I use the Stay Focused Chrome extension to block WordPress, Google Reader, Hacker News, Twitter and Facebook at work, beyond 2 minutes of aggregate usage. I’ve been very pleased with the results, but enjoy being able to tweet a bit whilst I work. As such I use the Python Twitter Tools from the command line. Never has procrastinating just the right amount by musing about work to the internet looked more like real work itself! Some samples from today:
how I read a scientific paper: 1. Abstract 2. Conclusion 3. Intro 4. Figures 5. Conclusion 6. Body. rare to get to step 6.
— Dr. C. Corbett Moran (@corbett) June 13, 2012
What about you? Sound off in the comments.
what is the symbol for the 'confusion operator' in eq. 5 of http://t.co/jgmla4H2 is called? looks like an emoticon
— Dr. C. Corbett Moran (@corbett) June 13, 2012
Apparently the answer is:
@corbett_inc They've just composed three different unicode characters: u25cb ○, u223c ∼, u00a8 ¨
— Neil Kandalgaonkar (@flipzagging) June 13, 2012
In the morning I check
what I read in the morning http://t.co/gfOpwyU7 http://t.co/jOAn1Pm0 & sometimes http://t.co/4DE1vA8F
— Dr. C. Corbett Moran (@corbett) June 13, 2012
scanning for a variety of tidbits. It’s very easy to get bogged down in a project with technical details for a few days, trying to finish a calculation, find a bug, polish a set of plots or start a setup. I try to spend at least the first 30 minutes of the day taking in the big picture with my research, and an afternoon a week. The arXiv routine is one part of that.
Finally
someone did my Phygg concept (digg for physicists) bigger&better. http://t.co/fxt4UMsa. working w/author on bookmarklet, coming soon
— Dr. C. Corbett Moran (@corbett) June 13, 2012
Phygg was a great learning experience; in retrospect I definitely should have built on wordpress as well, and focused just on getting local adoption. Glad someone has done it better! After doing a bit of recognizance, in which I figured out how to arbitrarily upvote papers (which has since been disabled) I’m working with the author of the site to develop a bookmarklet, which will let anyone browsing an arXiv paper vote the paper up on voxcharta in a click of a button.