[wt : 4]

So, this hit the wires recently:

BrainSignals Revisited: Simplifying a Computational Model of Cerebral Physiology.

Unlike that other paper I was ranting about a couple of months back, this one is properly my work, and it’s not bad. It may not be of much interest to anyone — actually I guarantee it isn’t — but it’s not reprehensible.

The paper itself is, inevitably, a bit hard going. One of my PhD examiners memorably described one chapter* of my thesis as “a long walk for a short drink”, an epithet that certainly applies here. So instead why not have a skim through this presentation I gave last week, which inter alia discusses the simplification work more briefly and accessibly, glossing over a lot of tedious detail.

 

(Click the image to download the slides in PDF form, with explanatory notes.)

As it happens, that other paper is also much less egregious than it was at the time, since I waded into it with a large axe. It’s currently back in review after another, thankfully much shorter, round of revisions. Time will tell whether enough has been done to satisfy the reviewers. I don’t feel very strongly about it either way, but at least I’ll no longer be mortified if it does make it to publication.

---

* Chapter 5, that was. The thesis is now available online, so you can check it out for yourself, if you happen to be insane. He wasn’t wrong.

 

 

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If you happen to have a lot of files in places that the installer would prefer you didn’t, notably /usr/local, then updating to Yosemite takes an unbelievably long time. Worst culprit is probably MacTeX — I’m pretty certain it would be a lot faster just to remove it altogether and then reinstall after updating the OS, but too late now.

On the plus side, the Yosemite installer seems to do a pretty good job of putting everything back in working order afterwards, which is more than can be said for most of its predecessors — in addition to LaTeX, all my Python, Fortran, Tk etc dev stuff seems to be working. Usually an OS upgrade means days of rebuilding. I’ll probably trip over a few things as we go along, but so far it’s looking surprisingly healthy.

Can’t all be good news, though, natch. As well as the frankly ugly new appearance and system font, there’s the woeful train wreck of Photos and the associated murder of Aperture. If you use the latter and haven’t upgraded to Yosemite, DON’T. The update that allowed the two to cooperate has been withdrawn from the App Store, so installing Yosemite is the end of the line*. If you’re not happy to be shepherded into the shitty new Photos app — and trust me, you aren’t — then it’s time to seek pastures new.

Adobe’s LightRoom is the obvious candidate, but I don’t like it and I don’t like them, so I’m currently checking out alternatives. Consequently, even though this has been Apple’s fuckup, it may finally nudge me to give Adobe the old heave-ho too. I’ve been stuck on CS3 for the best part of a decade, and that’s looking a bit rusty. I have no intention of buying into the Creative Cloud subscription model, and there seem to be a number of interesting new (or not so new) kids on the block, so let’s think of this as an opportunity.

Out with the old! (Present company excepted, obvs.)

---

* Update: although attempting to update fails, if you delete Aperture entirely you can – for the moment – re-download the app in its working form from your purchases. Don’t hang around, though, who knows how long that will remain the case.

I’m currently working on revisions to a paper, in response to reviewers’ feedback that is — shockingly — mostly sensible. Some of that feedback subtly hints at the fundamental truth of the paper, which is that it is dismal fucking rubbish that should never be published, although the reviewers are so reluctant to just come out and say so that there is a danger it will eventually slip through, given appropriate revisions by me. I would really prefer not to, but there doesn’t seem much choice. The mill of science — or, frankly, “science” — must grind on.

This is not my work, though it overlaps. Everyone else involved, at least in a doing stuff rather than holding grants kind of way, has gone off to pastures new, slope-shouldered and defeated, muttering “Fuck this, I can’t take the bullshit anymore, I’m leaving science.” There is literally no-one left but me who can do what’s required. And — not unrelatedly — no-one who understands what the problems are, or why they even are problems.

Publishing this would be beneficial to the people at the dusty end of the byline, for whom all publications are valuable, irrespective of being total bollocks. The front-line authors will get the blame for the shoddy content, but they don’t care, for reasons already noted. Then there’s me. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Stuck in the middle without you.

To make this piece of junk publishable requires either a fuckload of work, or some level of dishonesty. Obviously, I have been aiming for the former, but the nature of this whole research monstrosity is that nothing ever fucking works, so it’s slow going. And the resubmission deadline is next week.

Making it publishable would also require an acceptance on the part of TPTB that some parts of the work are of extremely dubious value and need to be explicitly acknowledged as such, if not killed outright. This is a tough sell.

And meanwhile, of course, my own ostensible work is languishing unattended, growing even less relevant and worthwhile than it was to begin with, which was not very. But at least I vaguely know what I’m doing with it. Knew. Sort of.

The frustrating thing — one of the frustrating things, for there are many — one of the more-or-less infinite number of frustrating things — is that none of this is much of a surprise. Most of it just revisits the reasons I gave for resigning, in my sadly abortive attempt over a year ago. If I had stuck to my guns then, I wouldn’t be in this position now. Perhaps I would be in a much worse one — such counterfactuals are pretty unilluminating. But that lingering sense of “I told you so” really doesn’t help.

I am required to update my CV, for unedifying purposes in support of stuff I don’t believe in. I am not sure this is really in the best interests of those demanding it. CV updating is grim, no question. If it has to be done, it could probably be to better ends.