GalaxyGoo Blogs

Today, at the Maker Faire, I was interviewed for Bay Area Backroads. I'm not quite sure how people get used to having cameras pointing at them, as it certainly unsettled me.

It was actually kind of cool. I didn't see that they had a camera, at first. They asked me what we were setting up for...and I was just myself, talking about the Cell Project. Then they wired me up with a mic, and started shooting. I have to say that they were a little more reserved once the camera started running, and I think this made me a little more reserved as well.

I'm learning that when it comes to filming, I do much better when I don't know the camera's running. All I can say is, well....I hope they edit it well, and that GalaxyGoo at least gets a mention in the show (which should air in the Fall).

Posted by Kristin at 11:47 PM | Permalink

We ordered some neat little stickers to take to the Maker Faire. The first batch arrived today!

We'll be giving these away at our booth, in the Maker Kids area of the Faire.

My fellow Biology geeks out there might appreciate this cell phone sticker... I couldn't resist putting one on my cell right away.

We ordered some in full color, as well. But they haven't arrived yet. Can't wait to see them!

Big thanks go to Professor Colin Purrington, of Swarthmore College, for suggesting the idea!

Posted by Kristin at 06:44 PM | Permalink

The Maker Faire is fast approaching. In fact, it's this weekend!

This year, they're trying out something new. They've invited the Makers to start a day early, and to participate in a special day just for students and educators. Admission is free for Education Day!

That's right, if you're a teacher, and you'd like to come to a special open house just for educators, go sign up right now!

I'll be conducting a special workshop for teachers, on making cell models. If you're going to be there, please contact me so that I can be sure to have enough clay on had for you to do the workshop. Did I mention that teachers get in for free?!

The open house for teachers is scheduled for 4-6pm. Earlier in the day, I'll be doing some demonstrations for students, who will be there on field trips from school.

Posted by Kristin at 08:39 PM | Permalink

Come see us, and the Cell Project, at the Maker Faire! Ticket discounts end in April. Get your tickets now, so you don't have to pay full price at the door.

As the organizers say, the Maker Faire is

A two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It's for creative, resourceful folks who like to tinker and love to make things.
We call them Makers.

Posted by Kristin at 11:27 AM | Permalink

Imagine my surprise, when I see GalaxyGoo mentioned on the front page of the Business section of the San Francisco Chronicle. In fact, we were mentioned in the Tech Chronicles in a short article on the Maker Faire. There we are! Right there in the second paragraph!

Posted by Kristin at 11:31 AM | Permalink

Wow, we're listed as a "featured maker" on the Maker Faire website.

Our kick-off meeting takes place this Friday, so I'm busy getting info packets together for potential volunteers and supporters. I was looking on the Maker Faire website, for a brief description of the event to include in the packet, and was pleasantly surprised to see that we were listed as a featured maker. Nice!

Posted by Kristin at 02:07 PM | Permalink

That's right, GalaxyGoo's Cell Project was accepted to the Maker Faire! WooHooo! We just got official notice.

Posted by Kristin at 03:27 PM | Permalink

Well, I suppose we should be happy that GalaxyGoo is so popular that we're getting enough traffic to give the server trouble. Especially trouble with running both the database apps and an email server. To alleviate the problem, we're now using a second server to handle just email. This is taking a while. In the meantime, email is down.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, to get in touch with me, please use my gmail address.

Thank you for your patience.

Posted by Kristin at 11:56 AM | Permalink

Issue has been resolved:

We're exceeding memory on the server, and need to tune the server and optimize some things. So, we may go offline briefly.

If you need to get in touch with me before everything is sorted out, please contact me through my gmail address. galaxygoo [at] gmail dot com.

Thank you for your patience.

Posted by Kristin at 03:31 PM | Permalink

Thank you for supporting GalaxyGoo through our affiliate links in the GalaxyGoo Museum Shop!

This year, you raised thousands of dollars through holiday shopping alone! The checks are still coming in from affiliate programs. Thank you!

Now, we've got another exciting opportunity to support GalaxyGoo programs: iGive. While affiliate link revenues support our programs, they are considered "earned income". The iGive program provides outright donations! Which, from an accounting perspective is much more important to GalaxyGoo, as a publicly supported non-profit organization.

One cool thing about the iGive program is that you can take a tax deduction on your donations (made while shopping).

Posted by Kristin at 02:59 PM | Permalink

The next GalayxGoo Happy Hour is scheduled for Friday, March 7. If you're in the San Francisco area and would like to attend, please rsvp on the event page.

Posted by Kristin at 02:59 PM | Permalink

Did you notice the new category on this blog? Well, I'm pretty excited about it: XO laptop.

A while ago, we sent in a project proposal to the OLPC developers program. Today, I found out it was approved, and that two XOs are on the way.

