Unexpected Presentation Zen Design fail

..so; I was fixin' to start making a ten-minute sales pitch for my research to potential collaborators at a seminar next Friday. I had a few good ideas on how to structure the talk Presentation Zen-style, and I was going to start off fresh by using some new font combinations. After cracking open Presentation Zen Design to the section on fonts and typesetting, I was ready to carve out a new font identity for myself. Comic Sans and Tahoma before that have served me well, but surely there are other fonts which better suit my needs and profile.

As I opened up PowerPoint and started browsing the ocean of available fonts, it dawned on me that the ocean was but a shallow puddle. Of all the "basic" fonts that "everyone should have at their disposal", only a measly two - TWO - were available in my university edition of Office. Garamond and freakin' Helvetica. No Futura, Gill Sans or any of the other cool fonts.

Bummer.

So I checked shareware on the faculty folder to see if there was a Holy Grail of fonts waiting to be unleashed on the wide open canvases of my slides. Not a freakin' thing.

Relatively undeterred, I opened the "Help" menu under "Where in the blue hell can I find me some more goddamn fonts." Windows directed me to a few websites, some of which were offering up some fonts for free. On the other hand, the fonts they offered were 100%, grade A, guaran-damn-teed useless and butt fugly to boot.

As I went down the list of websites suggested to me by Windows, I came across some which sold all kinds of fonts - including the entire Gill family. With my last shred of optimism I selected this package for pricing information.

1,400 NOK for the Gill family of fonts.

The hell with that - Comic Sans just rose like freakin' phoenix from the ashes.

Selecting a new car is serious business

With an eight months old baby boy, it's a definite limit to how much time one can spend roaming around car dealerships. Not to mention that there is a definite limit to how much time one can stand being around slime-drippin', "Obsession" by Calvin Klein-reeking, polyester-wrapped weasels trying to convince you that purchasing THIS model NOW is the best decision you'll ever make.

Hence, it makes a lot of sense to do a lot of research before you actually enter a dealership. There are many things you have to consider, like what fuel source would you like your vehicle to run on (diesel, since the diesel process is thermodynamically more efficient than gasoline, hydrogen fuel cars won't be launched until 2012 and there is as of today not a single hybrid car of sufficient size on the market), station wagon vs. minivan or SUV (station wagon, since European market minivans typically are shorter, and since the SUV caste is a club I'd prefer not to have a membership in, douchebag-laden as it is), and the key decision; which BRANDS are relevant. Once you pick the brand, there is typically only one car model (with many variables, but still) to choose from, so this seems like a good place to start.

Using a process derived from available statistics and personal bias, my wife and I managed to eliminate most car brands before we ever even looked at their models online. Like:

• Brands that are way more expensive than their performance and breakdown-statistics can justify. So long, Mercedes, Audi and BMW.
• Brands that suck at fuel efficiency, which may be problematic getting decent service on, parts to, and aren't made to withstand winter. Sadly, so long every traditional American brand.
• Brands that are soon to be extinct. Buh-bye, Saab.
• Brands where the local service providers have given us plenty of reason to distrust their service. See ya, Ford.
• Brands that are trying to shed their past history of making substandard (in every way imaginable) products, whether or not their new cars are decent (yeah, right). Lo siento, FIAT, SEAT and Skoda.
• Brands we've had bad experience with as rental cars (a.k.a. the "Just say NO to french cars" clause). Au revoir, Renault, Citroen and Peugot.
• Brands that don't really have models in the class you're looking for. Sayonara, Honda and Nissan.
• Brands which have designs which lessen the available trunk volume.
• Brands that have no business making automobiles. We're not really brand-obsessed, but if the car manufacturer made nothing but vibrators and electric nose hair trimmers up until five years ago, then I won't be caught dead in one of your wannabe vehicles. For one thing, new brands are impossible to compare with traditional brands with respect to for example odds of their ricockulous, cheap-looking, pre-rusted hulks breaking down or spontaneously combusting in shame. So of course the brand offers 36-year warranties, because the manufacturing and material cost is comparable to that of a small stove. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, KIA, Huyndai, Daewoo and other brand names sounding suspiciously like FookHue.

So in the end, there were only two...

