Note to memory: when github-tools explodes and doesn’t work anymore, just double check the submodule in .gitsubmodule.
Remove it and recreate it.
An Eye to the World, an Eye to the Net
Note to memory: when github-tools explodes and doesn’t work anymore, just double check the submodule in .gitsubmodule.
Remove it and recreate it.
The openbiblio group from OpenKnowledge Foundation has came up with a nifty idea: sharing all the bibliographies, without trying to make the golden bibliography, but actually making easy to share everybody bibliography in a easy way.
The current implementation is at bibserver, while you can upload your own biblio using bibsoup.
I’ve uploaded also mine, which opens the post with a bubble chart visualization, and you can browse also here: http://bibsoup.net/mattions/computational_neuroscience
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
Happy New Year! (It’s only few days the Chinese one has started ehehehe) It’s the Tiger year if you are wondering.
P.S.: Just discovered the report only now, and I though it was good idea to share :). Usually I follow the western calendar.. Usually..
Given to the advance of peak oil, changing to a more sustainable living is becoming a must from a maybe. In this view, the transition movement is doing pretty well, and here in Cambridge the Transition Cambridge movement is also gaining traction. A lot of actions, completely grassroot, are under taking place and getting recognised. Check out for example the last post about growing spaces.
A very brave initiative is been carried on by 6 people of the Cambridge Carbon Footprint, where they decided to try to eat local. I think it’s very good idea and they are blogging about it here.
Here an image of the last Friday supper
On the same note, an initiative to make local food easier to spot is undergoing and I’m personally working on it. It’s called sustainablesouk.com, and you can stay tuned it either subscribing to the form, or just keeping in touch to be sure to know when we are going to give it a kick 🙂
Directly from the Cambridge News, Growing Spaces, a Transition Cambridge Project, gets funding from the council:
Cllr Sian Reid, the authority’s leader, said: “It is very encouraging to see how many enthusiastic and dedicated groups we have working to protect and enhance our local environment for the benefit of us all.
“I am so pleased the council is able to provide this extra support to projects that echo our commitment to climate change reduction and sustainable living.”
The project to grow food on disused pieces of land received £3,000 and is being organised by the Transition Cambridge group, which has already planted fruit bushes and herbs at five places in the city, including Norfolk Street, Chesterton Road and Hawkins Road.
Organiser Stephanie Ferguson, 27, said the combined food production capacity of all the wasted bits of land in the city was massive.
She said: “We’re trying to rejuvenate pieces of land which have fallen into disrepair while at the same time starting a new source of local food.”
Very well done to Stephanie! She helped out at our Transition Food Group Stall at Mill Road Winter Fair.
Thanks to Ivan to have picked it up and signalled in the Transition Food group MailingList.
This blog is supporting the current campaign to stop SOPA and PIPA act in the USA. Wikipedia (US) is all down and you can see the screenshot above. However you can still see what you could do to Take action.
Some nice explanations why the bills will be so bad for internet:
Last Friday I was at the Lean Startup talk given by Eric Ries. You can follow his blog here. The talk was very good, and gave an overview of what is in the book. I’ve bought the book several weeks ago, and I have to say that I found it remarkable.
The main idea of the book is to run startups as experiments. In particular a startup should focalize to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) which is used to test a precise set of hypothesis. The result should either confirm or negate the initial intuition. The Minimum Viable Product should be considered as a test bed. It’s not just the “Ship it!” idea, it’s organic to the Build-Measure-Learn cycle. This cycle should be the fastest possible to achieve what is called the Pivot, the time when if the things are not working, it is time to change completely the strategy and try something else.
These are a lot of concepts all packed together, so stay with me and I’ll try to go through them.
Building
The building phase is when you are focalized in creating the first prototype. The first prototype is utopia. What is really interesting is the MVP. The only goal of the MVP is to test some hypothesis, to better understand the customers needs (the real customers): what they want and what they like. Real customers using the real thing are completely different story from the what you can get from the market research.
