NaNoWriMo for Thesis?

It is almost November: National Novel Writing Month aka NaNoWriMo. The goal of this event is to write 50,000 words (about 175 pages) in one month, so it is really a strong push to get yourself to write. This could perhaps be a nice way to kickstart my PhD thesis! I am only halfway, so most of my research is not done, but I could already write everything around it (general introduction, background, motivation, related work, methods), and add some fictional results to get it going ;)  This could really help in getting a clear view of the final product, where I want to go, what I still need to do.

Of course other people already thought the same way, see inaDiWriMo and NaReWriMo. For 2010, there is a topic on the official forums that could be interesting: Genre: Academic nonfiction.

Chromodoro Beep

I love the Pomodoro Technique and the Chromodoro Chrome extension that supports it. But I don’t like the beep sound that Chromodoro uses to notify me. Fortunately there is a simple solution, that I’d like to share. How to change the Chromodoro beep sound:

1. Find chromodoro.js (it should be located in a subdirectory of the User Data for Chrome), and open it in a text editor like notepad.
2. Find the following piece: beep.swf
   and replace it by: beep.wav
   
3. Now put your own sound in the same directory as chromodoro.js, and name it beep.wav.

Note: if your sound is not a wav file, then replace .wav above with the correct file type.

A bit off topic for braingaming, but on topic for people who have to manage their own time, like PhD students :)

Researchers’ Night Nijmegen

We have been invited to demonstrate AlphaWoW and Mind the Sheep at the Researchers’ Night in Nijmegen this Friday. There will be interesting talks about BCI, neurofeedback, and brain research, and of course many cool demos.  Entrance fee is 7,50.