So, after documenting how I save a timestamped log of my bash file, I got curious about what kind of analyses I could pull out of it. (caveat: I only started this logging about a month ago, so there aren’t as many data points as I’d like. However, there is enough to see some interesting […]
Category Archives: research
Saving Command Line History
12-Mar-11I’ve never been satisfied with the defaults for the way linux & osx save command line history. For all practical purposes, when we’re talking about text files, we have infinite hard drive space. Why not save every command that we ever type. First, A Roundup of What’s Out There Here’s the baseline of what I […]
I spent the day fiddling around with twitter and buzz, to see what signals I have at my disposal. Eventually I’d like to get some metrics that quantify a few different aspects of human relationships: Global influence (how much influence does this user have upon the world). This is pretty straightforward. Local influence (how much […]
Thoughts on Publishing in Academia
08-Nov-06To paraphrase/quote David Klein: publications would be so much better if we were forward-thinking instead of rigorous in our testing. It seems like people judge a paper’s value by “in 10 years, will someone find a hole in the rigor of my testing procedure”. I would rather judge a paper by “does this make me […]
Advice on Writing One’s Dissertation
02-Nov-06All dissertations require four months of uninterrupted work. The last month of work takes 0.5 calendar months. The second to last month takes 1.5 calendar months. The first two months can take years, and they usually do. Prof. Daneil Bewrry, U. Waterloo Sigh… if only this were less true.
Finished the Dissertation Proposal
19-Jun-06Ahhh, I’m done. Now, don’t that feel good. 71 pages on building a computational model of language learner errors. Phew, now to sleep.
On Rexa
30-Apr-06Rexa, a new player in community bibliography management, was opened to the public a couple weeks ago. Here’s a blog post from the PI on this project (Andrew McCallum) who details the announcement, and a little more here, from Matthew Hurst’s Data Mining blog. A cursory use of the system shows it to be a […]
On The Success of LaTeX
31-Mar-06I suspect that the success of LaTeX–and its ubiquity as a format for thesis-writing–is in part due to the fact that learning its arcane subtleties is a wonderful source of procrastination. What a glorious escape from having do to actual paper-writing!
Nature: “Scientists must embrace a culture of sharing and rethink their vision of databases”
01-Dec-05Good editorial on Nature, “Let Data Speak to Data“: Web tools now allow data sharing and informal debate to take place alongside published papers. But to take full advantage, scientists must embrace a culture of sharing and rethink their vision of databases. That being said, I find it more than a little ironic that this […]