Archives

This page contains an archive of all of the material I have written for this site.

Chronological list of everything I’ve written here

My experience preventing and managing RSI (n=1) (27 Apr 2020)
MLSys 2020 Conference Recap (23 Apr 2020)
Case-sensitive multiselect in VS Code (14 Apr 2020)
The Gene: Reflections on the PBS documentary (13 Apr 2020)
My current remote work setup (22 Mar 2020)
Notes on Spaced Repetition Memory Systems (21 Feb 2020)
Review of the Coursera Machine Learning course by Andrew Ng (16 Feb 2020)
On Deleting Facebook and Rare Disease (09 Jun 2019)
Recap: Southern Data Science Conference 2019 (24 Apr 2019)
Five-year update: BOS to ATL, Engineering to Data Science, PPP2R5D (19 Apr 2019)
Review: Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor E. Frankl (14 Sep 2018)
Measuring belief by constraint (02 Sep 2014)
Driving rules (26 Aug 2014)
How to survive air travel (20 Aug 2014)
Resources for a personal finance reboot (07 Aug 2014)
Finishing two hours later (13 Jul 2014)
Life lesson: Not enough data (11 Jul 2014)
Circular reasoning and your model (14 Jun 2014)
Not quite dead yet (13 Jun 2014)
My standing desk setup, part 1 (31 May 2013)
Winter is coming (Moving to Boston) (14 Mar 2013)
Vortex shedding around skyscrapers (13 Mar 2013)
Responding to skepticism toward your model (05 Mar 2013)
Preventing Instapaper bankruptsy (04 Mar 2013)
Commenting Excel files (04 Mar 2013)
Live from Only A Model dot com (26 Feb 2013)
The Dr. Bunsen custom notebook (12 Feb 2013)
Writing tool: Something to Throw (06 Feb 2013)
Cello Talks by David Finckel (05 Feb 2013)
Seth Godin on important problems (20 Jan 2013)
Units of expertise (09 Jan 2013)
PhD defense advice and resources (03 Jan 2013)
Roderick on year-end lists (02 Jan 2013)
Looking back at 2012 (01 Jan 2013)
Disappearing Golden Gate Bridge (05 Dec 2012)
Thesis to committee (04 Dec 2012)
How user-friendly should technical software be? (12 Nov 2012)
Heilmeier's Catechism (07 Nov 2012)
How much would you say you work? (20 Oct 2012)
Toxic professional comparison (19 Oct 2012)
Review: Vivaldi Recomposed by Max Richter (17 Oct 2012)
John Von Neumann on precision (17 Oct 2012)
You should write more (14 Oct 2012)
Elon Musk: Coax negative feedback (14 Oct 2012)
Teachers (12 Oct 2012)
When optimism doesn't make you happier (11 Oct 2012)
Circa Trumps Moleskine (10 Oct 2012)
Benefits of having an iPad at a conference poster session (02 Oct 2012)
iPhone + international travel (01 Oct 2012)
15WCEE Paper on FEA of Beam-Column Joint Failure (21 Sep 2012)
Current Status (29 Aug 2012)
Jad Abumrad on Radiolab's inception (15 Aug 2012)
Historical RSS Service Idea (14 Aug 2012)
Don't panic. Work the problem. (14 Aug 2012)
Writing-related activity (03 Aug 2012)
Ready to learn (02 Aug 2012)
Day One Journaling App (02 Aug 2012)
Numerical analysis on a solid state drive (01 Aug 2012)
Thesis typography: Bembo + Gill Sans (31 Jul 2012)
Why Sublime Text is a great text editor for finite element models (26 Jul 2012)
Why Sublime Text 2 (24 Jul 2012)
Review of the SpaceMouse Pro 3D Mouse (23 Jul 2012)
Chesterton on Architecture (05 Jun 2012)
Breaking: Interview with engineer on mainstream tech site (25 May 2012)
Asking the reader to do the writer's job (25 May 2012)
Unexpected results are good (18 May 2012)
PDF syncing in Sublime Text for LaTeX on Windows (17 May 2012)
Enough Python to keep me happy (16 May 2012)
Problem to be solved (01 May 2012)
Burj Dubai finite element model (06 Apr 2012)
Dealing with temperamental scientific models (05 Apr 2012)
How to digitize a graph on Windows (04 Apr 2012)
Right message, right level (02 Apr 2012)
Reading research papers on the iPad (02 Apr 2012)
Two weeks with the new iPad (30 Mar 2012)
The No Journal and avoidance work (20 Mar 2012)
Indefinite social media hiatus (09 Mar 2012)
CS Lewis quotes on reading (07 Mar 2012)
The resolutions of Jonathan Edwards (06 Mar 2012)
Expanding your finite element toolkit (05 Mar 2012)
Keeping seminar questions classy (02 Mar 2012)
Fix the table of contents line breaking headache in LaTeX (22 Feb 2012)
Before you read Bringhurst on typography (10 Feb 2012)
Breaking down your research problem (09 Feb 2012)
Toward better blog archives (26 Jan 2012)
Who should you study with? (23 Jan 2012)
You might be a structural engineer if (19 Jan 2012)
Saying no faster (19 Jan 2012)
When building collapse simulation meets social science (13 Jan 2012)
A 25-year retrospective on the finite element method (12 Jan 2012)
Corresponding authors who don't correspond (12 Jan 2012)
How to email a professor (and make them want to help you) (11 Jan 2012)
Artificial scarcity and your laptop charger (05 Jan 2012)
