bioneural.net

Tooling up to read, write and cite

Bruce — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:56:28 +0000

It's not taken me long to rediscover that a major facet of the student experience is the reading of lecture notes, journal articles, reports, book chapters, and other material. When much of this material is available in electronic form (notably Office documents and PDF) you need software that lets you work with and manage those formats effectively and efficiently. Sometimes this necessitates ditching your preferred tools in favour of de facto standards for the sake of compatibility: function must take precedence over form. And don't forget to shop around. The de facto Office standard I happen to like Pages and Keynote, part of Apple's iWork suite. But every time you need to open a Microsoft Office document you have to convert it, then re-save as .doc or .ppt for outside compatibility. I decided it would be easiest to obtain Office 2008 for Mac, since most downloadable teaching materials on my course are in Office formats. Just because a university promotes a certain supplier, however, doesn't mean you'll get the best deal. For example the Microsoft HE/FE Student Select Agreement offered by Viglen makes Office 2008 available for £36.00, but they add £10.00 for media plus VAT plus £3.53 delivery—total £57.58. Software4Students offer the same product for £30.15 plus VAT with free delivery and a £1.95 transaction charge—total £37.35. Reference and citation management EndNote is the de facto reference manager used at University of Sheffield, and they sell the Windows version directly to students for £80. For the Mac version you have to go to ...

A return to academia

Bruce — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:58:04 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

With introductory week and the first week of lectures behind me it seems like an opportune time to reflect on my initial experiences upon returning to campus. I'm hoping to relearn some of what I thought I knew about "health", gaining a perspective somewhat removed from my erstwhile clinical observation of individuals. To do this I need to study new subjects, fully engage with a new learning environment, take on the new adventure of commuting by public transport, and consider utilizing opportunities for extracurricular learning and activities. Different courses for different horses It's 16 years since I last graduated from a university, and I'm at the beginning of an intensive postgraduate taught course that should lead, initially, to a Master of Public Health. Full-time study entails 2 days of direct teaching but most postgraduate education is self-directed (they say 3 hours of independent study for every hour taught). Other buzz words used to distinguish it from undergraduate teaching include "critical thinking", "challenging assumptions", and "problem-centered learning". A Master degree requires 180 credits—60 of those being derived from a dissertation. There are four core (obligatory) modules on my course worth 15 credits each, all delivered in the first semester: Introduction to public health; Introduction to research methods; Introduction to statistics; Needs assessment, planning and economic evaluation. I have made up the remaining 60 credits by choosing the following optional modules: Systematic review and critical appraisal (systematic reviews are one of three possible dissertation types, and good preparation for a PhD); Epidemiological research design (essential for the FPH exam—see below); Public health ...

Geo Mashup implementation guide

Bruce — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:06:46 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Geo Mashup is one of my favourite WordPress plug-ins (and no, that's not just because it adopted the Geotag Icon). It neatly integrates geographically-relevant blog posts with a custom Google Map displayed within your own site. The Maps API in turn allows those willing to dirty their hands with a little JavaScript the option to pull in geotagged content from external sources, including photos (e.g. from Flickr, Panoramio, Picasa Web Albums), content from other blogs (via GeoRSS feeds), and placemarks from Google Earth (uploaded KML/ KMZ files, even with network links). What follows is an implementation guide, sharing some usage tips and the code used on bioneural.net. The code given here applies to Geo Mashup 1.1.1 and WordPress 2.6.2. Installing the plugin Download Geo Mashup here, expand the ZIP archive and upload the geo-mashup directory to /wp-content/plugins/ on your web server. Log in to WordPress as Administrator and activate Geo Mashup from the Plugins tab. Once active there will be a new Geo Mashup tab under Settings, and you'll need to visit this to enter your Google Maps API key (if you don't yet have one, click the Get yours here link). Don't worry about the other options at this stage. Creating a map page The tag reference gives you the choice of two types of tag to use with Geo Mashup. Shortcode tags are added to posts or pages on a case-by-case basis. Template tags on the other hand involve adding the tag once to your theme templates, and having the same result output automatically ...

Transitions

Bruce — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 06:00:49 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

When I met with Professor Crampton from the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago in Wellington last year, I was concerned about the difficulty I might face in making a transition from general practice (focussing on the problems of individuals) to public health (focussing on the problems of communities). The Prof. helpfully drew a graph on his whiteboard that I duly jotted down, illustrating three other crucial aspects of a career transition to be aware of aside from a shift in mindset.Beware of the dip The graph he drew is actually pretty generic, applicable to virtually any career transition (as in significant change that involves re-training; I'm not talking about getting promoted). Anyway, I've jazzed it up a bit and added in a "sink or swim" metaphor: Beware of the dip: keep swimming, or risk sinking I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but in case not it suggests that as you move over time from career A into career B you will experience a drop in professional competence, income, and self-esteem. As you become established in the new career, these losses are reversed. But there is a danger period in which you are not competent in the procedures & practice of either career, not well remunerated, and not feeling all that great about being in a kind of limbo. The best way to survive it, the Prof. says, is to tell everyone around you about it so they know to expect it and come to understand it. Sounds like good advice ...

