January 2011
Apologies Mendeley API, I'm giving you a bit of a hammering in my testing!
When struggling for motivation, in writing, at the gym, programming, I recommend listening to Masters at Work!
EDL protests aren't "marred by Islamophobia, racism and violence"; that's their entire point :( http://bit.ly/gDGBxZ
New blog post: Pynchon reference in the Economist http://bit.ly/ebB74D
Forget the NYT, CNN or even Fox News. My Pynchon piece is where it's at, first-Google-result-wise for: terrorism irrational escalation
Pynchon reference in the Economist
Image copyright the Economist. Too much of an opportunity to pass off for a quick post, the Economist recently featured a humorous take on the US map. Tucked away as the heading for Alaska was the, for some, cryptic heading "Lot 49", subtitled "For sale all enquiries welcome". For those in the…
Some would call using a bigint data type for a year field unnecessary. To such pessimists I retort that it's optimism.
Thanks to all for saxophone advice - I played clarinet to a pretty good standard and while back, hence my soprano leanings...
So, help me decide, should I get a Soprano or Tenor Saxophone?
Just bought a copy of @GregMitch's "Age of Wikileaks" book.
Think I may have just fixed one of the final remaining bugs in the first preview of Mendeley for Android. Hoping to release this week.
I'd like to pretend that I'm in central London for the demo. In actuality I'm being dragged around the Habitat closing down sale.
Mendeley for Android listing the different types of author publication: http://yfrog.com/h8o1bhp
Ubuntu Accessibility team using Rheumatoid Arthritis as a case study: http://bit.ly/hJ88st
Off to Barbican to see Du Goudron et des Plumes, part of the International Mime Festival.
New blog post: A Statistical History of UK Pynchon Doctorates http://bit.ly/e91imQ
A Statistical History of UK Pynchon Doctorates
While browsing the EThOS Thesis collection today, I suddenly became curious as to the history, statistically speaking, of doctorates in my field of literature: studies on Thomas Pynchon. It emerges that, on record since 1978, there have been 23 doctorates awarded in the UK on, or in part…
Would have definitely applied to Neo-Historical Exoticism and Contemporary Fiction http://bit.ly/fQ5WFR if wasn't already busy that day :(
New blog post: SSL Enabled http://bit.ly/hiFPr4 #nothingtohidenothingtofear #nthntf
SSL Enabled
Featured image credit: husky under a CC-BY-SA license. Some will tell me this is overkill, but I believe that, in 2011, we should have the option to read whatever we like on the web without ISPs, WiFi hotspot providers and their ilk able to see what we do online. There's nothing of huge sensitivity…
Facebook blames "bug" for unauthorized posting. There was me thinking it was a design feature http://bbc.in/flhkMg #bearswoods #popecatholic
BBC News article on meritocracy, ethics, Kant and Aristotle http://bbc.in/eYhdDX
New blog post: What has social media ever done for me? http://bit.ly/eik73a
What has social media ever done for me?
This is a re-publication of a post originally written for the Vitae blog's Digital Researcher section, archived here for preservation purposes. Image credit: leezfield under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. Much of the rubric surrounding social media is, to my mind, somewhat de-humanising. I don't…
Latin non stultus est: spotting amendments to ancient graffiti http://bit.ly/edBDUO
Nice branching chart of the Linux boot process: http://bit.ly/hDoAvP
Andy Gray's lawyers: "it would be inappropriate for our client to comment at this time". Didn't think he cared about inappropriate comments.
What it doesn't know is that the rest is 65% awesome.
Interesting that peerindex thinks I'm 35% human. Ha! Like a machine would know that! #captcha
Interesting blog post I found on Marx's abolition of inheritance in relation to current neoliberal meritocracy http://bit.ly/fh2GGP
Much bile from "squeezed" middle class over EMA in Metro today. Where's the empathy in the world?
Natty Alpha 2 out on Thursday; my second SSD now has a purpose.
Do I need to do something different, like setup a joint calendar?
At the moment it shows up in both calendars so I get duplicates when we are both going.
Helen and I both have Google calendars. Anybody know how I can make android not show events we are both attending twice?
New blog post: Mendeley for Android: Progress update http://bit.ly/f9XBHx
Mendeley for Android; background sync is working! Now to pull the DB off emulator and check it's right ;) http://yfrog.com/h2phhp
Mendeley for Android: Progress update
This is an update post for my progress on Mendeley for Android. I have just committed code that provides almost working background synchronization to the device. Indeed, the strange image that you can see here is an emulator dump of the Android logcat while the synchronization procedure is running.…
Today's tweets have been brought to you -- in between periods of sleep and sickness -- by the letters M, I, G, R, A, I, N and E.
... and by test, of course, I mean: debug ;)
Just finished the initial write of the Sync Adapter for Mendeley for Android. Hoping to test over the next few days.
