January Resolution Review

Title	Submitted	Revision requested	Resubmitted	Accepted
"The Logic of Categorematic and Syncategorematic Infinity"	14 January 2014
"Modal Logic in the Metalogicon"	24 January 2014
"Medieval Destinations: Lumbini"	28 January 2014

Friday, January 31, 2014

Reading

Writing

• Back to AiML2 in the morning, until it was time to teach.
• After teaching, I so totally lost any mojo whatsoever to do real work, so I gave myself an afternoon for onomastic stuff.

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

• Last day of classes! Winter semester is over!

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Reading

• Lots more DMNES related reading. XQuery, XSLT, XPath, all these acronyms to learn...And, my god, are some of them boring. I very nearly fell asleep while reading about XSL-FO (something which I have decided I will never, ever use if I have any say in the matter).

Writing

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Reading

• PPC, "The Logic of Knowledge-Based Obligations", Synthese.
• Hilpinen, "Deontic Logic".
• Receive another DMNES-planning related email. Woo!

Writing

• Had a productive day working on AiML2. Really productive. I hardly got distracted at all.

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Day started off on the wrong foot with forgetting my keys at home. Arg. Set me back ~20 min. to bike home, get them, and bike back. It was a long day, with an evening talk meaning I was out at the office for about 11 hours all told.

Reading

• Kretzmann & Stump's translation of De Arte Obligatoria.
• Sought out what others have said about Paul of Venice and the syllogistic. Came across a review by Perreiah of Broadie's edition/trans. of a part of the LM, where P. suggests that the LM is not by PoV! I've never seen such a view before!
• Knuuttila, "The Medieval Background of Modern Modal Conceptions", Theoria 66, no. 2 (2001). [Did not have anything about deontic modalities in it.]
• Wolenski, "Deontic Logic and Possible Worlds: A Historical Sketch", Studia Logica 49, no. 2 (1990).

Writing

• Wrote my "Medieval Destinations: Lumbini" piece for TI and send it off.
• Finished the translation of the Logica Parva on syllogisms, though I'm unhappy with my translation of habetur reducendo.
• Returned to my second AiML paper. I hate trying to write the same three introductory paragraphs differently in each paper. Working on this led me to some web searches which lead me to dig through my "K" folder of papers, to find a few that I started re-reading. I actually made amazing progress on this paper today. Whoo!

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

• Read student responses (2 more came in over night.)

Conferences

• Evening talk at KJC.

Miscellaneous

• Ran errands while getting lunch.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Reading

• The DFD people suggested this reference, so I did my best to read the Hildenbrandt paper with googletranslate.

Writing

• I had some more thoughts on my Ratnakirti paper.
• Translated more of the Logica Parva. It may be boring, but at least it's easy! I went from one sentence translated to very nearly all translated over the course of the day. Not bad! I've got three items that I need to look up in DMLBS in order to finish.
• I then wrote a few more sentences in the PoV paper, but honestly, it's hard to get excited about the LP on syllogisms.

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

• Read student posts for this week. *sigh* We gave them a deadline of today, but as of 16:30, only one person had responded.

Conferences

Miscellaneous

• Sorted out travel to Nordmark scriptorium, and made plans for travel to ID scriptorium.
• Ran errands over lunch.
• Started making plans for Scotland in May.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Reading

Writing

• While in the shower I had some ideas about things to put in my post-Procida paper, so I wrote a bit during breakfast.

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Friday, January 24, 2014

Reading

• Read A. MacC. Armstrong's review of The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury by Daniel D. McGarry in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 25, Oct., 1956: 374-375

Writing

• Wrote another blog post at From the Editors.

Revising

• Spent all morning rewriting the citations in JoS for new venue -- and then changed my mind as to venue and had to convert them all back (side note: ARG!). But I sent it off again. I still think it's an interesting little paper, if emphasis on little.

Refereeing

Teaching

• Taught.

