The Filter^

Papers - close but no cigar

I've recently been trying out software called "Papers". On paper, it sounds good:

Do you have dozens of PDF files from your favorite scientific articles scattered on your harddrive? Do you also try to desperately organize them by renaming and archiving them in folders? But like the piles of printed articles on your desk, you can't keep up with all the new papers you download, and despite all your efforts it has become impossible to find that one article.

Finally that all belongs to the past. We've been there, trust us, we know. That's why we wrote Papers, our latest application exclusively for the Mac. Papers will revolutionize the way you deal with scientific papers. Search for articles using the built in search engines, retrieve and archive PDFs, and read and study them all from within Papers, your personal library of Science.

The problem is, it doesn't work. When you import PDFs it automatically renames and sorts the files. In theory this is exactly what's required. In practice, it cannot distinguish between different versions of the same name, and only seems to allow automatic editing. For example, I imported about 20 of Peter Boettke's papers, and now have about 20 different authors - "Peter Boettke", "PJ Boettke", "Peter J Boettke", "P Boettke", etc. This is compound by co-authored papers since the programe fails to distinguish between authors and initials. In order to correct this, you use JStor or some other scholarly search function and match the paper. But the search is time consuming and often fails to find the article. So in conclusion this promises to solve a real problem, but falls well short. Back to manual folders and filenames...

Update: an evidenctly when you drag "papers" back onto your desktop it doesn't copy the actual PDF but a text clipping of the filename. Hence I've now lost all my papers of authors beginning with A, B, and C. Sorry George, Peter and Ronald.

Web round up

Not sure if it's just me, but I've become pretty bored of blogging recently. There was a time when most content was new, exciting, and informative. Perhaps because I have so many subscriptions it's almost a chore to flick through each feed, and I'm familiar enough with each outlet I don't tend to be surprised. Especially since the credit crunch levels of pointless cross-referencing seem to be at an all time high.

That said, here are a couple of online resources that I've recently added to Google Reader and genuinely enjoy:

• ThinkMarkets, a blog of the NYU Colloquium on Market Institutions and Economic Processes
• IEA Blog, one of the world's most influential classical liberal think tanks
• Mercatus Center's Financial Markets Working Group, a lot of output on current market conditions
• Productivity Shock, GMU grad students
• Constrained Optimization, GMU grade students

snippets

A few nice things i've discovered since catching up on the blogosphere (apologies for no cites):

• Colour photos of US cities in the 50s
• Working habits of the successful
• 78 optical illusions
• Sub title your own Indian movie
• Local knowledge - a Mercatus Center multimedia publication on the Katrina project

p.s. I like the new Facebook and dislike the new EvertonFC.com. It seems i'm the only one with this combination of preference. Strange.

Powerpoint help required!

Imagine you're doing a presentation on international trade. You want to do a spot quiz to see if the class know the UK's main trading partners. You ask the question "From which country do most of the UK's imports come from?" and have a brief discussion. You then want to reveal the "solution", which is a pie chart showing the results from here.

You also want to provide lecture materials to students, and to do so in advance. But it defeats the purpose of asking discussion questions if the student's have the "solution" in their notes.

I do not want to have to manage two separate powerpoint presentations (one for handouts and one for projecting) because this would double the class material I have to update etc. In an ideal world I would add the pie chart to the slides as some form of animation, and then convert the presentation to a PDF such that animations are not shown. Does powerpoint have this function? Please help!

The Filter^ is Web Archived

In May I received a request from the British Library to archive The Filter^, as part of the web preservation programme. According to the email:

We select sites to represent aspects of UK documentary heritage and as a result, they will remain available to researchers in the future

Having offered vetoes to the other Filter^ contributors - Steve, Andrew, Thomas, James and Matthew - I have accepted the request, and licensed the site. Given the existing technology to archive blogs I don't see this as a big decision. But it's only fair to let you, the readers, know.

