Going basic.

I cancelled my pricey WordPress business plan and reverted my blog back to basic. Some things here might look weird a while.

It really *is* FORTRAN, all the way down

Two weeks ago I learned something that completely shifted what I thought I knew, and which seems to not be widely known. Thanks to Mike Croucher (Walking Randomly), whose blog I have followed as long as I can remember following blogs.

Did you know that programming languages are built on other programming languages? It should have been self-evident, perhaps, but I never really gave a thought to where programming languages actually come from. Second; did you know that large portions of Python and R are built on, and dependent on, FORTRAN?! (yes, I know its name is supposed to be part lowercase nowadays, but in my mind it remains FORTRAN77, like my student days – no, I am not ancient, but my teachers’ tools were).

The reason I blog this now is: I mentioned this the other day to an old friend who is a real bona fide computer scientist and researcher, and he DIDN’T know.

And as MC tells it, “Much of the numerical functionality we routinely use today was developed decades ago and released in Fortran. More modern systems, such as R, make direct use of a lot of this code because it is highly performant and, perhaps more importantly, has been battle tested in production for decades.  Numerical computing is hard (even when all of your instincts suggest otherwise) and when someone demonstrably does it right, it makes good sense to reuse rather than reinvent. As a result, with no Fortran, there’s no R.“

And yeah, the same goes for Python, and a lot of other really basic (meaning not ‘simple’, but fundamental) numeric tools that are used everywhere. At least one of SciPy and NumPy has been a part of every Python toolset I have tried so far.

So what is the problem with many of our most indispensable software tools having a well-optimized FORTRAN skeleton? Compilers are the issue – the tailormade ways you tell the *really* basic low level parts of your specific processor what to do with your code. And processors are different. Hence, FORTRAN has over a dozen open source and commercial compilers adapted to different brands of processors – and for the commercial ones you have to trust that the organization that owns the compiler wants to continue supporting it. The currently most recommended compiler is commercial. However, open source efforts seem to have kept in step, more or less – though there are/were some question marks on whether everything FORTRAN-dependent would work well on Apple’s new Arm-based ‘Apple Silicon’ machines. (Imagine getting a shiny new expensive Apple computer – heavily marketed to people with rather vague knowledge of technical aspects – and everything goes wonky? The uproar.)

So, in essence, many modern open source computing resources rest on weaker legs than is really comfortable. It reminds me of that fantastic XKCD on dependencies. (There really is an XKCD for every tech scenario imaginable)

Ad-hoc guide to tweeting as an org

This was triggered by a request on Twitter, on guides/guidelines for tweeting as an institution. I scrambled through my mental inventory and came up blank. Then I figured that hey, I’ve done that for 11+ years, I might actually have some recommendations…

So, points to think of, off my head: 

1) Sort accounts into lists that make sense (e.g. members/staff, non-members, org accounts, relevant news sources)

2) Set a policy for each list on likes and retweets

3) If there are several tweeters, put their username in the org account description and have each sign their replies, if any, with their name/username

4) Have a policy for how you treat tweets from outside accounts. I tend to retweet a lot of community stuff and community-relevant stuff. That kind of behavior leads to a rather errant-looking timeline…

… which might not be what you want, if you assume people are reading your account in timeline view (I don’t think many do this, but maybe you want to display recent tweets on your webpage or some such)

5) Ping community members if you tweet stuff you know to be relevant to them. But it has to be very relevant to merit a ping, and not done too often

6) Hashtags are your friends, as an org. Try to have one for each relevant thing you communicate regularly; and don’t be shy to pick up a tweet, put it in retweet mode and just add a (community relevant) hashtag for visibility

7) Set up a best practices doc, even if you are the lone tweeter. There is some value in making your thinking explicit on a page, it usually clarifies things and helps you stay consistent. Also, onboarding new same-account tweeters gets WAY easier if you start with some common ground established

This post was originally a Twitter thread in response to a question from Hannah/@story645: https://twitter.com/story645/status/1331680526005100545

Kalendern lucka 7 – hydrofob sand

Vi hann till slut med att leka med den magiska sanden i lucka 7. ”Magin” ligger i att sanden är väldigt hydrofobisk, så mycket att den bildar smala korvar om man häller den i vatten.

Sedan försökte vi lyfta upp sanden med sked, och så fort den kom över ytan föll sandkorven isär i en till synes helt torr hög.

Sedan lyfte vi upp sanden, skedvis, till en bit aluminiumfolie. Där flöt den runt på en film av vatten, tills vi sög upp vattnet med hushållspapper och hällde sanden tillbaka i påsen.

De blanka fläckarna är små vattenpölar!

Community engagement working notes: monthly peer meeting

In 2017, I entered a AAAS Fellows program on Scientific Community Engagement, called “Community Engagement Fellowship Program” or in short, CEFP. The program has now moved to the Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement.

The CEFP 2017 Fellows, photo by permission of Lou Woodley. I’m in the middle row at the left.

