The not-so-great checked vs carry on debate
This time, some advice of a lighter sort. How light? Depends how well you pack!
A first lecture on time management
Several students have recently asked me for advice about time management. When people ask you a important and difficult question like this, usually the best thing is to think of someone else who can give a better answer than you. For tim...
Happy Blogoversary to me
I don’t like to write about the blog on the blog, because that seems silly and self-indulgent, but I can’t help noticing that today is the five year anniversary of my first blog post.
Context switching
Of the many quirks shared by computer scientists, one that has somewhat entered the popular culture is the use of computing metaphors to speak about how we think. For example, “multitasking” is actually a technical term invented by compu...
Where your brain wants to Go
Years ago I attended a lecture from a famous master of the game of Go. He is revered not only for the many championships he has won, or even for his daring and distinctive style, but also for his insightful and even witty commentary on t...
On creating a "companion web site" for talks
My last research talk, I tried an experiment during the talk. I created a “companion web site” for the talk, which is an online handout including slides, code, links to papers, and a bullet-point abstract. Here’s my first try at an onlin...
GTD Made Simple: Why I think the Internet needs one more blog post about "Getting Things Done"
I’m naturally disorganised, but I have so much stuff to do that out of necessity I get organized. (Then more stuff comes and I get disorganised again.) The way I get organized is by attempting to follow a system called GTD. GTD comes fro...
Why you should scrunch your face when you think
An important skill in any type of creative work is to observe and reflect on your own habits of thought and discover a way of working that suits them. A simple example is the old advice to notice the time of day when you have the most en...
My Top Conference Attendance Tip
One of my PhD students is on his way to his first academic conference. Conferences are one of my favourite parts of research: I’ve met so many interesting people and started so many fun collaborations that way.
Viva la voce
One of my favourite aspects of academia in the UK is the final oral examination for the PhD — formally called a viva voce, which everyone seems to call a viva (VEYE-vah). The viva is an oral examination that typically consists of the stu...