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December 2024

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A good comparison for rheumatoid arthritis: when you have flu your c-reactive protein level will be between 10 and 60 when you feel at your absolute worst. I'm on a drug that suppresses this inflammation marker, but it's still constantly around 30. Explains why RA makes you feel terrible.

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My favourite line in the whole of /Star Trek: The Next Generation/ is when Picard is discussing acting with Data and says "method acting, huh? I've vaguely heard of it..." 😂

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Had about 20 trans-membrane pressure alarms on the dialysis machine last night. As a result, I'm now totally wrecked. 😕

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Probably "too much information" but my kidney failure has worsened as, this month, I have now totally stopped producing urine. A most curious phenomenon.

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My mother visited and brought with her a folder full of all my childhood certificates. I don't think this is the furthest I swam, but 4k for an 11 year old isn't bad!

A rainbow swimming certificate saying 4000 metres. The certificate features a rainbow and the text "Rainbow Swimming Award Scheme" at the top.
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Dealing with this month's kidney haemodialysis supplies delivery. This is a small one. Our entire garage is lined with shelf after shelf of dialysis gear!

A hallway full of boxes, cannisters of liquid, and packages
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Made it through the pain to the exercise bike. Ha! I don't believe in "new years" resolutions. I think you just need to start, or you never stick to them.

Me struggling on an exercise bike in a Muppet Christmas Carol t shirt.
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Trying to summon the energy to get on the exercise bike. And the motivation to push through the arthritis pain.

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I commented on contemporary literary studies and ethics board approvals - saying we should probably use them - in Eve, Martin Paul, Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History (Stanford University Press, 2024), p. 230.

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History and Digital Preservation

This week, over Christmas 2024, I have read two pieces about digital preservation: Ian Milligan's Averting the Digital Dark Age[^1] and Ageh et al.'s "The Preservation of Knowledge in the Digital Age" for Arcadia.[^2] It is, in truth, fairly difficult to reconcile these two accounts of the state of…

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I finished @ianmilligan1.bsky.social's /Averting the Digital Dark Age/. I enjoyed much of the history and agree that we have hugely advanced digital preservation systems. However, I think I remain sceptical of the broader conclusion that a digital dark age has been averted. Might write more soon.

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I was hoping this would mention @mfenner.bsky.social's Rogue Scholar - and it does! In fact, it's about it.

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I've really got into the flow of overnight dialysis, now. It's amazing to have my daytime back and not lose up to 25hrs per week on the machine. It does take a bit of getting used to - making sure you don't turn over onto the lines etc - but this wasn't the end of the world.

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The block list feature on bsky is useful, moderation wise, but what happens when it's weaponised in future and bots build credible follow bases and then circulate malicious blocks?

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I enjoyed /Orbital/ and was particularly struck by its post-nationalist stances and also how SF futures guide present space exploration.

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More Muppet Christmas Carol trivia, copied over from Twitter.

If you watch the DVD vs the streaming version, simultaneously, the DVD will run approximately 4% faster because it runs at 25fps for PAL or 29.97fps for NTSC, as opposed to 24fps for streaming.

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I finally finished Adam Kelly's /New Sincerity/. I did enjoy it but have had such a disrupted couple of months that my reading has been very fragmented.

A picture of the cover for Adam Kelly's New Sincerity: American Fiction in the Neoliberal Age. It contains a range of yellow, pink, and blue rectangles arranged in a patchwork, like post it notes, with the title in the rectangles.
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I hate the perennial proposal, in REF and elsewhere, to replace all evaluation exercises with pure citation stats. This really discriminates against academics who do more than write. Example: so many papers "cite" the "Open Library of Humanities", but not the published research that informed it.

Of course, there are lots of reasons to hate citation stats, even if you are only writing and publishing traditional work. Can measure popularity rather than actual merit, for example.

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Took the doggos for a walk, which was exceptionally painful and difficult owing to the state of my rheumatoid arthritis. However, they loved it. Luka ran like a beast possessed ("zoomies") and their happiness made it worthwhile 😊

Robyn, our tri-pawd dog, sitting on a rug. She is brown and black with a bit of alsatian in her breeding somewhere.
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"But don’t forget the unseasonal truth: every time a charity helps a person find food or clothes, it is a sign of government failure"

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I'm also really enjoying Julian Sutton's /Melodeon Crimes/. He's the melodeon player for Kate Rusby's live shows.

The cover of Julian Sutton's Melodeon Crimes featuring the artist standing casually against a black wall, looking down at a melodeon.
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An extremely pleasing Christmas season album is Apollo 5's /A Deep But Dazzling Darkness/. Superb slightly unusual choral/a capella harmonisation.

The album cover of A Deep But Dazzling Darkness by Apollo 5. It features a painting of wood with an owl flying through and the moon in the background.
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Happens with every UBI experiment. Problem is that those who could implement it at scale fear that without the coercion of starvation, many people would not do their menial, soul-destroying or back-breaking jobs. So they remain "experiments". Forever.