I can hardly wait to get started! already studying the specs, before I even have the machine in my hands. Working in a Linux environment will be new for me, and while I've dabbled in Python I haven't done much with it yet. That's about to change. I get to be a newbie all over again!

Posted by Kristin at 03:09 PM | Permalink

Introduction:
At FOTB, Seb's talk on particle systems was on my short list of sessions I wanted to see, and meeting him was a real treat. I was delighted when he joined the GalaxyGoo Flash-a-thon. His snow effect is great, and the fact that he wrote it so quickly is a testament to both his skill as a coder and his familiarity with particles. ~Kristin

Author: Seb Lee-Delisle, Technical Director, Plug-in Media
Author's comments:
At FlashBrighton's Big Day Out a couple of weeks ago, I set myself the somewhat crazy challenge of programming a dynamically generated snowstorm in fifteen minutes from scratch. No pre-written classes, no graphics, nothing!

Needless to say it was a somewhat frenetic, but exciting session, and I just about made it with a few seconds to spare. And, as I felt that producing 2D particle snow would be a little too easy, I decided halfway through that it'd look better in 3D. And then I added some wind. As I always say, it'd be boring if it were too easy. :-)

Support the educational projects at GalaxyGoo, and make an online donation through Network for Good or Facebook Causes..

For live version, and source files, continue reading.

Continue reading "Snowstorm in 15 minutes" »

Posted by Seb Lee-Delisle at 11:27 AM | Permalink

How's this for a little experiment in social networking for a good cause? And the timing is great!

About the Causes Giving Challenge The Causes Giving Challenge launches on December 13, 2007 at 3pm EST and ends on February 1, 2008 at 3pm EST. Through the Challenge, all users of Causes on Facebook are invited to participate by creating a cause. A total of $250,000 will be awarded to the causes of those individuals who inspire the most donors to give to their charity.

$50,000 to the Cause with the most donors
$25,000 to the next two Causes with the most donors
$10,000 to the next ten Causes with the most donors
AND $1,000 each day to the Cause with the most donors that day

We believe that this campaign has the potential to show the extraordinary impact that new technologies and online communities are having on giving.
~ The Case Foundation

Note that it says the "most donors" not the most donated. So, if 200 people donate $40 each, we could be in very good shape.

Our goal is to raise money for The Cell Project, bringing us closer to getting it into classrooms as an integrated project based learning activity and lesson plan.

As of a few minutes ago, the Flash-a-thon for The Cell Project was doing pretty well. We're still in the top 4, but we need your help to stay there.

Adding to the excitement of the Flash-a-thon, the stats are updated real-time, so this could get exciting. How many donors will we need to win one of those $1,000 daily grants? Or one of the bigger grants?

Posted by Kristin at 10:39 PM | Permalink

Our hosting company has notified us that they will be conducting server maintenance tonight, between 10:30 and 12 midnight (Pacific). The galaxygoo website may be down, during this time.

Bad timing, so let's hope we're only down briefly.

Posted by Kristin at 01:03 PM | Permalink

We've opened the GalaxyGoo Forums. Registration is moderated, so you may not be able to post right away.

They're still in Beta, so play nice. :-)

Posted by Kristin at 02:58 PM | Permalink

The GalaxyGoo Flash-a-thon is coming! Starting Dec 10th!

We've got a bunch of really talented folks contributing their projects, with source code!

+ Branden Hall
+ Edwin Heijmen
+ Kristin Henry
+ Mike Johnson
+ Seb Lee-Delisle
+ Stacey Mulcahy
+ Keith Peters
+ Ben Stucki
.
.
+ and some great surprise guests!

This online event supports the educational projects at GalaxyGoo. Continue reading for more information...

Continue reading "The GalaxyGoo Flash-a-thon" »

Posted by Kristin at 08:46 AM | Permalink

It's hard to believe that it was just two weeks, because it feels like a much longer journey. After the magic of Flash on the Beach (which I'll write more about later), I headed off to Lisbon for a short visit with my college room-mate, and then returned to London for a few days.

Flash on the Beach was amazing. The talks were all inspiring and everybody seemed so happy to be there. It was a joyful conference. So many wonderful people. Between a bad cough and jet-lag, I wasn't at my best. But I would go back in a heartbeat, if I could.

Because of FOTB, I've decided to develop a new approach to giving talks. I missed the mark, on my audience, and made my talk a little too simplistic. But often, my talks at Flash conferences are not simple enough. So, I'm thinking of developing a more dynamic talk...where audience input determines the path the talk takes. Maybe I'll even create a run-time visualization of this, so that audience can see how they vary from others.

Next came a personal journey, which took me to Lisbon, Portugal.

