Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.

Category: Long Reads

Stories that take a bit longer to get through.

  • Design in Science

    I love design, but choosing medical science as a career means that it is never going to be more than a hobby for me. Even so, I try to learn what I can and experiment when I have the time. I follow a lot of talented designers whose inspiring work stands in stark contrast to…

  • More Media Tracking

    Ever since I started using Last.fm, I’ve been looking for similar services for other forms of media I intake. Goodreads was an excellent find, providing a lot of similar features geared toward books. It’s fun to integrate “what I’m doing” type lists into my website, but more than that the two services have generated some…

  • Scott Pilgrim

    My friend Jeff first introduced me to Scott Pilgrim when we were still in Maryland. Jerks that we are, we moved before the movie came out. It seemed like a good film to invite my fellow first year MD/PhD students to come see with me, but it turned out they were in Canada, Japan, and…

  • Date Night

    Chicken pot pie has a lot going for it. When you’ve got creamy chicken and vegetables inside a warm flaky crust, what’s not to like? Peas, as it turns out. They’re all but universally included in pot pie. Couple that with peas’ number two spot on my allergy ranking and pot pie winds up on…

  • Boarding Pains

    Everybody who’s flown before is likely familiar with the boarding sequence. First class, elderly and parents with children, military personnel, and everybody else beginning with the back of the plane. For the most part, it makes sense. But thanks to airlines charging fees to check baggage, most if not all of the passengers are bringing…

  • Holiday Hiatus

    Over Christmas I underwent a kind of internet fast. It wasn’t exactly self-imposed or rigidly enforced, it just kind of happened because I was away from my computer, Rachel commandeers the laptop to be her e-reader, and my phone is from before phones really figured out how to access the internet in a useful manner.…

  • First Quarter Down

    This morning I turned in the take-home portion of my biochem final exam, the last of my assignments for the quarter. That’s one quarter down…only thirty one more to go. I’m also wrapping things up with my first research rotation. When school starts back up on January 3rd I’m going to be switching from traumatic…

  • Meet Summer and Zoe

    Even though I’ve been building computers since somewhere around Windows 95, Tess was my first torrid affair. In 2005’s nether summer between high school and college, Jason and I researched components, ordered them from Newegg, and built cutting-edge sister machines. Between her hardware and my Windows customizations, Tess was the hottest computer in Erickson West, if…