My Hobby: Solving public health problems

Once upon a time, there were a boy and a girl. The boy ran a tech conference, and the girl worked for a company that made DNA. She submitted a talk about DNA design software to the conference, and it got in, and she was very, very excited.

While preparing to give her talk, the girl mentioned to the boy that if she only had a salad spinner, she could kick off her talk with a cute demo. "I will find you a salad spinner," said the boy, and he did (thanks to kragen), and the demo was very cute indeed.

After the conference, the boy and the girl got to talking about other amusing things that people could do with DNA, and somewhere in there, someone had the idea that it would be really funny to take Lactobacillus acidophilus, otherwise known as yogurt bacteria, give it the gene to produce green fluorescent protein, and make yogurt with it. Or "glowgurt", if you prefer.

They were, however, rather busy with a number of other projects, both together and separately, and along the line they fell for each other like a ton of bricks and got married.

This is where the story actually starts.

( Scurvy: it's not just for pirates anymore )

( My not-so-clandestine project: the melaminometer. Say that five times fast! )

[PSA] Welcome new readers

Hi, everyone popping in from Slashdot, reddit and so on. Yes, I am the Meredith L. Patterson in this article. Thanks for dropping by.

I've seen a lot of questions raised in various comment threads so far, and will be glad to address them when it's not 3:30AM CET and I'm not jet lagged from flying to Germany. I'll see about putting together a mini-FAQ or something. For now, though, the question I've seen most is an easy one to answer: how do you safely dispose of biological materials when you're through with them?

Answer: I sterilize all glass, metal and high-temperature plastic equipment in an autoclave before throwing it away. The high temperature and pressure kills off any remaining bacteria. Equipment that can't be autoclaved, such as single-use plastic petri dishes, gets sterilized by being soaked in bleach for several hours. (I prefer to cover it, to prevent spills, and leave it overnight.)

More later, when I've had some sleep.