How to accidentally apply for a job without realizing it

A few months ago I received an email inviting me to give a talk at a company that will remain anonymous — let's just say that it is a Bay Area company that has an interest in genomics (so that narrows it down to a few hundred or so).

I will stress that the original email simply asked, in very general terms, if I would be interested in visiting to give a talk. There was some back-and-forth email as we tried confirming a date and one email clarified that I could give a talk, have lunch, and then "perhaps" have some one-on-one meetings.

After we confirmed the date, I received an email that included my itinerary for the day. A few alarm bells rang when I saw that the file attachment was named 'Interview schedule'. In addition to giving a talk and having lunch I was now scheduled to have seven separate interviews with people at the company.

At this point I noticed from their company's website that they were actively recruiting, but I double checked all of our earlier email communications and confirmed that at no point had any employment opportunities been mentioned. So maybe 'interviews' was their name for informal one-on-ones?

Then a few days ago I received another confusing email that asked me to sign the company's NDA and complete the the employment application form. Hmm, it was decidedly looking like they were under the impression that I was being interviewed for a job. Not wanting to waste anyone's time I clarified that I thought I was just giving a talk. This no doubt has caused an equal measure of confusion at their end, and they swiftly suggested we cancel the whole thing.

So I'm no longer giving a talk this week, though as I have made many new slides I may well put the talk online anyway. It still kind of amazes me that this company could get so far along the recruitment process without realizing that the person that they wanted to interview hadn't actually applied for anything.

Bad restaurant marketing in Davis: a sign of the times?

There is a relatively new Japanese restaurant in Davis. Like all restaurants, and most places of business, it has signage that displays the name of the restaurant. Here is how that sign looks when looking at it directly from about 20 feet away:

View fullsize

If you were driving past this establishment, you'd be another 20 feet or so away from the sign. I suspect that many of you might not be able to clearly read the first word. Here's a close up:

View fullsize

The shadows that you can see hint at the problem that I'm about to raise. This signage is 3-dimensional, with the letters being raised several inches from the wall. So what happens when you have such a sign and you try looking at it from anything other than directly head on?

View fullsize

View fullsize

Doesn't seem great from a marketing perspective if the name of your business can only be read when looking at your sign from one particular angle! It's a little better at night as the white backing to the letters is illuminated. Here is a close up that more clearly shows the 3-dimensional nature of the sign:

View fullsize

Did no-one check this at any point and ask the simple question "Wait, can you actually read those words?"

change.org is full of pointless petitions, so I have launched a pointless petition to change change.org

There really is an awful lot of pointless rubbish on change.org. So I was curious whether they would let me create a petition calling for change to change.org. Specifically, to stop all of these pointless petitions from being added in the first place.

The fact that they allowed me to create such a petition perfectly illustrate my case regarding a need for some sort of curation. My petition is now live:

• Stop change.org allowing pointless petitions (such as this one)

Join with me and together we can rule the Galaxy as father and son…er, I mean we can make a difference. In the immortal words of Mr. David Robert Jones: "Time to make a change".

Sketches of Science: a must-see exhibition in Davis

This weekend we managed to catch the Sketches of Science exhibition at the Mondavi Center (also see the official website). I thoroughly recommend that people catch this free exhibition before it finishes on 28th January.

Photographer Volker Steger has met with many Nobel prize winners and asked them to make a poster (using crayons) that represents their nobel-prize-winning science. He then photographs them with their poster and some of the posters are also accompanied by audio interviews.

There is a lot of humor, beauty, and fun that emerges from this experience. Some scientists go for a simple representation of their work, others pack a lot into the poster (including a poem in one instance). Well worth seeing if you get a chance. I believe that this is the only place in the USA where this exhibit is being shown at the moment.

View fullsize

View fullsize

Martie Chalfie, one of many folks to win the nobel prize for their work on Caenorhabditis elegans

View fullsize

Bob Horvitz, another C. elegans researcher to feature in the exhibition

More photos here.

Decade

This Saturday marked by 10th year at UC Davis (also my 10th year of living in the USA). This is kind of incredible since the plan was only ever to stay for a year or two! Since arriving here in 2005, I have become a husband, a father, and settled down to a wonderful family life.

However, all good things come to an end and so we are planning to move back across the pond. We don't yet know where we will go (probably the UK, but possibly Western Europe), we don't know yet know what we we will do (probably something related to science), and we don't yet know when we will go (probably early 2016).

The USA, and Davis in particuar, has been very good to us both professionally and personally. Our careers have flourished, but more importantly we have made some wonderful friends who we expect to keep in close contact with wherever we end up.

I thought that this would be a fitting time to relaunch my website and blog as I plan to write more regarding what will be the next big chapter in our lives. The idea of not knowing where you will be in a year's time, or what you will be doing, is exciting and scary in equal measure.

I'm looking forward to what the future brings us.

No more science…at least not on this blog

I've decided that as I'm increasingly using this blog to write about science-related topics (bioinformatics in particular), that they should have a new home. Therefore, all of my existing genomics and bioinformatics blog posts have been copied to my new ACGT blog:

http://acgt.me

I have also removed these posts from this site so that (ultimately) they will only show up in one place in search engine results. Going forward, I will use the ACGT blog to write about anything that is predominantly science related. In contrast, this blog will now be used almost exclusively for stuff that is not primarily related to my research work.

---

Updated 2015-11-12  to reflect that I have now removed the posts that were duplicated between this blog and ACGT.