Some retroblogged posts

I often want to date my post the date that I had the experience/thought/whatever, but I don't actually get around to making the post until later. Sometimes much later...

Recent new-old posts that you might have not seen because even RSS feeds don't pick 'em up:

Thank you class of 2020

Musée de Cluny

Poesy the Monster Slayer

Doppelgänger

Yes, I'm wildly abusing the format but since the main reader of this blog is me it's ... fine. Self-indulgent public posting is the name of the modern game and I'm doing it in my own way. I also have books, so many books, to write about --- with posts in various states of drafting and editing --- probably about one or two a week. For the past two years at least. Are they posted? Mostly not. Will they ever be? It depends on how much dopamine I dispense to myself for finally pushing that "publish" button.

And of course more books are arriving regularly here... I have not ordered any new books in more than a month, but the mail delays, backorders, and long-ago pre-orders mean that I have easily a full year's worth of reading already in headed my way, plus a house full of books that deserve first- and nth-readings.

extremely relatable content by Tom Gauld

This post's theme word is silvicolous (adj), "living or growing in the woods." Silvicolous libraries could be locally-sourced!

Incredibly retroblogging

An honest assessment indicates that I mostly want this blog as a post-dated account of things I once did, some time ago. Want up-to-date Lila information? want breaking Lila news? want to know where Lila is, what she's doing, and what she's thinking?

... well, you won't find it here.

On the other hand, you will find all that information, edited and curated as usual, for past iterations of Lila. In particular, starting with the "Repatriation Phase 1", you can now find the following new old posts:

The tiniest steamroller
Purple tree
Sky in mirrored skyscrapers
Ithaca is gorgeous
Bring Up the Bodies
License to Quill

Just so you know, my sycophantic readers, my curious future students, and my intermittently-checking-in relatives, I have made a resolution in 2019 to blog more consistently. And I've beeminded it, so if I fall off from my goal, the sharp sting of a penalty will (maybe) prompt me to post more frequently. I've successfully managed my akrasia on several other topics using beeminder. Here's to 2019, and the 11/12ths of it that remain!


This post's theme word is nuncupate (v tr), "to solemnly pronounce," or "to declare a will orally." Long-time readers considered Lila's nuncupation as tenuous and tongue-in-cheek, which it probably was.

Stunningly efficacious

I have no particular, publicly-declarable goals to commemorate the incrementing of our calendar year, except that --- as always --- I want to hone myself into the startlingly effective, time-efficient, prosperous, merry, well-balanced person that other people (hopefully) think I already am.

I like circuitous sentences and superfluous verbiage, and I refuse to change either of those personal attributes in 2018. Come back and try again in 2019, haters.

Day 1 is marked by a high turnaround of holiday letters and emails, paying bills, updating all my yearly-in-January donations, and staring in awe at the truly prodigious list of half-written draft posts for this blog.

(Sorry about that.)

You, my diligent readers, whether my parents or my overcurious students or internet strangers looking to post advertisements as comments (don't, I delete them and it wastes everyone's time), will simply have to put up with me as I am, striving yet again, always, in a continual manner. I want to write more, and more cleverly, and because this platform is free and quick (except when stuck in draft limbo), it will likely be the recipient of this output.

Although frankly, a lot of it goes to /dev/null right now anyway, and that might be for the best.

My year-end phrase-stuck-in-my-head is "flamboyantly intelligent", which is a descriptor of the kind of people I'd like to surround myself with. Maybe there's a subreddit? I'm on a (mild) quest, in any case; if you find any such people, please send them my way. I am a diligent and snarky correspondent, and I have been told I am secretly kind and caring, but that was 2017 and I am looking to turn over a new leaf, so...


This post's theme word is palilalia (n), "a speech disorder characterized by involuntary repetition of words, phrases, or sentences." I am trying to remember the word for "having a phrase stuck in your head", but all I can come up with is palilalia, which is not-quite-it-but-close-enough-to-blot-it-from-recoverable-memory, plus: contains "lila" as a substring!

June retroblogging

Okay, so I have prescheduled this post and committed to automatically posting it at the end of the month. Woohoo!

• May's retroblogging post
• Video game art

This post's themeword is meed, "reward, recompense, wage." I receive no meed for blogging, hence my intermittent consistency.

May retroblogging

Much to my shame, the retroblogging project continues, and includes last month's retroblogging roundup post itself. Whoops. ... and also this post itself. I'm lagging at this already-lagged task. A pattern emerges...