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More information coming in the new year, but I'm thrilled to say that, from January, I'll be taking on the role of Interim Technical Lead of Knowledge Commons, within Mesh Research at Michigan State University. Yeah!

A picture of a green Spartan helmet - the logo of Michigan State University - withtl the text "Congratulations on your new position and welcome to Michigan State University!"
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I feel that if the UK gov now wants a transformative use provision in copyright, for AI training, it needs also to extend it to audio sampling in various music cultures (stemming from hip hop). It's ridiculous that even hugely transformed and unrecognisable samples can't be used as fair dealing.

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Urgh. Spent half the night awake with trans-membrane pressure sensor alarms going off - and am putting it down to a defective dialyser.

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Luka, looking as though he's just been savagely and unjustly reprimanded, rather than the reality that he's just scoffed down some treats.

A large black dog looking sad
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Some really important critiques here. Including:

* You can't just do POSI updates when you have good news - or when you are prompted after 1,000 days

* You need to do event-driven updates when your status changes

* Can Crossref, as a trade member org, ever achieve stakeholder governance?

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Today I reached the first draft of my Star Trek: Voyager book. Still quite a bit of chiselling and shaping to go, but a real milestone. To mix some metaphors.

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Looking back on university policy conversations a few years ago and there was all this concern about lack of researcher mobility. Just seems so quaint now that practically the only possible mobility in English HE is from "in a job" to "out of a iob".

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However, I do have lots of exciting things to work on today and fully intend to annoy @ajrbyers.bsky.social with my enthusiasm 😂

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I hate to moan, although it is cathartic, but my rheumatoid arthritis is still violently flaring. Ankle like a swollen, misshapen tennis ball and the pain in upper leg, ribs, shoulders and neck is appalling. Can only hobble small distances. Hospital: "have you had any bad stress lately?" Me: hmm.

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My favourite Times clue, from 20 years ago, remains:

Team leader led around in circles for so long (6-2)

T = team leader
dle = led around

Then put "circles" either side of "dle" to get "in circles".

Toodle-oo.

Which means "so long" (goodbye).

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OK, so that paper proved disappointing. Just basically says "these tasks are involved in solving a cryptic crossword. Here's how good/bad LLMs are at such tasks". Bit of a let down - I was hoping for some theory on why models of language at scale struggle so much with these linguistic puzzles.

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Reading the LLMs and crosswords paper. One thing that strikes me is the challenge of using Guardian and Times crosswords as though they were 2 datasets of the same thing. Guardian doesn't necessarily follow strict Ximenean clue standards whereas the Times does (ie is more formal). A challenge.

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Rewatching the Daniel Craig James Bond films and the real problem with Quantum of Solace - at least in the opening 30 minutes - is the directorial decision to use fast-cut cinematography during the chases. Most shots last less than half a second and it's really disorienting - almost sickening.

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This looks great and I will read it.

*My* hypothesis, before reading the paper, is that cryptic crosswords deliberately subvert the normal language embeddings on which LLMs rely (e.g. using "entrance" to mean enchant (en-trance)).

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Currently deep into the art department history of Star Trek: Voyager - fascinating seeing how they envisaged the show, with repetition and difference from past Trek.

An early art department image/drawing of the Caretaker array - it shows a large space station with acutely angled sails
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Some reading, writing, and computer programming lined up for this weekend, along with some downtime film watching to try to quell the awful rheumatoid arthritis flare. Still struggling to walk with it.

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"a hard question is whether we're using the wrong instrument to pay for it".

Ah yes. A really hard one that.

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Some new blog features at https://eve.gd:

* Bluesky share links :)
* DOIs for every post (thanks, Rogue Scholar @mfenner.bsky.social )
* Internet Archive backup link for all posts (again, thanks to Rogue Scholar, but also obviously, IA)

A picture of the bottom bar of my website, featuring a "cite as" block with a DOI, a link to where the work is archived at the Internet Archive, and a new Bluesky share button, beside Facebook
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Today, I've been doing more work on integrating the CRediT taxonomy into Janeway - this morning into the platform's JATS output, using canonical NISO URLs and terms.

An XML snippet showing two CRediT taxonomy roles being displayed in a JATS document
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My academic year in review

Like most years, a mixed bag for me here. Kidney failure continues to be a truly challenging medical fiasco, with AV fistulas, overnight dialysis, hormone therapies, and much much more. I also continue to feel the severe difficulties of my rheumatoid arthritis, which required a hip replacement in…

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Nurse yesterday, in hospital, asked me why I was wearing a mask - although the doctor asked if I wanted her to wear one.

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Days are very up and down here with the rheumatoid arthritis. Yesterday, I thought everything was improving. This morning, a simple dog walk was an absolutely agonising struggle. Hoping that a bit of a December break will stabilise it all, after recent stresses.