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Thursday, 23 January 2014

Gwen's back to daycare, I'm out at work, she didn't go to bed until 8:00pm and then woke up at 5:00 and didn't go back to sleep until 6:00 when we took her in bed with us. My throat is still sore and I'm running low on steam. I'm going to cut myself some slack today.

Reading

• Read Zanette 2006, which isn't necessarily directly related to the stuff I want to do in my Zipf paper, but was nonetheless quite interesting.
• Fox-Lasker 1983, which is about modern data sets and thus not very analogous.
• And then I fell into the rabbit hole that is googlebooks.

Writing

• Wrote a very small amount in Six Points and Zipf.

Revising

• I guess I can put this here. Well that was quick: RP wasn't interested in the JoS paper -- it was mostly a whim that caused me to send it there -- so I worked some on reformatting the references to resubmit elsewhere.

Refereeing

Teaching

• Read some supplementary material for Friday's class.

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Wednesday, 22 January 2014

Gwen's still home, and today it was my turn to be sick. Not much happened.

Reading

• Read more Malink. Have finally gotten to the good stuff! But "Barbara NXN and the Four Predicables" sounds like a warped children's story.
• Read a book review for my Zipf paper.

Writing

• Corrected some equations in the Zipf paper.

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

• Re-read material for Friday, and also set up the two forum posts for this week's and next week's responses.

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Change of plan for the rest of the week: Pretty sure I'm going to be home with Gwen, whom I expect to show signs of hand-foot-mouth disease tomorrow or Thursday. Oh well. Maybe I'll get some reading done.

Reading

• Read some more of Malink.

Writing

• Nope, not going to get anything significant done today, so I worked on my MED index for awhile. That requires little thought and allows frequent interruption.

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

Conferences

• Cluster talk, "What is Nāgārjuna refuting? New interpretations of some central concepts"

Miscellaneous

Monday, January 20, 2014

Reading

• After lunch I was feeling the usual Monday slump and wishing I just had something to read. Alas, I think Malinck is at home, so I returned to finish reading Ruffini which I'd started last week.
• I also went through a bunch of my JSTOR tabs, skimming articles and either deleting them or downloading them.
• This lead me to read D. Grafflin, "The Onomastics of Medieval South China: Patterned Naming in the Lang-Yeh and T'ai-Yüan Wang", Journal of the American Oriental Society 103, no. 2 (1983): 383-398.
• And after that, I read lots more on TEI and eXist-db.

Writing

• Some more DMNES emails. And, I suppose I should finally announce what that is: the Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources.
• So, there's this chapter I was asked to write months and months ago. The deadline was end of Dec. Um, yeah. Working on that now.
• Reading Ruffini of course lead me back to working on Zipf.

Revising

Refereeing

• Finished up my referee report for Res Philosophica and sent it off.
• Worked on the GPMR volume some.

Teaching

Conferences

Miscellaneous

• Paid for crown tourney reservation.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Reading

• Read and commented on a draft sent to me last night.
• Reread Burley on obligationes, and was perplexed not to find what I expected to find; then I read something more, and realized I was looking for the wrong thing.

Writing

• Since the structuralist paper is proceeding apace, I decided to spend some time setting up things for my other proposed paper for AiML.

Revising

Refereeing

• Began typing up my report for RP.

Teaching

• Reread material for today's class.
• Wrote a recommendation letter for a student.
• Attended class.

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Reading

• Olga Weijers, "The various kinds of disputation in the faculties of arts, theology, and law (c. 1200-c.1400).

Writing

• Returned to the structuralism paper, which I think I'm going to try to submit to AiML. Given that I never outlined papers I wrote in high school or for college English classes (I don't think I ever did for my philosophy ones either), it always amazes me when I actually find benefit in hand-writing an outline for a logic paper. It's generally nothing more than the major section headers, perhaps with a few subsection headers, and almost no notes, but it really is amazingly helpful. (No kidding.)
• Wrote a few more DMNES emails.
• Worked on the Nahuatl data.

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

• Read student responses for tomorrow.

Conferences

• Not really a conference, but tonight was a Jure Fixe, which swallowed up two hours.