If it disagrees with experiments, it's wrong (04 Jan 2012)
Introducing- Only A Model (03 Jan 2012)
Hire engineers and teach them to program? Or the other way around? (19 Dec 2011)
This has at times hurt my career (16 Dec 2011)
Should you drop my class? (15 Dec 2011)
How to improve font rendering on Windows (14 Dec 2011)
Grad students always use the most complicated model (14 Dec 2011)
On the length of books (13 Dec 2011)
Teaching computational thinking (12 Dec 2011)
Finding papers that use---but never identify---a specific software platform (07 Dec 2011)
Graduate School Now Or Later (05 Dec 2011)
Advice for new university instructors (29 Nov 2011)
Don't waste your slot (25 Nov 2011)
Book review: Visualize This (21 Nov 2011)
How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX (17 Nov 2011)
Numerical models and crystal balls (08 Nov 2011)
Is engineering education too hard? (04 Nov 2011)
Make links in LaTeX documents print in black and white (28 Oct 2011)
Typographers care more than you (27 Oct 2011)
How to end a seminar or conference talk (26 Oct 2011)
Is The 9 5 Phd A Myth (24 Oct 2011)
How to generate ternary plots in Matplotlib (13 Oct 2011)
Doing science in the open---thoughts from Michael Nielsen (05 Oct 2011)
Know your tools better, test ideas faster (27 Sep 2011)
The sad state of computer science education for engineers (21 Sep 2011)
Survival guide for your first year of graduate school (20 Sep 2011)
iOS apps for LaTeX aficionados (19 Sep 2011)
Liberating and future-proofing your research data (30 Aug 2011)
How to predict an earthquake (24 Aug 2011)
How to make Windows more Mac-like (for frequent switchers) (24 Aug 2011)
Does teaching make grad students better researchers? (23 Aug 2011)
Why I really love LaTeX (and you should too) (26 Jul 2011)
A few thoughts on O'Reilly Media (20 Jul 2011)
Embedding real-time feedback loops in exams (18 Jul 2011)
Speed up plot rendering in Python/Matplotlib (07 Jul 2011)
Software applications so transparent they disappear (22 Jun 2011)
Does the Kindle provide an immersive reading experience? (20 Jun 2011)
Standing up to fellow (graduate) students who cheat (15 Jun 2011)
Cheating in engineering classes (13 Jun 2011)
Is the Internet making us anti-intellectual? (10 Jun 2011)
How much can I expect to accomplish in a week? (09 Jun 2011)
Giving a conference talk John Wheeler style (24 May 2011)
Teaching and notetaking in technicolor (23 May 2011)
Time spent on basic ideas is never wasted (20 May 2011)
How to build a great academic website (13 May 2011)
Why build a website to archive your research? (04 May 2011)
How to learn a new finite element analysis code (04 Mar 2011)
What do structural engineers do? (03 Mar 2011)
Are you actually good at what you do? (01 Mar 2011)
Introduction to Abaqus FEA (tutorial) (25 Feb 2011)
Putting the thesis into proper perspective (18 Feb 2011)
Do you need ideal conditions to do great work? (03 Feb 2011)
Why trust your instincts when you discover new tools? (02 Feb 2011)
Engineers and "exact" calculations (20 Jan 2011)
Why we have to produce correct practical design guidelines (19 Jan 2011)
Before you skip my class (07 Jan 2011)
Giving technical talks to a target audience (04 Jan 2011)
How finite element mesh generation algorithms work (video) (29 Dec 2010)
My conversion to the open scholar cause (21 Dec 2010)
Reducing bias when grading exams (13 Dec 2010)
My afternoon thinking walk (10 Dec 2010)
Why engineers need a master's degree (09 Dec 2010)
Writing in an infinitely editable medium (03 Dec 2010)
Optimizing signal vs noise on the Internet (02 Dec 2010)
Things you never say to a graduate student (30 Nov 2010)
Why I started this blog/website (29 Nov 2010)
Beyond rote learning - SOHCOHTOH (sic) edition (24 Nov 2010)
Henry Petroski- "Engineering is not science" (24 Nov 2010)
Five books every graduate student should read (17 Nov 2010)
Always solve your own exam first (16 Nov 2010)
How to digitize a graph on a Mac (15 Nov 2010)
The choose your own adventure PhD (11 Nov 2010)
How to automatically buzz guests in your neighborhood or apartment (09 Nov 2010)
No more FM transmitters: My quest for iPhone audio sanity (05 Nov 2010)
John Nash on sharing credit for ideas (28 Oct 2010)
Quote: believing experiments vs simulations (25 Oct 2010)
Lessons learned from forensic FEA of failed RC structures (24 Oct 2010)
How I started reading again (15 Oct 2010)
What can a EE learn from statics? (08 Oct 2010)
The human impact of your work (25 Sep 2010)
Why you should re-read your article (03 Sep 2010)
How to succeed in engineering courses (03 Sep 2010)
Engineering homework solution format (03 Sep 2010)
Tufte on music animation (20 Aug 2010)
Engage challenge (19 Jan 2009)

