We now have a Mendeley Photostream on Flickr where you can follow all of our exploits. First up: Our geektastic Christmas party which started at the go-kart racing track and ended in a no-holds-barred Rockband session at our office.
Moreover, pictures from my recent US tour giving talks and Mendeley demos at Drexel University, Princeton, NYU, Cold Spring Harbor Labs, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and MIT.
As a software engineer who spends the vast majority of each day sat at a computer a good keyboard is very important to me. I’m sure it is the same with many people who spend a lot of time typing. It’s certainly the case for the other Mendeley developers:
Some have the latest and greatest Microsoft ergonomic keyboards, others have fancy Logitech cordless keyboards that tell you how many keystrokes you’ve entered per day and all sorts of other useless statistics. One even has a keyboard that lights up in blue, red, purple or white!
Unfortunately until recently I was using the basic Dell keyboard that comes free with every Dell computer. Not a terrible keyboard by any standard, but certainly not in the same league as the Microsoft and Logitech keyboards that my colleagues were using. I was jealous! And I was worried that my inferior keyboard might be hindering my programmer productivity. This was Keyboard Wars, and it was time to get serious!
I trawled the web looking for the king of all keyboards. After reading lots of reviews I finally decided upon the Logitech DiNovo keyboard for Notebooks. I’ve no idea why the keyboard is marketed as “for notebooks”, as it works perfectly well with desktops too. There is also a DiNovo EDGE model which is supposed to be superior, but the lack of a numpad ruled it out for me.
My keyboard arrived a few months ago, and I absolutely love it. I couldn’t say for certain that my productivity has improved, but typing is certainly much more pleasurable now. And if I ever need to do a quick calculation I can press the “calculator” button, which instantly brings up the calculator application! That’s a feature I certainly didn’t have on my old Dell keyboard.
I don’t think there is a better keyboard in the whole of the Universe! Some of my colleagues disagree of course, saying they “don’t like the laptop like feel of it”, or that fact that “it’s not ergonomic”. It sounds like jealousy to me, because I’ve clearly won the Keyboard Wars!
The Logitech DiNovo for Notebooks. The best keyboard in the Universe? I think so!
As a recent member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 
I’m marveling at their events calendar which strikes me as hands down the best entertainment programme in London (if you’re into scientific talks, that is). Two of the four lectures I’ll be attending in the coming weeks are part of the members-only, black-tie “Friday Evening Discourses” that were started by Michael Faraday in 1826 – isn’t that amazing?
One of the talks that I’ll unfortunately have to miss (because I’m travelling to Germany) is this one next Monday, 20th October:
London is an epicentre of medical advancement, from Edward Jenner’s pioneering work on vaccination to the world’s first heart and lung transplant. But London is also a hotbed of disease and demise and this event will take a look at the notorious murders and strange deaths in the capital. [...].
London has a rich and gruesome history of untimely demises. From the recent past we have the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, only a few minutes’ walk from the Royal Institution, who was killed by a radioactive teapot. 18 years earlier, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was dispatched with a poison tipped umbrella by Waterloo Bridge.
Or how about this one on 4th November:
The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy
Gray’s Anatomy is probably one of the most iconic scientific books ever published: an illustrated textbook of anatomy that is still a household name 150 years since its first edition, known for its rigorously scientific text, and masterful illustrations as beautiful as they are detailed. The Making of Mr Gray’s Anatomy tells the story of the creation of this remarkable book, and the individuals who made it happen.
Wonderful, isn’t it? So, in the spirit of peppering this blog with Edo period, medieval, and Japanese monster anatomy, here are some more highly rigorous anatomic drawings I just came across:
Via Gizmodo.
Long time no blog, indeed. I had wanted to write more about the numerous workshops and conferences I attended, but I didn’t get around to it because we’ve been very busy here at Mendeley HQ. Among other things, we’re planning a new release of Mendeley Desktop soon. Without giving too much away, it will include a few long-awaited and highly-requested new features. Stay tuned!
So I’ve been looking for a way to sum up my recent travels. With total disregard for Blaise Pascal’s famous quote “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time”, I concluded that Haikus might be a solution. Here goes:
In Soton I sleep
on Ben’s futon which fails, my
talk is all woozy
Said futon
Listening to Yaroslav‘s talk
Moving on – my Science in the 21st Century haiku:
Waterloo WiFi
breaks during the demo yet
enthusiasm wins
Chad Orzel on Newtonian vs. Galileian science – our former landlord Michael Palin making another unexpected appearance
Collective mind-mapping exercise devised by Alex Pang
Panel with Steve Weinstein, Harry Collins, David Kaiser, Lee Smolin and impressively bescribbled blackboards
In short, I had a marvelous week at the Perimeter Institute. Thanks to Sabine for organizing such a great conference, to Mark and Eva for the many inspiring conversations, to Jen and Michael for inviting me over to dinner, to Chad, Simeon, John and Cameron for the nice evening at the brewery, to Katy for offering to help us develop data visualizations, to David and Paul for sharing their insights into the current US presidential election (and Paul giving me one of his Analog SF magazines so I’d have something to read on the plane), to Gerry for sharing his thoughts on social networking (and looking like Albert Einstein), and to Hassan for inviting me to contribute an essay about reputation systems in science to his upcoming book.