It seems this blog has become not so much a timely and up-to-date record of my musings, but rather a back-dated catalog of things that I remember long enough to get around to posting, eventually.

This month my retroblogs fall in two categories:

2015 end-of-year holiday season and travels:

• Seasonal juxtaposition
• An utterly perfect day
• Yule logs
• Santa's path
• Alien husks

Miscellany (also known as the "else" category):

• April retroblogging
• Paris marathon
• Computer-augmenting stickers
• Science-fictional chase scene setting

This post's theme word is monology, "a long speech by someone, especially when interfering with conversation." My low blog traffic and the structure of single-author blogging means that this is a monology-free zone. Welcome!

April retroblogging

Another month, another frail effort at reducing the queue. I didn't do very well this month, but I did some. If you want to go back and look mostly at my light commentary on photos I took, go ahead:

• Stone-carving calligraphy
• The stereotypical Japanese alley
• Banal tourist photos
• Lengthwise koi pond
• The Atrocity Archive
• Light, visible

This post's theme word is fanfaron, "a boaster or braggart." Publicly failing to achieve pre-announced goals renders me less of a fanfaron, and can add a line to my CV of failures.

March retroblogging

The planet slowly orbits, the axis tilt bringing more arc/degrees of sun exposure to this land-heavy hemisphere. We warm.

Here is this month's list of things you definitely missed, because I retro-dated them and your RSS almost certainly did not pick them up.

Photographic documentation --- with light commentary --- of things I saw, places I went, and interesting visual phenomena I experienced:

• Shipwreck of the Annie C. Maguire
• Mirabelle pie
• Reims cathedral (very cool computer-mediated art)
• Valet umbrella parking
• Chocolate, chocolate everywhere --- and a moderate amount to eat
• Accessibly tactile art
• The texture of water
• Thatch texture
• Pi(e) day (observed)

Other stuff:

• ... actually, I never got around to retroblogging other stuff this month.

Enjoy.


This post's theme word is pangloss, "blindly or unreasonably optimistic." I automatically published this retroblogging post, but it was still in draft form: pangloss mistake.

February retrobloggin'

What a cool day. I'm probably out enjoying my extra day by leaping from stair to stair, bridge to bridge, tower to tower. Possibly singing at the same time.

I'm chugging along, with Beeminder on my tail. This month I reduced the number of outstanding draft posts substantially, from 382 to... whatever 382 minus the bullets below is. Hopefully I didn't lose too much ground to new draft posts this month.

• Lausanne pagoda
• Coffee and a croissant, perfection
• Victoria and Albert
• Skyscraper portraiture
• France (from Switzerland)
• Nourrissez la poubelle!
• Nightvale and Jason Webley
• Maine art
• Louvre castle
• Obligatory airplane window wing shot
• Métro Arts et Métiers
• Better than advertising
• Parc Martin Luther King
• In a hole in a hill there lived a hobbit...
• Journée de patrimoine (complete with water-processing dragon and restricted-access ballroom!)
• Eldrich food
• Tree interrupts skyline
• Lagoon
• A giant mobile brush?

Most of the retroblogging seems to be processing and sorting photos that I intended to blog, but got caught somewhere in my camera, on a memory card, or on a folder on my desktop. (Helpfully, the folder is called "sort these".) So here, enjoy these captured photons of my past.

This post's theme word is rhadamanthine, "inflexibly just or severe." The Beeminder penalties for defaulting on personal goals become increasingly rhadamanthine.

January retroblog roundup

I am getting better at posting content, although of course the date-stamps and quality of the content remain quite variable. Bah! humbug. This activity is for me anyway; I'm not making any ad revenue, I'm not getting any writing contracts, I'm just participating in the social media-o-drome (alternately: blagoweb) by sharing some content. I am the worldwide expert at me, so this is your best site for on-the-ground reportage from my real life.

Welcome, internet.

This month, we relived these exciting moments of the past:

• Wolf on a wharf
• Portland picturesque sunset
• A beautiful prospect
• Cue the pipe organ
• Austin dawn
• Traced against the sky
• Bizarre expressionless mannequins
• Fruit
• City on fire[works]
• Statuary at the Victoria & Albert (extended bonus edition: whale skeleton scaffolding!)

