NSF Workshop Report on Qualitative Research
The report for NSF's two-day workshop on Interdisciplinary Standards for Systematic Qualitative Research is now available. The goals of the workshop were to (quoted from the report):
- articulate the standards used in their particular field to ensure rigor across the range of qualitative methodological approaches;
- identify common criteria shared across the four disciplines for designing and evaluating research proposals and fostering multidisciplinary collaborations; and
- develop an agenda for strengthening the tools, training, data, research design, and infrastructure for research using qualitative approaches.
The whole report is 180 pages long, but you can get the gist from the executive summary. For graduate students, the longer sections on "Recommendations for Producing Top Notch Qualitative Research" and "Promising New Research Areas and Topics" are especially interesting reads. I'll post more details when I have a little more time. We don't get to see into the minds of our faculty members every day, and reports like this one give us a glimpse. Take a look, and keep working on your top notch research.
Review: iPhone glass replacement from Mission: Repair
My Situation
I dropped my iPhone 3G and broke its glass. I was so distraught about dropping it that I never got a picture of the broken glass. Trust me, it was depressing.
I checked with the Apple store about a repair, and they offered me a replacement for $299 + tax. That seemed steep and wasteful, so I went hunting online for repair options. No need to fill landfills with broken iPhones. I found two companies who do iPhone glass repairs and had positive reviews: Mission: Repair and iResQ. After blogging about my broken glass, I got emails and blog comments from employees at both companies. Way to be on top of the blogosphere, guys. After checking prices and reviews, I decided to go with Mission: Repair.
Disclaimer: Ryan at Mission: Repair offered to pay me for the ads on my blog whether I got my repair through them or not. He also offered me the same discount available to Apple store visitors who get a coupon from the Genius bar.
My Repair
I chose the 3G iPhone Digitizer Glass Repair and the "I'll send it in; return it to me overnight!" option for $9 extra.
My Review
So, how did it go? Swimmingly!
I sent the phone off via USPS Priority Mail with delivery confirmation on Monday from Ann Arbor. According to the USPS, my package arrived at 11:25am. Less than 2 hours later, I received an email from Phil at MR letting me know they had received my iPhone and would fix it right away. They fixed it Wednesday, shipped it first thing Thursday morning, and I received my phone back in near-new condition on Friday in Los Angeles (I was traveling). At first I was concerned that the glass was not flush with the sides of the phone, but I saw the "real" thing at the Apple store today, and the glass isn't flush on brand new iPhones either.
Bottom Line
Mission: Repair will fix your iPhone glass for less than the other guys and will do it fast and right. I highly recommend them.
Death and Taxes: 2009 Poster
Have you seen this fantastic poster from WallStats?
I'm digging interesting visualizations even more than usual lately, and I especially like this one of our federal spending. I'm not posting it here to start an argument about how we should spend; I just really love the poster and how it shows us where we do spend.
Thanks, FlowingData for telling me about the poster. You should all go visit and subscribe to FlowingData immediately. You may even be able to win a Death and Taxes:2009 poster. I won't enter because I'm trying to cut down on the stuff I buy and will eventually have to move. Please, someone, win a poster and show it to me!
Moving Data
A couple months ago someone hacked into a perfectly innocent server some friends and I use for things like storing backups of our dissertations and running Perl scripts. I was in Seattle when this happened so couldn't be much help in the recovery process. The helpful people at SI Computing recovered all the data from the server and put in on another server ("SIC") for me to access. My job was to move all the data from SIC to a third place so that SI Computing could have their Projects space back. I haven't ever had to remotely administer such a data transfer task. So, I had to learn a few new UNIX commands. Here's how I was able to move 57GB of data from the "SIC" server to the "Hosted" server. I used "screen" and "scp" commands to securely copy my data without requiring a Terminal window to stay open for the 36 hours it took the data transfer to complete. The most helpful websites I could find for those are
screen: http://jmcpherson.org/screen.html
scp: http://kb.iu.edu/data/agye.html
1. ssh libbyh@sic.edu
2. screen
3. scp MyData libbyh@hosted.com:MyData
4. Ctrl+A, d
5. exit
That should do it. You can check in on the data transfer by typing this at the prompt:
screen -r
Hopefully your next big data migration will go as smoothly as mine did.
