Category: Blog
New paper: "Relating dynamic brain states to dynamic machine states: Human and machine solutions to the speech recognition problem"
Hey!
I just had a paper published in PLOS Computational Biology. It's on some work I did with the Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain at Cambridge University. In it, we used a machine model of speech recognition to map phonetic sensitivities in human auditory cortex using magnetoencephalography neuroimaging data.
The paper is open-access, so you can read it here.
If you're interested, you can read more about the kind of research I do over at my "professional" website.
Nate Harrison's audiovisual essays
A while ago I came across a widely-seen Youtube video about the history of the Amen breakbeat, which was a reposting of a recording of a 2004 documentary audio installation by artist Nate Harrison. It details the artist's view of the rise of the break, as well as what this might tell us about the effects of intellectual property on cultural development.
Can I Get An Amen? — Nate Harrison (2004)
Having enjoyed the piece's dry-yet-engaging style, as well as learning about such a specific cultural phenomenon in some detail, I sought out other pieces by the same artist. Luckily, they're posted on his online gallery, as well as on Archive.org. Several of them are somewhat-abstract video installations which are less interesting to me, but there are several other audiovisual essays which I have enjoyed, on various aspects on art, media and tools.
Cool Faith
Looking through a turn-of-the-century almanac of graphic design, I came across this absolute gem:
Hazel rule to delete ResearchGate pdf cover pages
I download a load of academic papers in as PDFs from ResearchGate, since that's often the only place a free version of a paper is available. Unfortunately, ResearchGate prepend downloaded PDFs with a branded cover page, which I obviously don't want.
On MacOS, it's easy enough to manually delete pages from a PDF using Preview. But with a bit of help from Hazel, it's possible to automate it.
Working as a postdoc at Lancaster University
I've just started a new job at Lancaster University, working as a postdoc in Louise Connell's lab. I'll be looking at the roles of linguistic representations and sensory simulations in human cognition. You can read more about the lab's research aims on its website.
Update: Louise has now moved to Maynooth University, and the old lab's page at Lancaster has ceased to exist. But you can easily find out the kind of things Louise's colleagues worked on at her new page.
Slogans
Trying to decide which slogans are best for my sinister anti-Trump/May placards.
Curtain
Curtain is a short, powerful game by Llaura Dreamfeel, available on their itch.io page.
I won't say too much about it, other than I played it about a year ago (after Danielle Riendeau recommended it on an episode of Idle Thumbs), and it's stayed with me for a long time since then. I really recommend it, though take note of content warnings on the website.
Sacramento
Sacramento is a lovely little game by Dziff, available on their itch.io page.
It's a little quiet, dreamy watercolour space of sun, wind and wildlife to explore, with accompaniment by Glass Body.
It's more than worth a dollar and 10 minutes of your time.
(via a Hannah Nicklin tweet)
OHBM 2016
Writing this report was one requirement of the travel grant which let me attend this conference. Having written and hyperlinked it up, I thought I'd post it in case it would be of interest to anyone. At least check out the videos!