A good Saturday morning. I’m tucked in my study at home and rain is rattling the skylight above. I have Natural Language Processing with Python propped open and a notebook and pencil out to document my best few steps.
All posts in work
More information is available at the BLDGBlog — how cool is that? A film festival that focuses on the architecture?
These are two screen captures taken from Ron Johnson’s presentation before J.C. Penney investors:
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I don’t think there could be a more difficult audience than several hundred investors. In this case, Ron Johnson, who used to be Apple’s retail store guru, is laying out his plans for a change in strategy. It’s worth watching to see someone work with data.
For my own research, I make my own maps, usually creating them in Adobe Illustrator, where I create hand-drawn lines on top of commercially-available maps that I have downloaded (e.g., Google Maps), created through software applications (e.g., Topos), or scanned from paper. This is the only I have known to create a map that displayed the information I felt my reader needed and not too much more.
Turns out, there is another way to do this, perhaps, and it is to use Open Street Maps. I am not entirely sure what all is involved, but I look forward to checking it out as soon as the revision of the aesthetics paper is done.
My colleagues Clai Rice and Jonathon Goodwin swear by Zotero. I hated it as a Firefox extension, but it is now available as a standalone app. I tried it at 1.0 and it was not ready yet, but at RC 3, it is beginning to get interesting. It even began to sync some data I had synced a very long time ago, which was good, but then it took over my CPU cycles, and that was not so good:
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I don’t know Warren Ellis’ work, but I like his verve. This Mother Board interview is quite good. His assessment of the political pandering to the current space industry strikes me as the product of a long-time observer who deserves a listen.
Jason Jackson is far more expert here, but I keep track of these issues as best I can. The switch to open access is being led by the sciences — strange to see mathematics so encumbered by the old paradigm — and I hope the humanities can follow soon. It’s hard work, but not only does such an effort align with the overall ethical schemes of many of our disciplines but it is it worth it in terms of making our work more accessible not only to each other but also to a larger potential pool of interested individuals.
That said, the next step is a coordinated infrastructure that allows for easy accessing across the entire landscape. That’s the promise of Project Bamboo.
Next morning, new day. Lily wants hospital staff to stop scanning her wrist ban bar code: “I’m not groceries!” Good spirits but dozing now.
Surgeon came and briefed us. Long recovery but outlook good. Harshest moment was description of torn muscles (by bone). Waiting now to see L
Word from surgery is everything went well. They are re-splinting her arm now.
Still in surgery.
Surgery is just now getting started.