And also we revisited this media, consumed and now mulled over for some time:

• Inside Out
• Star Wars: n+1 (again)
• The End of the Sentence

I also declared personal book-blogging bankruptcy, and so I'm now only trying to blog things I've read since 2016 began, but right when I finish them (plus sometimes a day or so to think about it). I'm using Beeminder to help with this. We'll see how it goes.


This post's theme word has been sitting in my theme-words queue for awhile: gamp, "a large umbrella." There goes that tramp with a gamp!

Seasons change, decades pass

Another couple months, another set of life experiences and retrospective thoughts about them, posted to the internet for all of noisy posterity to (send robots to read, process, glean, and) enjoy. The daylight is noticeably shorter now, we rolled our clocks back in the historically-inherited acknowledgement of centralized time-measuring standards, and tonight everyone dresses up as something else and begs strangers for carbohydrates.

Seems like a reasonable time to reflect on the past decade.

It involved me leaving a lot of things behind: several countries, my life as a student (never again!), relationships tried and broken, and between 10 and 20 pounds.* Oh! Also my original (birth) ACL, gone forever, consigned to history and oblivion (although its replacement's image is immortally online). Now I have a gauche unmatched pair of ACLs. Most of these changes require no special comment; I do reiterate, here as elsewhere, my strongly-held belief that knee injuries should be avoided and knee surgery is not a suitable pastime. (Exceptions possible for knee surgeons.)

Even my fellow crack-of-dawn gym women have commented on the kilograms, though ("Vous étiez ronde... vous avez maigri"). Two sides of the coin (as usual: ignore the metaphorically inconvenient edge). The nice: Of course it is always nice to receive compliments from humans. Robots, not so much. Second, the cool part about converting fat (voluminous) into muscle (dense) is that my skin nerves are closer to my muscles, so I can feel in my skin when I contract my muscles (as well as the normal nerve feedback from the muscles themselves). For some muscles in particular this sensation is novel and thrilling (intercostals!). The irritating: Buying all new clothes is a chore and so everything I've bought is stretchy, it'll fit me as long as I avoid supervillain shrink- or giganticize-rays. Also, now I am even less imposing, and so rush hour subway commutes are a continual struggle to evade crushing and obtain access to enough oxygen at my elevation. Maybe a subway snorkle? Then I could breathe, plus everyone would know there is definitely someone there in that spot-that-looks-like-it's-empty-space-between-tall-people.

I've retroblogged a little recently, but a lot is sliding because it is job-application season in academia.

• I cleaned some photos off my phone and reminisced about snowy winters past. Oh, Canada.
• Shaun the sheep is a clever and adorable schemer, but my true love for inventive scientist Gromit is unmatched.
• Japan trip: not a crêpe, burned down/fell over/sank into swamp.

I have a lot more photos from Japan, and the queue is full of all photos chronologically following that trip. Yes, I evilly withhold content from you while informing you of its existence. I am the gatekeeper of Lila-related ephemera, kneel before me! etc., etc.


This post's theme word is gloze, the transitive verb "to minimize or to explain away," the intransitive verb "to use flattery; to make an explanation; to shine brightly," or the noun "a comment; flattery; a pretense." His gloze glozes, but it is a gloze rather than glozing.

*As a theorist, I acknowledge that a factor-of-two approximation may dissatisfy others, but it depends if you measure from the maximum in the time interval or the average. High variance in the past decade, is my point. Yes, I have the data (much to my theorist shame).

Accents on blogspot

Weirdly, blogspot.fr crashes every time I try to publish a post which includes accented characters.

How is this possible? The language has accents.

I wanted you to know that it's not me, it's the software.


This post's theme word is micawber, "an eternal optimist." The micawber believes that this issue will be resolved.

Old Year's resolutions

Welcome to the last month of 2010. New Year's resolutions are common; I'd like to execute an uncommon plan. For December. This is a plan with an immediate deadline. Over the long course of a year, New Year's resolutions can become fuzzy and get lost. Things build up, to-do lists lengthen.

I propose to shorten them. To zero. By the end of December, I want to finish my to-do lists, either by achieving the items or by declaring them forfeit in to-do-bankruptcy. Wrap up projects I've been delaying. Write (or delete) the 90 draft blog posts hanging around. (Ha! Pity yourselves, readers.) Answer long-lingering emails. Mend clothing. Finish the semester.

Let's do it, people.

This post's theme word is doggo, "still and quiet" (adverb).
This post written like Cory Doctorow.

