Siliceous and Delicious

…but the beginning of a new project—DSA: The Book.

In spite of the bittersweet “last ever” backdrop of the meeting, it was very helpful—as summarized in Beau’s own words:

Andy had a look at 1 pager and responded as per expectations. Andy review was very positive, lots of good vibes. After successful previous three day push, still aware of temptation to stop and procrastinate. Continueth previous approach: make a note on the blog and then move on… Important to maintain positive and energized thinking over these periods. Also potential arrangement with Kati joining to work in evening removes possible familial stress on the three day efforts.

Ben reported not using Omniplan at all. Focusing more on getting things done. Realized he sinks too much time into making these plans, and doesn’t really use them. Nature of research is so different from what he envisaged it to be. Much less systematic and plannable than he expected. Rapid development of ideas and experiments is in principle much more suitable, although in practice not always possible. Applicable to some projects more than others. Omniplan channels a certain kind of thinking, sets up false expectations. Implies he can easily switch projects and just needs to put in the hours and be done. Not coincidental with the way he works, much more curiosity driven. Charles was trying to say this all along. However both OP and OF were useful in helping with back of the envelope calculations to check basic feasibility.

It’s clear that what is most important is motivation, not a framework. Motivation comes from success in achieving things and getting good feedback. Getting things on paper is even better – provides concrete feedback. This is why regular checking in with Andy and the 1 pagers has been so useful. Also recently snagged a big whiteboard and now has it next to desk with immediate status on every project.

In general, Ben reported feeling optimistic right now, much like back in January. Will know that things are going well and going differently when first set of results are in hand, and Andy approves and starts talking about how to write it up. At that point, can think about graduating. Don’t want to jinx anything at this point!

Ben is also thinking about getting a paper out of the confocal laser project – can he find a simple application and write at up? Andy kind of dismissive, but Ben should push on regardless. Potential collaborators in Germany? At some point in the future need to set aside some brainspace to sort out pitch to German folks.

Found myself drifting a little again, unsure about what to work on. Now that I’ve abandoned the strict 1-project-a-day schedule (which was itself a great improvement over the 3-projects-a-day schedule it replaced), and have my motivational sights set on the next three-day push, the rest of this week feels like it’s in a bit of a vacuum. Or, it would be, if it weren’t for the ever-useful deliverables set in the meeting this morning. I caught myself on the verge of slipping into the abyss of procrastination again, not knowing exactly where to start, so I turned to my gmail checklist of DSA tasks, and forged ahead…

The first task on the list was to compute the % coverage of genera in Neptune provided by those genera described in the Round et al., 1991 book. This, as a reminder, was in order to try to figure out whether I needed to code all of the Neptune genera for my morphospace analysis, or whether it would be sufficient just to consider the subset represented by those described in Round. The results are, well, sort of what I expected, though I’m not exactly sure how to interpret them.

What’s clear is that coverage does vary through time, and it does so systematically in the predicted way (i.e. the Round book more completely describes younger assemblages). Whether this bias is enough to mess up the results, I am not certain. My instict is it would: only about 50% of the genera in the database would be showing up in the morphospace in the Oligocene, but about 70% would be showing up in the Pleistocene—this could make the Pleistocene look more morphologically diverse (the sciencey way to say it would be, “characterized by greater morphological disparity”)… Anyhow, it took all afternoon, but it’s a satisfying plot! And it’s one thing checked off my list for this week already.