Miscellaneous

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Reading

• Pérez-Ilzarbe, "Disputation and Logic in the Medieval Treatises De Modo Opponendi at Respondendi", Vivarium (2011).
• Read up on the DMLBS's specs.

Writing

• Wrote a few more DMNES-related emails.
• Wrote S 3.1 of the obligationes chapter, send it back to Catarina.
• Having completed that, I allowed myself to play with Nahuatl names the rest of the day.

Revising

Refereeing

• Some IEP work.

Teaching

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Having finished off the FotFS paper late last night, I decided to give myself a free day -- no pressure to work on the other two papers that have the most pressing deadlines.

Reading

• Read up on TEI and other DMNES related things. Sent off a few emails to people doing similarly-structured projects. Things are coming together!

Writing

• Oops, got a reference which caused me to have to update the FotFS paper. But that's a good thing, since when I went back to the submissions page, I found I hadn't actually clicked the final "submit" button. Ooopsx2.

Revising

Refereeing

• Read a paper for Res Philosophica, and made hand-written notes. Will try to type up the report tomorrow.

Teaching

Conferences

Miscellaneous

• Ran some errands over lunch.
• Talked with a guy from HRA for about half an hour.

Monday, January 13, 2014

Reading

• Internet was flaky for most of the afternoon, so nothing left to do but read. Decided on Ruffini, "The Commonality of Rare Names in Byzantine Egypt" (2006), got a few pages into it and had lots of interesting ideas.

Writing

• Revised DMNES proposal, and sent it off to Erik Decker. Time to find a tech person who can help us get started!
• Revised FotFS on the basis of Joel's comments. Rewrote conclusion. Submitted!
• Added some notes and thoughts and questions to Zipf.

Revising

Refereeing

• Wrote a JoLLI referee report.

Teaching

Conferences

Miscellaneous

• Filled out form to change bank accounts for my salary direct deposit. One wouldn't have thought this would be worth mentioning, except the form was 7 pages long and in German.
• Daycare wanted some pictures of our Christmas to put into Gwen's scrapbook, so I chose, printed, and cut out a selection.
• Went to the post office.
• Ordered the remainder of the DMBLS volumes I don't yet have, using my 25% off coupon!

Friday, January 10, 2013

Reading

Writing

• Some final proofreading and adding of Latin to FotFS.
• Since Joel was also proofreading and I wouldn't get his comments till the evening, I let myself work on my book on 15th C German bynames, which right now is so drafty, most of what's there is left-over HTMl formatting. Still, it'll only get closer to a usable state if I work on it.
• Treated myself to some DMNES proposal rewriting. I'd send it off, but it's 16:30 on a Friday afternoon...I'll wait until Monday.
• Nahuatl Nahuatl Nahuatl...
• After a bit of ragging from Catarina on FB, I also put in a paragraph or two into our joint chapter.

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

• Wrote slides for seminar.
• Taught.
• Bonus! Met with Birgit and Paddy and did class prep for next week and the week after. Hurrah.

Conferences

Miscellaneous

• Ran a few errands when getting lunch, since with Altes Hallenbad being closed, I'm having to go further afield for decent food. :( There's a limit to how often I want to get fried rice per week.

Thursday, January 9, 2013

Reading

• Simo Knuuttila & Anja Inkeri Lehtinen, "Plato in infinitum remisse incipit esse albus: New texts on the late medieval discussions on the concept of infinity in sophismata literature".

Writing

• FotFS. Printed and proofread, lots and lots of red...Got to a point where I could print it off to take home for Joel to read.
• Transcribed some more Nahuatl data.
• Dunno what put it into my mind today, but I went and revisited my John of Salisbury paper from nearly two years ago, and decided that it was not worth it to wait any longer to see if there'd be a proceedings volume from the conference. So, I did a bit of revision, found a journal, and send it off. January Goal Reached!

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

• Read student responses.

