Alan Dove’s Personal Blog
Recent Posts
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Fresh from the inbox: Hey , I came across Alan Dove online and wanted to reach out because we’re working with other science journalists that are offering science journalism. Science journalists offering science journalism? You really are hitting those keywords hard, aren’t you? I’m currently working with a few science journalists on campaigns that are…
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I recently acquired an AlphaSmart 3000, a brutally simple word processor from the early 2000s. These have surged in popularity in recent years as a distraction-free writing platform, and now that I’ve tried one I’m completely sold on the concept. I won’t repeat all the praise that’s been lavished on these odd little devices (here…
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Sorting through boxes of old technology my dad had cleared out of his basement, I find a half-remembered piece of my childhood. After hauling the grimy components out, arranging them on my workbench, and hooking up the cables, I flip the switch. There’s a beep, then the chugging of an ancient disk drive, and a…
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I’m scheduled to give a talk at the American Society for Virology’s meeting in Columbus, OH in a few weeks. If you’re there and have nothing better to do on Wednesday evening, feel free to pop in.
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Laura is reading a thriller by bestselling author Ruth Ware, and the main character is a virologist. Here, she laments the prestigious, career-defining events that are apparently out of her reach. I guess we’re officially a big deal.
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We have a Nintendo household, and over the years have accumulated a small collection of the company’s amiibo figurines. If you’re not familiar with them, these are sculpted miniature figures of game characters from various Nintendo franchises, each with a little NFC chip in the base. By holding the figure over the right spot on…
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I’m posting this from my phone, thanks to Apple’s nifty Shortcuts app. The shortcut I made takes photo and text input, then uses the built-in WordPress action to send it all to the blog. Here’s a copy of it. You’ll need to put your WordPress login information into the appropriate spot; it seems to work…
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While reorganizing my two sites (this one and alandove.com), I realized I did a similar exercise exactly two years ago. Apparently the urge to twiddle the settings on my blogging setup strikes every other Spring. This time around, the inspiration was realizing that I really post two distinct types of content, and the more professional,…
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A couple of days ago, I released a project I’ve been tinkering with for awhile: a game for teaching and practicing Morse code reception. You can check it out here. It’s certainly different from the previous games I’ve worked on, but it stems from one of my other major hobbies. If you’ve ever wanted to…
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In my continuing effort to acquire miscellaneous skills, I took up celestial navigation a little while ago. Yes, I mean using a sextant, some printed tables, and a rudimentary grasp of the principles of spherical trigonometry to find my position on Earth. It’s unlikely anyone really needs to do this here in the 21st century,…