New MacBook

Last week I replaced my iBook with a MacBook and thought I'd share comments:

• As with any Apple product, it's full of pleasant surprises. Most tech products aren't as good as you're hoping for. Every Apple product I've owned has exceeded expectations. Lovely stuff
• Leopard has a piece of software called "migration assistant", which promises to bring all your applications, files and folders across from your old machine with minimum effort. When I tried it, my applications came across but my documents didn't. I had to go back to the Apple Store, restore my new machine to factory settings, and start from scratch. It only worked when I migrated as part of the the initial set up
  
• I've never really likes the design of Apple laptops (especially at the lower end of the range), but it looks and feels far nice in my hands than it does in photos
• Speaking of photos, one of the chef benefits of an upgrade is being able to sort out my photos. Due to a lack of space on my old iBook i'd set up multiple iPhoto libraries and stored most on a external hard drive. This compounded the well known problem with iPhoto, which is that it's very hard to manage original files - you can mess about with 'albums' all you like, but that doesn't affect the actual photo. In addition any modifications saves as a separate file, so before you know it you have multiple copies of the same picture. The current version of iLife professes to solve all this with the concept of "events". It takes some time to get your head around this, but:
  • The right way to think about it:
    iPhoto Albums = iTunes playlists
    iPhoto Events = iTunes albums

This is very useful - each photo can appear in one and only one 'event', and you can merge or split events if a collection spans multiple dates. This works a treat for new imports, however i've had a tough time importing current photos. Although iPhoto now has an automatic duplicate detector, this doesn't apply for the duplicates made by the old machine. Thus I've imported a great deal of copies. The inability to drag and drop photos into events is frustrating, and the best way I've seen to do it

One way of doing it:
To move photos in Events view mode, you need to first flag the images to be moved, select the destination event, use the Events » Add Flagged Photos to Events menu item to move them, then select the Flagged entry in the RECENT section of iPhoto, and unflag the photos

Once you've done this a few times it's very easy. However then you're in the situation of having perfectly arranged events, comprised of duplicates. I've had to manually go through and delete photos (and marvel at the quantity of photos I'd thought were long deleted), but now realise that I'm left with thumbnails in some cases. Everything is backed up, so once i've identified the problems I'll manually copy across original files. This is a problem with previous versions of iPhoto.

• Having Leopard means I can finally sync my iPhone to my laptop. This has created an added benefit of the software update, which means my mapping software can tell where I am (very useful for when I'm lost). The ability to edit and create new icons for the home screen is great fun
• I don't see the point of 'Dashboard'. It doesn't serve any purpose
• I also bought Microsoft Office 2008, which is a clear improvement on Office X. I'm still trying to work out why themes and templates are separate, but it'l do
• I also bought a new external hard drive for back up. Leopard has a piece of software called 'Time Machine' which automatically hooked up to my new drive and backs everything up whenever I plug it in. It's a beautiful silver tower and therefore  don't mind it being on my desk, and *touch wood* I can finally get some piece of mind about losing files when backing things up

In conclusion, whatever slight failings the MacBook/Leopard/iPhone system that I use has, I genuinely can't understand why anyone has anything else.

 

More Lego classics

"Classics in Lego" is a Flickr set that uses Lego to recreate iconic photographs.

Also try the Life Aquatic set. Great stuff.

Thoughts on the iPhone

I know that Matthew already has an iPhone, and assume that Steve does as well (!), so a sizable proportion of Filter^ Editors  have embraced Apple's latest innovation. Having treated myself to one over Christmas, I thought I'd start an internal debate:

Pleasant Surprises:

• As ever, the entire device is unimaginably slick. It's only my third mobile phone and simply incomparable to what I've had before. The touchscreen is far more intuitive than I'd anticipated
• Not having to deal with O2 directly
• IM+ for Skype - using wifi to make phonecalls through skype
• Typepad's interface for iPhone - this is handy, intuitive etc
• Frenzic - I've looked at a number of games but found this to be addictive and fun
• I assumed I'd be annoyed by the set choice of applications, but I tend to use most of them. The stocks app is phenomenal
• The mobile version of Google Reader is excellent, and is easier to find tagged feeds than the normal version

