As a scientist documenting what you have done when is very important. Chemists and others who do experiments need to document procedures and results. They weekly (or even daily) see something that is new. As an Astrophysicist my life is different. It is very much like a data scientists. I or, more often now, someone else collects data and my day to day is filed with the analysis portions. I write code that looks at features of the data, I make graphs, but rarely does any of this feel like the “experiments” that lab notebooks are designed around.

What I need is a research logbook. I need a place where I write down my research questions, methods to solve them, answers, and what input created that figure! I work on several projects at a time, and each project lasts months and even years. My logbook needs to have a quickly skimmable table of contents, searching by tags and words, link to code and image files.

This sounds like a blog! So I will add to my website a sub-blog where I plan on keeping my logbook. A large part of science is communication. I hope to use this site as a form of communication to anyone with any background. That includes my peers getting links to my papers, code, and my daily logbook.