When will it end??

I thought that when I gave up the editorship of Cognition, I'd be done with it... after 8.5 years of managing zillions of manuscripts each year, it was time to return to some semblance of a normal life. But of course, the manuscripts that I had chosen to handle myself were still in the system and I felt I had a responsibility to see those through. Silly me... Turns out there were 130 of those. As of this morning, there are still 20 left. Which means that I've so far, this year, processed 110 unique manuscripts this year, and written 185 action letters! So it's not as much fun as I thought it would be, not being Editor-in-Chief...

The new semester is in full swing. But with 34 degree heat expected tomorrow, I don't think we'll be doing much swinging outside. Won't be long before we're all looking forward to some wintery relief from the heat. But today's Labor Day (the equivalent, I believe, of May Day holidays in Europe). So no work today... just a few action letters...

I love this brain

I had a small part to play in conceiving of the analyses which resulted in the following image (if it were bigger, you'd see lines more clearly between some of the blobs, and those lines show that some blobs are connected: when there's activity in one, there's activity in the other). Thanks to Z. and K. for turning an idea into data!

The perils of a good To Do list...

After 16 flights in just 9 weeks, across 3 continents and 6 countries, it is little surprise that I got way less done than I should have, and that my To Do list has grown to such an extent that if all my items were laid end-to-end they would reach between here and eternity... In fact, it took so long to compile the list that in the time it took me to do that, I could have completed a substantial number of those To Dos and turned them into Now Done's (Dones?). My resolution for the rest of the week is to stop adding To Do's and to start Doing Do's. Oh... oh dear... that just doesn't sound right at all...

My attempts, when not adding to my To Do list, to whip up support for TagNotate continue unabated and shamelessly. Go TagNotate!

And you? Go Review TagNotate!

TagNotate 1.1 released

Yep... yet another version hits the app store today! Lots of improvements, and more still to come. But... we need more reviews! For reasons that escape everyone, a review written on e.g. the US App Store doesn't appear on the UK App Store even though it's the very same software! So this is the blogger's equivalent of begging (!) - please consider downloading the app, giving it a try, and writing a review on the App Store. It's still free for another few weeks as it picks up steam. There's at least one more major release (1.2) before we let it run its course for a while. If Kickstarter can crowdsource funding, surely I can crowdsource reviewing?!

To make it particularly easy for you, you can download it from here. And to write a review, scroll down to the bottom of TagNotate's page on the App Store, and under where it says Customer Reviews, click on Write a Review. Don't forget to select some (high!) number of stars as well! But a written review is what we need to get noticed by web sites and other blogs.

And except for a new version of TagNotate, there's not much else to tell. I'm in London for a surprisingly cold and damp week. Hanging out in Café Nero where the coffee is excellent, the furniture comfortable, and the wifi fast. Turns out, Café Nero was founded by another Gerry... I wonder if he wants to invest in TagNotate?

TagNotate: Day 3

Three days in, and 1100 downloads later, it's time to celebrate. TagNotate is super easy to use: Simply download, use, and review on the Mac App Store. Doesn't get much easier than that. Seriously, though, we need all the reviews we can get. Spread the word: Rooftops, social media, whatever it takes! It's still free.

Am currently in Barcelona en route from Australia to San Sebastian. Not only is it a great place to celebrate, it's also a great place to recuperate after the 30 hours of traveling from the southern hemisphere... (actually, recuperation hardly needed. A gin and tonic did the trick!).

Tagnotate for Mac. Out now!

Yep... we've finally released Version 1.0 of Tagnotate for OS X. It's free on the Mac App Store for the first month - 400+ downloads just yesterday! Ideal for annotating PDFs and, uniquely, tagging those annotations so that you can use tags to collect all your annotations across all your documents in a single place. We've even got a short video introduction:



It's actually easier to use than it is to write a review of it on the Mac App Store. Which is a crying shame because that's what I'd really like everyone to do. Please? Pretty please?

Long time no write...

I can't bear to look at when I last posted to my blog. A year? 8 months? More? Less? It's hard to explain why, when life is so very good here in my new home (Connecticut, USA), the combination of moving house, job, continent, family, office, currency, mortgage, culture, can be so exhausting, time-consuming, and yet at the end of it all, so satisfying. Sacrifices had to be made, and one of them, was my online presence here (wherever "here" is). If I can, I intend to make up for the missing months with a more regular presence. If for no other reason than that I owe it to my past, and to my future, to maintain a record of why coming here is, as the saying goes, better than sliced bread (not that I can eat the stuff, but at least I remember what it was like!).

So... stay tuned. Oh, and download TagNotate on the App Store. Never mind why. Just do it! It's free. And write a review if you can/want. I'd appreciate it. The desktop version is coming out just as soon as we can figure out a workaround to a bug that Apple have yet to fix.

Finally - a rundown of major events in the past year: I'm a year older. Can't get much more major than that... And UConn have agreed to found the Connecticut Institute for Brain and Cognitive Science. Apparently, I'm its Director. But were it not for the vision of my colleagues at UConn, this would not (and could not) have happened. Other news: My apple watch has yet to arrive, my new piano will likely beat it to the front door, and if I don't get consumed by Lyme disease-harboring ticks beforehand, my next academic publication is going to be my best ever! (I continue to believe that the life of an academic cannot get any better if every couple of years or so one can publish something about which one can say that).

Still to come: why I think UK academia has much to learn from (some) US academia, why STOP signs oddly work (uh-oh... it's about time I got a US driving license), and why I love my personal trainer... yes - I do have a personal trainer: She's worth every penny/cent/dollar, and were it not for the fact that my 91 yr-old father got a trainer, I might never have appreciated the merits of this particular form of torture.

Until next time.