I just look at the figures

Why is it with all the combined mac-love and technogeekery amongst phylogeneticists there isn’t a simple, friendly way to get my treefile into a presentable graphical form? At present, it’s something torturous like from PAUP > Save As Pict. Then in Word, Import > Picture > File, and try to manipulate the individual bits. Until … Read more

yellow peril

I highly recommend Tze Ming Mok‘s Yellow Peril blog, commentating on multicultural life in Auckland, New Zealand. The other Kiwi blogs at the Public Address group are just as good, but hers makes me laugh and think (and realise why I hate and love Aotearoa) all the time.

protecting your ideas

In science, being “scooped” really sucks. It crossed my mind when I set up Culture Evolves! that “idea security” might become an issue. There are two aspects to this: 1. Idea Security as directly relates to the work I’m doing on my PhD, which I have yet to describe in any detail because I’m not … Read more

updated website

I finally updated my academic website. Updated CV with two publications 🙂 Changed old diary to point here. Updated the Links page to point to my del.icio.us bookmarks, as keeping that kind of thing current is a time-vortex best left unvisited. In the process, discovered that my site counter/stats tracker code was incorrect, and hasn’t … Read more

l’oceanie

L’Oceanie: Peuples des eaux, gens des iles is a fabulous presentation of the geography, (pre)history, people and anthropology of the Pacific Ocean. It focuses mainly on the Eastern Pacific (i.e. New Guinea westwards). There are dozens of fabulous images and great animations. It’d be a terrific teaching tool for a first-year course and makes a … Read more

endnote

I would very much like EndNote to interface with WordPress, my PDA, my email, and in general, my brain. But mainly the first. I like EndNote very much, and it has improved greatly over the years. I always feel I’m not using it to its greatest capabilities, despite always looking for tips and tricks, and … Read more

paper: artificial cultural market

A new paper in Science [link]: Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market by Salganik et al. In a web experiment, the researchers created an artificial database of music (from unknown bands) and allowed people to download songs after rating them. In some conditions, people could see which songs had been … Read more

productivity

I dug out my PDA (a Visor Neo, in up-to-the-minute monochrome) this weekend and have just synched it all up with the Oyster1. My mac is probably having hissy fits about being attached to such an antique piece of technology, but it’s plenty good enough for the diary and contacts function, which is what I … Read more