Book review: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Yeah, yeah, yeah - Jobs is the head honcho of Apple, but he's also widely renowned as one of the most charismatic presenters ever. Garr Reynolds says so, as do enough other people to ensure that at least a fraction of the cheerleaders are from outside of the Jonestown/messianic cult of Apple fanatics and Jobs kool-aid drinkers.

And credit where credit is due - Jobs IS a fantastic presenter and public speaker with a distinctive style. That's not really something worth debating - dude's good.

The author of this book - one Carmine Gallo - claims to have distilled what makes a Steve Jobs presentation great and is offering this to the reader in "A three-part framework to wow your audience". Steve Jobs on a bottle, if ya will. That's a tall order for a book. What are the three parts - or acts as Gallo calls it - you might ask?

• Act 1: Create the story. Plan in analog, focus on the audience and why they should care about your presentation, make simple, clutter-free slides and create twitter-like headlines.
• Act 2: Deliver the experience. Put numbers into some kind of context for easier visualization of impact, use cool lingo and memorable catchphrases in order to stand out, and feel free to use props in order to give a physical demonstration if applicable.
• Act 3: Refine and Rehearse. No further explanation required.

Those familiar with Presentation Zen know at this point that one-third of the book is snagged directly from Garr Reynolds, and at least 1/3 of what Gallo makes off of this book by right ought to end up in Reynolds's pockets. The only semi-original part of the first act is the twitter-headline thingy, which actually is a stroke of pure genious. By spending lots and lots of time creating twitter-like headlines, journalists just use the pre-digested headline provided by Jobs, essentially leaving Jobs in charge of his own media appearance. Admittedly very clever. As for act 2, Gallo "borrows" liberally from Presentation Zen once again, and the third act, with its riveting tales of how Steve Jobs makes his presentations look spontaneous and effortless, but how this is actually a byproduct of intense and long rehearsal hours....well gosh now......what's next? Do musicians rehearse before gigs?

By and large I don't really recommend this book although there are some cool parts, like the "make your own press" bit. Garr Reynolds has become the ABBA of presentation design in that everybody and their mother have jacked material from him without necessarily bothering to cite the source. This, plus the fact that Gallo spends way too much time plugging Apple products rather than the underlying principles of the Jobs presentations that launch them, makes this book at least a second-tier manual.

Another thing is that if you opt to buy this book rather than - repeated ad infinitum - Presentation Zen, and you actually follow the advice, you're probably screwed. What Steve Jobs can get away with, you can't, and while there's a section in the book on how you should dress (odd, I know), Gallo fails to mention that Steve Jobs comes off as quite smug and sometimes arrogant in his presentations. Moreover, he is constantly badmouthing the competition. Steve Jobs can do this because of who he is - given his track record and all - you can't. Especially in academia, where odds are that your brilliant solution/theorem/method is more likely to be a step further than the final answer. In order to get away with Steve Jobs' method of badmouthing the competition and - quite literally - introducing some opposition product as the antagonist (rather than simply as the competition), you need to have an enormous credibility, and an h-index approaching Nobel laureate status. Otherwise you'll just come off as a know-it-all douchebag. And if you're thinking of buying a book like this to model your presentation technique after, odds are that you're not of sufficient academic standing to get away with smugness, so just don't.

Plenty of books you'd be better off buying.

That was fast

In the new proposed national budget, the gov't wants to introduce a value-added tax to biodiesel and LPG, i.e., gaseous fuel for motor vehicles. The reason is apparently that the majority of costs associated with personal motor vehicles are associated with accidents, heavy traffic/gridlocks and noise, none of which vary significantly with the fuel source. Thus there is no reason for tax rebates for certain types of fuel.

Brilliant, says I. There is only one singular explanation for this proposal that doesn't bring into play a linear combination of zero eco-cred among the government parties, epic broken promises during the election campaign and several people in key positions not taking their medication. Namely that the pesky problem with CO2 emissions and that whole man-made climate changes-dealie has been called off.

Otherwise, how in the blue hell do they plan to motivate people to purchase more eco-friendly cars when they refuse to lower the taxes for hybrid cars significantly and the fuel for the more expensive cars they're supposed to buy is at least as expensive?

So; now that the red-green coalition has eliminated climate changes, what's on the agenda for next week? End world hunger? Rename Mondays?

Some data...