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Wednesday, January 8, 2013

Reading

Writing

• FotFS paper. Maybe tomorrow it will be done? I'm down to one todo and the conclusion left, though the entire thing needs to be read over start to finish to make sure it's sensible, not repetitious, not boring, etc.
• Returned to PoV LP trans., it's short enough that it might be useful/interesting to include as an appendix.
• I took a short break to transcribe 2 pages of Nahuatl names.

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

• It's that final 10% of the writing that's the worst, so I decided to spend some time this afternoon doing class prep -- reading the SEP article on inductive logic and writing my slides.

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Reading

• Since I made such good progress on my FotFS paper today, I rewarded myself with reading one of the random papers I've saved on my desktop just because it looked like it would be interesting: Colwyn Williamson, "Squares of Opposition", NDJFL (1972).

Writing

• Worked on FotFS paper. I might be able to finish it tomorrow; hopefully on Thursday.
• Worked on DMNES proposal (squee! When I met with Birgit this morning, she told me who in the digital humanities section I should talk to about database-y type stuff).

Revising

Refereeing

• It's a strange way to do it, but I think the most efficient thing to do is to invite myself to be a referee...

Teaching

• Met with Birgit to discuss this week's lecture.

Conferences

• Submitted my abstract to the 5th International Dharmakirti Conference

Miscellaneous

• Post-travel bag-emptying out.

Friday, January 3, 2013

Actually managed to get work done on the train to Coronation!

Reading

Writing

Revising

Refereeing

Teaching

• Read, for next week's seminar, Gillon, "Dharmakīrti and the Problem of Induction"
• Read, also for next week's seminar, Lasic, "Dharmakīrti and His Successors on the Determination of Causality"

Conferences

Miscellaneous

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Daycare is open! I am at my office! I am going to get work done!

Reading

Writing

• Wrote my next section in the obligationes chapter and sent it off to Catarina.
• Downloaded AiML 14 style files and started incorporating them into the structuralist paper. I've got 10 pages already; I need < 15. This may work out.
• Returned to FotFS paper, for which I've been given an extension until, say, Jan. 15. Would love to finish it up by Tues. or so. Made good progress today.

Revising

Refereeing

• Sent off some IEP referee reports.

Teaching

• Downloaded papers for next week -- maybe I can read them on the train tomorrow or Sunday.

Conferences

Miscellaneous

• I only lost a small amount of time to LOL my thesis.

a resolution

I'm going to do something this year I've never done before: Make a resolution.

As much as I enjoy my new colleagues and our life in Heidelberg, I found the transition from a huge department filled with logicians to a huge department where I am the only logician (even mitigated with an interim time in a small department with few logicians) difficult. It has sometimes been hard to stay motivated and enthused when not in the brownian motion of other people doing things similar to what I'm doing. (One reason why I've found conferences so necessary this past year: Every single one I went to I came back thrilled to be doing the work that I'm doing and wishing I could do more of it.) As a result, I was not nearly as productive as I could've been, and I made too many excuses for this fact.

In September, I started keeping this blog, a daily record of what I did at work each day, to try to keep myself accountable. This has helped, and on days when I was tired and discouraged about how little I'd been able to get done, it was useful to point to a concrete list of things that I accomplished, even if it was something as minor as "cleaned up all the extra paper on my desk" or "caught up on my email after a trip".

But I can do better, and the way for me to ensure this is to state my goals publicly and hold myself to them. I have a number of 3/4 finished papers -- some of which have been this way for more than a year. My list of "papers I want to write" gets added to more than things get taken off (because I've written them). I have done so much research on so many different topics in the last 1-2 years, and now it's time for me to make something of that, so my resolution this year is to submit 12 papers/submit 1 paper per month. The ultimate goal is 12 papers by the end of the year, while the short-term goal will be 1 per month. This will allow me to start with a new slate each month, and not worry about whether I reached the previous month's goal or not, but having the long-term goal will mean that just because I get one out in a month doesn't mean that I can then rest and relax, there's always impetus to get something else out to count towards the overall total.

I'll do my best to check-back at the end of each month with status reports.