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March 2017

It's a bit mean to say this, but I can t resist. Somebody yesterday suggested that github was the solution to software preservation.

Open conference bingo: "standing on the shoulders of giants". (It's more a series of leg-ups from average-sized people.)

A small insight into the difficulties of rheumatoid arthritis: today my hands hurt a lot. V nervous re handshakes at conference.

Off to Reading today to speak at the Open in Practice conference. Interested in range of approaches on show from others.

Alas, I didn't win - I'm blaming you, Twitter! - but Karma was a TOTALLY deserving winner & I'd have voted for her.

It's the week of the Guardian HE awards, or as I like to think of it: "the week of finding out whether my Twitter circles did enough voting"

I know about and enjoy contemporary fiction. But I can't do my job working on it with my computational knowledge without utter pain.

I know that most of computational projects consist of data wrangling/cleanup. But seriously: copyright frustrates my research daily.

I've read and re-read and re-typed this text in ways that I wouldn't have dreamed of for other close reading projects.

What I've found and got is great, but it's so opposed to the ingrained assumption that computational methods save reading labour.

Rather than the distant reading paradigms that are supposed to alleviate reading labour, I've had to re-type an entire novel.

This book I'm working on is about using computational methods for literary close reading. I realised today how much work it has entailed...

Tracklist for Leftfield's Leftism-22 announced. Includes the amazing-sounding Release The Pressure (Adrian Sherwood Mix).

Didn't think it was possible to concoct a way of "providing" healthcare so terrible that US Republicans wouldn't support it.

Re last tweet: if someone doesn't pick me up for saying "post-receiving community" I'm going to be disappointed.

Are there any words more terrifying in the post-receiving community than "your parcel is now with your local Hermes courier for delivery"?

Fantastic talk this evening at @birkbeck_arts by Clara Jones feat her newly discovered Woolf stuff. And this slide.

Off to see Clara Jones, with whom I did an MA a fair few years back, speak on Woolf's Lost 1931 Sketches at @birkbeck_arts. Sounds great!

PhD actually useful shock! Nurse: "since you're a doctor, I can tell you that your liver scan looks OK to me". Her face fell a little after.

I'm sure whatever horrific tax haven entity we become afterwards will extend deregulation and many neoliberal-type actions, though.

Sure others have said it but: if neoliberalism is replacement of politics by economics, Brexit is something different given economic turmoil

I miss the institutional index on the back page of the print Times Higher. Been meaning to say that for months.

And that's despite my literary studies training drumming most biographical urges out of me... And I've worked on Pynchon, the invisible man.

I'm currently writing a literary biography of Jennifer Egan and it's quite rewarding rereading her work on this frame - subtle life echoes.

One year ago last night, to the hour, I was in accident & emergency beginning a series of diagnostic tests for my stroke. Last night:

Uni removed rather than comply. Tech bros go mad in comments claiming ppl with disabilities are going too far in asking for access 2/2

I wonder how many other authors considered this? Under W-f-H the legal author of the piece is the entity to whom you sign it over.

Just been asked to sign a contract for a book entry as work-for-hire. Not keen to lose my attribution rights. Asked for changes.

Just launched the March 2017 @openlibhums library board vote. Five journals, two subscription flips, one university press partnership...

Started typing a q. in SurveyMonkey. Autosuggest: "During the last week how many times has someone left you out of activities on purpose?"

Love how the translated titles for A Visit from the Goon Squad range from "Time is a Bastard" to "What have we done with our Dreams?"

About to complain to a publisher about requested turnaround of a 7-day period on proofs, in a week with 2x bank holidays & a weekend.

Thought to myself: hmm, this month looks quiet for OLH renewals. Probably because I spent the entire period this time last year in hospital.

Preparing the next round of journals that want to join @openlibhums for library board vote. Some really exciting flips from subscriptions!

We've been on the tarmac for 40 minutes now but still not off this @british_airways flight at @heathrowairport.

That was the worst plane landing I've had in 15 years coming in to Chicago. I was very ill. Sorry fellow passengers.

I also frequently wish that PhD theses were treated as first-class research objects that were more widely cited and valued in my discipline.

Also: PhD theses are treated as "unpublished" but they can be consulted and seen although access can also be denied. How much of a contrib?

They are hard, if not impossible, to consult on-site. Obviously e-theses and their dissemination help here but change publishing norms.

It's not enough to know it, yourself. It has to be a "contribution" to humanity's knowledge. But, yet, we often lock up PhD theses.

I keep returning to the question of what the term "contribution" means in the definition of a terminal degree as a "contrib to knowledge".

Had an interesting discussion with @sgediting this morning, around the nature of knowledge and our ability to disseminate it.

Interleukin 6 inhibitor sirukumab apparently showing good results for rheumatoid arthritis in phase two trial. Good news!

Just went to fab panel at @birkbeck_arts on limits of estrangement, fiction & current political climate with @the_blochian & @DrBlacklock

I did consider joining in but instead fell into a private thought chain about how we evaluate student work and what frames/signals exist.

Why is it near impossible to score over 80? What's the point in numerical gradiation below the fail point of 40? Good questions.

Favourite part of my Edinburgh evening so far was eavesdropping on students discussing university marking procedures in the pub.