Live from New York… it's Galaxy Zoo!!!!
2:01 PM: Kevin and LankyYankee are here. Kevin is showing off new pictures of the Voorwerp. Kevin says that there will be one paper announcing the discovery, and another sharing the XMM Newton data.
2:06 PM: Kevin is comparing the Voorwerp to NGC 1068, another mystery AGN. What makes NGC 1068 so strange is that you only see the very highest-energy x-ray images, because all lower energies are scattered by the thick gas in the galaxy. There are two possibilities for the Voorwerp – either it is a heavily obscured AGN like NGC 1068, or it is dead, and we can only see the light echo as the Voorwerp.
2:11 PM: Kevin: “Scientific publication is unlike most other kinds of publication in that the author pays to publish the papers…. a typical paper in the Astrophysical Journal is a couple thousand dollars.”
2:21 PM: Kevin and I just called each other on Skype while sitting 2 feet apart, to test the camera. LankyYankee is now telling us how he found out about Galaxy Zoo. He’s saying that he got involved in the forum after her “got tired of clicking star/don’t know, and wanted to talk to people.”
2:54 PM: We’ve been trying to get a live link going with Astrofest in the U.K., but alas, no luck. Hanny and weezerd say hello, though!
3:07 PM: Success! We now have a conference call with 8 Zooites!3:10 PM: My lovely wife is here also. While we’re setting up the audio conference, she’s talking with LankyYankee about our plans for the weekend.
3:17 PM: We now have people from 4 countries on the call, but the group in Astrofest is not among them. Kevin is theorizing that they have been thrown out of the pub again. 🙂
3:20 PM: Apparently on the <a href="http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=273032.330">Astrofest thread at the Galaxy Zoo Forum, people are talking live about our current breakdown in communications. Alice, Hanny, and FluffyPorcupine are all in London, but all their phones are off. 🙂
3:23 PM: I should stop blogging for a moment so I can focus on getting this figured out. More soon.
Galaxy Zoo 
Greetings to the New Yorkers! I can’t imagine a zoo meet-up with one zooite, but that must have been very special – you must have got to talk to the zookeepers a lot!!! Sorry to miss you. I don’t think my phone was off at 8.20 p.m. (my time, your 3.20) though . . . We did our best to connect; after about 45 minutes Hanny and I had to admit my dongle and her laptop were not going to get on. We borrowed the restaurant’s, but there wasn’t much skype success. Wish I could have talked to you. Ah well, next time! 😀
Well sir, let us take this as a drill. Next time we will be better prepared. Practice makes perfect. 🙂
And anyway we had lots of fun and we got to hear you and Kevin talk about Galaxy Zoo. 🙂
Thanks Jordan. It’s fun to hear how you guys were filling time while we tried to make the technology work. We could hear snippets of your discussions but not enough to make sense (which I’m sure it would have done if complete!!) …and I never got a chance to speak to your good wife… Ah well, next time…we might have signed off but we were not able to disconnect (with plagiarist apologies where required.)
I hope that you had a great time, guys, it’s a shame the link-up to London didn’t quite get there. I have skype, myself, and look forward to joining in with any conference scenarios arranged in the future.
As Lovethetropics says, “Practice makes perfect!” Why not set up a weekly (?) time where those who want to try their hand at “Skyping” could do so? It would be fun, and people who are relatively new to the technology (like me) would get a chance to try it out amongst friends 😉 .
Georgia
Yes, wonderful idea Georgia. My Skype works fine at home again.. sorry we missed you guys, but already looking forward to next time! 😀
Yep, pity it didn’t work, we did get the occasional gurgle sound, but it was fun to try 🙂
What is this Skype that we are taling about? Is it a voice over IP communication?
If it is just use Ventrillo.. It’s easy to set up. You can use whatever server you want to host the Server side of the program. Then everyone else uses the client version. You input the server and port info. ie (voice.thissite.com) and port info goes into the box on the client tht says “port” ie 3894. Everyone uses this same date on the client. Everyone can talk. Administrators can mute people if the need. You can make rooms for groups to talk.
Hey did you go up up and away the Empire state Building??
i think this blog is awsome