Thursday, August 23, 2012

moving toward a post-doc life

This is the synopsis provided in
Title:
How to create a journal article from a thesis
Author:Kathy Ahern
Source:Nurse Researcher. 19.4 (July 2012): p21.

Box 2 Steps to producing an article for a journal

* Dozens of references do not necessarily impress an editor unless
these references are relevant to your article and target audience
(Johnson 1992, 1996, Bowen 2010).

* Avoid presenting a summary of the dissertation or thesis (Johnson
1992, Bowen 2010).

* Limit descriptions of informed consent and other ethical issues.
Keep discussions to a concise statement regarding the institutional
review board or ethics committee (Bowen 2010).

* Focus the topic so it addresses the concerns of journal
readership (Johnson 1996, Kekale et al 2009, Bowen 2010, McConnell
2010).

* Rewrite and update the literature review (Johnson 1996, Garry
2007). Edit the demographics and methods section. Keep the
literature and theoretical framework to a minimum (Johnson 1996,
Kekale et al 2009, Bowen 2010).

* Identify one dimension or outcome to report (Johnson 1992, Bowen
2010).

* Establish a clear topic with a strong opening sentence to entice
the reader into the article. (McConnell 2010). Write a conclusion
that reflects the topic in the title and introduction (McConnell
2010).

* Include only the charts and tables needed by the reader to
understand the topic of the paper (Johnson 1992, 1996, Kekale et al
2009).

* Incorporate truncated quotes and more summative statements in
qualitative papers (Bowen 2010).

* Emphasise clinical application of the research (Johnson 1992,
1996, Kekale et al 2009, Bowen 2010, McConnell 2010).

* Adhere to journal referencing, style and length requirements
(Johnson 1996, Bowen 2010, McConnell 2010).

Saturday, August 04, 2012

Exploring digital spaces in an ANT like way


Apparently my use of txt spk tells u of so much more of me than i eva intended.

In an ANT world how i am shaped by the technology might tell you more than i intended.

The use of following google trends can apparently demonstrate the flow of flu so much faster than any traditional method according to Rogers of the Digital Methods Initiative in Amsterdam

Google Flu Trends, which uses keyword searches of “flu like symptoms” to locate the spread of the flu (and other diseases) geographically – much faster than traditional epidemiological techniques.

Rogers also argued that we have now entered a new phase in which internet activity need not be studied as something categorically separate from “the real”. The online, rather than the real, is now “the baseline”.

the real phenomenon to be accounted for is not the delineation of one version divorced from the rest of its copies, but the whole assemblage made.

Meantime i will do my bit to look up things using 'u'

Here's a great link to a conference I could only experience because of the digital connections
From Digital Methods to Digital Ontologies: Bruno Latour and Richard Rogers at CSISP


Meantime, some thoughts to ponder, what matters a cv when one's connections can be discerned by ones digital traces?

Thursday, August 02, 2012

What haiku and ANT have in common

What haiku and ANT have in common:
They both aim to tell a story that engages
They aim to tell of threads that cross, of networks made
Both run the risk of a fringe audience
They both fold associated but not yet recognized materiality...there is a sense of disrupting arbitrary notions such as small and big - both being part of a whole
They both allude to how things might be arranged differently

Characteristics of haiku (from http://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-a-haiku.html)

The following are typical of haiku:

A focus on nature.
A "season word" such as "snow" which tells the reader what time of year it is.
A division somewhere in the poem, which focuses first on one thing, than on another. The relationship between these two parts is sometimes surprising.
Instead of saying how a scene makes him or her feel, the poet shows the details that caused that emotion. If the sight of an empty winter sky made the poet feel lonely, describing that sky can give the same feeling to the reader.

This blogpost was brought about by some writers block advice = work on two projects at once, when one gets too hard the other holds more appeal.
So here i am avoiding the thesis task.
Reading and writing about the writing instead.
Here's an excellent site for some writing hacks for the blocked writer by Scott Berkun
His snowflake approach to writing is worth a look too.
I find it oddly settling since Ive had it pointed out on my penultimate draft of my phd that it doesnt seem to follow the genre of a phd...
Apparently these have a trajectory, they find a hole and fill it; they have a trajectory; they provide answers...
Mine instead is described thus (my first book review? vs peer review?)

"You take a very gentle approach - developing your arguments around the literature- although, areas of research/theory are treated one after another, your arguments are not presented linearly as is common in a thesis; instead, they are more iterative and cumulative as the points you make wash over the reader in layers."
and that it sits
"somewhere between a Janette Turner-Hospital novel and a conversation with Yoda ☺"
I'm going to have to read some Janette Turner Hospital, I hope to find she writes wellor at least that I find her readable.

i have no doubt my thesis might be arranged differently.
it is after all its own performance

If only I could write like this:

Void in form

When, just as they are,
White dewdrops gather,
On scarlet maple leaves,
Regard the scarlet beads!

by Ikkyu


And because i am avoiding the opening of another page of feedback that i need to negotiate, I try

A voiding

but all i get to is the first line before
as Berkun suggests...i am driven back to my other hard task while i avoid the hardness of this one...