Measuring
Measuring is very very important. Understanding what is going on is a must, but even more important is to understand where to look and what to measure. A very interesting concept introduced in the book, to understand what are the real metrics to keep under eye, is the engine of growth. The engine of growth is a metaphor, comparing the process which makes a startup growing with a combustion engine, which needs to be tuned for the best performance. The engine of growth is the main way a startup will grow, acquire new users and become a sustainable business. Three main engines are suggested in the book: (i) the paid engine, where the revenues are used to acquire new users, using advertisement and so on, (ii) the viral engine, where the software or the service gets automatic diffusion thanks to the massive support of the users and the virality as well, (iii) the sticky engine, where the users are coming back and their are addicted to the service provided. Each engine has different type of metrics which is vital to that type of engine.
Learning
The learning is the part where the experiments ran are used to understand what is good and what is bad. Because we started with clear falsifiable hypothesis, it is possible now to declare if the objective has been reached, or if we didn’t hit the point.
Persevere or Pivot
Being on top of your metrics, and getting the outcome of the experiment is all in preparation to understand what should be done in reaction. In particular the decision to Pivot or to Persevere. Eric at the talk suggested to schedule this meeting ahead of time, to avoid the stress to announce it, but also to have a fixed point. This could be used has the deadline date, from where it is possible to work backwards, understanding which metrics are needed to arrive at the pivot meeting with all the informations necessary.
Conclusions
The book is a remarkable piece of work, and I think it is one of the best out there in the light to bring some formal theory in startup creation. I have really enjoyed the talk as well, so if you’ve got the possibility I’ll suggest to go. I also suggest to read this book to everybody which is thinking to launch a new product or launch new startup. It’s just very broad and full of good ideas.
P.S.: I’ve bought this book from Amazon in kindle format and I’ve just discovered I can’t lend it to friends. I understand that the terms are legally different and I didn’t buy a book but the ability to read it when Amazon is pleased, but this would not happen with a real book. I hope Amazon changes this crappy system as soon as possible and give us back the ability to do whatever we want with our books. Pretty please.
I’ve bought a kindle (the e-ink family with 3g) 6 months ago, middle august pretty much.
From then on, I’ve got to say I’m loving it. In a not particular order:
Data about the accidents happened in UK (focus on Cambridge City Center). The Map is based on Open Street Map plus OpenData. Check it out here.
There are tons of guides published on journals how to write a good paper, so these are some quick tips which could be added on top of these. I’m trying to be general, but I’m writing this mostly for my use and they reflect my view.
I’m using the second person, so it’s more direct and motivational.
Feel free to leave comments/integrate these.
First of all, state the problem.
If you are working on something, most probably you are trying to solve a problem. Well, you’re not alone. People are working on something that is close to your research topic (if not the same) and you have to review their work. In big depth and with a big breath. It means you have to address the problem from all (at least the majority) of the points that comes to your mind.
Dont’ talk about your solution, yet.
Then you have to talk about the different solution people provided so far. Go into the details, pick up if have been re-used somewhere else and follow that lead. On and On. Be exhaustive.
Basically put the readers in the position where she will be able to say exactly what are the already proposed solutions so far, their strength and their weakness.
When you are finished with that, then you can start to present your solution, and what exactly it is the matter.
Describe the key points and be very careful to be as objective as possible.
It works it may be good enough in a non-academic environment. But not in academic environment. You have to motivate why it works with hard data, numbers, and logic arguments. Anything that can back up what you are saying is paramount. Possibly comparison or exact pros and contros. If you don’t do that then, it’s not good enough. Even if it works. You will be asked for more.
The assumption that you have made, or reason why you have used some solutions instead of others need to be explained. It’s difficult to pick these up, because you are very familiar with these choices. Most of the time this will look like self-explanatory. But it’s only for you.
Scientific methods described plainly
Why you are doing something and what is your thinking process is very important. A reader expect to follow you in the journey. That’s why you need rational hypothesis to drive your research.
You state your hypothesis, then you run experiments and simulations to disprove them. Try everything you have to bring them down. If you can’t, well then maybe you have something that you can put under more scrutiny, but you are on something.
Good luck.