Wednesday, November 12, 2008
I’m confused….
I had to wonder when Christie at Observations of a Nerd proclaimed that she was actually a man. I mean, I have never met her, but from previous postings etc., I was pretty sure the author of the blog was a female. However it seems her writing is decidedly male, at least according to one analysis.
According to the site GenderAnalyzer.com, which analyzes the gender of the author of a site based on their writings, I also may have an identity issue to deal with on top of GRE’s, Grad school applications, etc…
It seems Eclectic Echoes is decidedly gender neutral. (Technically 53% male).
Larval Images is decidedly male at a ranking of 74% male, and
The Other 95% is comparatively dripping with testosterone at 84% male.
Of course since I blog at TO95% with Kevin, I decided to analyze his other sites as well.
Deep Sea News (with co-bloggers Craig McClain and Peter Etnoyer) scores strongly male, but at 81%
I also tried Kevin’s home page, but according to the analyzer it is not written in English (?!) so it could not complete the analysis.
Unfortunately without a site exclusively authored by Kevin, I don’t think there is a solid way to break out each author’s effects accurately.
Aside from the fact they probably need more training data for increased accuracy, what conclusions can you draw? (While I get back to studying aggregate supply and demand curves and writing a paper on oxygen isotopes and global climate analysis)
Monday, November 10, 2008
Go vote for Brian of Laelaps fame, (but not fortune) and make his college experience a tad less expensive.
He entered a Student Blogger contest that has a $10,000 award and after making the first cut is in a vote-off or the big prize.
(Damn, that would have killed the credit card debt right nicely!)
Seriously, if you all know me and what my family has been doing to make this a reality, you surely know it isn’t easy. Brian is an awesome writer and we need people like him in science and science communications…
Damn, just realized Laelaps isn’t in the science blog links over there —>
must fix.
As for my education… one thing I have learned this week. Bureaucracies are the same wherever you go, and I would still rather be in combat that deal with them – at least in combat you have a fighting chance to survive.
I think I shall wallpaper the house to both celebrate my new stone free state, and to remind myself to drink 1 litre of cranberry juice and 2.5 litres of water every day.
Urinary Tract Wallpaper by Shannon Wright
Hat tip to Miriam at The Oyster’s Garter
Sunday, September 28, 2008
While the gents at Deep Sea News get time on some of the best manned and remotely operated vehicles out there, the rest of us don’t have to sit it completely out. I think some time this winter Tammy and Johann and I will build a homebrew ROV to explore some of the local shores. Maybe we can find some of the stomatopods that live in the Mystic estuary for a test cruise.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Thank you to all who expressed their thoughts and concerns for me regarding my surgery and recovery. Working with the VA medical system is a royal pain, but I guess if it gets done in the end…
We ended up going to Storrs on Sunday to represent the Marine Science Department for the open house, then going down everyday to New Haven related to the surgery. The surgery was on Wednesday. There was a marked difference in the way that everything was handled. The Dr. made sure to talk to us before the surgery and to Tammy afterwards. They released me from the recovery unit as soon as I was able to pee. Amazing how a simple thing like that can become so important yet impossible to do. Basically all the things that were wrong with the first time around were corrected this time. Fortunately they were able to get the stone and use a home removable stent (ACK!!) so there will be no return trip for that.
I was pretty out of it though for the past few days, couldn’t focus enough to get any work or studying done, slept half the day away, so when I was awake I cruised some photography web sites. I was looking for some ways to do some more advanced studio type lighting on the cheap and looking to see if I could find a repair for the focus mechanism on one of my lenses. I ran across a few websites I wasn’t already familiar with so figured I’d share them here…
ProPhotoLife – a site with lots of video tutorials (through YouTube) that is aimed mostly at studio and commercial type photography. Lot’s of good hints here for those specific fields but also for general photography including color management, gear bags, lighting theory, composition, starting and running a business.
Strobist – a site dedicated to photography using off camera flashes and strobes. A lot of good stuff in there including a lot of good DIY ideas for creating complex lighting effects on a beer budget. It covers the range of photography styles including macro, nature commercial, assignment and studio. Their Lighting 101 and Lighting 102 series will get you up to speed with off camera flash photography easily and the On Assignment series (how an assignment shot was created) is always fun to read.
Canon themselves have an interesting Virtual Lens Plant, that shows how their excellent lenses are made including the science behind high quality optics. It’s done in an easy to understand way using graphics and video to best effect. It also has interviews with the lens craftspeople who are responsible for making them. Pretty cool for an optics geek to see how those lenses are actually made.