The best friends, are those who know all your dirt and still love you. In fact, they love you even more. I've been very lucky in life, to have friends like this. They see through my many flaws and help me see my own inner glow. Jen is one of these friends, and it was wonderful to see her again. To meet her children! We went back to those wonderful days in college, through my sister's illness, and on through today. All with the ease of an old friendship. It's left me feeling very centered.

After the intense social aspect of FOTB and personal time-machine of Lisbon, I really enjoyed my solitude in London. For the first time in years, I had the luxury of passing several days alone with my own thoughts. I walked through Hyde park several times, and marveled at the exposed beauty of the naked trees.

Combined with the inspiration of FOTB, I'm now thinking a lot about the fluidity of systems...particle systems and fluid dynamics. At one point, I noticed that if I had chosen to walk down the other side of the street, I would have seen the signs that indicated a path I wanted, but missed the first time through. Instead, I followed along with the tide of people, through the channels of London's streets. I'm not sure what this means to my work yet, but I'm sure it will.

Posted by Kristin at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

For a while, I've been keeping an eye on zazzle.com, and have finally taken the plunge. GalaxyGoo is now on Zazzle.com!

What was the deciding factor? They have a special program for non-profits, and all sales will result in donations for GalaxyGoo programs. Once we got into the system, I was delighted with how easy it is to get up and running.

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

Posted by Kristin at 04:23 PM | Permalink

Unfortunately, we've had to assign all incoming mail to the junk folder for many gg addresses. If you've tried to get in touch with me or anyone else at GalaxyGoo, and you haven't heard back yet, please use our contact form.

These measures had to be taken, due to overwhelming volume of spam on these addresses.

Posted by Kristin at 11:32 AM | Permalink

Getting the words out, after a long vacation from blogging, can be painful. I saw it referred to as "blogger's block" on twitter. It's not just writer's block, since I have been writing. Grant writing, book proposal writing, email writing, and lots of code writing.

So much code writing, in fact, that the GalaxyGoo forums are ready for an alpha release. Basic features are all functional now. Working on making them even more useful, and getting the project collaboration space back up and running again with file-upload support for project members.

Posted by Kristin at 08:52 AM | Permalink

We've been putting a lot of work into bringing the GalaxyGoo forums back online. In fact, we've been building it from scratch. Why? So that it's more tightly integrated with the rest of the systems we're developing. Over the years, we've used various forum software, and they each have their own benefits and drawbacks. One of the major drawbacks has been needing different logins for the forums and other features.

The new forums are pretty bare-boned. Nothing fancy at all, but they are a good start. If you'd like to help test them out, and get a sneak peak at upcoming features like the project collaboration space, drop me a note or post a comment to this post.

Posted by Kristin at 02:58 PM | Permalink

At last, I've got the old GalaxyGoo word search game back online. I had to dig in the old code (AS1!!!!) to add the location of the crossdomain policy file for this app, so that the word list data would load. Nothing else is new about it, but it has inspired me to go back and update it to AS3, adding new features. Looking at my old code, I'm amazed that I pulled this off with AS1. It also reminds me how frustrated I would get with ActionScript.

We flashcoders really have come a long way.

Posted by Kristin at 02:38 PM | Permalink

My session description for Flash on the Beach is up. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this one!

The complexity of the universe and all of life is based on simple building blocks. A metal is a metal, no matter how many times you melt or pound it. It's the sub-atomic particles of each atom that determine its character, and how it interacts with others.

Posted by Kristin at 01:31 PM | Permalink

Recently, I spent some time browsing at the MIT Press book store. Well, I couldn't just browse! Here's a list of the books I had them ship home to me. I've got my summer reading covered now....for the next few summers, perhaps.

Design:
Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology

The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)

Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education

Math:
The Pythagorean Theorem: A 4,000-Year History

Four Colors Suffice: How the Map Problem Was Solved

Roses, Origami & Math

Unit Polyhedron Origami

Floral Origami Globes

Comp Sci:
Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics (Artificial Intelligence)

Evolutionary Computation: Toward a New Philosophy of Machine Intelligence, Third Edition (IEEE Press Series on Computational Intelligence)

Cog Sci:
The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius

Models and Cognition (Bradford Books)

Science:
Survival Skills for Scientists

These and other books are listed in the new GalaxyGoo amazon shop, which is still a work-in-progress. While the interface from Amazon is easy for simple collections, it gets a little challenging to create more complex collections. We'll see how it goes, but so far so good.

Posted by Kristin at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Recently, I discovered the Causes app on FaceBook. This application puts the power of online social networking into grass-roots efforts and fund raising. As the head of a non-profit, naturally I was curious. Getting set up was fairly easy and their staff was very helpful.

