We have talked about how to get an interview and how to nail the case section. The last step in the “PhD’s Guide to Getting a Consulting Job” is discussing your personal experience in a way that is clear, compelling, and shows that you’ve got what it takes to be a consultant. Click to continue →
CNN and FOX news can’t stop talking about it.
You may have seen someone ‘tweet’ in real-life.
You feel like you might be missing out.
Despite all the hype, twitter seems unbelievably stupid…
I thought so too when I first tried out the service, but by taking a different approach it is starting to seem like a useful tool.
I keep this blog to write long-ish articles and posts about topics that interest me and that I think can help you, the reader. However, on a good day there are lots more ideas and discoveries than time. Enter, the microblog.
Twitter provides a medium to post very short ideas, comments, and links to interesting content found elsewhere. I endeavor to make each tweet a stub for a potential blog post… just without my elegant prose. That means every time I post something I want it to be useful to the reader, not just some pointless info about my life. This suddenly transforms twitter from a self-indulgent distraction into the realm of useful tools for recording ideas and adding value.
Lots of people I follow use this same formula.
When you find a link, hear a quote, or get an idea that you’d like to remember and share, you may not be near a computer. Twitter can be your ubiquitous information capture tool in those cases. By sending an SMS or updating twitter via iPhone the content gets sent to a centralized, searchable, shareable place to be found or referenced later.
Right now my list of followers and follow-ees is rather short. To really leverage the power of the medium there need to be lots of connections between friends and colleagues interested in similar subject matter. This gives you the opportunity to get quick answers and collaborations by asking questions of your followers and responding to their questions.
You should follow me on twitter (@shawnlankton).
If you want to see my microblog without joining twitter, an embedded version can be accessed via the μblog tab at the top of the page.
Any other ideas on how to use twitter? Leave a comment.
Knowing about new research in my field helps keep my work informed and relevant. However, I rarely remember to log into IEEE Xplore, Springer, or Science Direct to see what’s new in top computer vision journals. Recently, I saw mention of using RSS to keep up with research on Productive Scholar.
It took a bit of searching, but eventually I found RSS feeds for many of the journals I’m interested in and loaded them into google reader. It is now quick to scroll through new abstracts as papers appear on-line prior to publication. Below are links to RSS feeds for some computer vision journals I’m keeping up with.
It takes a bit of hunting sometimes, but I can’t imagine that a journal would not have RSS these days. IEEE Journals are easy to find, and I found that inezha.com was a good resource for finding some of the other ones I have listed.
Any good feeds I missed?
Other good ideas for keeping current?
Leave them in the comments.
When I really need to concentrate I listen to brown noise. I find that it boosts my productivity and keeps me from getting distracted by sounds around me. This is most useful in coffee shops or noisy offices, but I even do this when it’s quiet.
Brown noise is similar to white noise; it sounds like random static. However, brown noise is at a slightly lower pitch so it’s easier to listen to. That means that I can work for hours without hurting my ears!
You can download some free random noise MP3s to play on your computer or iPod, or listen to some right from your browser. Both work great.
This works better than my previous method (using ear plugs) because the sounds aren’t just blocked, they’re all scrambled up by the static. I get so much input from my ears that my brain ignores sound all together and focuses on work!
Anybody else tried this? How else do you keep focused?
This was a guest post for my uncle’s site, Harmony Earth. You can find it in the “Success Stories” section. Enjoy!
I’ve been eating a mostly plant-based diet for the past few years. When I first got started, I faced personal and social barriers. However, by taking a few conscious steps, I was able to break them down and really improve my eating habits! Knowing the truth about nutrition, understanding the benefits of a plant-based diet, and committing to a change are all important, but actually revamping my lifestyle was a daunting task. Here are 6 tricks that I used.
By thinking long-term about rewards and taking steps to preempt myself from falling into old eating habits I was able to leap feet-first into a new way of eating that has improved my life immeasurably. Click to continue →
I recently figured out how to keep a necktie in place. I get really irritated when they don’t cover the buttons on my shirt. In the past, I’ve tried several tricks, but last month I had to dress up a lot, so I did some research and found the best way (in my opinion). Click to continue →
Most things I do on the computer, I do within emacs. I use it for email, writing programs, compiling programs, running programs, typeseting papers, running shell commands, etc.
So how did I make this post from within emacs? Google led me to this post detailing how to set up weblogger. Here’s the quick and dirty setup:
bash$ cd ~/.emacs.d/
bash$ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.nongnu.org:
/sources/emacsweblogs \co -d weblogger weblogger/lisp
Put this in your .emacs and execute it (highlight and C-x C-e):
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/weblogger")
(require 'weblogger)
You’re now ready to start a session: M-x weblogger-setup-weblog. It will prompt you for your XML-RPC server/path. For example, I log into http://www.shawnlankton.com/wp-admin to post, so my XML-RPC path is http://www.shawnlankton.com/xmlrpc.xml.
One final touch is to turn off auto-fill when in weblogger-mode because carriage returns get interpreted literally as <br>. A quick fix:
(add-hook 'weblogger-entry-mode-hook
'(lambda () (auto-fill-mode nil)))
I listen to NPR’s Science Friday podcast every week. Last Friday, there was a great interview wit author Michael Pollan. In it he talks about his new book, “In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto.” Pollan says that he can really sum up the whole book in 7 words.
Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.
As a mostly-vegan who is appalled with the amount of junk that people eat, I couldn’t agree more! I also like his description of processed-packaged-supermarket-stuff as “edible food-like substances.” I think his message is 100% correct, and very important. Most of the stuff Americans eat is not food. By eating better stuff Americans could be a lot healthier and happier!
While I may sound fanatical about it, Pollan does a great job of getting these points across in a calm, informative way. He even talks about the history of food science and how we got in this predicament. Check The Science Friday Website for a link to the audio of the interview.
Listen to the Interview
I got an iPod shuffle several months ago, and coupled with my cord-free headphones, I am a very satisfied customer. The only problem was that with the iPod mounted securely to your left ear, its hard to see which button is which. This means that sometimes when you want to turn down the volume, you accidentally skip the track and a host of similar transposition of intent problems.
Well, I have found the solution. I needed to give the buttons some kind of tactile indicator. In this case of the shuffle, there is just one doughnut-shaped button. This button smoothly transitions from one function to the next, so you have to add something in order to know that you’re finger is over the appropriate function before you press. I turned to an old friend… superglue.
I put a dollop of superglue over each function. When the glue dried, it left a nice little bump that is feel-able, but doesn’t interfere with operation at all. If you do this to an iPod or other device, be sure to use gel superglue. If you don’t I imagine you’d be in for trouble. Also, keep in mind that it takes the glue several hours to dry when its in blob form I made the mistake of touching the “volume up” dollop too soon. The result is actually nicer though. Now there’s no bump over “volume up,” so I can tell the orientation.
For some time now, I’ve had the dream of growing my own food. Once you start down the natural/healthy path, having your own organic garden is something like the penultimate experience. For Christmas my mom gave me a bag of dirt and two planters. Most people might think they did something wrong if their mother got them dirt for Christmas, but not me… I knew that my mom know just what I wanted! I was going to build a container garden.
In addition to the pots and dirt, Mom let me take 3 baby collard green plants. When I got back to Atlanta, I tucked them into their planter and got some basil, cilantro, and oregano plants for the other one. I’m now an urban gardener with a small but well loved collection of vegetables and herbs. I’m already making plans to get more planters and more plants! (This might get out of hand)
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