Academia

Finishing two hours later (13 Jul 2014)
Units of expertise (09 Jan 2013)
PhD defense advice and resources (03 Jan 2013)
Thesis to committee (04 Dec 2012)
Heilmeier's Catechism (07 Nov 2012)
Toxic professional comparison (19 Oct 2012)
Benefits of having an iPad at a conference poster session (02 Oct 2012)
Reading research papers on the iPad (02 Apr 2012)
Keeping seminar questions classy (02 Mar 2012)
Breaking down your research problem (09 Feb 2012)
Corresponding authors who don't correspond (12 Jan 2012)
If it disagrees with experiments, it's wrong (04 Jan 2012)
This has at times hurt my career (16 Dec 2011)
Finding papers that use---but never identify---a specific software platform (07 Dec 2011)
Advice for new university instructors (29 Nov 2011)
How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX (17 Nov 2011)
Numerical models and crystal balls (08 Nov 2011)
How to end a seminar or conference talk (26 Oct 2011)
Doing science in the open---thoughts from Michael Nielsen (05 Oct 2011)
Survival guide for your first year of graduate school (20 Sep 2011)
Liberating and future-proofing your research data (30 Aug 2011)
Does teaching make grad students better researchers? (23 Aug 2011)
Giving a conference talk John Wheeler style (24 May 2011)
How to build a great academic website (13 May 2011)
Why build a website to archive your research? (04 May 2011)
Are you actually good at what you do? (01 Mar 2011)
Putting the thesis into proper perspective (18 Feb 2011)
Why we have to produce correct practical design guidelines (19 Jan 2011)
Giving technical talks to a target audience (04 Jan 2011)
My conversion to the open scholar cause (21 Dec 2010)
Writing in an infinitely editable medium (03 Dec 2010)
Things you never say to a graduate student (30 Nov 2010)
Five books every graduate student should read (17 Nov 2010)
The choose your own adventure PhD (11 Nov 2010)
John Nash on sharing credit for ideas (28 Oct 2010)
Quote: believing experiments vs simulations (25 Oct 2010)
Why you should re-read your article (03 Sep 2010)
Engage challenge (19 Jan 2009)

