Category Archives: Cardiac Electrophysiology

Cardiac Electrophysiology

Almost-Final Preparations

I’m still in Mandeville (see the map link!). I finished the roll of film that was in the SLR camera, and popped it out. Much to my chagrin, it was professional-grade black-and-white. What that means is, barring possession of a lab and developing skills, it costs about $17 to develop the roll. That’s a lot of dough just to see if the camera is taking okay pictures. Not only that, but no place around here will do it in-house. They don’t have the equipment, so they have to send it away. Bah, I say, bah!

While I suspect that the camera is working fine, I may yet venture out tonight to get a cheap roll of color film, shoot it, and develop it. Taking 5 rolls of film on the trip only to find out that I have zero pictures would be something of a waste, not to mention a let-down.

Meanwhile, I discovered an error in some simulations I ran recently, one of which takes at least three days no matter how I slice it. I need the restart files from those simulations to run the 72 cases for the project I’m working on. I’d hoped to load them up in the cluster queue before I left, but alas, it’s not to be. Luckily, they’re short jobs, so I can swamp the whole cluster with them using the short queue when I get back.

Put the Lime in the Coconut

I’m giving a 25-minute talk this Thursday, July 14th at 17:00 at the Hilton downtown. I’m pretty sure you have to be registered for the SIAM conference to come see it, but here’s the information just in case you want to know. I’m part of a minisymposium: (schedule).

I have spent most of my time since returning to New Orleans working on this presentation, and it should be nice and sharp by Thursday night. I’ll try to get pictures or something.

It’s late. Bedtime.

Technical Writing

Technical writing, or my attempt at it, is killing me. It’s killing my motivation to write. It seems like writing can be technical or readable, choose one.

Is it because it’s hard to fit what needs to be said into the provided space? It seems that whenever I attempt to write something that’s readable, it’s critiqued as too colloquial or the like. People are used to seeing jargon in journals.

I know that it’s important to be precise — that it’s necessary to convey exactly what was done, or exactly what happened. I understand that there are certain terms and lingo that make a paper more likely to be published. I’m having a hard time reconciling that with readability.

It’s probably just that I’ve never done this before. I’ve never really had to work at writing. Typically, the words just come to me and I put them on the page. A reread or two to make sure that I didn’t switch thoughts midsentence, and the paper gets an ‘A.’ That worked before. It most certainly does not work now.

I read two books, you know, on how to write well. One addressed nonfiction in general with a section on scientific writing, while the other specifically covered journal-grade scientific writing. Perhaps they were lousy books, or I took the wrong lessons from them.

Why the passive voice everywhere?

Argh… any pointers on how to do this correctly would be appreciated. I just went through my advisor’s comments on some of my drafts and tried to figure out what I did wrong. This post is my brief break before digging back in and trying to fix what’s wrong. I’m tempted to start over with sentence fragments and thoughts and then rewrite.

So Much to Do

Today I came to a realization while doing my weekly review: There are a lot of things that I want to do, to learn in the time I have. Things I’m excited about.

I guess I’d best get crackin’, as a feller says.

Enqueue

  • Results outline for paper: check
  • Pacing currently running for another project: check
  • Niger visa application ready: check

I’m waiting for some things to happen. Sam’s out getting the alignment on his car fixed, while I wait here for his PowerBook to arrive via FedEx. I work at home a lot, so that’s okay, but once he gets back I’m off to the post office to get a money order and some postage, and mail in my visa application.

I hope to hear from my advisor today about the outline, and I just have to wait for the pacing to complete before I do anything else with that project. There’s one other project I need to work on in the mean time, which I think I’ll do. But first, I need to go load the dishwasher. The sink is getting kind of full.