If you're on FaceBook, you can add GalaxyGoo to your causes with a simple click. You can recruit new supporters, make a donation, or just show your support by "being there". Note that the "invite" feature is stalling, currently. I've been reminding them every few days, on the app developers "wall". Trying not to be annoying about it, but it is a fairly important feature. :-)

One of the things I really like about the app is that as an individual, you can support several causes all in one place. Very cool! It really takes the supporters perspective into account. If you're a publicly minded person, it can be challenging to keep track of the causes you support.

It's also been more successful for GalaxyGoo, as a fund raiser. In the first few days, we had $75 in donations from three different supporters. In contrast, our six degrees badge has yet to see any action.

Posted by Kristin at 05:01 PM | Permalink

Later today, I'm heading out for the GRC conference on Visualization in Science and Education. This is an amazing conference. I'm still skimming the surface of ideas from the last one, which was two years ago!

I'm hoping to come back with some new ideas for The Cell Project, and lots of inspiration! Perhaps some new collaborations! Whatever happens, I'm very much looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting some more fascinating folk.

I'll have email access while I'm gone, but I might be slower than usual in responding.

Posted by Kristin at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

GalaxyGoo has participated in the Blogathon twice now. It's been a lot of fun and we posted some great experimental Flash projects.

It's time for us to spin off on our own, with a less hectic schedule and more community participation. I'm thinking that we should spread the posts out over a few weeks and encourage the community to post links to their adaptations. Perhaps we should arrange some nice prizes.

We need a name! Current candidates are "GalaxyGoo-a-thon" and "Flash-a-thon". Obviously, we need more ideas.

Posted by Kristin at 01:42 PM | Permalink

I'm making some changes to the server, which could result in the blog going off-line for a while. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Posted by Kristin at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What do you think about registering, before getting open source files? I ask this because it is rather challenging for us, as a non-profit organization, to provide reports on how our efforts are received by the public. How many people are we reaching and serving with our programs? Are we fulfilling our mission? We could develop better server solutions for tracking download statistics, behind the scenes. However, I'd prefer to go with a full disclosure policy, from all parties.

Is registration "bad", when we're a growing community? Identity supports responsibility, and respect for fellows.

My impression is that this is a sensitive issue, and I'd like some well considered thoughts from the community at large. If you are unfamiliar with GalaxyGoo, we are a small non-profit dedicated to increasing science literacy.

Posted by Kristin at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

In past years, GalaxyGoo's participation in the Blogathon has been a lot of fun and resulted in collections of cool Flash experiments and their source files. Participants post every 30 minutes, for 24 hours. It's certainly a marathon.

I'm thinking that GalaxyGoo should go independent, and modify the program a bit. Scheduling daily bursts, for a week or two, instead of the 24 hour marathon. That would give our readers time to participate as well. I'd love to see variations on the posted source files.

Posted by Kristin at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

FITC was fantasic! I had a great time, and even learned a few things.

Attending FITC, without the pressure of presenting, was very enlightening. Previously, I had always felt as though I needed to prove my worth. This time I just met up with my buddies, revelled in geeky conversation, and met lots of new and interesting people. It was the best time I've ever had at a tech conference. I feel very fortunate to be part of the Flash/Flex community.

What makes a conference successful? FITC is one of the best, so I was looking at the conference with a critical eye. "Critical" in the sense of looking carefully, intent on learning. One of the things that stood out to me was a sense of community, that the conference was providing a social setting for us to learn and conduct business. There is just no substitute for face-to-face conversation in a casual situation, when it comes to business...or life in general.

The fine folks who organize FITC tried something new this year; something they called "the panic room". Attendees could sit down with speakers, for a short interval, and pick their brains or show off their work. Seems like an interesting idea, and I wonder how it went over.

Well, now it's back to the regularly scheduled program.

Posted by Kristin at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Now presenting: The "i goo" line of t-shirts from GalxyGoo. This slogan was proposed a long time ago, but just never manifested...until now. Why is the "i" not capitalized? It just looked better in lower case font.

The shirts come in a variety of colors and cuts, including some generous styles for women. Yeah!

Posted by Kristin at 12:01 PM | Permalink

Join us for tonight's GalaxyGoo Happy Hour!

Tonight, starting at 5:30 pm.

See details here: GalaxyGoo Happy Hour

If there's interest, I'll bring clay, and demonstrate the activity we did last weekend at the AAAS meeting. :-)

Posted by Kristin at 01:40 PM | Permalink

I've turned off comments on some, but not all, of our posts as part of the long defensive battle against blog-comment spammers/vandals. Sometimes it sure seems like we're trapped in a siege-war.

While all comments are moderated, it's still a constant chore to deal with all the spam attacks. The last couple weeks have been particularly bad.

