several half-truths, and one blatant, unrepenting lie about my recent whereabouts

Apparently time does a thing that is much like flying. Seems like just yesterday I was sitting here in this chair, sipping on martinis, and pleasantly humming old show tunes while cranking out several high-quality blog posts an hour a mediocre blog post every week or two. But then! Then I got distracted! And blinked! And fell asleep in my chair! And then when I looked up again, 8 months had passed! With no blog posts!

Granted, on the Badness Scale, which runs from 1 to Imminent Apocalypse, this one clocks in at a solid 1.04. But still, eight months is a long time to be gone–about 3,000 internet years. So I figured I’d write a short post about the events of the past eight months before setting about the business of trying (and perhaps failing) to post here more regularly. Also, to keep things interesting, I’ve thrown in one fake bullet. See if you can spot the impostor.

• I started my own lab! You can tell it’s a completely legitimate scientific operation because it has (a) a fancy new website, (b) other members besides me (some of whom I admittedly had to coerce into ‘joining’), and (c) weekly meetings. (As far as I can tell, these are all the necessary requirements for official labhood.) I decided to call my very legitimate scientific lab the Psychoinformatics Lab. Partly because I like how it sounds, and partly because it’s vaguely descriptive of the research I do. But mostly because it results in a catchy abbreviation: PILab. (It’s pronounced Pieeeeeeeeeee lab–the last 10 e’s are silent.)
• I’ve been slowly writing and re-writing the Neurosynth codebase. Neurosynth is a thing made out of software that lets neuroimaging researchers very crudely stitch together one giant brain image out of other smaller brain images. It’s kind of like a collage, except that unlike most collages, in this case the sum is usually not more than its parts. In fact, the sum tends to look a lot like its parts. In any case, with some hard work and a very large serving of good luck, I managed to land a R01 grant from the NIH last summer, which will allow me to continue stitching images for a few more years. From my perspective, this is a very good thing, for two reasons. FIrst, because it means I’m not unemployed right now (I’m a big fan of employment, you see); and secondly, because I’m finding the stitching surprisingly enjoyable. If you enjoy stitching software into brain images, please help out.
• I published a bunch of papers in 2012, so, according to my CV at least, it was a good year for me professionally. Actually, I think it was a deceptively good year–meaning, I don’t think I did any more work than I did in previous years, but various factors (old projects coming to fruition, a bunch of papers all getting accepted at the same time, etc.) conspired to produce more publications in 2012. This kind of stuff has a tendency to balance out in fairly short order though, so I fully expect to rack up a grand total of zero publications in 2013.
• I went to Iceland! And England! And France! And Germany! And the Netherlands! And Canada! And Austin, Texas! Plus some other places. I know many people spend a lot of their time on the road and think hopping across various oceans is no big deal, but, well, it is to me, so BACK OFF. Anyway, it’s been nice to have the opportunity to travel more. And to combine business and pleasure. I am not one of those people–I think you call them ‘sane’–who prefer to keep their work life and their personal life cleanly compartmentalized, and try to cram all their work into specific parts of the year and then save a few days or weeks here and there to do nothing but roll around on the beach or ski down frighteningly tall mountains. I find I’m happiest when I get to spend one part of the day giving a talk or meeting with some people to discuss the way the edges of the brain blur when you shake your head, and then another part of the day roaming around De Jordaan asking passers-by, in a stilted Dutch, “where can I find some more of those baby cheeses?”
• On a more personal note (as the archives of this blog will attest, I have no shame when it comes to publicly divulging embarrassing personal details), my wife and I celebrated our fifth anniversary a few weeks ago. I think this one is called the congratulations, you haven’t killed each other yet! anniversary. Next up: the ten year anniversary, also known as the but seriously, how are you both still alive? decennial. Fortunately we’re not particularly sentimental people, so we celebrated our wooden achievement with some sushi, some sake, and only 500 of our closest friends an early bedtime (no, seriously–we went to bed early; that’s not a euphemism for anything).
• I contracted a bad case of vampirism while doing some prospecting work in the Yukon last summer. The details are a little bit sketchy, but I have a vague suspicion it happened on that one occasion when I was out gold panning in the middle of the night under a full moon and was brutally attacked by a man-sized bat that bit me several times on the neck. At least, that’s my best guess. But, whatever–now that my disease is in full bloom, it’s not so bad any more. I’ve become mostly nocturnal, and I have to snack on the blood of an unsuspecting undergraduate student once every month or two to keep from wasting away. But it seems like a small price to pay in return for eternal life, superhuman strength, and really pasty skin.
• Overall, I’m enjoying myself quite a bit. I recently read somewhere that people are, on average, happiest in their 30s. I also recently read somewhere else that people are, on average, least happy in their 30s. I resolve this apparent contradiction by simply opting to believe the first thing, because in my estimation, I am, on average, happiest in my 30s.

Ok, enough self-indulgent rambling. Looking over this list, it wasn’t even a very eventful eight months, so I really have no excuse for dropping the ball on this blogging thing. I will now attempt to resume posting one to two posts a month about brain imaging, correlograms, and schweizel units. This might be a good cue for you to hit the UNSUBSCRIBE button.