2015 Dance Your Ph.D. Contest

You can see the winning videos in this article, which also includes a link to all 31 entries. (The overall winning entry includes some networks, and the winner in the physics category is from University of Oxford.) Very cool!

(Tip of the cap to Physics Today for this particular link. I saw a post earlier in the day from IFLS.)

D4D Challenge

Do you want to study a huge mobile phone data set? Well, if you write a 250-word abstract quickly and you get chosen as one of the lucky winners (based on your proposal), then here's your chance.

This is a very cool idea, and I like the idea of this kind of challenge very much. If one or more of my group members or collaborators wants to do this, then I will help him/her/them, but when there are too many cooks stirring the pot (as there are with mobile phone data), I usually steer myself towards other research directions. I do have a paper that uses data from the NetFlix Prize competition, but my collaborators and I studied used the data to study human dynamics and generative/rewiring mechanisms for networks for their own sake rather than practical things.

(Tip of the cap to Lada Adamic.)

Bulwer-Lyton "Winners": 2012 Edition

Here are the winners of the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Some of the entries are brilliant, and some of them are just plain bad. I actually liked a few of the dishonorable mentions.

(Tip of the cap to Puck Rombach.)

Two-Minute Thesis Contest

PhD Comics is holding a contest that invites people to describe their PhD thesis work in 2 minutes. Jorge Cham of PhD Comics might even select to broadcast your audio file on the PhD Comics site.

Come on! You know you want to!

(Tip of the cap to Jimmy Lin.)

More Fruit Fly Sex

One of the winners of the 2011 Dance Your PhD Contest comes from Oxford, and the video is about mating in fruit flies.

And if you're wondering about the title, it's because of this blog entry.

(Tip of the cap to Philip Maini.)

2011 'Dance Your PhD' Contest

Come on: you know you want to do this.

(Tip of the cap to Greg Fricke.)

Two-Way Streets

Sometimes, it can be really amusing when a one-way street becomes a two-way street.

The caption of that poster really sucks, though!

I'll buy a drink for whoever comes up with my favorite caption for that poster.

It's a Rankmaniac, Rankmaniac (on the Floor).

Apparently, some Techers will benefit from some sort of "Googlebombing" competition (I'm not sure if it's a Google competition) based on how many people link to their entry.

That's the purpose of this blog entry. Booyah!

Their entry is meh, in my opinion.

Quote of the Day: Bulwyer-Lytton edition

Today's quote comes from the curator of the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest: "Your submission has arrived and will receive the treatment it deserves." (I guess such comments can also apply to submissions to scientific journals.)

For what it's worth, I was doing the equivalent of 'going for last place' with this particular submission: "Why are you looking at me like I have two heads?" said Officer Cerberus Jones to the criminal he was arresting."

(I want to get 'dishonorable mention' in the fantasy category.)

Quote of the Day

Today's quote comes from the art submission guidelines from the J!NX catalog in their solicitation (with potential monetary reward) for new t-shirt ideas:

"3. We have disabled BMP files in the art upload. If you are using MS Paint, you probably don't need to be submitting art."


Comment: I approve! (As a side note, some of you reading this may be aware of my numerous rants at students who submitted drafts of papers to me in which the figures were in .bmp format. In the MTBI REU program in particular, that a was well-known way to make me go ballistic.)