It’s that time of the year, for the American Physics Society March meeting, when 5000+ physicists from around the world descend on some poor unsuspecting American town (this year, Portland) and, well, talk physics.

Last year’s meeting in Pittsburgh was the first meeting I tried my hand at live-tweeting. And it was a good experience (for me, that is, I think it strained the good nature of my Facebook friends). Unexpectedly it helped me get much more out of the technical sessions — it’s amazing how much more attention you pay to what someone is saying when you’re trying to distill it for someone else. I’ll bet UN interpreters know better what’s going on in the world than any UN diplomat.

The only draw back is that 140 characters isn’t really an ideal format for physics reporting. Although I appreciate the discipline, it atomizes the flow too much to do the subject matter justice.

And so this year, I’m going to try live-blogging instead. The powers that be have not extended the free wifi into the meeting rooms. But I’ve managed to find a 3G and a contract-free broadband package that looks a good two orders of magnitude cheaper than dataroaming on O2. So the only thing stopping me is Maxwell’s equations.

If anyone’s interested I’ll be pegging the sessions on Twitter but most of the content will be presented here.

To follow other tweeters from the meeting, the tag set for the meeting by @APSPhysics is #APSMar10. And Matteo Cavalleri and Dave Flanagan will be live-blogging at MaterialsViews.com.

Fun fun fun!