I don't know where this picture is from...

IMG_8682
Originally uploaded by kiddostudio.

But I love it. I found out this morning that an experience report I submitted to a conference on software architecture was rejected. I am a little sad about it because the reviews were generally positive, but since it's not my primary area of research, I'm not letting it get me down.

Giving a guest lecture this afternoon at 5:30. The suspense is killing me!

Lou Pearlman: Exposing Exposé

Depending how in tune you are with popular culture, you may or may not have heard of Lou Pearlman. He's the Orlando music mogul who singlehandedly brought us The Backstreet Boyzzz and N' Sync, as well as shows like Making the Band, and correspondingly O-Town. He also brought us a ton of other boy bands you've never heard of. But I do follow popular culture, and so I remember how, at the height of Lou's fame, he was everywhere; VH1, MTV, Entertainment Tonight, E, and all that other garbage you never watch. He was rich, and he was famous.

Now, it turns out, not only did he have a knack for cranking out terrible bands with weirdly catchy songs, he was a pyramid scam-er, old-people defrauder, possible sexual predator and all-around creepy guy. True story. He's in jail in Florida right now, after fleeing the country.

I learned about this last night in Vanity Fair, and fortunately for you, the article is available free online. It's a little long, but amazingly well written, and extremely fascinating. Do yourself a favor and check it out. This is, honestly, the stuff that movies are made out of.

Niceness-es

This weekend is going pretty well so far!

This morning I finished Baudolino, which I have been reading for the Patrick Gage-organized book club. Good book! I recommend that you check it out, even if the subject doesn't intrigue you (as it didn't intrigue me). Quasi review located here.

Last night I went to see Randal Munroe of XKCD fame talk at the CMU gym. I was pleasantly surprised. While there was a fair amount of fanboy-ism from the audience (example questions include, "who would win a fight, a raptor or a zombie?" and "who would win a fight, a minotaur with a crossbow or some other garbage I can't remember"), but I got the impression that Randal himself was actually a pretty well-adjusted guy. He was neither a super-nerd, nor a power-mad leader of the nerds type, which I appreciate.

Tonight I am going to see Broken Social Scene with Brianne and others. What up?!

Researcher Stats

After some conversation last night, I believe we have developed some good metrics for measuring a researcher's performance! ("Awesome," you say sarcastically, "another means by which my advisor can tell that I am slacking.") Okay, fine, it may not inspire too much self-confidence, hence the friends-lock, but it is at least fun to calculate!

Here are the two metrics:
Batting Average - Just like in baseball, your batting average is the ratio of accepted papers to submitted papers. I can't really think of the research equivalent of a walk, but I'm sure one of you can. Walks, of course, would not be factored in to batting average. Maybe we can leave that for on-base percentage. My batting average is .667, but this is mainly due to my not having submitted many papers at all. (6 submits, 4 accepts)

Slugging Percentage - Now this metric I believe to be much more illustrative. Just like slugging percentage in baseball, a researcher's slugging percentage is the number of accepted publications over submitted publications, weighted by strength of venue. One could imagine several orderings depending on how things are done in your field, but for now I will go with 1x for workshop papers, 2x for second-tier conferences and journal special issues, 3x for standard journal articles and 4x for first-tier conferences. Here, due to the relative poor quality of my publications, I don't do nearly as well. (2w.s. x 1 + 2s.t. x 2) / 6 = 1.000. Good for baseball maybe, but not particularly stunning in the research world.

What do you guys think? Am I opening a horrible horrible can of worms? Am I a bad person? Any other stats you'd like to see?

Gmail, You're My Only Friend

Gmail is new and slightly more radical. Most of the new features I don't really care about, but the contacts manager is much improved, and you can now use your browser's back button, since different pages now have different URLs. Nice!

Blue States Lose!

Originally 

trappedinabay

 turned me onto this, but you really should all be reading Blue States Lose on a regular basis (it comes out every Friday). It's snarky commentary on pictures of hipsters at nightclubs, and I love ever minute of it. Where else could you get hipsters in zombie costumes? Check out their ironic expressions!

Grad Student Tip!

Here's a tip for a productive career in grad school:
Don't suck on the open end of that plastic tube that you find inside of a ballpoint pen during a meeting with your advisor. The ink could in fact go into you mouth, all over your tongue and teeth, and then you would have to run out of the meeting to flush your mouth with water and scrape ink off of your teeth.

Good luck!