There has been much written recently about Nature’s new link-sharing initiative. I am not going to go in depth into how it works, but essentially this allows for the sharing for links by people who already have access to them to those without access. A good summary, with links to numerous other posts (none of […]
Author: mtb
Uvania Naidoo (from UCT) and I (from NMMU) attended OpenCon 2014 in Washington DC this November. The conference brought 175 students and early-stage researchers involved in Open Access, Open Data and Open Education together. The Open Movement is driven by the belief that access to scholarly research, educational and medical resources should be freely accessible, […]
So, I got to go to my first international conference. And what a conference. I suspect it may have spoiled me for future ones…. Apart from the fact that I could say that I literally flew to Washington DC for the weekend (OK, and the Friday and Monday) which was such a short time, it […]
A few years ago I came across the suggestion of using an analogy of a movie to visualise geological time-scales. That is, each frame would be one year and you would view 24 frames per second. I incorporated this into a talk that I did, and then forgot about it. I was reminded of this […]
And breaking the silence. So, most people who know me as someone not on the other side of a computer screen (and even many of those) know that I recently relocated to Port Elizabeth. Why? Well, I am starting my MSc. The project is an interesting mix of computer science and geology, in which I […]
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A small confession…
… I love pulp fiction. No, not the movie, which I have not seen for some reason, but the genre. Today I picked up a large stack of issues of pulp comics, mostly from the War Picture Library. These are set in World War 2, with accurate equipment and real battles. The stories are fictional […]
In the last couple of years, I have had a growing interest in the open data and open access movement. I have not really done too much yet, being located on the periphery of what might be done, and with a lack of a specific project/problem to tackle. That said, I think that I have […]
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Worthwhile Causes
Over the last few months I have come across two causes that I think are worth supporting. Map Action The first is Map Action ( http://www.mapaction.org/ ). This organisation is based in the UK, and provides first response mapping in disaster situations. This may sound a trifle odd, but think about it: if the midden […]
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Dasher – Non-traditional Input Methods
Just a short note to prevent this being submerged in a tidal wave of baking and food. Today a friend of mine pointed me at Dasher ( http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/TryJavaDasherNow.html ), which is a dynamic input program. Basically, it allows you to do away with a traditional keyboard, and have your input be based on a lexicon. […]
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Accretionary Wedge 61 – What do I do?
Mika, over at GeoMika is asking what everyone does on a day to day basis. So, since this might be useful for other people, here goes. I work for a small geotechnical engineering company. My background is normal, academic, geology (plus computer science, but that is another story), so I have not really studied for […]