...to quote Demetri Martin. I've just come across a bad graphs at FINN.no. First off, is a pie chart of the different browseres used on FINN.no:

So what's wrong with this? First off all, pie charts are depending on us camparing areas to each other, and we can't do that very well when there are some many. So this is the wrong type of chart. To make it even worse, the gradient, shading and 3D-effect makes it even harder to compare the ares. The alignment of the numbers can also have an effect to make the perceived area larger or smaller (though there aren't any really good examples on this chart). They should at least have ordered the slices in decreasing or increasing size. Also, the legend on the right makes your eye go back and fourth to match the browser with the corresponding slice of the pie.

A simple table would have made these data much more available and faster to explore for the reader.

But since I'm in a mood for exploring the possibilities and limitations of Excel and improve my presentation/ charting skills, I've suggested a better graph:
I made this just with Excel, no editing. The numbers next to the where made using a "fake" second series with value 0% and named after the value of each browser share, and I use series name as data label, aglined to the left. I would have loved if Excel could do that automatically, and to be able to formate each of the labels individually. For example, I would prefer to have the "%"-sign a couple of points smaller then the number. Also, I think the point of the author was that IE6 is now used of less then 10% of the users. To emphasise that, I could have given the IE6 bar a red color. But, when it comes to colors, I prefer the following rule:

So, I made a version in black and white. Slightly less fancy, but it does get the point across:
Yes, I could have worked a bit more with selecting the greys, but this is the default grey's in Excel 2003.

Next up was a line plot showing the trends over time:

Line plots greatest strength is to show trends over time, so in that case, they've choosen the correct type of chart. But there are some bad graphing here as well: The background gradient takes too much attention, the alignment of the titles of the axis are wrong (they should be horisontal), your eyes again has to go back and fourth between the legende and the plot, etc. But my main concern is the numbers on the lines. First of all, they don't add up to 100% (just sum the numbers on the right end) and especially from sept. '08 march '09 it's really hard to read the values on the smallest browseres. I even had to "guesstimate" the values there when I made my own version. Line plots does not do a good job of presenting individual values, bar charts are much better at that. Or a table. So my suggestion for improving this graph, is a combination of a line plot and a table, to get the best of two worlds:
Again I could have spent more time on the colors, but I used the standard palette in Excel 2003. What I really would want to be able to do here, is to formate the table better, so make the legende and headers stand out from the data. But here I'm falling short, I don't even know how to "cheat" in Excel to make that happen. Any suggestions? Still, I do feel my suggestion is clearer and better then the default ones from FINN.no.

Sins of omission

After watching the NrK debate on environmental issues today, I'm left with the sense that none of the participants even come close to being honest about the issues at hand. The energy sources discussed are on one hand oil and gas that we strive to phase out, and on the other hand the so-called renewable energy sources we need to develop and phase in. In this election, three forms of "alternative" energy sources have been mentioned (with the exception of FrP and their penchant for hydroelectricity) - solar power, wind power and biofuel. I'm all about solar- and wind power, but the problem is that none of these power sources are practical for transportation - with the exception of trains and subways. There's a missing link between solar/wind power and transportation: battery technology. If you think you can power a truck or a plane using either of these technologies via the battery technology which exists or which lies around the corner, I've got a cathedral here in Trondheim I'm offering up for sale.

The transportation problem is one of the main reasons why the financial crisis and subsequent fuel price were blessings in disguise. If the US reduces their consumption of fossile fuel for transportation purposes (i.e.; deep-six Hummers in favor of smaller and hopefully more environmentally friendly vehicles), it goes a long way towards reducing CO2 emissions. President Obama actually comes across as having credibility on this issue.

The only "alternative" energy source which currently can power the transportation sector is biofuel, which ironically is the biggest detour of alternative energy. First of all, it's not that efficient compared to fossile fuel. Second, it creates a massive industry, pressure groups and government pork barrels for what is at best transitional technology. As such, it diverts hard-needed funding from research on energy sources which can actually make a difference. Third, growing crops for purposes of fuel means less crops for consumption, and last time I checked, the ratio of population growth to food production was not favorable.

