Top all-time · #7389
Colin Purrington
Personal blog · colinpurrington.comscienceculture
Colin Purrington's personal blog at colinpurrington.com covers science and culture. Since 2013, 11 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Colin Purrington's practical guides on lab notebooks and scientific poster design, plus mason bee nesting and insect hotel advice. Commenters value the guides for their hands-on advice.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
nature photography / natural history / misc
Most-linked posts?
- /tips/lab-notebooks/3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-09-28
What Hacker News says?
A friendly reminder that these insect hotels need annual maintenance, or else you will eventually have a parasite haven. https://colinpurrington.com/2019/05/horrors-of-mass-produced...
Comment linking /2019/05/horrors-of-mass-produced-bee-houses/
on “Insect Hotel”Submitted Posts about Spartan Mosquito as a story · 40 points
HN discussionHe also mantains some great guides e.g. on scientific poster design[1] and keeping a lab notebook[2]. I remember he even tested the solvent resistance of different pen inks, but cannot find the link. EDIT: Found it in a previous version ( https://web.archive.org/web/20181112011236/http://colinpurri... ). [1]: https://colinpurrington.com/tips/poster-design/ [2]: https://colinpurrington.com/tips/lab-notebooks/
Comment linking /tips/lab-notebooks/
on “A disturbing Twinkie that has, so far, defied science”Submitted Some insects I found inside dried Turkish figs from Trader Joe’s as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFun fact: the owner of the Twinkies was a tenured biology professor at Swarthmore College (a top-rated liberal arts college in the US) who left his tenured position after 14 years. It is pretty rare for folks to leave tenured posts in academia, given the decent pay, extraordinary job security, and relative enjoyability of the work. https://colinpurrington.com/about/ https://www.nature.com/articles/nj7425-627a
Comment linking /about/
on “A disturbing Twinkie that has, so far, defied science”Submitted Plagiarism detection in elementary schools as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor a good historical example, see Linus Pauling’s notebooks (with page numbers and dates): http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/coll/pauling/rnb/ The blog by biologist Dr. Colin Purrington also has advice for maintaining a notebook (discussing why, backups, and what to note down): https://colinpurrington.com/tips/lab-notebooks/
Comment linking /tips/lab-notebooks/
on “Keeping a Lab Notebook [pdf] (2013)”Submitted The Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research Plagiarism as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis guide [0] is intended for digitizing books, but it can lead you to some places. If you can get your scans to a PDF (e.g. with a scanner or a smartphone app), you can always try OCRmyPDF [1] to perform the OCR for you.[2] has some tips, but try to look for an older version in Wayback Machine, as I think it has been condenses for the worse. [0] https://www.natecraun.net/articles/linux-guide-to-book-scann... [1] h…
Comment linking /tips/lab-notebooks/
on “How to digitize your lab notebooks”I've found this [1] other tutorial as a great basis to keep a good lab notebook.I love how he tried a cromatography of different pens to find something that can survive any accident. [1] https://colinpurrington.com/tips/lab-notebooks
Comment linking /tips/lab-notebooks
on “Guidelines for keeping a laboratory notebook”Most of the native bees/wasps/flies that are important for pollination are solitary, but you can still help them with nesting areas. Mason bees can be relatively easy: drill some small holes in a post and let it be. You can also get way more complicated with it. https://colinpurrington.com/2019/05/guide-to-diy-mason-bee-h... Bumblebee make nests for breeding, you can sometimes find nests in birdhouses or in gaps of…
Comment linking /2019/05/guide-to-diy-mason-bee-houses/
on “The Bee That Everyone Wants to Save”Oh, I've tried the portrait-orientation template, it left everyone around confused. I always reccomend his lab notebook post [0], although I think he has edited it through the years. The testing of different writing tools against different solvents is just great. [0] https://colinpurrington.com/tips/lab-notebooks/
Comment linking /tips/lab-notebooks/
on “Some insects I found inside dried Turkish figs from Trader Joe’s”Oh hey it is Collin Purrington, whose conference poster templates I regularly used at conferences during PhD- https://colinpurrington.com/tips/poster-design/
Comment linking /tips/poster-design/
on “Some insects I found inside dried Turkish figs from Trader Joe’s”
