Some random notes from holidays.
Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) is out. I didn’t upgrade my system though. Among the major changes are updates to base programming languages (Python, Perl, Ruby). The rest looks like poor little cosmetic changes, with iCloud as a definitive replacement for mobile.me (previously dot mac). All mobile.me services have been stopped, including photos galleries and iDisk (and shared users iDisk). I still have a .mac email address, that I don’t use much. Too much of benevolent contributions now depends on the infamous App Store. I don’t plan to renew my annual subscription. Apple, you just suck sometimes.
I ordered a lot of books on psychometrics. Obviously, I won’t have time to read them all before end of August, but I will try to review them whenever the opportunity arises. Here they are:
- Wainer, Bradlow, Wang, *Testlet Response Theory and Its Applications*, Cambridge University Press, 2007. (280 pp.)
- Thissen, Wainer, *Test Scoring*, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, 2001. (434 pp.)
- Guilford, *Psychometric Methods*, McGraw-Hill, 1954. (597 pp.)
- Jenkinson, *Measuring Health and Medical Outcomes*, Routledge, 1994. (224 pp.)
- Cudeck, MacCallum, *Factor Analysis at 100: Historical Developments And Future Directions*, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, 2007. (384 pp.)
- McIver, Carmines, *Unidimensional Scaling*, SAGE Publications Inc, 1981. ((96 pp.)
I have some ebooks on Clojure that I need to read, and I bought five new books from Stat Press. I still have a lot to learn and write about Clojure and Stata. I am thinking of building a pedagogical website using the Noir framework, borrowing ideas from the excellent Smooth CoffeeScript interactive HTML edition. Probably more to come soon (or later).
I found many nice tutorials on tmux. Maybe my preferred is this one: Less Perplexing Terminal Multiplexing with tmux. At this point, I am not clear about the advantages of tmux over iTerm2, besides keeping session alive when you close you Terminal window.
I published a paper in BMC Medical Research Methodology. In retrospect, I am not happy with that paper. More generally, I don’t think it’s my job to publish papers. I’m no longer an academic researcher, time has passed on me, and I’m probably no more than a slave of others' data. That works for me, as long as I can provide them with my best advices. (That’s for the most pessimistic thought of the day.)
In the same vein, I haven’t submit any abstract this year. I feel like I need to concentrate on things that really matter to me, rather than show myself in public events. However, I will be attending many events. I believe it is important to keep in touch with people doing nice work on things I’m interested in, and, of course, visit foreign countries.