Internet identity and anonymity

I had a nightmare recently that I had accidentally written something not bland-as-paste here, and then someone confronted me with angry violence. Yikes! Neither of those things has actually happened.

I can see the appeal of an anonymous I'm-a-woman-in-science blog. I read many of them (e.g., Ambivalent Academic, YoungFemaleScientist, unbalanced-reaction, See Jane Compute, Professor in Training, Average Professor, FemaleScienceProfessor, and the memorably-named BitchPhD). They seem to be an opportunity to vent anger and frustration, and receive support, without repercussions. They also provide a forum to voice one's own doubts, distance oneself from them, and laugh soundly at them, then proceed with surmounting those barriers that stand in our way. We are women in science! We stand in the breeze and let our capes and hair blow in the winds of change!

Reading these women's accounts of their graduate school, faculty, industry, and personal trials and tribulations is heartening. It makes me feel like I'm not alone, as stereotypical and silly as that may sound. (There are many women in my program and female faculty in the department!) It gives them a chance to vent about colleagues, departmental politics, funding problems, research techniques, and a thousand daily annoyances, large and small. (I vent vicariously, and covet their freedom to rage, rage against the dying of the light.)

It also gives them a chance to provide, and receive, social support. How to deal with a biased supervisor? It's in the blogosphere, discussed in detail. A blow-by-blow account of the two-body problem? It's out there, covered in the US and abroad. It has been reassuring to discover from these anonymous women (and many non-anonymous senior faculty/students at conferences) that everyone suffers from impostor syndrome. And though I am loathe to admit it, I too doubt my own abilities and deserving placement in graduate school every so often.

But blogging anonymity is a fickle thing (see also). Even the anonymous can face sudden recognition; ironically, the more popular an anonymous blog becomes, the more likely it is that the anonymity will be compromised (more readers, better odds that someone who knows you in real life is among them; also, more incentive for someone to "unmask" you).

Although I appreciate the women out there blogging anonymously/pseudonymously, and occasionally envy their ability to rant against the barriers that block their way, I don't want to be one of them. Because the internet is too public a place to write my major failures and frustrations. I would not put them on my resume, and I will not put them here. What I have gleaned from many conference sessions on success as-a-woman/in-graduate-school/both is that, although we all appear successful and inwardly feel like impostors, we're somewhere in-between. Ultimately, I don't mind disclosing my research hang-ups and daily aggravations, but you have to earn that right in face-to-face combat. If I can't be anonymous, neither can you.

At least we can be sure that we won't misinterpret each other's tones that way.


This post's theme word: pseudandry, "the use of a male pseudonym by a woman."

This post comes a week after that great internet non-anonymizer: there are now pictures of me, with face clearly identifiable, available publicly online. I had tried to avoid that for as long as I could, but I suppose it's inevitable.

I endeavor to grow basil and blog

I purchased some cute little basil plants and potted them in old jam jars that had been accumulating, waiting for a purpose.I like basil and hope it grows. It can certainly get lots of light on my windowsill and I've set my [digital] calendar to remind me to water it. If it dies from my (admittedly) black thumb, oh well. Maybe there's some kind of edible cactus I can grow.

I have a lot of drafts of blog posts that are finished, but unpublished. I hesitate to publish them because they are not bland life-updates (food, plants, pictures of cute things) but actual statements of my opinions and thoughts. I recently suffered (endured?) an unpleasant attack on (criticism of) my personality and it's made me doubt my ability to judge how offensive/appropriate I am at any given moment. I know who reads this. So maybe I'll keep stringing you along with these insubstantial posts. Maybe I'll work up the courage to get over it. We'll see.

This post's theme word: bromide, "a trite or obvious remark; a platitude."

Victoria Day!

I had no idea that today was a holiday. Lo! It is. My calendar told me so. It also told me that I had a meeting with my advisor this morning. We were the only people in the (locked) building. (More international students showed up later.) We were both rather vague on the purpose and scheduling of Victoria Day, facts which I could look up now. But I leave that task to the reader.

The meeting went well. Then I worked, typing up my results of last week and reading about becoming a permanent resident. It will make me eligible for more scholarships and lower tuition.

Later today I walked around downtown and enjoyed the sun and cool weather. And resolved to write here more frequently. I have a few ideas to write up this week.


This post's theme word: zephyr, "a gentle breeze from the west."