Just signed up for @Peerindex. Fairly interesting for quantitive value of social capital. http://bit.ly/yourPI
Feeling justified in recent badminton defeats as optician tells me that I have become twice as shortsighted. I knew PhD work was good for me
Tonight at 8pm GMT the Guardian will release confidential documents relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. http://bit.ly/cOFn3d
All the cool kids are firefighting their inboxes on Friday night. Mine is about to up the cool stakes by early bedtime reading!!!1!
New blog post: Picture this: Postcards Competition http://bit.ly/gZeqN3
Very cool blackbox reverse engineering XSS tool. http://bit.ly/gXIQii
Picture this: Postcards Competition
Image credit: grewlike under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. Picture this: postcards and letters beyond text Postcards Competition – deadline extended! The arrival date for entries is now the 4 February. There is no entry fee and the competition is open to all. For full details of how to enter, see our…
<3 Kermit. http://bit.ly/i6g9A5
A good day: fix computer, gym, blog post, Arthritis Research UK funding meeting, thesis @ British Library
New blog post: OCZ RevoDrive on Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI http://bit.ly/hcBXg2
OCZ RevoDrive on Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI
My Christmas present (I am SUCH a geek) was a lovely OCZ RevoDrive PCI-E SSD, with blistering 540mb/s read/write speeds. Very nice. However, it was not a simple install on my rig and I thought I'd share my basic tips from the experience. If you need the manual, it's on the official Abit site and…
http://yfrog.com/hsxqkhj enjoying an evening of geekish improvements to The Rig
For one who professes a keen interest in classic Eng. Lit, Mr 'Gradgrind' Gove sure hasn't read Hard Times recently.
API portion of Mendeley for Android done, just filling it all into a nice db structure now. Then a GUI. Then I'll show you!
14 hour day in hospital tomorrow. Hope to get some Mendeley for Android code done and few hundred words of thesis. #useallthetimeyouhave
Would be participating in #phdchat but am down the pub.
New blog post: Rockaby: Mission Statement and Implementation Plans http://bit.ly/eWLcQU
Rockaby: Mission Statement and Implementation Plans
Image credit: El Waka; Licensed under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-alike This is a post to announce the initial draft of a mission statement and implementation plans [PDF] for my Digital Humanities project, Rockaby. Although the PDF version contains a far greater number of screenshots and…
New blog post: The Botnet: Webs of Hegemony/Zombies Who Publish http://bit.ly/fvBYsp
The Botnet: Webs of Hegemony/Zombies Who Publish
Image credit: rodolphoreis; Licensed under Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-alike To my great excitement, my initial proposal for the forthcoming book, Zombies in the Academy has been accepted! While it still has to undergo peer review and as such isn't guaranteed to be published, I'll…
Dates changed/CFP extended: First Fictions conference http://bit.ly/fz30xn
Update with Open Access: Publication: ‘Local Transcendence: Postmodern Historiography and the Database by Alan Liu’,... http://bit.ly/hATVot
I owe my life to the NHS, and, quite frankly, the government plans to destroy it. http://bit.ly/dW6nQs
Today looks good. Book chapter proposal for Zombies in the Academy accepted and Richard Thompson at Festival Hall tonight.
Guardian pass notes on Android: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/17/android-mobile-operating-system-iphone
On to the final section of this chapter; about 8,000 words left and then I can... write the next part! #phdchat
For a research app, Qiqqa's "comparison" is hardly objective: no negatives? Cross-platform? Open Source? #phdchat http://bit.ly/gSCrTZ
(although note to would-be-triallers, you need a Firefox nightly as there's a bug in b9 that won't allow privileged extension calls)
Firefox 4 beta is great; going to be using it with Zotero beta all day today with the hope that it doesn't bork all my documents ;)
Android contentprovider gives no way to do transactions over multiple requests. Great.
Document sync on Android for Mendeley is coming on!
New blog post: BBC News: fathoming financial terms http://bit.ly/etlLzU
BBC News: fathoming financial terms
Surprisingly, I managed to make an appearance in the business section of the BBC News website, of all places. When I returned from lunch at the British Library last week, a camera crew were asking people to define various jargon terms used in the pension industry. Needless to say, the only…
Anybody on #phdchat fancy writing something for the Vitae #dr11 blog? See last comment at: http://bit.ly/e3vFoM
A brief post on my use of social media on the Vitae research blog. #dr11 #phdchat (cc @pigironjoe) http://bit.ly/e3vFoM
New blog post: Getting a custom Sync Service and Adapter to show up under "Data and Synchronization" on Android http://bit.ly/eDgo4Y
AHAHAHAHAHA! I've worked out the elusive undocumented sync functionality in Android!
Getting a custom Sync Service and Adapter to show up under "Data and Synchronization" on Android
As mentioned previously, the two part tutorial on c99.org is a great starting place for people wanting to write their own synchronization service for Android. The only problem is that, because it syncs to Contacts, it omits to tell you what to do to get your new service appearing under Settings ->…
If some lovely Android-god fancied taking a look at my question: http://bit.ly/i41HFW, I'd make much better progress on the Mendeley client!