We had comparatively nice weather (i.e., it didn’t rain) in London yesterday – so we seized the chance and organised a Mendeley team BBQ on the roof terrace of our office! Luckily for us, we didn’t set the building on fire, and no one fell off the roof. Here are some impressions:
Paul being happy while stealing plants for decoration:
Paul becoming even happier and pointing at things:
Smoke signals:
Pankaj, Steve and Falk discussing physics and metaphysics:
More happy Paul:
Julia, Aaron, Ben and Britton Street:
Ben apparently not moving as much as the others:
Fin!
And just in case you’re thinking, “these kids should do less BBQs and more software updates”, we’ve got you covered! Tomorrow we’ll release Mendeley Desktop beta version 0.5.8 with plenty of bugfixes, speed and stability improvements. Happy Paul will blog about it in more detail.
We are proud to introduce Robert Knight – yet another boost to our development team. It’s not that we didn’t enjoy the company of a certain other knight who said “Ni” (and from whom we rented our previous office):
Still, we think Robert is a much better fit to our team. Ni!
——
Robert Knight joins Mendeley as a software engineer working on Mendeley Desktop. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Southampton in June 2008. In his spare time, Robert is a contributor to the KDE project and develops the Konsole terminal. In the past he also wrote the BlueIDE development environment for DarkBASIC and contributed to KSpread.Today in our web developer Skype chat: Paul, Falk (brother-in-law of Paul) and Pankaj (freelance database expert).
Paul Föckler, 10:46am: I added Pankaj to our web chat
Falk Kühnel, 10:46am: hiankaj
Falk Kühnel, 10:47am: damn, my eybor is bron i guess
Cracks me up!
Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. I won’t be able to travel to the AMA Summer Conference. At this time tomorrow, I should have been at the beach of San Diego with Michael and Thorsten and a nice cold beer, but it was not to be. My cough from the viral infection hasn’t completely disappeared yet, and a weeks’ travel to California would have worsened it again… what a major bummer!
However, after a month of working from home, I have returned to the office. And as promised earlier, here’s a brief guided photo tour:
Exihibit A shows a room full of software engineers. They occupy the west wing. They’re all so talented that they have little halos around their heads, but you can’t see them in this picture due to the backlight from the window. True story!
Exhibit B: The east wing. This is where we non-software engineers gather (notice the puny monitors and machines).
Our meeting room at lunchtime. Paul’s arm stretches out inconspicously, stealing someone’s food (or so I presume).
Our kitchen. Jan.. trying to sell me a coffee machine?!
Me in my corner, trying to take a break by hiding behind a book. Fittingly, it’s titled “Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness“. Incredibly fascinating stuff! I’ll probably write about it on this blog later.
Outside our windows, enveloping darkness has settled in, and thus the long night of bugfixing has begun. I have witnessed a mysterious phenomenon: After dark, wherever large groups of software engineers congregate, large quantities of pizza boxes spontaneously materialize out of thin air.
And now for something completely different. Do you know 14? 14 is an artist who satirizes celebrity culture on her blog Gallery of the Absurd. Here’s my favourite of her paintings:
For months the world has been anticipating the arrival of the Brangelina baby. Tabloids and bloggers have been speculating that this baby is destined to be the Most Beautiful Child Ever. New York Magazine ruffled feathers when stating “Not since Jesus has a baby been so eagerly anticipated.” What I’d like to speculate is…..what if the offspring of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt isn’t as stunningly gorgeous as everyone assumes? What if she’s just a regular looking baby….maybe even a little goofy looking? It could happen!
Now, did you ever wonder what would happen if scientists were tabloid fodder? I actually didn’t. But 14 does:
I’ve always wondered what our culture would be like if we obsessed about the private lives and accomplishments of scientists, researchers and great thinkers the same way we obsess over celebrities. Would we follow closely the scandals of scientific study the same way we follow the scandals of Britney or Madonna? Would certain appealing scientists be given their own reality shows?
… and her answer is hilarious:
Unfortunately, my scientific achievements are not yet colossal enough for me to be included in the science tabloids. I still hope to win the Ig Noble Prize one day.
