Take me out to the patio...

First off - okay, from now it's a personal goal of mine to attend a Comic Con. Yeah, it's primarily a gathering of mostly middle age people who can be categorized as fanboys. But I do like conventions of this type. Attending one makes me think, "Well at least I'm not THAT weird." Although you may think this is a place for only comic swapping, it's now also the launching of upcoming blockbuster movies. Examples include Iron Man 2 and Twilight's sequel (I'm only in interested in the former, not the latter). This was also the venue that James Cameron launched his next movie "Avatar". Considering that the last movie Cameron made was Titanic, it makes it a pretty big deal that he launched his next film here. The vibe is so big this year that the media is dubbing the event HollyCon due to the presence of so many Hollywood stars. One preview that tugged on my memory is Disney's remake of TRON. I honestly forget the plot in the original movie - all I remember watching a dark movie full of blue lights and speed chases. But that's about it. The remake looks stoked enough that I'll spend my $15 on it one night.

Finally summer has arrive! Though I'm not enjoying being *too* warm at night despite the efforts of my floor fan. It's a sign that I'll always be Cdn - I just like temperate weather. 25oC is my max temp. But with the summer-like weather means various outings with people. In fact Wed to today, I've been out with friends nightly, sipping cold cider on patios and enjoying some summer food. Today I have a deck party to attend to continue the tradition.

There's also another tradition with hot weather: BBQs. More specifically hot dogs. I like hot dogs. I try not to think what's really in them. Though of recent years, I purposely buy those "all-beef" kind. However "beef" is still ambiguous.

This is all leading to this week's episode of Something Sciencey Sunday. BBQd hot dogs are the best. But there's an invention of the roller grill that you often see hot dog wieners being cooked. I think this is the source of where a scientist had the inspiration when faced with the problem of how to continuously rotate Western gels overnight for washing. In fact, I can see the certain scientist going out and purchasing a wiener roller for this purpose BEFORE the engineers developed the "scientific" roller (which means inflated price for the same piece of equipment). I will give the engineers credit that this roller does rock in two directions (y plane and z plane) rather than one direction. Oooooh, ahhhhh eh?



You might be wondering what's this purpose? To develop gels properly, the longer washings are with buffers to rid background developing, the better the gel looks to discern any results. Such washings require constant rocking back n forth of solution over the gels which can be rolled up in those conicals tubes. This machine makes it a godsend for the poor grad student who would have to spend his/her entire night rocking the gel back n forth manually.