Fourth and final, one of the primary producers of biofuel is - and will be - the third-world semi-dictatorship known as Brazil. Brazil does one thing well - apart from keeping the vast majority of its population way below the poverty limit despite having a fast-growing economy - destroying the rain forest. Whether it's for purposes of cattle grazing, oil-field development or for biofuel crops, the sub-mexicans of Brazil have proven not to give a damn about any deleterious effects on the environment. Seeing as how the rain forest contains a whole lot of - well - trees and trees do an awfully good job of absorbing CO2, this would be nothing short of disastrous.

In my admittedly not so humble opinion, none of the political parties featured in debates prior to the election have a realistic view of alternative energy. One might actually argue that FrP is the most honest party out there, as they're the only ones to state that they don't believe in any climate changes and thus don't see a problem with upholding or even increasing the energy consumption.

Filesharing - Trine Skei Grande edition

This week's edition of Morgenbladet includes a letter from Venstre's second-in-command Trine Skei Grande (if that doesn't give you pause to think about Venstre's future when Sponheim retires I don't know what does) about the party's position on filesharing. Basically, they don't want to allocate any resources for battling illegal filesharing, and they certainly don't want to take any steps to limit monitoring of internet traffic. Fair enough - at least she outlines their position. However, she goes on to detail Venstre's "solution" to the problem:

"Venstres alternativ er å utvikle en modell som sørger for at rettighetshaverne får ordentlig betalt, samtidig som fildeling gjøres lovlig og kulturen fortsetter å blomstre. Med andre ord vil vi både utvikle et nytt opphavsrettssystem og alternative kompensasjonssystemer. Gjennom en slik modell kanaliserer vi dagens illegale fildeling inn i legale former, noe som alle vil tjene på. ... (English translation: Venstre's alternative is to develop a model which ensures that the copyright holders are properly paid, while simultaneously legalizing filesharing and making sure that culture will keep fluorishing. In other words we want to develop new copyright legislation and alternative compensation systems. In other words Through this model, we will channel the present illegal filesharing into legal revenue streams, something everyone will benefit from."

What a pile of steaming horseshit.

Or rather; it wouldn't reek of sucktitude if she'd presented an outline for such a model. This is a declaration of vague intentions and nothing less. Unless they can specify or at least outline some of the steps between intention and reality, this is nothing but a pipe dream.

Venstre has zero credibility in this matter until they present something tangible, at which point I'll be absolutely thrilled.

....but WHY?

Along with the University in Stavanger, NTNU is the first Norwegian university to put lectures on iTunes.

Why in the name of E. Harrison Leslie and his thousand (horrible) gimmicks would NTNU and UiS want to spearhead this? Really - I'd like to know.

According to the piece, NTNU has put out some 90 videos with lectureson a wide range of topics. The NTNU representative, Julie Feilberg, explains that phase one is to communicate science to the general public. This makes sense to me, and is kind of cool.

The long-term plan is to incorporate this iTunes channel into regular teaching at NTNU. Feilberg refers to the fact that universities like Stanford, MIT and Yale were among the first ones to jump on the iTunes U bandwagon.

Lemme' get this straight; when trying to improve, it's always a good idea to get inspiration from those who are massively successful, and there's no denying that Yale, Stanford and MIT absolutely rock academically. And putting lectures on iTunes U isn't within a million light years of being the reason why these institutions are excellent. I can probably come up with a short list of some 50 reasons why the good US universities kick butt, and I can also come up with a laundry list of reasons why I think this would undermine teaching at Norwegian universities.

Can anyone think of a slew of good reasons why NTNU and UiS incorporating video'd lectures would improve teaching and learning?

iShred

Just discovered this little app you could add to your iPhone, which turns it into a guitar simulator of some sort (and giving Line6 a run for the money... ;-D ). Check it out:


I really don't know what I think of this. I have to admit, there's some pretty good thinking behing adapting a guitar to a small screen. Of course it is very limited compared to a guitar, but you can do slides, single string picking, wah-wah, string-bending, etc, etc. And compared to GuitarHero, you actually have to know some guitar/ music to make this thing work. And it's not sounding half-bad on my PC speakers either. As for the entertainment value, I don't know. You won't see me running to the store for a iPhone just for this app. But the nerd in me likes some of the solutions in the app...

So, what do you guys think?

