The most over-used trope of 2020 is saying that “2020 has been such an incredibly unusual year”… but let’s be honest, it’s true!

Since 2020-March-12th I have been “working from home”, along side my superhero wife, and our two young children. For the last few months we’ve been able to have some backup, local family helping watch the kids a couple days per week, to allow us adults to get something closer to a reasonable amount of work done… still, on my best weeks I’m probably only at ~60% work capacity.

That lower productivity hurts, not just for my career (which has somehow managed to progress a bit, even in spite of all this), but also for my sense of direction and self-worth. I like my job, am proud of my work, and I miss doing it!

Naturally this means I’ve also been producing less creative stuff - which for me is data visualizations, blog posts, and in the past couple years vlogs. So here is my flash update:

1) A video I posted (TWO MONTHS AGO already?!) talking about what I’ve been up to during the pandemic:

If you’re curious about the (little) astronomy I’ve been working on, here is a 5-min talk about the paper I’m finishing up right now: The Rise and Fall of HS Hydra!

I hope you all have a safe, socially distant December. Mask up!