Post-Brexit bullsh*t

 A week ago, I bought a second-hand cassette deck on eBay, from a seller in Germany, for €59 (about £51). Given the model, this was a pretty good price. Shipping was quoted as €22 (£19) - OK. Then, the post-Brexit shit started to hit the fan.

First, eBay charged VAT at 20% on the purchase, as apparently they now have do for items bought from the EU for under £135. So, that's another £14.

Then the seller got in touch to say the courier had increased their prices as a result of the UK leaving the EU. So, that was another £11. 

Then, today, the courier got in contact to say they wouldn't deliver the parcel until I paid another £10 in import VAT and a £12 clearance fee. So, another £22.

All told, Brexit cost me an additional £47 on a item that cost £51. 

I did not vote for this. Those of you who did, welcome to the new world, I hope you feel it was all worth it.

h = 25

 My Google Scholar h-index just ticked over to 25; five months since the last uptick. Minorly faster steady progress ;-)

The Five Years of the Linux Desktop

 I've been using Linux exclusively - desktop, laptop, and server - for about five years now. It's been a really great experience, and it's been fun to see the world move in the same direction. Microsoft bought github, introduced WSL, and "loves Linux" now, apparently. Well, better than the "Linux is a cancer" MS view of old. We now teach R on a web server rather than SPSS on Windows, and test using OpenSesame on JATOS, rather than E-prime on Windows. I made some new friends at the local LUG and Tech Jam. It's been quite a ride. Looking forward to the next five years.

h = 24

 

Nine months after reaching 23, my Google Scholar h-index is now 24. The steady progress of this index continues.

Computers: 20 years on

Just added 32GB of memory to my home desktop, bringing the total to 40GB.  This is 300 times more memory than my top-end work desktop in 2000. And it's twice the size of that machine's hard drive.

Define 'Highly Cited'

It might be this:

LeCun, Y., Bottou, L., Bengio, Y., & Haffner, P. (1998). Gradient-based learning applied to document recognition. Proceedings of the IEEE, 86(11), 2278-2324.

This paper introduced convolutional (weight-sharing) networks - now popularly known as Deep Neural Networks - and showed they could be used in real-world problems. Cited 24,100 times, according to  Google Scholar (2020-01-29) - over 1,000 citations per year on average.

Oh and - psychologists take note - published in conference proceedings.

Not a one off. How about this conference paper. It's by Simonman & Zisserman, it's a development of the LeCun paper, it was published in 2009, and has averaged 5,500 citations per year.

h = 23

My Google scholar h-index just hit 23, about 8 months since the last rise. Steady progress, I guess...