Amplifier issue

I've got a problem with my Line6 Spider 210. Specifically, the amp is in the original state from when it was purchased in NC, meaning I've run it through a 110 to 230V power adapter ever since we moved here.

The adapter had the recurring problem of getting REALLY hot during use, and now the plugs are shot, leaving me high and dry (not the Def Leppard album) and currently unable to run my amp. What I want to do - or rather get done - is replace the transformer in the amp so as to enable use with 230V and Norwegian sockets. Seeing as how people import amps all the time, this should be a straightforward operation, right?

So; can I just haul the amp to the guitar shop and have them work their magic? And what would be a realistic estimate for how much that's gonna set me back?

Web page blues some more

In May, I wrote about how every faculty member had to create his/her own professional web page by June 15th. This directive came from higher up, and it was not presented as a voluntary activity.

Like a schnuck I did what I was asked and delivered well before the deadline, just to be sure that it'd get done before our son was born.

Well; two weeks after the deadline, the results are in with regards to percentage complete at the different departments. The two departments with highest completion rate ranked at ~70%. In contrast, "my" department pimp-strolled in with a 16% rate of completion, which means that only myself and six other schnucks among the scientific and administrative staff actually bothered to follow up on the directive. And my department was not the one with the lowest completion rate either.

What's worse is that the beureaucratic instance who issued the order only had a completion rate of 42% - less than half of the staff followed through on their own directive.

It's a miracle that other faculty members haven't taken my lunch money yet. Or it could be because not a single soul actually bothers to look for or even less read these official web pages and thus nobody knows. At any rate, I sure got well doinked with my pants on.

Now with proper interweb connection at home

Finally we've got proper internet access at home. When we moved here, we counted on the cable company to provide us with internet service. In theory, cable companies have the massive advantage of already having this huge cable with which to transmit signals hooked up to your - or in this case our - house. In theory, cable tv providers ought to be able to kick the phone companies' collective asses when it comes to internet access. In practice however, I now subscribe to Scott Adams' theory that cable providers are staffed with people who couldn't get jobs with phone companies. This very much mirrors our experience of having the cable provider supplying us with interweb - or not, as the case turned out. If the line was stable for more than a half our, it was a really good day. Moreover, we weren't exactly surfing the web at the speed of light. Nor were we surfing the web at the transfer rates we paid for. When the interweb really crapped out on us and we had roughly the same odds of getting on the web and stumbling across the Loch Ness monster while it collected its Lotto winnings, I called the cable provider tech support hotline, where a friendly voice informed me that I could find more information regarding my particular problem on their web page. Or in the native dialect: "Du fijnn meir ijnnformassjon på nættsijann' vårræs".

Thanks for nothin'

Phase two was to get a hold of a mobile broadband connection from netcom. We'd tested one out and came to the conclusion that it was fast enough for our purposes, and it really was. For a while. The problem was that it took forever and a day to launch the browser, but in truth this was probably due to the computer we were using, which was not exactly state-of-the-art. A little over six months later, teh mobile broadband connection slowed down for inexplicable reasons, and started to become increasingly unstable. Which is great fun when you're using the online banking services, for example. Enter phase three.

This time, we were going to get proper interweb, dammit. So we purchased a brand spankin' new, kickass laptop (in other words not Dell) and ordered ADSL through Telenor. The modem and junk was supposed to arrive within ten days. If you're guessing that it didn't arrive on time and that an unforseen problem arose, congrats. Step forward and claim your prize - a big bag of nuthin'.

Despite being among the first to be informed of our new address when we moved last April, the douchebag who took my order somehow managed to send it to our old address, which meant the original order had to be annulled and another one initiated. Which meant another ten days of waiting. This time Telenor managed to ship the package to the correct address, and we got to work on setting up the connection. After all, the first sales weasel had told me that the installation procedure was pretty much foolproof unless I had severe technology issues, so I hedged my bets on my wife and I having the necessary tech skills if we pooled our resources. As it turned out, it was pretty much plug'n'play - in theory.

In practice, the very first window we arrived at when running the installation procedure asked whether we had a home alarm system, in which case we needed a servide guy to install it, or odds were the alarm wouldn't be functional anymore. Bummer. Despite this being among the very first alternatives we encountered upon running the installation procedure, the douchemeister who took my order never bothered to ask us whether we had an alarm system. 'Cause you know; getting a service guy to show up takes time.