Art

Review: Vivaldi Recomposed by Max Richter (17 Oct 2012)

Conferences

Recap: Southern Data Science Conference 2019 (24 Apr 2019)

Data Science

Recap: Southern Data Science Conference 2019 (24 Apr 2019)

Design

Thesis typography: Bembo + Gill Sans (31 Jul 2012)
Before you read Bringhurst on typography (10 Feb 2012)
Typographers care more than you (27 Oct 2011)
Tufte on music animation (20 Aug 2010)

Engineering

Vortex shedding around skyscrapers (13 Mar 2013)
Don't panic. Work the problem. (14 Aug 2012)
Chesterton on Architecture (05 Jun 2012)
You might be a structural engineer if (19 Jan 2012)
When building collapse simulation meets social science (13 Jan 2012)
Hire engineers and teach them to program? Or the other way around? (19 Dec 2011)
Teaching computational thinking (12 Dec 2011)
Is engineering education too hard? (04 Nov 2011)
The sad state of computer science education for engineers (21 Sep 2011)
How to predict an earthquake (24 Aug 2011)
What do structural engineers do? (03 Mar 2011)
Engineers and "exact" calculations (20 Jan 2011)
Why we have to produce correct practical design guidelines (19 Jan 2011)
Why engineers need a master's degree (09 Dec 2010)
Henry Petroski- "Engineering is not science" (24 Nov 2010)

Finite element analysis

Numerical analysis on a solid state drive (01 Aug 2012)
Burj Dubai finite element model (06 Apr 2012)
Dealing with temperamental scientific models (05 Apr 2012)
Expanding your finite element toolkit (05 Mar 2012)
A 25-year retrospective on the finite element method (12 Jan 2012)
Grad students always use the most complicated model (14 Dec 2011)
How to learn a new finite element analysis code (04 Mar 2011)
Introduction to Abaqus FEA (tutorial) (25 Feb 2011)
How finite element mesh generation algorithms work (video) (29 Dec 2010)
Lessons learned from forensic FEA of failed RC structures (24 Oct 2010)

Learning

Resources for a personal finance reboot (07 Aug 2014)
Life lesson: Not enough data (11 Jul 2014)
Cello Talks by David Finckel (05 Feb 2013)
Elon Musk: Coax negative feedback (14 Oct 2012)
Teachers (12 Oct 2012)
When optimism doesn't make you happier (11 Oct 2012)
Ready to learn (02 Aug 2012)
Saying no faster (19 Jan 2012)

Machine Learning

MLSys 2020 Conference Recap (23 Apr 2020)
Review of the Coursera Machine Learning course by Andrew Ng (16 Feb 2020)

Meta

Not quite dead yet (13 Jun 2014)
Live from Only A Model dot com (26 Feb 2013)
Introducing- Only A Model (03 Jan 2012)
Why I started this blog/website (29 Nov 2010)

