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· 4 May 2012, 19:00 ·

Presenting at the LEL Postgraduate conference: Implicit and Explicit Iterative Mindreading

I will present a paper on my dissertation topic, iterative mind-reading, at this year’s LEL postgraduate conference. This work is based on a collaboration with Cathleen O’Grady, under the supervision of Kenny Smith and Thom Scott-Phillips.

You can find the abstract here:

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· 15 April 2012, 07:58 ·

Baseline testosterone in hunter-gatherer societies: Actually not that high.

A recent article by Trumble et al. (2012) investigates testosterone levels in the Tsimane, hunter-gatherer society in the Bolivian Amazon. They organised a competitive football match between eight different Tsimane villages (Seriously, how cool is that – organising a football match as part of your research?), tested testosterone levels of the (male) players men before and after a match and compared these to testosterone levels in an age-matched male US sample. The authors have two key-findings: On the one hand, both groups show increased testosterone levels in a competitive football match. On the other hand, baseline testosterone levels are lower in the Tsimane.

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· 12 April 2012, 14:15 ·

Easing the pain of referencing, part II: Gathering bibliographical information

In part I of this brief guide to academic referencing software, I introduced BibDesk and Mendeley as two examples of full-featured referencing software. In part II, I will briefly hint at different means of extracting bibliographical data from Google Scholar and journal websites, that can be used by BibDesk and other BibTex based software. Some of these hints also work with other reference managers. This article is more advanced than the previous one. You should be reasonably confident in your usage of BibDesk or Bibtex.

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· 12 April 2012, 00:28 ·

Feist - Graveyard (live)

A little while ago I had the opportunity to see Feist live again. Hell, it was amazing, and I can only recommend everyone to go to a Feist gig, if she’s playing nearby (or even a little further away).

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· 11 April 2012, 22:44 ·

New: Lens Reviews

Photograph of the Auto Revuenon 50mm 1.4

As if this site didn’t have enough subject areas covered already: I’ve added a new section, called Lens Reviews that I will use to put up lens reviews (didn’t the title give that away already?) of a number of lenses that I own, or have owned. It’s not going to be a pixel peeper feast, beware: It’s a brief summary of my subjective impressions after whatever amount of time I have used the lens for, a few sample pictures and RAW files for download.

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· 5 April 2012, 01:27 ·

István Örkény

Most of István Örkény’s stories are short. Very short. In fact, shorter than what would be called “short stories”. On average, they take no longer than a minute to read.

Despite their brevity, Örkény is able to convey much more meaning than many other authors are able to fit into a 200 page novel. Every sentence, every word, even dots and whitespace, contribute to the overall interpretation of the novel. Örkény leaves away as much as possible without turning to an abstract minimalism.

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· 19 March 2012, 04:16 ·

Batch conversion of HTML5 compatible video

Recently I had to develop a website that is using html5’s new <video> element excessively. I had to convert at least 10 videos from the original mov to webm, theora, and x264. If this was audio, I would simply be using the extremely handy MAX Unfortunately, I did not find a similar programme for video files, whereas I created a short bash script that does the job.

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· 7 February 2012, 11:38 ·

Mohna - To Do

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· 12 December 2011, 21:25 ·

Barbara Ehrenreich: A vacation in the West

It would be nice to go on a vacation where I didn’t have to worry about being ripped limb from limb by some big ursine slob…All right, I know the ecologically correct line: ‘They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.’ But who knows what bothers a bear?…So instead of communing with the majestic peaks and flower-studded meadows, I spend my hikes going over all the helpful tips for surviving an Encounter. Look them in the eye? No, that was mountain lions. Bears just hate it when you stare at them, so keep your gaze fixed dreamily on the scenery. Play dead? Let’s see, that works for grizzlies but not for black bears. So do you take off the backpack, get out the wildlife guidebook, do a quick taxonomic determination and then play dead?

What a nice way to start an article!

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· 30 November 2011, 01:17 ·

Easing the pain of referencing, Part I: Reference Managers

When you’re writing an academic article, one of the most annoying parts of the process is getting your references right. It’s an annoying but necessary task, that requires a large chunk of time that would be better spent on getting the content right. However, with the help of a referencing software you can reduce this hassle significantly.

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