Annoyances:

• I hadn't contemplated that my version of OSX would be too old to sync with an iPhone, so I'm unable to use my iBook with it. I was at home over Christmas and activated it with a PC, and transfered a selection of photos/music from via that. I've bought more songs direct from iTunes than I'd intended, but I'm replacing my iBook soon so this isn't a major problem
• It took me a while to figure out that in order to use my Gmail account I had to click "other" rather than "Gmail". Although the iPhone is unhelpful, Gmail offers simple instructions under the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab under "SETTINGS"
• Now that I've got IM+ Skype I'd like to assimilate my Skype contacts with my contact list in the iPhone. I don't use Outlook or an address book, so I assume there's no way to do this...
• The YouTube app is fun, but I'd expect to be able to view my account within it, and for it to update when I add new favourites etc. The key to mobile internet devices is to be compatible with what you're doing with your laptop/PC so that you don't have to replicate anything. Given YouTube is a separate app, this is surprising
• Google Calender offers an iPhone version (go to http://calendar.google.com and the iPhone automatically redirects) but you need to view it through Safari. I'm hoping there's a way to use this through the calender app and be able to view it offline
• I'm still getting used to "Edge". It's clear when you join a wifi network, but I'm not sure if there's a difference between dial-up through O2 and being on Edge? I've been on the internet and unable to view videos that "require the Edge network" etc
• I've tried to use the Maps app for driving directions, but struggled to read the text. I've not been able to find a voice version, which would probably solve the problem

Those are what first spring to mind - what do others think?

Note: all the above are official add-ons - I'm too scared to utilise some of the amazing sounding hacks that exist

A sign of the times

I've just been looking through a website that collects passive aggressive notes: http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/. I don't find any of them funny (although some people seem to acknowledge that the situation is petty, and use humour to express themselves), but instead sad indictments of the frustrations that arise when we share space. Offices and student dorms are classic examples since we have little choice over who we share space with. The latter in particular can thrust people from vastly different backgrounds together. In the picture on the right below, is that last part a joke? 

 

Offices in particular propagate a missive culture (where instructions are given in text rather than verbally), making passive aggressive notes an inevitability. I recently met the former CEO of a French company who pretty much outlawed note taking - he wanted someone's word to be binding, and a culture of personal (i.e. face to face) communication.

Contrast these conflict resolution techniques with how we behave to our families/partners. I suspect that very few people leave notes of this sort (exceptions might be parent's leaving notes to teenage children, or new relationships and/or alternative sleeping patterns examples of both below), so hierarchy (or the struggle for hierarchy) seems to be an important influence. My intuition is that note leavers are high-group (in Mary Douglas' system), encompassing both hierarchical (corporations) and egalitarian (dorms) cultures. But should we leave notes to our spouses? For those of us who've survived long distance relationships, there's something special about *the letter*. With emails, SMS text messages and cheaper phone calls the art of crafting love letters is a dying form, one supposes. But there's clearly power and clarity that come from putting thoughts onto the page. It's also fascinating when these informal notes develop into memes (such as signs that read: "unnattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy"

Are these missives an integral part of human coexistence; a window into embattled souls desperate to be heard, unsure of how to be heard, and thus willing to risk public humiliation by exposing those frustrations in written form? To the extent that the unfolding story, and sequence of repeated notes, becomes quite distressing? Is it a sign of the times, or am I assuming a perennial search for autonomy upon others?

click on photos to enlarge

Podcasts

I feel that I'm missing something when it comes to podcasts. I listened religiously to Ricky Gervais, and was excited by The Guardian's offerings but find most of it pretty dull. I strongly recommend the breadth and depth offered by "EconTalk" - Russ Roberts has assembled a phenomenal list of interviewees, and they're an excellent way to study economics. The Libertarian Alliance has some fun audio files, and I've just found an on-demand service to listen to "Australia All Over", a long running folk radio phone in show hosted by Ian "Macca" McNamara. If only that were a podcast. So help me out - who's got a good recommendation?