How I Make Decisions, Goals for JoVE

Let’s talk about making decisions.  Cause I get to phofphelesziz…  (dude next to me at Tosca suggested “proselytize”…  that’s almost the word, though not quite…  Gah!  Where is Fitzpatrick when you need him?!)

First, a very important question: What do I want?

Simple: I want to be happy 1) personally and 2) professionally.  Both must fit within certain constraints.  What are they?

Constraint 1: Regret

When faced with any difficult decision, I ask: “What will I regret in the future?”  That is, wa-a-a-ay out in the future, assuming that I grow old without growing senile.  All minutiae promptly crumbles off the core often clearing the path to a decision.

Learning Ruby

Learning Ruby, using this tutorial (thanks Pascal).  Recently learned about SASS (Seriuosly Awesome StyleSheets).

Reading

Reading a paper call Eye Movements in Reading and Information Processing: 20 Years of Research (published in 1998).  Gonna use this thing to take notes. 

• It being 11 years old seems a bit old, but perhaps most of the interesting stuff was found early on?
• Basic terminology:

• Saccade – when eye moves from looking at point A to point B

• Duration of a saccade related to distance covered: 2º take 30ms, 5º take 40-50ms
• saccade latency – saccade a motor movement –> latency – 150-170ms.

• separate process: decision on when and where to move eyes
• evidence: cognitive processes can influence latency
• gap effect – if fixation point disappears before appearance of target, latency goes down

global center of gravity effect – given two objects, first saccade goes between them.  Position related to “weight” of objects (closer to heavier).