Basic cheatsheet

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When I was a spotty schoolboy my favourite book was the Science Data Book. This amazing little book, which fit in my jacket pocket (we wore suits to school), went everywhere with me. Everywhere at school, I mean, I'm not that much of a nerd.

It contains some really handy stuff: the Greek alphabet, SI unit definitions, the periodic table, the fundamental constants, handy formulae like the Maclaurin series, (remember that?), and even a very nice table of isotopes (did you know that the half-life of vanadium-50 is 400 trillion years?).

Amazingly, there are some used copies of that little book on Amazon. 

You might think that in these days of smartphones and WiFi everywhere there's no need for such things. But have you never sat in a meeting or lecture and just couldn't remember how many acres in a hectare (2.47), or when the Silurian was (417 Ma BP)? Usually it's too much hassle to pull out my phone, then find Wikipedia and the one piece of data I need. Especially when tapping away on a cell phone looks like you're texting someone 'So bored, please get me out of this meeting, call me in 5 mins?'.

So, I give you the first in a series of cheatsheets. This one has mostly basic stuff on it; future editions will have more geoscience-related content. Print it out and stick in your notebook, or maybe on your wall, right next to Signs & Symbols.

If you use it, please let me know what you like or dislike, so I can improve it. Have I missed anything you're always looking up?

← Click on the image for the PDF

Create better time scales

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If you ever find yourself drawing geological time scales in Microsoft PowerPoint (embarrassingly enough, this has happened to me), or trying to build a hackish database of geological events in Microsoft Excel, then you need TimeScale Creator. This free, Java-based application runs on any platform (because it's Java), and is fully extensible with your own stratigraphic data. You can also buy a Pro version ($500 for non-commerical use, or $1500 for commercial purposes). The upgrade gets you various stratigraphic data packs and other perks like better export functionality. 

To give you a flavour of what this little app can do, I made a quick column for part of the Palaeogene. I picked the interval more or less at random, and haven't changed any of the defaults except the columns to display, but this took me about 60 seconds to make. The data I'm showing here are all included in the free version, and all ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. And I can export it as an SVG file (scalable vector graphics), which I can edit freely in Inkscape or any of several other vector graphics editors. applications. Here it is:

You can download the software by following this link. If you have any tips for using the software, or other ways to make timescales, please leave them in the comments!

Note, TimeScale Creator is a trademark of the Geologic TimeScale Foundation. I am not connected with the software or its creators in any way. Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Java is a trademark of Oracle Corporation.