Miscellany

How to survive air travel (20 Aug 2014)
Roderick on year-end lists (02 Jan 2013)
Current Status (29 Aug 2012)
Right message, right level (02 Apr 2012)

Modeling

Circular reasoning and your model (14 Jun 2014)
Responding to skepticism toward your model (05 Mar 2013)
How user-friendly should technical software be? (12 Nov 2012)
15WCEE Paper on FEA of Beam-Column Joint Failure (21 Sep 2012)
Why Sublime Text is a great text editor for finite element models (26 Jul 2012)
Why Sublime Text 2 (24 Jul 2012)
Review of the SpaceMouse Pro 3D Mouse (23 Jul 2012)
Breaking: Interview with engineer on mainstream tech site (25 May 2012)
Burj Dubai finite element model (06 Apr 2012)
Hire engineers and teach them to program? Or the other way around? (19 Dec 2011)
Finding papers that use---but never identify---a specific software platform (07 Dec 2011)

Models

Numerical analysis on a solid state drive (01 Aug 2012)
Dealing with temperamental scientific models (05 Apr 2012)
Grad students always use the most complicated model (14 Dec 2011)

Personal

Five-year update: BOS to ATL, Engineering to Data Science, PPP2R5D (19 Apr 2019)
Not quite dead yet (13 Jun 2014)
Winter is coming (Moving to Boston) (14 Mar 2013)
Looking back at 2012 (01 Jan 2013)
Thesis to committee (04 Dec 2012)

Philosophy

Measuring belief by constraint (02 Sep 2014)

Photos

Disappearing Golden Gate Bridge (05 Dec 2012)

Productivity

My current remote work setup (22 Mar 2020)
Seth Godin on important problems (20 Jan 2013)
How much would you say you work? (20 Oct 2012)
You should write more (14 Oct 2012)
Circa Trumps Moleskine (10 Oct 2012)
Don't panic. Work the problem. (14 Aug 2012)
Writing-related activity (03 Aug 2012)
The No Journal and avoidance work (20 Mar 2012)
Indefinite social media hiatus (09 Mar 2012)
CS Lewis quotes on reading (07 Mar 2012)
The resolutions of Jonathan Edwards (06 Mar 2012)
Saying no faster (19 Jan 2012)
Artificial scarcity and your laptop charger (05 Jan 2012)
On the length of books (13 Dec 2011)
Don't waste your slot (25 Nov 2011)
Does the Kindle provide an immersive reading experience? (20 Jun 2011)
Is the Internet making us anti-intellectual? (10 Jun 2011)
How much can I expect to accomplish in a week? (09 Jun 2011)
Are you actually good at what you do? (01 Mar 2011)
Do you need ideal conditions to do great work? (03 Feb 2011)
Why trust your instincts when you discover new tools? (02 Feb 2011)
My afternoon thinking walk (10 Dec 2010)
Writing in an infinitely editable medium (03 Dec 2010)
Optimizing signal vs noise on the Internet (02 Dec 2010)
How I started reading again (15 Oct 2010)
The human impact of your work (25 Sep 2010)

Programming

Enough Python to keep me happy (16 May 2012)

Python

Speed up plot rendering in Python/Matplotlib (07 Jul 2011)

Quote

Chesterton on Architecture (05 Jun 2012)

Quotes

Seth Godin on important problems (20 Jan 2013)
John Von Neumann on precision (17 Oct 2012)

Rare Disease

The Gene: Reflections on the PBS documentary (13 Apr 2020)
On Deleting Facebook and Rare Disease (09 Jun 2019)

Research

Unexpected results are good (18 May 2012)
Problem to be solved (01 May 2012)
Know your tools better, test ideas faster (27 Sep 2011)
Liberating and future-proofing your research data (30 Aug 2011)