Next step was to call the broadband patrol ("Bredbåndspatruljen"), in the hopes of getting a time table more narrow than "Yeah; we'll be there some time between now and November". I made the first call to the broadband patrol a week ago, and I was immediately impressed by the fact that they had somehow managed to construct an automated phone service less effective than what the tax and social security offices have. As you call them up, you're greeted by a friendly voice telling you that "In order to connect you to the office closest to you, please press your zip code now." Kewl. Having done that, the same friendly voice told me the following: "You've got the following options: For the southern part of Norway, press 1. For the eastern part of Norway,press 2. ..." What the hell? And having selected the proper area I still had to go through another two options in order to reach the branch office closest to us.

Why in the blue hell would one have to go through that when the first thing you do is enter your zip code?

Oh well; one week later, after several repeat calls to the local branch office and a total number of return calls from the service guy of zero, dude just showed up today with less than a half hour notice. Nevertheless; we've got a functional interweb connection!

Science and mass media

Last week I caught the Norwegian popular science TV show "Undring og Mangfald", featuring Professor Gro Vang Amdam. She was talking about adaptive behavior in bees (among other things), and I thought she was doing a really good job. She had obviously prepared herself well, and the host was on hand to ask for a clarification every time she used a complicated word or a term that the general population might be unfamiliar with.

In short, I thought it was an excellent general-interest show about a scientific topic, made in such a way as to appeal to the interested layperson.

Which probably means it's not at all well-suited to raise public interest in science, as getting my approval is akin to preaching to the choir. Besides, I'd get more out of reading her articles anyways.

So my question is; does a show like "Undring og Magnfald" put more asses in the seats (to add some crossover-appeal by using pro wrestling vernacular), or is it simply an outlet for the already converted? Like selling WoW tees at a loser convention? At the end of the day you need to make the decision to tune in to an educational type of show, which adds a significant bias. Unless this is something you're interested in watching, you're not likely to keep your digits off the 'mote. Which isn't a knock on the show at all, merely an observation.

Contrast this to sports, which are shoved down your throat in pretty much all media outlets. During the news, they talk about sports happenings (no matter how minute the event, like Marit Bjørgen threatening to retire following yet another loss) during the "general news" segment, and then again during the "sports" segment. If somewhere on the planet there's a soccer game involving some Norwegian scrubs, then BOOM: a slew of other shows are cancelled due not only to the schnoozefest, 0-0 on overtime extravaganza that is sure to follow, but also the pre-show game detailing the importance of scoring goals, and the experts' predictions, an intermission special with analysis of how while nothing has happened in the game so far, the teams are eager to score, and a post-game analysis detailing how the experts were right despite having failed at all their predictions, how the team that scored the most goals won, and that in soccer everything can happen (except for anything action-oriented). In newspapers, it's pretty much the same thing. Sports - especially soccer - rears its ugly head both in the general news and sports sections - there's no escape. And that's not counting the multitude of sports shows and -channels one would think saturated the market.

Maybe some reality show based on various research groups, where some contestants are voted out each week. The winners get temporary diplomatic immunity and half an hour alone in a room with Sudbø.

Pirate Bay Backlash Bonanza

In last week's Morgenbladet (May 15-21), there was a commentary by one Pål Hetland, self-professed writer and former press secretary for the Quart-festival. I'm not going to bother to recite large sections of the piece, both because the writing was underwhelming, and also because the argumentation mirrors what any "music and movies should be free for everyone, man" kook has ever written. The basis for the piece - beside the Pirate Bay legal hubbub - was a petition against piracy signed by some 300 Norwegian artists. According to Hetland, this is nothing but paranoia, as illegal downloading represents no clear and present danger for recording artists. Lemme' provide a rundown of his three main arguments:

1. Whereas copyright legislation has only been around for 300 years, art has always existed and is thus immortal.
2. Record companies, not recording artists, are the ones who stand to lose the most, as standard record deals today only provide the artists with some 15% of the record sales. Thus, the artists are pretty safe according to Hetland.
   
3. In the future, recording artists will probably be able to find other revenue sources than selling copyrighted material.

