New Year’s Resolutions

I’ll keep this short but wanted to get something down before too much time passes.  There is a lot to work toward for 2016.

Foremost, is finishing writing articles of all sorts.  In no particular order, although I know there is a definite order:

1. Minneapolis paper – DOM from the Mississippi (with S. Driver)
2. Compilation of papers for final thesis.
3. Odds and ends (Involvement in Satilla and earlier projects)
4. New directions (R software and LMMs master list)

This last part is in my further interest in the data analysis pipeline for mass spectra within the R programming language.  Data analysis of these sets, particular with interest to the globally collected and discussed datasets, can tell us more about the changes in composition that are to be expected with various perturbations to the natural movement and degradation of DOM.  And also the real challenge of compiling disparate data sets, derived from different extraction and analytical methods, with different sample compositions and with instruments of different capabilities.  This is a continual challenge to the humic sciences because the heterogeneity prevents instrument calibration and method validations for the wide difference in composition.

For the New Year, I want most of my software contributions to be open source and have used GitHub to begin doing that.  I hope to contribute to other projects as I work with R. My projects in software are, again in no order:

1. LMM algorithm (in C++) in R language package.
2. Contributing to package for DOM MS analysis.
3. Further analysis of multiple datasets.

I should have started this on a forward-looking trajectory, rather than back to re-analysis of old data.  So in that thought, my resolution is creating better partnerships with researchers looking into properties of complex substances to better understand their relation in chemical and biological system.  Reading much more (daily) is a start, and reaching out, staying open to opportunities and looking for gaps in current data is where the difference can be made.

I wanted to conclude by a simple list of some things (mostly non-science) I recall from 2015 that I enjoyed, and want to remind myself of for this year.

• Working with teens, particular robotics students preparing their paper submissions.
• Cooking a good meal.  Soups and chilis.  Farm fresh ingredients.
• Gardening (really my father) and taking items to the county fair.
• Watching my nephew and new niece. Helping kid’s art at Salina festival.
• Open development of software in GitHub, and learning some R.
• Spending time with family.  Brother’s law school graduation.  Pool time with nephew.  Sunday dinner with Grandma.  And others.