Review

Review: Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor E. Frankl (14 Sep 2018)
Review: Vivaldi Recomposed by Max Richter (17 Oct 2012)
Book review: Visualize This (21 Nov 2011)

Rules

Driving rules (26 Aug 2014)

Structure

Disappearing Golden Gate Bridge (05 Dec 2012)

TIL

Case-sensitive multiselect in VS Code (14 Apr 2020)

Teaching

Ready to learn (02 Aug 2012)
Who should you study with? (23 Jan 2012)
How to email a professor (and make them want to help you) (11 Jan 2012)
Should you drop my class? (15 Dec 2011)
Teaching computational thinking (12 Dec 2011)
Advice for new university instructors (29 Nov 2011)
Does teaching make grad students better researchers? (23 Aug 2011)
Embedding real-time feedback loops in exams (18 Jul 2011)
Standing up to fellow (graduate) students who cheat (15 Jun 2011)
Cheating in engineering classes (13 Jun 2011)
Teaching and notetaking in technicolor (23 May 2011)
Time spent on basic ideas is never wasted (20 May 2011)
Engineers and "exact" calculations (20 Jan 2011)
Before you skip my class (07 Jan 2011)
Reducing bias when grading exams (13 Dec 2010)
Why engineers need a master's degree (09 Dec 2010)
Beyond rote learning - SOHCOHTOH (sic) edition (24 Nov 2010)
Always solve your own exam first (16 Nov 2010)
What can a EE learn from statics? (08 Oct 2010)
How to succeed in engineering courses (03 Sep 2010)
Engineering homework solution format (03 Sep 2010)

Technology

Notes on Spaced Repetition Memory Systems (21 Feb 2020)
On Deleting Facebook and Rare Disease (09 Jun 2019)
Preventing Instapaper bankruptsy (04 Mar 2013)
Commenting Excel files (04 Mar 2013)
Benefits of having an iPad at a conference poster session (02 Oct 2012)
iPhone + international travel (01 Oct 2012)
Historical RSS Service Idea (14 Aug 2012)
Day One Journaling App (02 Aug 2012)
Why Sublime Text 2 (24 Jul 2012)
PDF syncing in Sublime Text for LaTeX on Windows (17 May 2012)
How to digitize a graph on Windows (04 Apr 2012)
Reading research papers on the iPad (02 Apr 2012)
Two weeks with the new iPad (30 Mar 2012)
Indefinite social media hiatus (09 Mar 2012)
Fix the table of contents line breaking headache in LaTeX (22 Feb 2012)
Toward better blog archives (26 Jan 2012)
How to improve font rendering on Windows (14 Dec 2011)
Book review: Visualize This (21 Nov 2011)
How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX (17 Nov 2011)
Make links in LaTeX documents print in black and white (28 Oct 2011)
How to generate ternary plots in Matplotlib (13 Oct 2011)
iOS apps for LaTeX aficionados (19 Sep 2011)
How to make Windows more Mac-like (for frequent switchers) (24 Aug 2011)
Why I really love LaTeX (and you should too) (26 Jul 2011)
A few thoughts on O'Reilly Media (20 Jul 2011)
Software applications so transparent they disappear (22 Jun 2011)
How to digitize a graph on a Mac (15 Nov 2010)
How to automatically buzz guests in your neighborhood or apartment (09 Nov 2010)
No more FM transmitters: My quest for iPhone audio sanity (05 Nov 2010)

VS Code

Case-sensitive multiselect in VS Code (14 Apr 2020)

Work

My experience preventing and managing RSI (n=1) (27 Apr 2020)
My current remote work setup (22 Mar 2020)
My standing desk setup, part 1 (31 May 2013)
Jad Abumrad on Radiolab's inception (15 Aug 2012)

Writing

The Dr. Bunsen custom notebook (12 Feb 2013)
Writing tool: Something to Throw (06 Feb 2013)
John Von Neumann on precision (17 Oct 2012)
Asking the reader to do the writer's job (25 May 2012)