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Yesterday's post-hospital treat was a very naughty visit to Canterbury Christmas Market, with delicious food.

A picture of me, looking happy, wearing glasses, bald head, eating/holding a bratwurst hot dog.
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... But the Humanities actually got there first, with @openlibhums.bsky.social, among others. APC-free OA has always been the way!

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Hospital today. I have to go to the hemophilia clinic for tests to see why my AV fistula won't stop bleeding after dialysis. As a result of this bleeding, I have to keep using the central line in my chest, which is more prone to infection and far less convenient.

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I'm looking forward to this, given my work earlier this year showing the poor state of digital preservation of journals

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Rheumatoid arthritis flare is really giving me grief today. Pain levels are very bad - worse than when I've broken my foot in the past. 😔

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Today, I will be part of a US PhD dissertation defense committee as well as doing some contractual tech work and working on my book.

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I've got to the first complete draft of the Voyager book. There's quite a bit of smoothing and refining to be done. But it's really getting there now...

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I'm an advisory board member on this project and I wholly condone it - a really great topic on which to work

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Is anybody yet archiving Bluesky posts? Seems early enough to be a worthwhile and doable digital-cultural preservation project.

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We're not normally allowed to put the tree up until at least the 15th December, but this year, I have won!

A picture of me wearing a red hoodie with a Christmas tree in the background, with a mouse fairy decoration on top.
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This is why I was so disturbed to overhear some older woman in hospital a few years ago saying that we should move to an insurance system. I thought: you have no idea. You would be denied healthcare under that system.

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Rheumatoid arthritis continues to flare at the moment. My ankle looks like a tennis ball between the leg and foot. And walking on it feels like stepping barefoot on glass. Agony.

They postulate that stress precipitates such flares because it releases pro-inflammatory cytokines. 🤷

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Not naming any names, but whenever I see a new university press starting up, with Book Processing Charges for OA, I am disappointed. If you're starting an organisation from scratch, you should look at other, equitable models. Take Lever Press as an example.

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Meanwhile: this morning's fun is that I have a huge rheumatoid arthritis flare in my left ankle. It's swollen, hot, incredibly painful, and I can hardly walk on it. Sigh. Hopefully this will ease off as the day goes on. Doesn't look like I'll be doing that exercise cycle, though.

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Today is my dialysis machine's annual service. Huge thanks to the NHS for providing this so I can do dialysis at home, overnight, and have some of my life back.

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I have a strange relationship to my e-ink device - a reMarkable 2. My handwriting is appalling. I mean, beyond "Drs have bad handwriting". So you wouldn't expect I'd want to take notes by hand.

But I love reading on it and annotating docs by hand, even though I then type up the notes.

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Another gross injustice is the discrepancy in funding & resources between different NHS departments

Rheumatology - with a HUGE number of patients: it's impossible to get help between appointments or contact clinicians

Kidney failure: I have a direct mobile number for a nurse and can text for help

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Probably won't apply for the job advertisement I received today for Technical Lead at a nuclear power plant. I mean, my code is robust and tested, but that might be a responsibility too far.

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And here it is in action, showing the messages sent and responses received for a p1-pio broadcast message

The Janeway admin interface showing messages sent to the OA switchboard, including the columns success, broadcast, message-type, the article in question, the journal it appeared in, the message itself, and the response from the server
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Perhaps why Mastodon didn't take off - it focuses on the "cool tech" of its decentralization, which most people just didn't care about. They just wanted an aesthetically pleasing Twitter-like interface with no hassle.

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My #dayofdh was very d and h segregated. Digital work included further work in infrastructure integration between Janeway and the OA Switchboard. Humanities side, I continued work on my Voyager book.

And did some dog training.

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Today was a major breakthrough: my first cuddle with Luka thanks to help from the trainers. He's never really let me seriously touch him before. Today, I got the paw for more fuss.

This has taken over 18 months.

A picture of me wearing a red hoodie and glasses stroking my dog, Luka, large black dog with a white muzzle all around his nose.
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Hilarious.

In the interview, Spelling, Ian, ‘Rick Berman: Co-Creating STAR TREK VOYAGER’, Star Trek: Voyager, April 1995, pp. 10–17, Rick Berman goes through all the cast of _Voyager_... But forgets/omits Chakotay. Whoops.

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We wrote a plugin system for @janewayolh.bsky.social right at the start and I am pleased that it works so well! You register for the event:

Events.register_for_event(
Events.ON_ARTICLE_PUBLISHED,
logic.publication_event_handler,
)

and your function is called. Dead easy.

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Dialysis went really well last night - no alarms at all. Just plain sailing from start to end.

However, because my body can never just leave me alone, I am in excruciating arthritic pain. Hard to describe quite how bad it is, even after morphine and fentanyl and pregabalin. Anyway: onwards!

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Lots of fantasy takes on scholarly communications rely on the idea that "the only thing stopping us is millions of people all making the same decision, at the same time, despite their own vested interests not to make that decision"