I'm tempted to add captcha, but I'm not sure if the accessibility issues have been worked out yet.

Posted by Kristin at 04:53 PM | Permalink

The next GalaxyGoo Happy Hour is scheduled for Friday, Feb 23rd. If you're interested in joining us, drop me a line either in the comments here or with our contact form.

Better yet, RSVP on the upcoming.org page for the event: GalaxyGoo Happy Hour

Posted by Kristin at 01:29 PM | Permalink

GalaxyGoo will be at the AAAS - Annual Meeting Family Science Days! Feb 17-18. Exhibit Hall at the AAAS Annual Meeting, San Francisco Hilton.

We'll be demonstrating some of the off-screen activities from our Cell Project. My favorite is building Cell models out of clay, and looking at the cross-sections. So bring your family along and play! Admission is free!

I hope our booth has a view of the stage, because there are a number of presentations I want to see, espcially by the Mythbusters and Iron Science (from the Exploratorium).

GalaxyGoo's participation in this exciting event was made possible by the efforts of Simon Conlin and the support of Adobe. Thank you!

Posted by Kristin at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Kevin Bacon has a new website, that he hopes will encourage charitable giving...and it's called SixDegrees.org. It's sort of a social-networking-do-good project. I haven't explored it fully yet, but I'm intrigued.

To help promote the project, Kevin Bacon is offering $10,000 matching grants to organizations. Now here's the tricky part...the site has these badges, which can be created by anyone. People can select several organizations to raise money for. Mr Bacon's grants will go to the organizations selected by the six people with badges that raise the most money. A neat little play on the whole six-degrees-of-separation thing. you can even add video to your badge.

I've set up a badge for GalaxyGoo. You can too! Just click on the "get this badge" link and you'll be on your way.

Posted by Kristin at 11:58 AM | Permalink

I was working on a sudoku puzzle for the upcoming GalaxyGoo newsletter, when I realized that GalaxyGoo has nine letters in it. So, just for fun, I converted this original puzzle into a GalaxyGoo sudoku puzzle. Instead of the usual numbers (1-9), the letters in GalaxyGoo are arranged in the rows and columns of the grid. I'm guessing that the repeating letters (G, A, and O) will make the puzzle easier to solve. (update: no it doesn't) So, print it up, give it a try, and have fun.

Update:
Page with puzzle in three versions: numbers, chemistry symbols, and repeating letters.

GalaxyGoo Sudoku

Posted by Kristin at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We need to upgrade our servers. As tech support tells us, our current server "is extremely overloaded" and is "using *twice* more RAM" than it's supposed to support.

We need your help! With your support, we can upgrade the server and get our database driven programs back online. We currently pay quarterly for a "Base" dedicated virtual server from Media Temple. We'd need to upgrade to a "Rave" or "Extreme" account. We do get a small non-profit discount, but the upgrade will approximately double our server expenses.

Online donations can be made through Network for Good, or Paypal:

We would like to thank you, so please be sure to include your name and address (see our privacy policy).

Posted by Kristin at 04:34 PM | Permalink

GalaxyGoo is revving up for the next level. As part of this, I’ve been working on an important document that’s currently named “GalaxyGoo Goals and Accomplishments”. Here is a portion of the current version:

Primary Mission: to increase science literacy of students and general public.

Approach: Develop learning tools that can be used in classroom or informal learning settings, and online. By using web technologies, we can produce materials that are inexpensive to deliver and to use. We want to supplement curriculum materials already available, project-based activities whenever possible. Software that allows teachers to generate printed resources, that are inexpensive to print out and copy.

Why general public, and not just kids? Our society faces important decisions right now. Decisions that require, at the minimum, an understanding of what the scientific process is. We also believe that the path to science literacy is a family activity. From reading books to your children, to exploring the importance of biodiversity, adults need to take responsibility for their own lifelong education, and to share this with each other and the children in their lives.

Why Flash? We use Flash for many of our online projects. We prefer it over javaScript (or AJAX) because of it’s cross-platform compatibility. With javaScript, we would be dependent on the way different browsers (and every new browser yet to come) interprets the javaScript language. Instead of spending the time and money writing several different versions of the javaScript code, we prefer to write it once and let the Flash player engineering team debug cross-platform and cross-browser issues. In addition to the coding issues, Flash has several features that make it useful...graphics, video, …

Project maintenance and Open Source. We maintain source files for our projects, so that they can be updated again and again. Technology changes, and our work is important enough to keep operational as our technical ecosystem changes. When feasible, we publish the source code of our projects, as open source, an freely available to other developers. Why? Because we want our work to grow and evolve.

Posted by Kristin at 10:20 PM | Permalink

It's been a while since we've had a GalaxyGoo Gathering. In fact, we're long overdue.

