I am awake at 1 in the morning on Friday, a workday. I cannot sleep for reasons that I cannot put down in words here now, nor would you understand if I did.

My last actual post here was written about 9 years ago, several months after I graduated from Penn, several months into my job as a research fellow in Temasek Labs at NUS. So much has happened since then, so much has changed. The me who wrote the last post in 2010 would look at the me of today utterly confounded, wondering how I got there from here.

I'm a professor now, on the tenure track. I've gone through times of deep despair and times of soaring joy. Thinking back over the last nine years, I think I have Lived, and I am satisfied and proud that I have been able to do so.

Blogging is really old-fashioned, I know. But I look back on the posts I wrote a decade ago, and I feel fondly towards how I was then, and I feel glad that i have this record of Me in my 20s to look back on. I think I would like to start again, at this point in my life where things are in flux, where things are old, and new. Let's see how it goes.

nyt 8/12

Difficulty: *****/5




Yea, do not try this at home.

lat 08/10

Difficulty: **/5

lat 7/10 ("4x4")

Difficulty: ** to ***/5

lat 6/25

Difficulty: ****/5




hard-ish, i think, and not really the best puzzle i've made, but we live and learn.

lat 5/27

Difficulty: ***/5

lat 5/5

Difficulty: ***/5

nyt 4/21

Difficulty: *** (and a half?)/5




Clue for 36-Down was originally [Sub type?]. Guess the puzzle was hard enough already.

lat 3/26

Difficulty: ****/5




it's themeless, and toughish. and no, i have not suddenly become a republican.

notes:
* 55-Across was originally [Like some MRI scans]. Guess that was never going to fly.
* Clues that were vastly improved: 43-Down, 59-Across, 52-Down
* Original clues I preferred: 54-Down was [It has its points], and 42-Down [Pot dealer?]
* Clue that most betrays this puzzle as mine, if you know me at all: 10-Down

i am slightly embarrassed to admit that i'm addicted to angry birds.

lat 12/15

Difficulty: **/5




I guess it was only a matter of time before I decided to make a vaguely psych-related puzzle. As you might have guessed, 49-Across was originally a Hitchhiker's Guide related clue.

of course

singapore's salad days are over

we has data

well, 2 pilot subjects anyway, dr. fnir and RA #1. primary lesson learned: it is much grosser than one might imagine watching people spit into a tube. i have a little cubic container in which to store all my samples, which means i get to happily watch it fill up day by day like a pokedex, or one of those old panini sticker albums. will be slogging it out on my own for the next month, after which we will hopefully have RA #2 and an intern, whereupon i plan to devote myself to the careful study of epigenetics, and where in NUS to get the best cup of coffee.

more burger (thanks su-lin)

all i want for christmas

randall the enamel animal

this may have come from one of you guys, but since su-lin and i were talking about it today:

best burger ever

it's been a long time coming, but i think i'm finally going to start getting data in a couple of weeks. while it wasn't surprising how long and irritating the process of getting ready for this experiment was, it didn't make it any less painful to have to go through, and has certainly answered a lot of questions (in very minute detail) about why there's such a dearth of good science here despite the best efforts of the-powers-that-be.

anyway, i think i'll be in a more forgiving mood once subjects start streaming through the door. i'm aiming to start slow and accelerate to a clip of 40 subjects a week, which may not sound like that many to a behavioral psychologist, but for someone who's done imaging his whole career (i.e. me) is like having half the CBD come through the lab each day. still, it'll be nice to have busy work for a while, filing and macros and backups and lots of numbers in neat, straight columns.

Finale, Poulenc's "Les dialogues des Carmelites"

powerful stuff.

LAT 11/9

Difficulty: * (out of 5)




easy one, with thanks for justin for inspiring the theme.