Homepage: https://ribo.zone
Date: December 31, 2024
Thank you for visiting!
wow, what a year for celestial phenomena!
in april, i saw a total solar eclipse for the first time. ben and i stayed with some friends in southern vermont, and the group of us drove north until we reached hope cemetery. all the tombstones there were cut from the same granite quarry, and this matching texture made them look unreal in the altered light leading up to totality. and what can i even say about totality? i get it now. i understand why people travel the world, chasing solar eclipses. there's truly nothing else like it.
in august, ben and i woke up at four in the morning to catch the perseid meteor shower. i've seen a handful of meteors in my life, but never anything like this. even with the light pollution from the city, we were able to see about one meteor every five minutes. i even saw one really good one, with a flash of color in the tail and everything. really beautiful, and it happens yearly!
in october, i saw C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS), a comet from the oort cloud! this is another first for me. i think i'd heard it explained, but until i saw it, i hadn't really internalized how comets just... hang there in the sky. they move so quickly through space, but appear to move so slowly to the human eye. ben and i had the pleasure of pointing out the comet to a group of people at the park who had no idea it was happening.
unfortunately, we missed the few times that the aurora borealis was visible, but we did use eclipse glasses to look at the sunspots that were happening around the same time.
bug photography has been a major hobby of mine since 2017, and i've known about inaturalist for nearly as long, so it's a little bit ridiculous that i didn't make my own account until this year. uploading my photos to inaturalist gets me help with identification, plus the satisfaction of contributing data to ecological research. though my focus is insects, i've been learning about a lot of other organisms, too. the global year in review page is awe-inspiring. so much data! i love it. i won't be linking to my personal year in review page (so i can keep my location private), but i do want to share my stats!
of the major taxa, there were only three that i didn't observe this year.
beyond my own data, i've also had a lot of fun looking through what everyone else in my area is observing. there's one person who sets up light traps for moths almost every night throughout the summer, another with a trailcam that catches the nocturnal mammals, and a third with a birdfeeder cam that makes me laugh every time because the fisheye lens makes the birds look ridiculous. i'm not very confident at intentifying most things down to species, but sometimes i sift through the "unknown" observations and give them very course IDs. that's a plant, that's a bug, that's a crab, and so on. or i go through observations of a certain insect and annotating them as larva, pupa, or adult. it's a much better use of time than doomscrolling, not that i did much of that before anyway. my goal has been to identify at least as many organisms as i'm uploading, but i've come up just a bit short.
i promised you serious bug data, so here it is: 127 of my observations this year were included in the global biodiversity information facility (GBIF) dataset, and 7 of them in the global biotic interactions (GloBI) dataset! and here's a sunburst chart of every observation i've made so far!
after spending my whole life playing games as my primary hobby, and years asking myself "wouldn't it be fun to make a game?", i finally made a damn game! it only took me a weekend to make, and it'll only take you minutes to play, but it's real! it even got a comment on itch! go play eukaryote story! it's one of the things from this year that i feel proudest of. if you're anything like me from a year ago and wondering if or how or why to make your first game, i really recommend checking out bitsy and the games made with it, like this one.
i also played some games, according to my very boring steam replay:
my most played game was final fantasy xiv, which comes as no surprise. i've been playing on and off since 2017, and it's been my top game since i made my current character in 2021. this summer there was a new exansion added, dawntrail, and i liked it! though at one point i excitedly thought [redacted] was pulling a god emperor of dune on everyone, so when that didn't happen i was a little disappointed... oh well. now that i'm caught up on the main story, i mostly play frontline, the chaotic 24v24v24 PvP mode.
i wanted to play more new games (looking at 1000xRESIST and metaphor: refantazio), but i only found the time for these two:
i'd also like to make a special mention of fire emblem: three houses. i first played it on release, which was during the summer before i started grad school. i loved it, but i was only able to finish the crimson flower route before other responsibilities pulled me away from games for a while. this year, i recommended it to ben, who now loves it too. i've been sitting on the couch next to him as he plays, reading or working on my website (or offering tactical advice, at the beginning). it's been so fun to see the game again through his eyes; he also started with crimson flower! now he's playing through the other routes, so i'm finally getting to see the parts of the story that i missed. game of the year.
i don't know how much i want to talk about work on my site. the science "theme" is everywhere, sure, but i rarely discuss the day to day particulars of my job. this is mostly to keep things fun for me; i'd rather spend my free time online playing the role of "person with hobbies" than science communicator. that being said, a review of my year would feel hollow without some discussion of this major part of my life.
i'm currently five and a half years into a phd program in molecular biology. the average (pre-covid) time to degree is also five and a half years. everyone (reasonably) keeps asking me when i'll graduate, but i only have the vaguest predictions. maybe next fall? maybe the spring after? and then what? i used to be more comfortable going at my own pace, but lately i've been feeling the pressure to move on.