If you're going to be in the San Francisco area, and would like to join us, please post a comment here, use our contact form, or email me directly. I'll get back to you with date, time, location details.

Update: Looks like the weekend after New Years is better. :-)

Please vote for your preference of meeting days (Thursday, Friday, or Saturday).

Posted by Kristin at 02:39 PM | Permalink

We're working on a budget for an upcoming project...one with funding that will allow us to hire outside talent for the first time, and where we'll be working with scientists from different fields.

We need to get an idea of the current commercial ranges, and are surveying firms and independent contractors on how they currently budget for the following positions:

• Head animator/illustrator who will work with me to develop the overall style of the visuals, and help manage production.


• Illustrators/animators with a solid understanding of animation, user interaction, and Flash.


• A photographer/videographer who understands challenging lighting situations and can work with glass and liquids.


• Copy editor (science/technical).

If you'd like to help us out, please use our on-line form to contact us. At this time, we're just looking for budget information. It will be some time before we start looking at portfolios.

Posted by Kristin at 11:59 AM | Permalink

Donation Levels & Thank You Gifts:

$20 level thank you gift: bumper sticker

$40 donation level thank you gift: Coffee Cup

$60 donation level thank you gift: long sleeved T-Shirt

T-shirts are long sleeved, and available in women's and men's styles. Sizes are Small, Medium, Large, and Extra-Large. T-shirt color options are white, black, brown (for women only), and navy (for men only). Please indicate your style, size, and color preference on the donation form ("Designation").

$100 donation level thank you gift: All Three! The sticker, the coffee cup, and the t-shirt.

You can make your donation online, with Network For Good (an online donation service).
Be sure to indicate the style, size, and color you'd like, as the "Designation" on the donation form, if your donation level includes a t-shirt as your thank you gift.
You must include contact information, or we won't be able to send your thank-you gift to you. Unfortunately, thank you gifts will NOT be shipped before the holidays.

You may also make a donation by postal mail:

GalaxyGoo
4104 24th Street, #349
San Francisco, CA 94114

Posted by Kristin at 01:27 PM | Permalink

In a "past life", I was retail buyer for a small gift shop in San Francisco. I was pretty good at it, and continually increased profits for my boss. Actually, I was so good at it that my boss offered me my own store if I would stay, instead of going off to school in New Mexico. I really enjoyed the job, but I was determined to continue my education.

My life is completely different now, and I didn't think I'd be doing that job again. But, when running an organization like GalaxyGoo, not even the most obscure skill remains dormant forever. So, I've developed the GalaxyGoo Museum Shop and sett up affiliations with a select group on online retailers. Just in time for the holidy season, I've personally selected items from our affililates and posted short reviews and links on the GalaxyGoo Museum Shop blog.

What does this mean to you? It means that you can support GalaxyGoo while shopping for some of the best toys and gifts available online. This is GalaxyGoo, so Science and Art are strong themes in the collection.

Why a blog? It's just such an easy way to manage this. With categories of a blog, posts can be grouped multiple tags. They can be grouped by activity (like building and creative and by subject (like chemistry and dinosaurs). They can even be grouped by age group.

New items are added most days, and affiliates range from Mindware and Stacey's Booksellers to Boden and Dean & DeLuca.

Posted by Kristin at 12:46 PM | Permalink

We've added new designs, and long-sleeved shirts, to our CafePress shop. My favorite is the blue deinonychus fossils on brown for women, and on navy for men.

Posted by Kristin at 03:30 PM | Permalink

I'm excited to announce that Peekabootique is now carrying GalaxyGoo t-shirts. Proceeds will support GalaxyGoo, and our educational projects.

How'd this happen? Our t-shirts were a big hit at the Noe Valley Harvest Festival. This didn't escape the notice of Peekabootique's owners, who were looking for a local artist to work with to develop lines for their store. After a short series of talks, it was aggreed that Peekabootique would carry the currently available t-shirts and that we would work to develop new designs and packaging. While I can't go into any details, all designs will be science and math related.

Peekabootique is located at 1306 Castro Street (at 24th Street), in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco.

Posted by Kristin at 12:26 PM | Permalink

The folks at Adobe surprised me this summer. They said they wanted to feature my work in the Adobe Design Center Gallery. I was thrilled...and who am I to pass up such great publicity?!

I had a lot of fun creating the piece, and I hope you enjoy it:
Adobe Design Center Gallery Featured Artist: Kristin Henry

Posted by Kristin at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

GalaxyGoo is a Recycle My Cell Phone partner. We'll have boxes for collecting old cell phones at our Noe Valley Harvest Festival booth, on Saturday, October 21st.