Publication: ‘Local Transcendence: Postmodern Historiography and the Database by Alan Liu’, Textual Practice, 24, 6 ... http://bit.ly/hATVot
Publication: ‘Local Transcendence: Postmodern Historiography and the Database by Alan Liu’, Textual Practice, 24, 6 (December 2010)
My review of Alan Liu's latest offering, Local Transcendence: Postmodern Historiography and the Database is now available to read in Textual Practice vol. 24 issue 6. I'm in the process of clearing up pre-print Open Access permissions and hope to post that when clarified. Update (2011-01-18):…
iPhone app announced for @timeshighered - why no Android love?
A delicious pizza express with @liannedemello!
Ok, so SwiftKey is pretty impressive. It's winning me over from HTC IME.
Seems likely that I will have only sporadic net access for #phdchat tonight.
Mendeley for Android: screenshot of collection display
Here's a screenshot of today's milestone on Mendeley for Android; collection display running in the emulator:
Great sentence: "It featured an eponymous superhero anthropomorphic duck" http://bit.ly/2trYV7
Sussex Research Hive Seminars
Just a quick promotional post to get the word out about the research hive seminars at Sussex. This series presents an exciting opportunity to hear about, and fore-arm yourself against, the challenges posed to 21st-century research. Research in the UK is coming under increasing pressure from funding…
Committed the first working background sync version of Mendeley for Android!
Have tickets for David Tennant in Much Ado!
Pressing workshop attendance issues: will they have eduroam? Will it work? Is lunch provided?
HEA teaching workshop today and then the chapter writing resumes in earnest tomorrow.
Android Rom Update Utility extractor for Linux
As my hobby-geek phase draws to a close and I return well and truly to my PhD, I thought it worth sharing this python script I wrote a while back which will extract the update.zip file from an Android RUU.exe file on Linux. There are other items out there that do the same thing, but this is my…
.@crashplan just signed up; 4 year plan and it's great! Can you please do a seed service for the UK, though? 3 years estimated backup time!
Automated CPanel Backups with SCP
Originally from V-Nessa's site, I thought I would share the PHP script that I have now modified to include Secure Copy (SCP) support.
Vanity Fair on Wikileaks overly critical, but makes some gd points. Conclusion is wrong, though. Not either, or. Both. http://bit.ly/dOggRV
Apologies for double posting that blog entry; typo fix in title triggered tweet plugin
Only 1 concessionary para to the fact that exercise is good for you so the article can brand gyms as a con http://bit.ly/g2RfAB
Mendeley Android Client: now implemented as a user account with sync
As I made rapid initial progress on the prototype of the Mendeley Client for Android, I started to think about the design. In order to minimize hits on the API, as well as for speedy browsing, it doesn't make sense for the UI to be initiating API calls at every turn. Instead, it would be better, I…
Sorry to have missed #phdchat - blame cardiotrainer on my phone. It told me to exercise and who am I to disobey?!
Scan Computers have massive delay to orders because of accident on Motorway. Fair enough. BUT THEY DIDN'T TELL ME. So I'm at home, not work.
Holy macoroni batman! On a whim I tried a small code change and now fixed the Android OAPI problems (haha, it was my fault :P)
Mendeley Android Client Progress (w/ Video, Source and APK!)
Before anybody non-techie gets excited by the heading there, I'm not claiming this is anywhere near production-ready. In fact, it's not even functional. However, from a technical perspective, my Android Mendeley client has reached a milestone of succesful OAuth login. In this post I will give some…
Done lots of work on the @Mendeley Android client, but am now getting server error status 500 when retrieving /oapi/library/ (cc. @mrgunn)
OK, sussed what's up with @mendeleyAPI for @mendeley OAuth. Callback from auth url must be "http://", which is a bug.
OAuth for Mendeley on Android: solved and a bug
Thanks to Clemens' comment on my last post, I have managed to track down the problems that I was having with OAuth for Mendeley on Android; it's all callback related. It seems that callbacks to any protocol except "http" are prohibited. For instance: A callback request to "http://www.martineve.com"…
Just performed a successful OAuth request to Mendeley from Android :)
Grr. Trying to write my @mendeley android client and, now using signpost lib, the @mendeleyAPI still doesn't work. Works fine on other oauth
Got soundly thrashed by Helen at badminton.
Cirque, even.
Helen has my old HTC Wildfire and is using it to control the stereo over WiFi, scaring the life out of me with Circle du Soleil soundtrack.
Today is a bit of university work, a bit of DIY and a bit of badminton.
Nice new SSD ordered with Christmas money!
Emailed @MendeleyAPI to hopefully resolve my Android OAuth woes and get on to developing the actual app!
Now digitizing my Samuel Beckett radio collection which Helen gave me for Christmas.
Advantages of not being able to drink much owing to immunosuppressants are truly felt on Jan 1st.