Wait, Colorado?

_DSC8545.jpg, originally uploaded by kcmckell.

Originally published Monday, February 22, 2010.

I could have sworn that URL thingy up in the top of my browser says “hawaii.edu”, right?

Well, it’s true. I am a bona fide graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. That does not mean, however, that I spend all my time there. Case in point: This semester, I am living in Boulder, Colorado doing research under the auspices of “Visiting Researcher” and/or “Campus Guest.”

There are several reasons why a graduate student may want to spend some time away from his or her home institution. If the research is “portable” enough, a change of scenery may increase productivity if one goes somewhere with fewer distractions such as friends, family, and other non-academic commitments.

There are potential long term benefits as well. Working in different locations will only broaden the pool of colleagues that you know. While making new friends is always exciting, one never quite knows where future collaborations will come from, so knowing more---and different---people is a plus. Further, in this world of social networking on steroids (now there’s a Google hit just waiting to happen), we can maintain contacts like never before.

Lastly (and this plays into my love of travel), if one is lucky enough to land a job at an institution that grants sabbaticals---almost unheard of in industry---your opportunities for extended travel reduce to once every seven or ten years. Thus, why not get it in when you can?

Stay warm,

Clay

New Site!

Originally posted Friday, February 19, 2010

Welcome to my newly redesigned website!

After some minor---but persistent---ridicule, the old pure-html-written-in-notepad site gets retired today. To replace it, I’ve drawn up my first site using iWeb 3.0. Given that my previous site building experience was solely text-based, I have to say that this is a step up. However, I am not naive enough to think that this is the end-all of site builders.

Actually this is primarily a test to see whether iWeb could handle a larger task (more on that later). In the end, I don’t think this will be my go-to application to build complicated customized websites. However, it should be just fine for keeping this site up and running.

I would love to get your feedback on the redesign, but I can only enable comments if I host the site through MobileMe (lame). In the end, you’ll have to either be mute or reach me on Facebook or the like.

Cheers

-Clay