Far be it from me to rain on Hetland's parade, or to let facts get in the way of a good (or in his case mediocre) story. However, I wonder if this master debater (master bater?) has thought of the following:

1. Art is older than copyright legislation - no discussion. However, whereas some poor schnuck would have to spend six months painting a single replica of Mona Lisa - not to mention the time spent to acquire the necessary skill, no skills are necessary for some before-picture Clearasil poster boy to convert Eminem's "Relapse" to .mp3 and share it twith his 35 000 "friends" who can download it as many times as they want without any loss in quality.
2. Sure; the majority of the revenue from record sales don't end up in the pockets of the recording artists. While the profit margins versus actual expenses and risk can be debated, allow me to present the following argument based on actual math and Hetland's premise of 15% revenue stream to the artists: Let X and Y be positive numbers. If X > Y, then 0.15*Y < 0.15*X. In other words, 15% of less ain't as much as 15% of more, and for some reason I doubt a struggling musician who's got to give up music as a full-time career is comforted by Hetland telling him that percentage-wise, Sony BMG or Nuclear Blast is losing more.
   
3. "In the future, someone clever is going to find a way to fix the problem, so let's not worry about that now". Congratulations on copping out completely. When exactly is this future? Will we all have flying cars, personal jetpacks and silver jumpsuits by then? How about some glimpse into this wonderful future of unlimited revenue which does not imply any consumer costs, Nostradamus. Because as far as I know, there has been no quantum leaps in new forms of revenue for a LONG, long time. Gene Simmons pretty much rewrote the book when it came to making a buck off of merchandise, but all he really did was widen the selection. Merchandise has been big business since Beatlemania was running wild and Monkees had their own Milli Vanilli thing going on. Besides royalties coming from the front and back end of record and DVD sales, the major direct revenue sources are pretty much live gigs (for bands below a certain size), merchandise and paid appearances.
   

Don't leave us hangin' big guy - give us a taste of the magic revenue sources that have eluded the entire industry for so long. Otherwise, know your role and shut your mouth. "It's not a problem 'cause someone else will come along to fix it" isn't an argument - for future reference.

Basic internet use FAIL part II

...so...by now people have gone from complaining about the resulting spam to (mostly) doling out advice on how not to spam themselves. Get this; a bunch of people with doctorates and a presumed IQ above 70 send out what they believe to be private emails filled with good advice for the ones who accidentally spam the entire list.

Invariably the email goes something like this: "Hey, NN. I do not have a particular need to be informed that you wish to be removed from the mailing list. If you want off the list, simply hit the "Reply" button instead of the "Reply all" button and type in your request to be removed from said list. That way we don't all get hit with your email.

..and then they're probably confused as hell about why their supposedly private email is sent to everyone on the mailing list. Brutal lack of understanding how a mailing list works.

That's it; I'm writing down each and every single blowhard who does this on my personal $hit list.

Basic internet use FAIL

Let's say - hypothetically speaking of course - that you worked at a university and someone from within the system included you on a weekly mailing list that you found to be annoying and desperately wanted out of. Would you: a) Hit the "Reply" button and write a message expressing your wish to get off said mailing list in more or less polite terms or would you b) Send an email to the clearly listed person responsible for the list with the same message.

Bonus: If you opted for what was behind door a), would you also follow that up by hitting the "Reply" button at least once more complaining about all the spam mail you kept getting because of this mailing list? If so, you could be one of my esteemed colleagues, many of whom hold professorates within math, physics and information technology and thus ought to be familiar with the basics of email software.

Oh, and:

Old news...how exciting

Despite my familiarity with the subject and researchers, I didn't know this made it to the Discovery Channel...good stuff.

Maybe it's something to them nanoparticles after all......I'm told they're like, really, really, really, ridiculously small robots that can, like roam our bodies and cure us and stock our fridges and make our clothes change colors and stuff.

Cold fusion is back

It appears that cold fusion is creeping back into the spotlight, as can be seen from recent media coverage, for example via ACS and at forskning.no. There's also a video presentation on LENR by Pamela Mosier-Boss here, and there is a comprehensive bibliography and a set of full-text papers on cold fusion here.

