14 
Soooo… I’ve been writing this book chapter, you see, for about two weeks. The way the labor is divided (I do the text, another guy does the figures and formats the references and the boss rewrites it and asks for new figures) I should be done with my part in a few days. At least until it has to be rewritten. So, I’m utterly distracted and, while I would love to blog about all the literature I’ve been reading but you’ll have to just enjoy a picture of it instead. If you want to blog about all that shit, go for it. I’ll even send you an email notice when the chapter comes out so you can find all the references and write all the posts.
In other news, I’ve fallen in love with word clouds. For instance, I took the first 200 posts of my blog and generated a word cloud using Wordle to see what it is I love the most about life:
Grad School and NMR and polls! Wow. I didn’t realize I loved NMR so much. Or grad school. Here are some others I made. Make your own and post them in the comments!
(you need to follow these instructions to paste your wordle into the comments. Here is a screen shot of the URL you need to paste. Due to heightened security, your image will not show up if you try to use the HTML code provided. Also, due to heightened security, I am allowed to look through your bags and steal your Percocet if you fly on my airline.)
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No way ‘fucking’ is that small.
I was surprised, too.
Scotty D. Thats amusing.
Scotty D.? Huh, I thought we were the only ones that called him that. Not to his face though.
is it purely coincidence that “adviser” appears immediately next to “beating”?
Yeah, what an odd coincidence that would be.
Uch. Like this, fools.
We talk chemistry so much, wordle put it up twice.
As an open thread comment, I just want to say that the ACS meeting this year was dire. At least the chemistry presentations in the division that I went to. Most were conducted by people who obviously can’t present their research well (i.e. don’t assume I know the background — give a more detailed introduction; there are fans who don’t read every one of your papers in the audience) so if you’re outside the field, you’re not going to get much out of it. If that wasn’t bad enough, it seems like everyone decided at the same time to draw as much little crap as possible in their slide. They used a 12 font in their power point slides and the ChemDraw figures weren’t much bigger. That meant that if you showed up in the middle of the session to the cavernous Philadelphia lecture rooms and decided to catch a talk from the back, you were shit out of luck at being able to get anything at all out of it.
Usually the students have the better talks as well, but this year a lot of students apparently didn’t prepare enough for their presentations so the nervousness, on top of the other two problems previously mentioned really killed it. Most students talked in a monotone boring voice throughout it all, but a good percentage had a dead soulless and/or bitter tone that seemed to tell me that they hated their life and research. Especially the Hartwig student. Even though I liked the content and got something out of it, I’m going to remember how, apparently, this person is really depressed and wants to end it all. I actually wanted to ask a question afterwards, but upon reflection decided that it would be better for my sanity to forget about it.
Heyzus Christ. I’ve been to other ACS meetings and for some reason everyone decided to be at their worst this time around. The poster sessions were good though. And as another saving grace, the very last technical session in my field turned on the awesome. About two thirds at that session were new profs with some exciting chemistry. Every speaker was good and had big font and figures, and the chemistry was really new and promising. Too bad that some of the awful big group student presenters left early so that they didn’t see how it was supposed to be done.
One thing I found weird about the Philadelphia ACS was the apparent installation of the Organic, Medicinal and Fluorine chemistry divisions as being geographically central to the whole endeavor (rooms 201-204). While certainly convenient for me, I found it odd or even a little off-putting, if I were a member of, say, the Analytical division.
As another open thread comment, what do people think of this new (to me, anyway) habit of taking digital camera pictures of people’s slides and posters? Learn to take notes, dammit! I find taking digital camera pictures of people’s posters (while they’re not talking to you, the presenter) to be more than a little bit rude. This will push me off the edge of never presenting a poster ever again: I don’t like standing there for 3 hours repeating myself, while drunk people pretend to be interested. If I do, though, I’ll see about getting a camera-proof laminate for my poster.
Yeah, there was a dude who took pictures of some slides during all presentations in my session, including mine. Later I sat behind him by chance and noticed that he took detailed notes and that his pictures appeared to be random (when only half the slide was up for example), so I just thought that he was a reporter. Or an ineffective spy trolling for research topics.
Did you submit your poster into that Poster2View thing by the way? I’m debating whether I should or not since a lot of it isn’t published yet and I’ve been lazy at writing up lately. I’m also paranoid. Did I mention being lazy as well?
Was he a guy with curly black hair and a rolling suitcase? That was the dude in my sessions.
I did a oral presentation; no pictures that I remember. (And yes, the room had a fair number of people.) I think Poster2View is a great idea, actually. But if you’re worried about being scooped, it’s not the way to go. In my academic days, no problem.
Nope, different guy. I think he might have been Russian but not sure if he was US based or not. Yeah, the Poster2View really depends on the poster I guess. If there are too many tables that can have hidden results on them (that you only get out after you talk to the presenter for 10 minutes), then it’s not the way to go. I think the ACS poster is not scoopable at this point, but a poster from a specialized conference a while earlier was.
The other point about that though, is that maybe you’re cutting down on face time with others if you put your poster online. You don’t want to train people to avoid you. Especially if you are a grad student who is looking to meet professors.
Someone needs to invest in one of these “Image Fulgurator”.
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/.....-adds.html
(with video)
I tried to write my own synopsis of how it works, but the article did a better job. “The device has a slave unit on top which is triggered when it sees a flash fire. This triggers his own flash, which fires through the back of the camera, through a film slide containing his slogan and then on and out through the lens at the front. This works because a camera is pretty much a projector in reverse. And because the light-graffiti is fired at the exact same moment the unsuspecting victim takes a picture, it ends up in their photograph and paranoid mind ramblings result. Neat.”
So, someone needs to set this up at their research talk and have a big “F*** YOU!” appear everytime someone takes a picture. Nifty.