Well, it’s been a while since I made time to blog (Should be able to get back to something approaching regularity from today).
To get things up to speed, here’s a stunning picture by the Hubble Space Telescope; see below for more links sites celebrating 20 years of Hubble.

Been busy, doing some more freelance work (one for a website I haven’t written for before, on autism symptoms emerging early in infancy which was both very interesting and quite challenging to write), some more for Popular Science, Science Illustrated and the newsletter of the Institute. Will post links to whichever ones get published online, most of them haven’t come out yet.

I also took a vacation, and wasn’t really motivated to spend too much time on my computer, let alone blog, during that time. (Maybe someday when I get myself a smartphone I’ll blog/tweet when away from my computer, but right now I’m tied to the old laptop).

I did keep a list of links/items I wanted to write about or at least mention, here are some of them, in no particular order:

1. During my vacation, although I don’t have a smartphone myself, I used my wife’s Iphone to browse the web during long bus trips. And I realized that the normal website layout didn’t really work for mobile browsing, so I’ve created a mobile version of the site (thanks to the WPTouch plugin) that is much easier to browse and read on a smartphone. It just made more sense – if nothing else, next time it’ll make it easier to blog from my wife’s Iphone 🙂

2. One of my last few posts concerned Simon Singh’s libel case fight, and how he was giving up writing while he devoted all his time to the case.

Well the good news is that the British Chiropractic Association dropped its libel case against him! This came after a court of appeal ruled in his favor. There’s been plenty of coverage online, but I’ve just linked to The Guardian, which has a good overview of the ending of the case.

Even after the case, the debate over Britain’s libel laws continues, but at least the ordeal is over for Simon Singh…although there’s nothing he can do about all the time and money he lost fighting the case. Hopefully somewhere down the line this leads to reform of the libel laws. As for Dr. Singh, I hope he’s able to get back to writing.

3. 20 years of Hubble! Seeing some of the sites putting together Hubble’s best was really amazing, it’s easy to forget how many stunning images we owe to this telescope. It’s also hard for me to imagine it’s already 20 years old…
Here’s MSNBC’s best images from Hubble, and Foxnews.com’s compilation.

Here’s a NASA Documentary on 20 years of Hubble. If your internet connection is fast enough, make sure you watch it in high-resolution on NASA’s Youtube channel, along with related videos. 🙂

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJmADQkhUeo[/youtube]