Predictably, this resuscitates old battles and opens up new battle fronts, including one between chemists (primarily electrochemists) and physicists that I find to be particularly interesting. In the piece at forskning.no, two Norwegian physicists from the University of Bergen - Håvard Helstrup and Professor Egil Lillestøl - express severe scepticism towards any claim of cold fusion. Professor Lillestøl kicks the antagonism into high gear by claiming that "En fysiker vil ikke vil ha store problemer med å forstå at kald fusjon basert på kjemiske prosesser ikke er mulig" ("A physicist won't have great difficulties in understanding that cold fusion based on chemical processes is impossible").

That statement is very hard to take as anything but a stone cold diss of chemists and a chest-beating proclamation of the scientific superiority of physicists. I am going to have to find this dude's h-index tomorrow to see if he's got the credentials to back up such claims or if he maxed out by being the Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard of Thorium-based nuclear energy in Norway.

Update: Prof. Lillestøl last published in a scientific journal in 1990 according to ISI-WOS. While his h-factor is substantial, he is only first author on two papers from WAY back in the day. He typically appears smack dab in the middle of the author list among some 30+ other scientists on CERN-related publications, and unlike some of his co-authors, his biography is not on the ISI HighlyCited list. Dude is apparently highly renowned for his pedagogic skills and his popularization of physics though - good on him.

The Tao of Grad School part 6

Part 6: Experimental work
..or modelling, as the case may be. And I'm not talking about the "make love to ze camera" modelling, but rather the application of mathematical methods to extract and predict trends. Most likely, your Ph.D. is going to entail massive amounts of experimental work, computer modelling, or a linear combination thereof. Moreover, proper planning and execution of lab work will probably be crucial in your future job, so you might as well get good at it. While there are many ways to becoming a good experimentalist, I personally consider the following to be of utmost importance:

Don't take any shortcuts
The quality of your data is directly correlated to the quality of any publications or presentations derived from your work. Without rigorous data collection, you've got nothing. This also means reproduction, as a single data point or a trend means very little unless it's reproducible. To paraphrase my former co-advisor, there's a reason they call it re-search and not just search. If at all possible, you should also try to confirm your results via a complementary technique.

Statistical methods are your friends.
Never exclude data points unless you are certain they are outliers. Which either means that you know something went wrong with that particular experiment, or (more likely) that you've performed the proper statistical tests to ascertain whether said data point indeed belongs to the remaining set.

Know Thy Experimental Techniques
Never, ever, ever, ever just use black box technology. ALWAYS know the working principle, the possibilities and limitations of the experimental techniques you use. Each and every experimental technique comes with it's own set of possibilities and limitations, and this counts double for mathematical models. Don't be the guy (or gal) who accepts instrument output as truth without any form of bias. In principle, you could be using a metal detector to be looking for unicorns in your sock drawer and never see the problem unless you really know your instruments. As instrumentation gets more advanced and data collection becomes increasingly automated, more data can be collected within a short period of time. Which is awesome. However, this places more responsibility on the individual researcher, both with respect to data treatment and with respect to trusting the instrument output. 'Cause the instrument is gonna spit out a number or a data matrix no matter what - whether or not it means anything and if so what, is for you to assess.

Plan your data collection.
Walk into the lab with a hypothesis and a planned set of experiments to put this to the test. Look at your data during the process, and change the experimental set-up according to the outcome. Data collection is an iterative process, and a plan of research is just that, not a set of commandments. Start the data collection with a goal in mind.

For me, I've never started an experiment if I'm not reasonably certain the data is going to end up in a publication since I started grad school, and I'm also inclined to plan the research with a specific journal in mind. This has worked out pretty well for me, but there have also been cases where it failed spectacularly. Most notably, experience has taught me that if a study is assumed to a) be quick and b) the outcome is expected to be predictable, it's very likely to be neither.

Phase one complete

Today I finished running the series of experiments needed for an upcoming "methods" article. It's all been done and reproduced in seven days' worth of lab work, including the initial fumbling by me, a switcheroo of our model system, and some troglodyte bumping into the equipment. Not bad for a week's work - not bad at all.

What's even better is that the results more than confirm our initial hypothesis, further improving the odds of getting the future article into the journal we're aiming for. Two things remain; (i) working up the data properly and (ii) writing the actual article. Of the two, the data work-up is sure to be the most tedious and time-consuming. Still, it's not purely wishful thinking to aim for a December submission to the journal in question.

Hellz yezz!