This program was a turning point for me, personally and professionally. Many of us still keep in contact, and one of the things I regularly do is meeting virtually with another CEFP fellow, Stefanie Butland. She’s in Canada and I am in Sweden, so we meet virtually over audio (for the bandwidth to keep up with us). I really recommend you to do something similar, if you are lucky enough to find a compatible person.

We meet the same day each month, and usually check in the day before to confirm the time or adjust it if necessary, and we always end the talk by confirming the next meeting time.

We use these talks mainly to ask for advice on challenging issues – for a while Stef talked about the same hard issue for months and it worked out! – and for celebrating achievements and successes. Several of the issues work themselves out while we are discussing them.

It works because we are strict about keeping to 15 minutes each. Usually, we self-regulate around our own 13-minute marks. Despite the short time, we can get a lot done, because we trust each other and are honest. And we both have similar and different experiences, good and bad, from our community manager work, so there is almost never the need to explain a lot of detail.

Sommarvärdar 2019

Jag har räknat forskningsnära sommarpratare, i år som alla tidigare år (2018, 2017, …). Men i år på min nya samlingsblogg som inte bara tar upp vetenskap.

Sommarpratande värdar 2019

Jag brukar, vid det här laget mest av tradition, räkna alla sommarpratare som har något slags forskningsanknytning. Det känns kanske inte fullt så nödvändigt nu, när forskningsrelaterade poddar blommar upp vart man vänder sig och den som lägger manken till och letar lite nog kan lyssna på forskare hela dagen, hela veckor i sträck.

Men tradition är tradition, som sagt.

25/6 Anders Hansen, Överläkare i psykiatri

27/6 Magnus Ranstorp, Statsvetare, terrorexpert

11/7 Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, Biolog, professor

13/7 Emma Frans, Doktor i epidemiologi, forskare, vetenskapsskribent

6/8 Ingrid le Roux, läkare

11/8 Michael Tjernström, Professor i meteorologi

14/8 Nick Bostrom, Filosof

Jag har säkert missat någon.

Jag ser förstås fram emot en hel del av de andra sommarpratarna, också. Särskilt glad är jag att Sven-David Sandström hann spela in sitt sommarprat. Och det finns flera hedersdoktorer bland de övriga sommarpratarna, som Anne Ramberg och Anna Rosling Rönnlund.

Denna post publicerades ursprungligen 2019-07-13 på min gamla blogg.

Sommarpratande forskare 2017

Efter två års dipp i talarlistan (2 forskare 2016, 3 st 2015) är Sommar i P1 tillbaka till en mer rejäl handfull forskare och forskningsanknutna igen. Roligt!

4/7: Förstås måste jag lyssna på Taffelkollegan och måltidshistorikern Richard Tellström!

12/7: Angela Gui, doktorand i historia vid U. of Cambridge, och dotter till fängslade förläggaren Gui Minhai.

18/7: Johan von Schreeb, läkare som grundade svenska Läkare Utan Gränser. Kirurg och docent vid Centrum för katastrofmedicin på Karolinska Institutet.

21/7: Johan Kuylenstierna, VD för Stockholm Environment Institute, naturgeograf och adjungerad professor vid Stockholms universitet.

25/7: Jerzy Sarnecki, professor i kriminologi.

3/8: Jonna Bornemark, docent och lektor i filosofi.

18/8: Annakarin Nyberg, internetforskare och universitetslektor vid Umeå universitet, samt författare.

Och så måste Gullan Bornemark (12/8) få ett litet hedersomnämnande – hon har tydligen satt musik till Pythagoras sats!

Tidigare räknarår: 2016 (2 st), 2015 (3 st), 2014 (7 st), 2011 (7 st), 2010 (6 st), 2009 (6 st)

Sommarpratande forskare 2016

Vet ni, det börjar kännas lätt poänglöst att köra den här räkneövningen. De sommarpratande forskarna blir ju bara färre och färre. I år är det hela TVÅ stycken forskare som är sommarvärdar i P1. Av totalt femtionio sommarprat.

30/6: Danica Kragic Jensfeldt, professor i datalogi
16/8: Hannah Akuffo, professor i parasitologi

Men Å ANDRA SIDAN ska Karin Bojs sommarprata (19/8). Det blir nog bra.

Kort gästspel i Morgonpasset om sur mjölk

Ungefär såhär ser mina förberedelser ut inför en intervju, även en hastigt påkommen sådan. Post-its är bra, för man får inte plats att komplicera saker alltför mycket.

I måndags morse blev jag helt oförhappandes kontaktad av Morgonpasset, som ville fråga lite om sur mjölk, i direktsändning samma morgon. Det var en sån där klassisk måndagmorgon där alla är sena och barnen klättrar på väggarna, men jag hann med att skicka resten av familjen till förskolan och ta en paus med kaffe och en halvtimmes uppborstning och sortering av kunskaperna innan det var dags att prata.

Resultatet kan höras här via webben (spola fram till klockan 09:15).

Jag kan för övrigt rekommendera post-its för anteckningar när man förbereder sig för en sån här sak. En enkel tanke per lapp, och sedan fylla på och flytta om tills det inte finns några gigantiska hål i tankekedjorna.