April 2014
13th Century Multiverse Theory Unearthed http://zpr.io/HvZH
Unseen Octavia E Butler stories recovered http://gu.com/p/3zzdn
Governing Academic Life – conference marking 30yrs since Foucault’s death http://zpr.io/HvfB
Open Access, Monographs and "working for publishers for free" http://bit.ly/1iJ3nG7 #monographs #OA
Open Access, Monographs and "working for publishers for free"
The other day, I was sent a text message by a senior academic friend who has a healthily sceptical view of the open access work that I do. The question was: "re. Monographs, authors should be paid for their work, the publishing business model now allows for that as would online pay walls (not much…
Managed to get my head around bash completion scripting in the last hour and this is now supported in meTypeset!
Good news from Classics at Leeds http://zpr.io/H4WX
Next Thursday is Pynchon in Public Day! What will you do? http://bit.ly/fgP78w
This is what "civilization" looks like.
Botched Oklahoma execution leaves inmate writhing on gurney - http://gu.com/p/3zz63
Academic labour, students as consumers and the value form http://zpr.io/H4wf
Why yes, since you ask, I did just push to the meTypeset GitHub repo from 30,000 feet on a plane. #thefuture
"there are only a few more sponsorship opportunities available" #yeahright #whoareyoukidding
Sitting at Heathrow, having been reading and now coding, reminded me of this article by @leggetti in @AlluviumJournal http://bit.ly/UAObuD
How the FCC Plans to Save the Internet By Destroying It: An Explainer http://bit.ly/1mPnBRp
Why Speed-Reading Apps Don't Work http://zpr.io/HcgU
Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature now open access http://zpr.io/Hc6Q
notes on money and the democratic deficit and higher education http://zpr.io/He4g
I've just been appointed to the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council's Peer Review College. Hurrah! #morework #butgood
Never count your new features before the regression tests have passed.
Right, cup of tea while the regression tests run but I /think/ I've just got meTypeset totally working on MS Windows. #headache
Phew. Domestic emergency and @tado have been superb at getting me back up and running. Very stressful but they were very helpful.
Ubuntu 14.10 Named ‘Utopic Unicorn’ http://zpr.io/HdVj
Writing about academic labour http://zpr.io/HdFe
"should postgrads who teach side with students or staff?" < dispute is not students vs. staff. @GdnHigherEd
A conference on Quadrophenia at Sussex. Featured in @RollingStone with comments from @pamthur! http://rol.st/1f2lVBA
And I overdid the "today"s in that tweet.
Was very good to bump into @benshowers, to meet @Stephen_Curry today (at last!) and to catch up with @lawsonstu today, all at @Jisc!
Today I am off to a Jisc Scholarly Communications Advisory Group meeting, where I represent @pkp.
An Open Library of Humanities? Adeline Koh interviews me at the Chronicle's ProfHacker http://bit.ly/1tw5RvR #OA #Open_Access
"This page scientifically designed to annoy web hipsters. Donate now to stop the Comic Sans and Blink Tags." LibreSSL http://bit.ly/1lzMfFI
An Open Library of Humanities? Adeline Koh interviews me at the Chronicle's ProfHacker
This is the tenth interview in a series, Digital Challenges to Academic Publishing, by Adeline Koh. Each article in this series features an interview with an academic publisher, press or journal editor on how their organization is changing in response to the digital world. The series has featured…
I do hope someone will organize a Pynchon conference in 2016 called "Against the Decade".
Friends' kids are about to descend on our place for an Easter egg hunt. Will try not to compete /too/ hard against the 8 year olds.
Openness for society or for profit? http://bit.ly/Rxc503 #OpenAccess #opendata
(That's how much big business cares about the security of your data vs. profit.)
OpenSSL developers are not paid. Many enormous companies use the software w/out paying or checking it themselves: http://nyti.ms/1hWGQWU
Openness for society or for profit?
A twitter conversation that I had with Michelle Brook this morning. [View the story "Openness for society or for profit?" on Storify]
"Clap your hands if you feel like happiness is a ruse"
Re last tweet: oh dear.
Minerva CEO Details His High-Tech Plan To Disrupt Universities http://zpr.io/Hick
So, @AlbertRolls1 just posted a picture of his kid reading my book and I now fear for the youth of tomorrow.
Happy Easter weekend all! May it be chocolate-filled. Here's some deep contemporary electronic stuff to launch it. http://bit.ly/Qtth5w
To argue that open access limits the reach of research is to undersell research. By @ersatzben of @HEFCE http://bit.ly/1hS5hDW
embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void.
Part inspired by Foucault's work on prisons. And part inspired by this Pynchon line: prisoners in the top room of a circular tower,
For those who have said kind words about the cover image of my book (don't judge etc.!), it was part inspired by philosophical cave stuff...
Co-operative university discussion at #DPR14 http://zpr.io/HiYA
Code Quality: Open Source vs. Proprietary http://zpr.io/HiYh
Me, an owl and the book I wrote on Thomas Pynchon and Philosophy, which just arrived. Thanks @PalgraveLit!
MT @PabloK: Some quick thoughts on @ucu, UCEA's 2% (non-)offer and what comes next.http://bit.ly/1hPnLpu < very good.
In case you missed it earlier, I wrote this for the @GdnHigherEd today. On journal prestige, reach and #openaccess http://bit.ly/1hOCSQf
I will stop geeking in a minute, but, if that is how OOXML tables work, it's a complete pain. Bitmasks in XSLT look like a nightmare.
Here's what I think OOXML does to encode table headers: http://bit.ly/1hPiizc If anyone can enlighten, I'd be very grateful!
OK, I am defeated. I have searched high and low through documentation and test cases and can't work out how OOXML encodes a table header.
Bitmask values for w:tblLook w:val attribute in OOXML http://bit.ly/1mgpLXr #Technology
Bitmask values for w:tblLook w:val attribute in OOXML
For my own reference: 0x0020 Apply first row conditional formatting 0x0040 Apply last row conditional formatting 0x0080 Apply first column conditional formatting 0x0100 Apply last column conditional formatting 0x0200 Do not apply row banding conditional formatting 0x0400 Do not apply column banding…
What do we mean by the "standing" and "reach" of research? http://bit.ly/1gKryCO #OA
What do we mean by the "standing" and "reach" of research?
This article originally appeared, in a shorter, edited form in the Guardian: Is UK humanities research reaching the widest possible audience? Today marks the launch of another report into the open access ecosystem; a space that is rapidly becoming extremely saturated. Funded by HEFCE and overseen…
Alluvium 2nd Birthday Panel Event http://bit.ly/QcGy2u
Alluvium 2nd Birthday Panel Event
It's almost 2 years since I founded the open access journal Alluvium, which publishes short, topical articles written by leading academics on 21-century writing and 21st-century literary criticism. Launched in June 2012 with my colleague Dr Martin Eve, the journal has gone from strength to strength…
This review claims that the Lebwoski influence on Inherent Vice is "unexpected". Must know jack about the book. http://bit.ly/1euWxnr
First Impressions From Paul Thomas Anderson’s film of ‘Inherent Vice‘ http://bit.ly/QaJRXO
First Impressions From Paul Thomas Anderson’s film of ‘Inherent Vice‘
With his fastest turn-around in well over a decade, Paul Thomas Anderson completed production on Inherent Vice last summer, just around a year after initial screenings of The Master began. In adapting Thomas Pynchon‘s 2009 novel, the director has been hard at work in his editing suite (with…
. @Nadine_Muller is doing some horrendous long-distance cycling for a women's abuse charity. Sponsor her if you can! http://bit.ly/1iUTMsN
Symposium on David Mitchell: 9th May, London http://bit.ly/1gZA4K3
Symposium on David Mitchell: 9th May, London
I'm very pleased to be able to say that I will be speaking at the symposium on David Mitchell, organised by Courtney Hopf and Wendy Knepper, on the 9th May at NYU London. Should anyone else wish to attend, you can register interest online. The programme is available to download in PDF form and…
A really interesting upcoming conference on scholarly publishing in Edinburgh http://bit.ly/1aHrzRa hosted by @Joysci and @McDawg
Enabling a triple-head (3 monitor) setup on Linux Mint 16 ("Petra") with two Nvidia cards http://bit.ly/1nnNjtp
Enabling a triple-head (3 monitor) setup on Linux Mint 16 ("Petra") with two Nvidia cards
OK, so this was utterly painful and I needed to share what finally worked for me. I have 2 x Nvidia GTX480 cards. I have 3 x monitors. I wanted to be able to run all three off the same box, using it as a single X Screen (i.e. so I can move windows between screens and it acts correctly). No matter…
Sussex security staff wearing continuously recording lapel pins and suppressing protest on campus. Absolute disgrace.
Darcy Casselman: Enable Two-Factor Authentication http://zpr.io/Hk9J
On the co-operative university and the general intellect http://zpr.io/Hk9i
Financialising the university: What is to be done? http://zpr.io/Hk95
Book: Pynchon and Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno http://bit.ly/1enrcDp
Book: Pynchon and Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno
Martin Paul Eve, Pynchon and Philosophy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) Thomas Pynchon, perhaps the most important living American author, is famed for his lengthy, complex and erudite fictions. Given these characteristics, an examination of the philosophical dimensions of Pynchon's works…
Recent overviews of English HE http://zpr.io/Hrb9
Gold refers to the work being open at source as opposed to green deposit. It has no presuppositions of business model. #lbf14 #facultylbf
I just read that Elsevier Vice P Mark Seeley just said that "only gold [OA] is a business model" at #lbf14 -- Gold is /NOT/ a business model
Union Efforts on Behalf of Adjuncts Meet Resistance Within Faculties’ Ranks http://zpr.io/Hrm7
The ethics of search filtering and big data: who decides ? http://zpr.io/HrmG
OpenSSL Bug Allows Attackers To Read Memory In 64k Chunks http://zpr.io/HSrf
In case you missed it earlier: the Open Library of Humanities has funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation http://bit.ly/1gDjUWh
Staging Beckett at the Margins http://zpr.io/HS6E
Funding for the Open Library of Humanities from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation http://bit.ly/1gCIbvG #OA #OLH
Funding for the Open Library of Humanities from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
As detailed over on the OLH site, I am very pleased to be able to say that we have secured a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch the Open Library of Humanities! To quote: We are delighted to be able to announce that the OLH is being funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, who…
Good selling technique there by @jameswilsdon: "Overhaul of metrics usage could cut frequency of REF" http://bit.ly/1hkscII
EU Should Switch To ODF Standard, Says MEP http://zpr.io/HC5k
Is the worker co-operative form suitable for a university? (Part 3) http://zpr.io/HC52
Philosophers DVD: Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault http://zpr.io/HC5r
MT @LSEImpactBlog: By adapting editing environment, production process can be improved http://bit.ly/1sr6ENY < true, but unlikely to happen
Catching up on some writing as recovering from virus and jamming out to Dark Strands' "Return Of The Oscillator" http://bit.ly/1hQ5gjl
Michael Gove's bid to limit fallout from failing free schools http://gu.com/p/3z7h3
Tesla Model S Has Hidden Ethernet Port, User Runs Firefox On the 17&quot; Screen http://zpr.io/HCHU
Ah, brilliant, @ernestopriego found it! http://bit.ly/9mXjO6
What is the license on images that denote creative commons licenses? e.g. http://bit.ly/1gwkuoK (can't find statement of public domain)
Suggestion to publishers: replace the disingenuous "invitation" to review with the word "request". It bugs me every time.
At what point did the obsession with being able to "relate" to works of art come to such prominence?
JG Ballard: five years on – a celebration http://gu.com/p/3z67y
Made good progress on typesetter today by reworking the size classifier. Software now detects when it has made an error and mis-nested stuff
Iwao Hakamada (now 78) spent almost 2/3 of his life waiting to be killed. CP supporters: what can you give him back to compensate for that?
Last week, the world's longest-serving death-row prisoner (48 years. 48-damn-years) was released; conviction unsafe. http://bit.ly/OfOezh
MT @anterotesis: Academic publishers are publishing booby-trapped URLs http://bit.ly/1sbLjb7 < warning, contains spider image
In the gentlest way: if you can't figure some of this stuff out, then running your own journal is not for you.
I'll never respond rudely to such requests, but will state now that I will only help with specific questions.
I still get emails, probably once a fortnight, that are just: "I want to start a journal, can you help?"
A while ago I wrote on starting an open access journal, in which I set out the processes involved; even social editorial stuff.
Nurseries 'not preparing children' for the needs of a modern economy, errr, I mean for school. Yes, school. http://bbc.in/1ee3kwv
The costs of revisions to estimated repayments for existing loans http://zpr.io/H3LE
Michael Gove wants to end innumeracy in the UK? This is the man who said that "all schools should be above average".
How long until UKIP moans about immigrant dust storms caused by gay marriage?
Opportunity: Thesis Text-mining Project Officer, British Library http://zpr.io/H3ZT
Ryan: "Federal subsidies for the [..] Arts, [...] Humanities, [& ...] Public Broadcasting can no longer be justified" http://1.usa.gov/1omgbq2
Designing an open source OA toolchain for books http://bit.ly/1gYreSk #OA
Designing an open source OA toolchain for books
The Cluster and the University Library invited Dr. Martin Eve (Lincoln University) for a two day intensive workshop with Dulip Withanage and Dr. Andrea Hacker to develop and design a publication tool for Open Access books. The workshop took place March 27-28. Building this publication tool is part…
When people say we should adjust to climate change, do they understand what that actually means? http://gu.com/p/3z36z
Mark My Work? http://zpr.io/H3gZ
I have spent this morning debugging the most painful XSLT bug. Fixing is now going to entail merry hell on regression tests.
Nothing I say today should be considered an April Fool's Day prank. And all Cretans are liars.
Why OA mandates don't compromise academic freedom http://bit.ly/1iUOjDY #OA
Why OA mandates don't compromise academic freedom
Since yesterday's HEFCE announcement, I've seen some comments floating around that resurrect the argument that OA mandates are a blow to academic freedom. I do not agree, and especially so when we're talking about the HEFCE mandate. With HEFCE's current policy, 96% of submissions to the last REF…