Hi. I’m still here. At the moment I’m struggling a bit to be the Queen of everything, with the end of the school year already in sight (!) But the universe has never really let me down before, so I have reasons to believe I’ll be doing just fine if I’ll just keep swimming.
I’m still wearing my teacher’s, student’s and ambassador’s hats and as the latter I recently did two Zooniverse lectures of which I might share some musings later. Oh and I’ve also been to the We Will Rock You Arena Tour in Amsterdam (what a weekend!) And in between there was this impersonator we dealt with rather swiftly. Some free advice: don’t just take any of the pictures from here without asking nicely first.
Anyway. Other stuff I’ve been up to includes preparing for a certain birthday party, with friends from abroad coming over for a weekend of fun! I’ve sent them these invites. (Thanks again to my super dad for helping me make ‘em). Keep calm when turning thirty right?
Didn’t see the comet a couple of weeks ago? Neither did I, although I did take my dad comet-hunting. It was just too clouded and light-polluted. However! Brian posted one of Jamie’s excellent pictures of it, for 3D viewing! (Remember Venus? I’m making cards of these now).
So print it. Get an OWL, preferably. And enjoy! (Thanks Bri!)
Credit for the picture obviously goes to the brilliant Jamie Cooper, who took more amazing pictures of the comet. Follow him at: twitter.com/CoopsCamera. The three dimensional magic was done by the brilliant Dr Brian May, who’s on brianmay.com.
And here it is! My good friend Richard brought me a copy this afternoon (and after a small computer disaster I managed to get this picture on here). Have a nice rest of the weekend dear people out there! (Click to enlarge).
As mentioned in my calendar, I recently did an interview for the Limburgs Dagblad (a local newspaper). I was asked about what my life’s been like after five years of discovering Hanny’s Voorwerp. Many nice memories and anecdotes came to mind.
I have met some of the most awesome people in the world, but I have had my share of basket-cases too. Keeps life interesting, doesn’t it?! And I have learned a lot indeed. For instance, before I was “quoted” in the media a lot, I used to think quotes were sentences actually said by the people quoted! (Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing particularly wrong with this interview, I’m really just saying). (And yes you can quote me on this, tee hee).
Anyroad. I woke up yesterday with a text from my good friend Richard, merely saying: “Wow, two pages!” It took a while for my brain to process what he was on about (the interview was a while ago). I’m also not on facebook as much as I am on twitter, so the friends on the former hadn’t seen earlier announcements and posted pictures of the newspaper being all surprised their friend was in it.
I like the piece; it sums it all up quite nicely. And I’ve had some nice comments on it. The group of people who like the Zoo is ever growing! Onwards and all! Oh and here are some pictures Jan-Willem Souren (who let us in the science centre) took at the shoot. The last picture is the one they used in the article. It’s from their photographer Bas Quaedvlieg.
My story also recently appeared in a Mexican magazine, called Cómo Ves. It’s an article on the ‘thrill of science’. Look what a cute drawing they made of me (and I have a certain famous guitarist on a poster now)! The pdf was sent to me, but you can read the whole article online as well. Well, if you can read Spanish that is.
