It has been two years since the blog's first post, which was neither interesting nor informative. Since then, the blog has become unstoppable. Not unstoppable in the Michael Jordan in the NBA Playoffs kind of way, but in the sense that momentum makes it difficult to stop posting. Until that time comes, here are summary … Continue reading A Blog in Motion
Category: Writing
Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh!t
Although far removed from earthquake engineering and academic writing, we can learn a lot from writers of advertising and fiction. The most important lesson I've learned is that nobody wants to read your shit. Steven Pressfield wrote an entire book about it, but I'm pretty sure the phrase was around long before the book. https://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Wants-Read-Your-Sh-ebook/dp/B01GZ1TJBI … Continue reading Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh!t
Random Bullets on Blogging
It's 2021. So, why blog when peak blogging was like 2007? Here are some random bullets on why blogging works for me. The more you write, the more ideas you generate. Usually it's ideas for more blog posts, but sometimes it's new ideas for research.Blog posts have a direct, conversational tone. Like I'm talking with … Continue reading Random Bullets on Blogging
Go Cite Yourself
Metric-driven academia, with its focus on h-indices and impact factors, can lead to shady behaviors like citation cartels and publication bounties. Superfluous self-citations are also shady, but a few self-citations are natural when developing a line of research. So, go ahead and take a selfie. https://twitter.com/mikusscott/status/975382276434378752 Think of the baristas at your local coffee shop. … Continue reading Go Cite Yourself
No Framework for Old Men
You've run a bunch of OpenSees analyses with Concrete23 and developed some fragility functions. Now you need to write about it. This blog occasionally addresses academic writing, e.g., here and here. While there's a lot of good (and bad) writing advice out there, some of the best advice comes from outside engineering. For example, I … Continue reading No Framework for Old Men
How to Cite a Blog Post
How to cite OpenSees was one of the blog's first posts. Several posts have been made since. Most of them non-sense, but there's a couple that have enough technical content to be citation-worthy. Based on its style guide, ASCE treats blog posts like a website where you provide the author, title and publication year of … Continue reading How to Cite a Blog Post
You Know You’ll Have to Write About It
The odds are, if you're running OpenSees analyses, you're going to write about it, whether it's a thesis/dissertation, technical report, funding proposal, conference paper, or journal article. Several writing books are available and some are very good. One book that I've found useful is Becoming an Academic Writer by Patricia Goodson. The title may sound … Continue reading You Know You’ll Have to Write About It
Glenn Holcomb, The Prof.
The Glenn Willis Holcomb Professorship in Structural Engineering was established at Oregon State University (OSU) in 2011 through a gift from the estate of Col. Roy C. Edgerton. While Col. Edgerton had an impressive civil engineering career, this post will focus on "The Prof." Glenn Holcomb joined the faculty at OSU in 1920 (when OSU … Continue reading Glenn Holcomb, The Prof.
Thoughts After a Year of Blogging
Here are some random thoughts from the blog's first year. Prior to my first post, which was insubstantial and lame, I came up with about 45 ideas for posts of actual substance and saved them in my Drafts folder. Some of the ideas were, and still are, junk and will never be published. But, even … Continue reading Thoughts After a Year of Blogging
Where Is Eastchester?
I often mention Eastchester in posts, referring to a conversation with "a colleague in Eastchester" or showing an example from "a class I teach in Eastchester". But where is Eastchester? You won't find it on any map of the US Pacific Northwest. Eastchester is the home of fictional Cascadia College in Bernard Malamud's novel A … Continue reading Where Is Eastchester?