my big shift in perspective happened in july, when i presented my work at an external conference for the first time. i was nervous about showing my data to new people, but the most hostile members of the audience were actually the faculty from the same university as me, familiar faces i thought would be supportive. this is not me misinterpreting constructive criticism; one professor, the first to visit my poster, just said "you shouldn't have done your introduction that way" with no suggestions to improve, leaving me stumbling over my introduction for the next hour. other professors i knew came by and gave me judgmental looks. i'm sensitive! my feelings were hurt! i spent half the poster session feeling like i should quit science altogether. but the new faces, the ones i was worried about originally? they were so kind to me, so enthusiastic about my project, and asked such insightful questions that i was able to pull it together. i even met someone whose work on [niche subject we both study] is absolutely brilliant, and i got to tell him i love his papers! and he had nice things to say about my project! and we had dinner together! and joked about [niche subject we both study]! it was awesome. i would join his lab for a postdoc if it wasn't in [expensive country where i do not speak the language]. but i digress. the point of this story, of sharing the lows and the highs of that one poster session, is that it flipped a switch in me. i can't help but compare my experiences with the people at my current university and the people from everywhere else. it's not that every professor around me is blasting negativity my way; it's just time to move on! it's time to hear new ideas from scientists i haven't yet met!
the second half of my year has been full of doubt. yes, it's time to move on, but am i ready? am i good enough? the dream i've been chasing is professorship —— teaching and running a lab of my own. the traditional next step for that kind of academic career is a postdoc, but i've also been looking into more independent fellowship programs. then again, there's the doubt. am i ready to be independent? i still haven't published a paper, which is one of the primary ways success is measured in academia. i spent weeks and weeks of grueling effort this year trying to make a knockout cell line, failed, and haven't been brave enough to try again. i missed deadlines. i made mistakes. i am scared. but there have been some wins too! i spent all of 2024 funded by my own grant (the one mentioned in my very first blog post two years ago). in october, i was given a service award for my work organizing a yearly scientific retreat from 2021 to 2023. i am making progress towards my paper, however slowly. i am scared, still, but i know that i'm okay. when i write it all down, it doesn't seem so bad. i'll probably continue to be scared, but i'm not going to let that stop me from applying to those exciting fellowship programs. maybe they'll even accept me!
it's been a very long time since i've connected with a book as much as i have with annihilation by jeff vandermeer. it might be my book of the decade. check back with me in 6 years. or sooner. maybe next year i'll have devoted a whole page or section of this site to how much i love it.
the only movie i saw in the theater this year was dune: part two. i went with a big group: most of the lab, plus a few +1s. we got there early and wandered the mall, which made me feel older than i am. for concessions, i got popcorn and a blue raspberry icee in a big commemorative cup that says ride the beast on it. i forgot how big IMAX screens are. the person next to me spent the second half on his phone. just as with the first film, i liked the slow establishing shots and i hated when anyone was speaking. (why do they all talk like normal people from today instead of little freaks from dune?) i loved the worm scene. i still have my stupid cup.
a much better film than dune: part two, and my personal favorite of the year, is mars express, which i watched after seeing it recommended on sweetfish's monthly checkout counter.
my song of the year is, without a doubt, no sun on main street by elie mcafee-hahn (feat. julie bodian). nothing cheers me up like singing "it shades the terrain!" or "he sold it for parts!" around the house.
it's too hard to pick an album of the year, so i'm nominating everything that's currently in our CD player.
i generally listen to podcasts while i'm pipetting at work. most of the new (to me) ones this year were about history, and my favorite of them all was our friend the computer. it's about alternative computing histories, which i assume you'll also find interesting, given that you're here reading a personal webpage.
i love updating my website and i love surfing the web. maybe you already know this.
i spent a lot of time this year looking for new sites and encouraging people to make their own. i joined my first webrings and made my first fanlistings. i got involved with the 32-bit cafe and, in february, i hosted one of their code jams for the first time. it was so much fun that i hosted another in june, and i helped put together the page for the new year's event happening now. i even ran my first in-person workshop to teach my artist friends the basics of html and css.
some time this year, i read one too many articles or posts lamenting the state of the internet or asking "where all the websites went" and i got really mad. i'm tired of people telling me, sometimes even on my own website, that no one makes sites like this anymore and how much they miss the internet of the past! if this sounds like something you'd say, your nostalgia is making you ignorant! there is so much good out there, being made and shared every day, if you just take the time to look.
lately i've been thinking more about outreach. i maintain my links page and stumbleupon-like link portal to show people my all my favorite sites, but it doesn't feel like enough. how do i reach the people that don't already know about this side of the internet? the answer might be punching a hole in the walled gardens of social media and showing the people there what lies beyond. i don't have the tolerance for twitter, instagram, or facebook, but i recently joined bluesky and set up a custom feed to find interesting links (keywords are documented in this thread). moderation is like game of whack-a-mole, but it's been fun so far. i've also been (ir)regularly sharing links to sites i love in the websurfing tag, and i invite you to join me. wherever you hang out online, share links to your favorite pages.