Flickr junkie turned photojournalist
I'm on Now Public* as a contributing photographer again. This time, someone requested the use of some of my pictures of salmon at and from the Pike Place Market in Seattle. I don't know much about salmon supplies and how they affect people, but this may be a year to learn. The story claims British Columbia's First Nations people are facing a salmon shortage.
* Now Public is a participatory news network. Learn more here.
365 Beers wrap up
A year has come and gone. My "365 beers in 365 days" adventure officially ended in April, and now I can go back to drinking what I like when I want it. I learned to appreciate the biting hops in an IPA, the crisp drinkability of a Pilsner, and the room temperature smoothness of a nice ESB. Those three varieties top my list of favorites, and I'm glad I've gotten to know them better. I didn't quite make the half-way point on my adventure; I recorded only 158 different beers from 101 different brewers.
Brew pubs made my life a little easier with their sampler flights and snacks - Stone, Grizzly Peak, dillon DAM, and Leopold Bros. were the four brew pubs I visited. Well, "brew pub" isn't quite the word. They brew beer, and they serve food. Stone, especially, has really, really good food. You'll notice Arbor Brewing is not on that list, even though they're right here in Ann Arbor. I really don't like their beer, and their food makes me sad. I managed to avoid them all year, save a University of Chicago alumni event and an "Alt" with my Haab's fried chicken. I appreciate all the work the Greffs do for our communities, but I won't be visiting Arbor or Corner much more often. Now that Leopold Bros. is closed, I won't have to make any more excuses to go to my Ann Arbor favorite - Grizzly Peak.
My favorites beers were brewed by Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, CA and Lagunitas Brewing Co. in Petaluma, CA. Stone gets bonus points for their environmentally-friendly practices (including serving locally, sustainably grown food and biodiesel work crew fleets). New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, CO tries to be environmentally friendly too, and their Springboard beer is the only remotely blonde one I liked.
I'll be buying Stone beers for home when I know I'll be doing some drinking. Beers like Arrogant Bastard and Ruination IPA are not for the faint of heart, nor the "about to drive." They're so tasty and strong though, that they have a spot in my fridge. The Pilsner from Laguitas is one of the most drinkable beers I tried, and I'll keep it around for occasional, spontaneous consumption. It's great with burgers, oysters, to celebrate turning in a conference submission, playing Wii, watching the Cubs beat the Brewers 19-5, whatever. Both breweries' beers (and most of the ones I've tried) are available at Super Liquor IV in Ann Arbor. Super Liquor is the best liquor store around, despite their B+ from Beer Advocate.
For those of you who may consider my beer adventure a failure because I didn't reach 365 different beers, consider this - I spent over $500 to get this far. For a grad student who prefers Coca-Cola, that's a serious investment. Summer's almost here, and I may try some sort of Washington beer quest while I'm in Seattle. I'll let you know. Until then, drink responsibly and try something new every once in a while.
New-ish and Useful: Seafood Selector
I like a Patagonia tooth fish (a.k.a. Chilean sea bass) as much as the next girl, maybe even more, but it's time for me to be more responsible with my seafood selections. Luckily, the Environmental Defense Fund makes that ridiculously easy by providing both a PDF and a mobile-web viewable version of their Seafood Selector (get both versions here). I didn't manage to completely avoid farmed salmon when I had sushi yesterday, but I promise to do better. A story on Fresh Air last week reminded me that EDF provides these pocket guides. You can still listen to the story.
Stick to small fish that grow back easily (sardines, anyone?). You can still eat salmon as long as it's wild caught. Yum!
New (to me) and not Useful: emacs therapist
Lifehacker comes through again with something fun. This time, it's a software Easter Egg - emacs Therapist! To use the emacs Therapist (Mac OS X only), open Terminal, type emacs, hit return, hit Escape, then type xdoctor. You get Eliza. Ha! That can kill some time.
If you're looking for other ways to kill time, may I recommend shopping for t-shirts? I found Palmer Cash recently, and it makes me pretty happy.
Yes, sometimes I read the Journal
In one of last week's Wall Street Journals, there was a thoughtful little piece about our near-helplessness in the face of all the information available online. You can read it here. Lee Gomes compares us humans and the internet to cats and laser pointers. Trust me, it kind of works. I admit, mostly I posted this link because I don't want you to think the New York Times is my only news source, and I haven't had much to say to the world in a while.
This week and next, I'm finalizing my dissertation committee. I hope. More when that works out.