Posted by Kristin at 02:54 PM | Permalink

I'm addicted to Flickr! They've created so many of the features that I'd like to implement on GalaxyGoo: file sharing, groups, tags, connection to physical world (like Moo cards).

One of my explorations of flickr involves getting Moo cards made. I've been having fun with the cards, and uploading pix if patterns I can create with them.

In this one, I've recreated the complete mandala pattern by arranging the cards in a spiral stack.

Here, I've used cards with different cropping of the original image. Overlapping them, so that the plesiosaur pattern is completed, creates variations in color bands. Yes, I'm having too much fun with this.

My two-year-old wanted to get in on the action, and picked up the card matching the t-shirt she'd been wearing all day.

Posted by Kristin at 01:33 PM | Permalink

The PlumpJack group is featureing GalaxyGoo in the Charity Corner of their current newsletter: PlumpJack News -- October 2006. There's a blurb on GalaxyGoo in the bottom-right corner of the page, so you'll have to scroll down to see it.

Posted by Kristin at 12:27 AM | Permalink

The PlumpJack Group is running a promotion, benefiting GalaxyGoo, at their Noe Valley shop.

"PlumpJack Wines Noe Valley and GalaxyGoo are working together to increase science literacy. GalaxyGoo is science, art, and discovery. The educational resources GalaxyGoo develops are free to teachers, students, and the general public.

Guess how many cells are in your body to be entered to win dinner for two at Balboa Cafe San Francisco, our PumpJack restaurant at the corner of Fillmore and Greenwich in historic Cow Hollow.

Your $1 donation will benefit science education, and give you the chance to win a great night out!"

The poster was designed by Matt Wood, of Visual Goodness, using elements from GalaxyGoo's Cell Project and my kaleidoscopic cell piece.

Beneath the poster are coaster sized disks, with kaleidoscopic cell patterns printed on them. They sort of remind me of sand dollars on a beach.

I've uploaded some photos of the window display to flickr.

Posted by Kristin at 11:32 AM | Permalink

GalaxyGoo will be at the Noe Valley Harvest Festival, on October 21. If you're going to be in the neighborhood, stop by our booth, and say "hi"! It's a great family-focused street fair, here in San Francisco.

There were so many little kids at last year's festival, that we decided to design some cool dinosaur T-shirts for this year. My favorite may be the Plesiosaurs, but I also like the Deinonychus patterns a lot. The fossils look like they're chasing each other around in a circle, and the black-on-white one reminds me of South Western pottery.

Posted by Kristin at 03:17 PM | Permalink

We've got the most of the contact forms back online again. Woohoo!

Currently, the pages for each project in the mediaLab are hand coded. Next step, is to convert all this to dynamically generated pages and to add download features (for source code, and such). This should make things a lot easier, both for visitors to find stuff and for us to manage it.

Posted by Kristin at 04:46 PM | Permalink

GalaxyGoo has a great outreach opportunity coming up, involving a retail window display. We need immediate help with design and possibly printing. The project requires very clean , but fun, design.

Update: The fine folks at Visual Goodness,are generously helping us out with the poster. Much thanks go to them, especially since this was such short notice. I'll take lots of pix of the window display when it goes up, and post them on our flickr account.

Posted by Kristin at 01:57 PM | Permalink

I’m sure it will soon be obvious that I’m a big fan of Edward Tufte, so I might as well admit it now. Presentation Zen, in: Is it Broken? posted a video of Seth Godin at the Gel 2006 conference (a "good experience" conference. Or something.) His topic: things (signs and user interfaces, mostly) that are broken. Curiously, [to me at least (my fondness for parentheticals is also obvious)] he uses Charles Joseph Minard’s map of Napolean’s march on Moscow as an example of something "broken on purpose."

Continue reading "Graphs and the Cognitive Style of Powerpoint" »

Posted by Rob at 07:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm very pleased to announce that Rob Simmon will be joining us on the GalaxyGoo Blog. Rob works for NASA, at the Goddard Space Flight Center's Earth Observatory, and will be writing about design and scientific visualization.

I met Rob at the Gordon Research Conference on Visualization in Science and Education, in Oxford, last summer. Since then, we have continued discussions begun at that conference. We usually agree on visualization issues, and sometimes we disagree. I'm very much looking forward to bringing our discussions, and more, into the public arena, and inviting others to join in.

Posted by Kristin at 02:17 PM | Permalink

In the tradition of museums who stock gift shops with items related to their exhibits, the GalalaxyGoo Museum Shop will be all about science, art, and geeky items.

Over the years, we've experimented with different ways to work with affiliate programs. These ranged from hand-coded html pages, to database driven Flash visualizations. Now we're trying something different. We participate in a number of affiliate programs, and creating a "package" that they all fit in has been a challenge. So, we're trying a blog.