Gearing up for SSL to WordPress with Safari

Bruce — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:19:01 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

A friend brought an impending WordPress security exploit to my attention, in the form of a CookieMonster. Your data might be at risk if you administer your blog from a public Internet connection (e.g. WiFi in a café). Securing your authentication cookies with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) provides a defensive countermeasure for your admin loggins, and WordPress.com users now have a checkbox to "Always use HTTPS when visiting administration pages". That checkbox is absent in self-hosted WordPress 2.6.2, but here's how to enable HTTPS and accelerate your admin sessions using Google Gears via Safari. Lock up all your cookies with a secret key You may have already defined a SECRET_KEY to secure the cookies that store information about your visitors, a feature introduced in WordPress 2.5. If you didn't do this visit key generator 1.0 and copy the output into your wp-config.php file after the opening PHP tag, so it looks something like this (don't use this one):

The Scottish Highlands in eleven days

Bruce — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:48:59 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Scotland. Even the name of the country causes something to stir in my McKenzie blood. The last time I was there in 1994 we didn't get to the North Western Highlands and so in early September, between the high season/ school holidays and autumn proper, we drove 2845km (1768 miles) in our tiny 698cc car to scratch that itch. Here is our admittedly full but rewarding route and accommodation plan, complete with downloadable maps, KML files for Google Earth, and itinerary/ POI files for TomTom navigation devices. For more photographs, see here. Day 1: Home to Glasgow Although not itself in the Highlands (as demarcated roughly by the Highland Boundary Fault), Glasgow served as the staging point for our expedition. We arrived mid-afternoon after a long drive so had several hours in which to visit Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, the overrated SECC beside the black waters of the Clyde (not comparable to the Sydney Opera House as suggested), and the civic centre. We stayed centrally at the Thistle, a tired hotel not deserving of four stars (the window sill in our room had been used as an ashtray; we were flabbergasted to see a smoker puffing away in the corridor beneath a smoke alarm; housekeeping fit pillow cases inside-out, etc.). There's free WiFi for patrons at the Kama Sutra Indian restaurant—if you find yourself in the, err... position without it (excellent food with excellent service too). Day 2: Glasgow to Kilchoan Click thumbnail to enlarge imageRoute and points of interest for Day 2 Not far from ...

New icons in GraphicConverter and iTrail

Bruce — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:17:04 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Thorsten Lemke's GraphicConverter is the Swiss Army Knife of image editors, and starting with v6.2 uses the Geotag Icon to clearly highlight geotag-related menu options for showing/ setting positions via Google Earth, editing GPS coordinate values, and geotagging photos via GPX files. iTrail, a track logging app for iPhone, now sports new tab bar and padlock icons I contributed to developer Justin Davis (preview). I was impressed by the extent to which the iPhone SDK manipulates white outline shapes with transparency that result in the inactive grey/ active blue icon states that you see.

Know your waypoints from your track points

Bruce — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:23:05 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Geotagging photos can be done manually or automatically. When using a GPS data logger in automatic mode your position at each point in time (intervals vary) is recorded as a track point. The collection of track points recorded during a logging session is called a track log. Some devices (e.g. GlobalSat DG-100, Holux M-241) feature a button for manual entry of a specific GPS location as a waypoint, which you can match to the corresponding photo(s) by hand. That all sounds pretty straight forward doesn't it? Well it's not, because some GPS devices can't tell their waypoints from their track points. Thankfully the aptly-named GPSBabel can translate us a way out of this misunderstanding for the DG-100, and an update to BT747 means you can now download waypoints from the M-241 to your Mac. It's not merely a question of semantics Contiguous track points illustrate a very clear path on a map: you can see exactly where you went and, at a pinch, use a pre-recorded track to follow in someone else's footsteps. What you can't do is readily identify particular locations, because when plotted on a map track points are indistinguishable from one another. Specific locations (waypoints) have a variety of uses, including manual geotagging of photos, mapping points-of-interest, indicating landmarks for direction-finding, or marking cache locations in geocaching. If you're looking to providing instructions you want others to be able to follow, an ordered set of waypoints (describing a route) is what you need. Lets look at some simple examples with ...

Fire Eagle from Yahoo! aids location sharing

Bruce — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:32:51 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Fire Eagle is a free service from Yahoo! that provides a conduit for updating a centrally-stored current location, permitting delivery of location-aware services by means of an API allowing developers to resolve and share user location across various applications. Care has been taken to address privacy concerns by keeping choice in the hands of users, who can update their location manually or automatically from "anywhere". For example, Fire Updater on your MacBook might put you in a London hotel, while subsequent telemetry from SearchQuest GPS on iPhone tells your mates which pub to find you at; a least one WordPress plug-in is in development.

New Zealand tipping over the edge?

Bruce — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:17:44 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Are New Zealanders, the People on the Edge of the World, about to tip off the edge and into cultural homogeneity with the United States? I was surprised to read in The New Zealand Herald that the a new edition of the Lonely Planet travel guide is advising visitors to leave a tip of about 10% for good service. Tipping was not part of the culture when I was growing up, and nor was it an overt practice during my last stint at home during 2006–2007. It would be unfortunate if visitors to Godzone came with the expectation that they had to pay over and above the advertized price. All goods and services in New Zealand are subject to a 12.5% Goods and Services Tax (GST), included in the displayed price. I was also under the impression that most employees (such as wait staff) were adequately remunerated so that they did not need to rely on tips for income, as I believe is the case in the USA and some other countries (where workers aren't properly paid). I don't like the phenomenon of tipping. I've always found it uncomfortable as a traveller knowing when to tip and by how much. I want to look at a menu and know in advance what I'll be paying—just as I can buy a new keyboard for a fixed price without thinking about the 10–15% extra it might cost if the sales assistant demonstrates competence with the card reader. But more than that I resent ...