The Dichotomous Trekkie 2.0

As I've been working on the sauropod paper (aside from feeling a bit neglectful of Kepler), I've definitely felt the wish to "feature creep". For those unfamiliar with the term, its one I borrowed from computer program development; its the wish to include ever more "new" stuff into a program that you're writing, often to the detriment of timeliness. Aside from finding ever more species to want to add to my analysis, I find that I am having a difficult time finding the line where I say "enough -- I've explained this to my satisfaction." There are some legitimate holes that are left over from its "essay" form, such as comparisons on different ways of getting the taper constant, ways of extrapolating neck length and accuracy, and even I can't remember what I did to find the trunk length.

I also was a bit lax about my citing in the initial essay (oh, the usefullness of BibTeX -- I wish I knew it sooner. Kudos to Kit for helping me out there), I also really want it to look nice.

So, with its current state of revisions, it is being looked at by Sara W, Sarah W, Sarah K, and Andrew. Hopefully, it will be ready for submission by the end of June, July at the latest. Sarah (K) brought up a good point though -- where to submit it? Its hardly Nature or Science quality, but that still leaves:

1) Journal of Paleontology
2) Paleontology
3) Historical Biology

As the prime candidates at the moment. Hm. I'm leaning towards Historical Biology, but we'll see.

Hopefully this will be out of my system by the time Hawaii is over -- then I can do some solid astronomy. Helps that that's the one I get paid for, too.

So, as my housemate Kit very properly asked: why am I starting this blog?

 Its true!  I have (two) defunct Blogger addresses, and I regularly stick to my Livejournal -- so why this one now?

 Well, this is an OSS expandable platform with by own domain name, which is nice.  But, more to the point, I think this is where my sciency posts will live.  Posts with more quality input than discussion of girls, homework, the latest movie ... if this blog starts to become substantial, I may end up migrating over from LJ, but we shall see about that.  This is to be used for something else.

 And, well, I need to work out the kinks still.  I am still not sure if timestamps are working right, and I'm wrestling with remote Atom posting.

So we'll see.