The GalaxyGoo Museum Shop has links to specific products that we like, at our various affiliates. We're still playing around with tags, but so far entries have tags for subject (biology, general science, ...), activity type (games, books, ...), and affiliates (adobe, mindware,...). We will even have links to our own designs at CafePress.

Posted by Kristin at 03:19 PM | Permalink

It is with great pleasure that I announce GalaxyGoo's new CTO: Edwin Heijmen. He's a long time contributor to GalaxyGoo; most recently as part of the blogathon. He posted several AS3 experiments. This is a volunteer position, so we're especially grateful to have him take on this more formal role at GalaxyGoo.

Joining the GalaxyGoo Advisory Board, is our former CTO: Mike Walth. We're looking forward to interacting with Mike in this new capacity. It's good to mix things up a bit, from time to time. Also joining the GalaxyGoo Advisory Board, is Stacey Mulcahy .

Posted by Kristin at 01:58 PM | Permalink

GalaxyGoo is an affiliate of the Scientifics Online store. So now you can support GalaxyGoo and your geeky habits at the same time.

Find the largest selection of toys and tools for kids, hobbyists and science geeks of all ages at ScientificsOnline.com.

We'll be adding links to specific items soon...like telescopes and science kits.

Posted by Kristin at 12:59 PM | Permalink

Wow! We did it! We posted experimental Flash projects (with source files) every 30 minutes for 24 hours. It wouldn't have been possible without my amazing team. Edwin, Mike, Paul, and Stacey, and special guest Keith Peters, posted fantastic and diverse experimental flash projects (including source files). The experience made us all wish we had more time to experiment. Everyone went above and beyond what was asked of them, and in my eyes they truly sparkled.

In addition to the coders, we had an invaluable team member who may be unfamiliar to the Flash blog audience: Phyllis Pugh. Phyllis is a neuroscientist.She is also on the board of directors and is the science advisor to GalaxyGoo. If you ask me, we've just discovered a hidden talent of hers: blogger extraordinaire. Her introductions were great! She stepped up during the blogathon, even with an unexpected and personal loss.

Why'd we do this? There were two main goals: 1) inspire our fellow flash developers to do more experimentation and 2) raise money for the educational programs at Galaxygoo.

It's not too late to make a pledge of support for GalaxyGoo at blogathon.org. To every donor who pledges $40 or more, we'll be sending a cool thank you gift: a Glow-in-the-dark Astro-Logix construction toy (64 pieces).

Posted by Kristin at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There's nothing like publishing in print to make you appreciate the hyper-link. To make it easier on our Gazette readers, we're including all of the links from the newsletter here, in the order in which they first appear.

• GalaxyGoo Blogs
• Sponsor GalaxyGoo in Blogathon
• Art Intersect Science
• Noe Valley Harvest Festival
• GalaxyGoo T-shirts

Posted by Kristin at 03:30 PM | Permalink

The blogathon is almost upon us, and we're working furiously to get ready. We've got a fantastic group of Flash coders contributing files to this event. Some participated back in 2003, and some are joining us for the first time.

• Edwin Heijmen
• Kristin Henry
• Mike Johnson
• Stacey Mulcahy
• Paul Ortchanian

The projects will be in various version of Flash, including AS3.

During the event, we'll publish source files as well as finished swf. We hope that you will join in on the fun, play around with the code, and post your own variations.

The event starts at 6am (pacific), on Saturday, July 29th, and ends 24 hours later.

You can help support the educational programs at GalaxyGoo, by making a pledge of support on the blogathon.org website.

Posted by Kristin at 12:53 PM | Permalink

We finally put together our first humble newsletter: The GalaxyGoo Gazette. It's being printed right now.

If you'd like to get on our mailing list, send your postal address to gazetteAT galaxygoo. Be sure to send it to dot org, instead of dot com, or it won't get to us.

Posted by Kristin at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On July 10, 2002, I made the very first post to the GalaxyGoo blogs. At the time, we were just playing around with some new web technology. Four years later, I can't imagine GalaxyGoo without a blog.

To all of our readers, thank you!

Posted by Kristin at 01:44 PM | Permalink

I've updated the Data Visualization of Avian Flu so that it shows the data from the World Health Organization on cases reported through July 4th, 2006.

Posted by Kristin at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's official! We're in the 2006 Blogathon. We'll post an experimental Flash project every 30 minutes, for 24 hours.

In the 2004 blogathon, GalaxyGoo won the award for "Best Visual Arts". After a two year break, we're participating in the blogathon again.

When: Saturday, July 29th
Start Time: 6am (Pacific)

Sponsor GalaxyGoo! Your pledge supports the educational projects at GalaxyGoo.

Posted by Kristin at 11:30 AM | Permalink