Online researching

I've been discovering the new ways of making "doing research" a both fun and efficient thing these days, and in this web 2.0 era (or should I say "SNS era"?), there're plenty of interesting stuffs on Internet that we can use for research. It seems that everyone could think about something under the category of "online research resources" such as online database, ebooks, and academic forums. While these could be very useful when I need to find some resources, I'm more interested in the question of how to find the latest news, findings and "voices" in my study field. 

Besides subscribing to Google Scholar or the university's library, what else I've found? Twitter and Facebook!

Thanks to LSE Impact Blog, for providing the idea of "using Twitter in university research", and after creating my own research list, I've turned Twitter into a platform for getting updates, voices, ideas, and inspiration that related to my research area. Similar things have also happened to my Facebook news feed, after clicking the "Like" button on the pages of some research institutions or networks, now there're always something interesting to read when I check the feeds. More importantly, through this way, I've found some great institutions and research centers that I was not quite familiar with before, and now I can subscribe either to their regular updates in Google Reader or to their newsletter for more information.

Turning the guilty SNS into a "research tool" is really a great step for me. Now academia becomes funner than ever, and relaxing is more than "wasting time".

The next step is to share and store. Several ways that I usually take include: sharing and starring on Google Reader, sharing on Facebook, retweeting and favoring on Twitter, and starring in my gmail inbox.  But I also need to put everything I found in different sources together and group them based on topics, so I use Delicious.com and Evernote, both of them can store and group web resources, and are capable of sharing with others. After creating several stacks on Delicious, I can group all the online information and sources I found accordingly, while keeping my Chrome bookmark bar tidy. It's also a great way to reach everything I need no matter which computer I'm using. 

Finally, something interesting I found on Twitter today: Istambul traffic visualization

Just for douban

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Moving away

I'm trying to turn this once "personal" blog into a place for writing in English, especially something related to my studies. So I finally moved all the past posts, all in Chinese, all about my personal feelings (some are really emotional), to another blog site. And all my past Chinese posts are there, from June 2005 to September 2010. I hope that is a good place to keep them, though I may not read them again.

Let's see what's gonna happen next.

To-do list isn't working for me

Yesterday I made a "to-do list" for myself, it's not quite an usual thing for me, 'cause I'm more preferring to make plan in my mind, before going to bed, or after waking up. But last night, I suddenly felt so stressful that I've got a bunch of things to be done by this weekend, though everything seems having been started, none of them looks like going to be successfully ended within these days. So I made plan, very detailed. I listed something like "19:00-20:00 update group doc; 20:00-21:00 reply TA mail; 21:00-23:00 finish at least 1/3 of final paper". It looks very workable, but the truth is, I did finish the first two as I planned, but when it came to the time for the paper, I turned my attention to something else, something also needs to be done but not that important.

I thought a "to-do list" could be a way for solving my procrastination. Actually it works, but not that much. I mean, without it, maybe I could not even finish the first two things on time, but I still can find excuse for myself to avoid the "big project". This is awful, especially when I can justify my behavior by doing something that is also on my list.

The good news is that everything is getting better than what it was a couple of weeks ago, but not good enough. Though I can see the progresses I made, they are not enough. Being in graduate school, procrastination can really kill me.

Address Is Approximate

This is absolutely amazing :)

"Environment" in Geography

This is an assignment for a class

Title: Elaborate on a place for "environment" in geography
Word limit: 400

Borrowing from Vidal de la Blache (1926), “environment” in geography is a “composite, capable of grouping and of holding together heterogeneous beings in mutual vital interrelationships”. To understand “environment” in geography, it is inevitably needed to put it in the relationships it holds with “beings”, especially the one with man, namely the human-environment relationship. This relationship is characterized by the constant interactions between human and environment: the adaptation of human and human’s adjustment on environment. In this case, in my opinion, “environment” in geography cannot be isolated from its interrelationship with human and must be understood within it; it could be viewed as the whole surroundings that around and interacting with human beings, and due to the interactions, it is not a fixed entity but a collection of floating elements, constantly changing over time. 

Here I intend to use a typical Chinese garden as an example to elaborate my opinion. The Humble Administrator Garden (Zhuozheng yuan), located in Suzhou, China, has gone through various transitions in its 502 years old history. At first, this place was suffered from soft land and pervading puddles, which made it not suitable for too many architectures. However, this environmental restriction motivated the designer to build the garden with water as the main body: most of the buildings were built around several ponds and linked with bridges. Hydrophilic vegetation was planted, and in order to express the fine taste of the garden owner, the planted vegetation was chosen based on its special meaning in Chinese culture. After the owner passed away, this garden was sold and divided by different owners for several times, each changed its design on the basis of the first version for their own uses. Then in 1950s, it was restored and opened for public. Nowadays, hundreds of tourists go to the garden to enjoy the beauty every day. The ingenious designs of windows, doors and bridges create several micro-scenes like putting people in a painting, and attract more and more to appreciate its uniqueness. 

Putting the “environment” into its relationship with human, the interaction first was building the garden under its original natural conditions, then was a series of changes over time and finally is people’s appreciation towards the scenes. And the “environment” has also been changed from a natural area to a synthesis of natural and man-made landscapes, a collection of changing elements surrounding and interacting with human. 

Reference

Vidal de la Blache, P. 1926. Meaning and aim of human geography. In Human geography: An essential anthology, ed. J. Agnew, D. Livingstone and A. Rogers, 181-191. Oxford/Malden, MA: Blackwell. Originally published in Principles of human geography, trans. M. T. Bingham, 3-24. London: Constable.

What's on my mind

I've nearly forgotten this place? What? Absolutely no! But I definitely don't know too much about what to write right now.

I've already got a personal blog, where I can put nonsenses, little stuff happened in my life, etc. So why I'm still keeping this one? Maybe because I do like the design, or maybe because I'm thinking about using this for some "serious" topic which I'm actually having no idea what should be.

Anyway, I'll try to use this place more often, though seems no one is actually reading. But this is helpful, that I can have the courage writing more.