Finishing the thesis

I'm right on the cusp of finishing the thesis, but all little things keep coming up and I'm having trouble focusing. So I'm going to try this insane strategy that I just thought up: I will not check my email until I'm done with my thesis. Obviously I'll check my school email, because I'm in touch with my advisor. For awhile now I've been on a stint of "I will not blog until I'm done with my thesis" and now it's time to take it to the next level. (Ironically, announced via... blogging.)

The longest time that I've spent without email in the past six years (and probably longer) is the two days that I was in the Sahara, where my activities were reduced to (1) consume water, (2) sweat, and (3) try not to die. But as soon as I was able to reduce that to just (1) and (2), I sought out the intertubes and hooked back into my world of email.

I'll see you guys on the other side, where I'll blog about my recent trip to the Google Workshop for Women Engineers, a few movies I've seen, and some of the more interesting thoughts I've had on subjects as diverse as: modes of thought, blueberries, research topics, my personal life goals, skiing, women in academia, blogging, Braid, gchat, and of course eggplant parmesan.


This post's theme word: shilly-shally, "adverb: Hesitantly; irresolutely. adjective: Hesitant; vacillating. noun: Hesitation; vacillation. verb intr.: To vacillate; to dawdle. "

My discomfort with blogging

My discomfort with blogging is waxing. Why? It's so public. But I certainly knew that when I started.

This post's theme word: coprolite, "fossilized excrement." The internet is full of it... you have betrayed me for the last time, Google.

Traffic spike!

A week ago I must have been crawled by some Google spider, because my previous maximum visits-per-day was 6. Since then, I've had between 8 and 47 hits per day. FORTY-SEVEN. I think I interact with fewer than 47 people each day. WHO ARE YOU OUT THERE IN THE INTERTUBES? (intertubes intertubes intertubes...)

Only two of you came from my departmental page, and five from my facebook profile. 97 new visitors came from Google images. Where? When I Google image search my name, I get some hits for me but none for LilaPrime.

Welcome to all my new, anonymous internet stalkers. I guess I have to be even more careful and paranoid about what I post. (This blog has come so far since its early days as a public status update to my mother.) I invite you to leave comments, so that (1) I know who you are, and (2) I get feedback. These will both contribute to a more enjoyable blog-reading experience for you, o my anonymous and numerous readers.


This post's theme word: asperse, "to spread false and malicious charges against someone" or "to sprinkle with holy water. " It is a transitive verb, as in, "Lila aspersed him on her blog."

Local goals reviewed

This weekend, I successfully

• emptied one inbox (zero!),
• finished my grading,
• straightened out business with former landlord,
• had two synchro practices and went running,
• cooked (a week's supply of daal and cookies),
• did laundry (necessary),
• gained another RSS subscriber (yo R.!),
• caught up on my desperate sleep debt from the end of last week, and
  
• ordered a new keyboard (but not the swanky one C. lent me).
  

It remains to

• empty the other inbox (41),
• read a paper before the M11 seminar,
• find my ballot,
• complete an assignment,
• achieve my weekly thesis-writing goals (particularly large this week),
• find the necessary receipts to be reimbursed, and
  
• follow-up on the many contacts I've made this month.

I could accomplish all these things tomorrow if I set aside the thesis-writing, but that strategy generalizes poorly. And if all I do is thesis-writing, then I won't accomplish any of the goals, plus I'll burn out all my mathematical neurons in one session. Moderation.


This post's theme quote reflects my puzzlement at some students' solutions:

On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’
I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage

Local goals

After my last meeting with my advisor, I have a goal:

Submit my thesis by December 15.

This is to allow enough time for it to be read, and for me to amend mistakes. It does not, however, allow a lot more time for me to wander about the topic, wildly flailing my mental tendrils as I absorb the problem from every angle. I have to be direct and effective, without reading every article ever written on the subject.

I have a lot of other things -- a veritable swarm -- hovering over me, emails to write, internships to apply for, articles to read, cleaning to do, posts to write (yes, I still have my GHC reflections bouncing around in my head), and miscellaneous tasks. (It would be nice to have food in the kitchen so I don't starve.) These things are all on pause while I cram in some more work before my weekly meeting with my advisor; as soon as I leave his office tomorrow, I'm going to go on a task-completing rampage.

My more local goal is to get back down to inbox zero, which I achieved over the summer and maintained up until two weeks ago. A more long-term goal is to pick up where I left off with Project Simplify.


This post's theme quote is from Siméon Poisson:

Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics.