I thought I’d share a tip on consuming quality caffeinated beverages since it’s finals time for those of us on the quarter system. I know I’ll need plenty of them. First, it’s not that hard to make great coffee and tea at home (see links), which saves lots of money even if you buy quality beans & leaves.

What I’ve recently discovered is the key role of the thermos. I’m pretty picky about the temperature of these drinks, so I would often end up tossing out a good bit of it when it got cold, especially if I was working and forgot to drink it for a while – or microwaving it, which, to me, leaves it with a weird taste and doesn’t stay hot as long. Using a “travel” thermos both at home and on my way out has worked quite well for me. It’s an obvious solution, but it hadn’t occurred to me before.

I started three new research projects this quarter and re-wrote part of my M.A. thesis as well. I’m a bit worried that I’ve got too much going on, but I’ll be making a big effort to extend/finish projects in the spring and summer. I’m also keeping an eye out for social technology research internships for the summer.

Projects:

1. I’m taking my first stab at analyzing survey data. It’s pretty interesting trying to figure out the different techniques and seeing relationships in the data. Fortunately I’m working with a group on this one so I’m sure we’ll make good progress and hopefully finish something next quarter.
2. For my class about news I’m looking at the crowd as editor on digg. I think this project has some promise & I intend to keep working on it definitely over the summer if not somewhat in the spring.
3. For my social networks class I’m looking at the idea of a social tag-based exploratory search system. This one is just a proposal, I don’t have any data for it as of yet. Hopefully I can extend the idea in the technology in organizations class I’m taking next quarter.

This quarter I’ve got a seminar on News and Information as Politics and Culture with Jim Ettema, another seminar/lecture about social network analysis with Noshir Contractor and an independent study about credibility on the web. At the start of last quarter I said I hoped to blog about topics related to my classes, which I wasn’t really able to do very much. I’d like to think I’ll do better this quarter, but my workload will be even heavier so I won’t make any promises. I will post about my revamped electronic organization system once I have done a bit more testing.

With so many things going on around the university I always feel like I might be missing something, or, worse, I know I’m missing something because two things are scheduled at the same time. It’s not a bad problem to have, too many resources, interesting events, and talks.

This quarter I’ll be working on a statistics, a media studies theory and history, professionalization and introduction to the faculty’s research, and information seeking research, so hopefully I’ll be able to write a bit about that in the coming weeks.

I’m very much looking forward to this, as those of you who know me can attest, the academic world/life suits me well.

It’s true, I should have gotten that book from the library. I just slimmed down my Amazon “wish list” to books I’ve read and want for reference or books I want to take my time with like Team of Rivals. If I really like It’s All Too Much I suppose I’ll eventually give it away.

By the way, Amazon lets you keep multiple wish lists, so I’ve been using one called “Gifts for Library.”

Basically they said that the content is all there and the research is good, but it needs work on organization and style. Fair enough. I’m pretty pleased with that. Now it’s just up to me to do the revision and that’s it.

I still have a few other papers and projects in various stages (3 revising and 1 working on the first draft). I feel like I’m coming to the end of things, ready to move on.