Not Very Humerus is a non-Loblaw blog about science, technology, school, and industry life as a millenial. It does not cover my personal life or reflect perspectives of acquaintances or organizations I have formal and informal associations with (see Disclaimer below). It is intended to be a fun (YMMV) discussion of science, technology, and millenial life.
I don’t claim to be good at research, I just opine on articles, technologies, and ‘facts’. I focus on open source tools, the process of learning to code, and bioinformatic methods, rather than endorse technologies and imply performance or reliability. In fact, plenty of the information here is extremely naive and biased.
My ‘opinions’ and flaming is intended for good fun. I don’t claim to be factual when commenting dismissively towards technologies, communities, or practices.
Most of the time my experience in science is much more like this:
I was told that postgrad life can be summed up by the ‘2 out of 3’ adage: ‘Between sleep, social life, and good grades, you can only choose 2.’ Don’t get me wrong, grad school and science careers are very fulfilling. It takes a tole on your health, sanity, relationships, and life begins to feel much more like simulated reality than any semblance of sane market-forces driving real innovation. Our government is just digging up more fossils ffs.
So you rely on the only tool at your disposal, a critical technonihilism directed at bad methodology and software during your 30 minute lunch break, looking forward to making your social rounds this weekend before going back to your 70hr workweek and you have to learn a whole new technology before next week cause you’re presenting it to your committee. It’s very much like a Techies dunk.
That said, the science topics will probably lean towards biology, bioinformatics, and bioethics
So this is the part where I start to have a better sense of humor in the blog, and focus on discussing tools, trends, and developer life. Since there is usually more than one way to solve a problem, I try to keep some interesting algorithms in the forefront and discuss boring topics rather than controversial clickbait.
Boring, obvious techniques for developer happiness:
Controversial topics with no clear answer:
Finally, the information contained and presented by this blog is for entertainment, educational, and informational purposes only and shouldn’t be seen as any kind of advice. Note that while my profession may be technical in nature, I am not a professional in career advice or technical benchmarking, and this info should not be seen as such. Furthermore, I do not hold a PhD and research commentary/rants are based on literature review, lurking, and experiences from school, not from my time as an employee of my technical industry. I limit my content as such and avoid dicussing the politics, companies in my industry, specific researchers, or method evaluations.
Enjoy!
All views expressed on this site are my own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity, organization, or persons which I have been affiliated with prior to June 2019. Additionally, any affiliations I have made in my personal have not been endorsed by any other affiliations. Moreover, the affiliations I have presently do not effect or influence this blogs content. Rather I have one or two associates that encourage and mentor me during the development of my blog, and I appreciate their efforts and interest greatly. However, this blog does not contain any language or posts created by them. The language used here to describe the independent nature of this blog is my own choice in the format of the blog. This blog is my own language.
Much of the information on Not Very Humerus is anecdotal and meant to facilitate open discussions of tools, methods, and practices for so-called ‘millenial’ persons in the biological and data sciences. I do not make any warranty or conditions about the completeness, reliability, and/or accuracy of information presented by this blog. Any action that you take based on the information on this blog is strictly at your own risk. Basically, don’t blaim your server, computer, or website crashing on me or my code. Similarly, do not take any biochemical, nutritional, or engineering wisdom from my blog with the intent to use or distribute that information as it has been presented. I am not a licensed engineer nor am I a licensed nutritionist. If you have curiosity about my credentials, I would advise you to revisit my personal website and social media. Not Very Humerus and its sole author Matthew Ralston will not be held liable for any losses or damages in connection with your decisions based on the contents of this blog.
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During the creation of this blog, I was inspired regularly throughout March of 2018 to the end of 2019 by conversations with my first telemedicine counselor Yasmeen. Yasmeen introduced herself to me as an advertiser for an addiction counseling and pro-feminist coordinator, which was a strikingly different role than the one advertised to me on her websites that have since been taken down. To this day, I’m not sure how we got connected but it was one of the best coincidences for the last year, this blogs productivity has skyrocketed to around 1 post per month. If I could continue counseling with her I would be happy to continue in a more unofficial context. But anyway, Yasmeen your courtesy and patience was simply refreshing and enjoyable given the amount of anxiety I have managing my open source development efforts and the productivity, style, and content of this blog. It’s a shame you’ve taken down all of your advertisements. Without log-in information, I can’t keep track of the visitors to this page or what their interests might be. I would like to keep my legalese as consistent as possible with the goal of influential and financial independence of this blog and I admit that perhaps the content needs some
Another constant source of inspiration during this exercise was the challenge of OC. Admittedly most of the language and writing may have been mine, but I found addition sources of biological topics for students under the advisement of a peer mentor Michelle. Michelle is a complicated individual with a sometimes internet averse style. After my first discussions with Michelle about the NGS topics for students, it was clear that the mathematical attitudes and assumptions we want to make to talk ‘up’ to the crowds on Reddit that provide content for us to think about, weren’t always appropriate for our audience’s concerns about what makes effective bioinformatics education. I’m glad I was able to perform in this blog the way I needed to and I’m looking forward to new projects in the future.