Devin Berg 
@drb@scholar.social
- Keybase
- devinberg
- Director
- @engrxiv
- Non-profit
- https://www.openengr.com/
- Website
- https://www.devinberg.com
- Support
- https://ko-fi.com/devinb
Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Working to make engineering knowledge and education more accessible.
Joined Jan 2018
My phone keeps complaining about low storage space. I've deleted several apps, moved others to the SD card, and deleted all photos/videos that are backed up. Still something sucks up the available internal space. Really trying to avoid getting a new phone!
Devin Berg
boosted
boosted
2020 is coming to a close, finally! And it's been a year at Engineering Archive.
grading, coworkers
When you grade the final report honestly using the common rubric and your colleague teaching the other section decides to just give everyone perfect scores. 😒
email, MS Outlook question
Anyone know of an easy way that I can compose and send an email through Outlook without actually having to see my inbox? Bonus if it is from the web interface and not the desktop app.
Key benefit of an online semester: being able to watch my students' final presentations on 1.5 or 2x playback speed. 
scheduling question, WhenIsGood
Dear users of WhenIsGood: When you fill one of those out, are you filling out the limits of your availability to include the duration of the meeting or the limits of your availability for the meeting start time?
For example, if 3pm is a slot on the poll for a 1 hour meeting and I have a conflict at 3:30, do I select 3pm because my availability goes up until 3p or not because a meeting that starts at 3p wouldn't work?
Citation gaming, Google Scholar link
@jaranta @bgcarlisle @vickysteeves I came across it because the person submitted a preprint to my server citing his own work several dozen times. Digging in a little further, it looked like a combination of using preprints and just a large group of people citing each other. Many in journal published works.
Citation gaming, Google Scholar link
@bgcarlisle @vickysteeves my favorite part was that if you looked into some of the papers you'd find one from like 2015 which had maybe a small handful of citations per year until 2020 when it was suddenly cited 60 times. That would be a rock star level of being 'discovered'.
Citation gaming, Google Scholar link
@bgcarlisle @vickysteeves basically someone with around 100-150 citations per years for 2016-2019, then 950 citations so far in 2020.
Citation gaming, Google Scholar link
@bgcarlisle
I did call him out on it so maybe he deleted?
@vickysteeves
Citation gaming, Google Scholar link
In case you are wondering what it looks like when someone decides to engage in citation gaming. 
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=7lKZY1MAAAAJ
COVID mention
Today my department chair told us he is scheduling an in-person strategic planning meeting for next month shortly after he told us that he recently tested COVID positive.
56 videos (about 9.5 hours) later, I've completed all of the videos for one of my courses!
@Cyborgneticz but... did you send it?
language, people
Sometimes you find someone who would be an ideal collaborator for a project you've been wanting to work on. Then you discover that they are kind of a huge dickhead.
Maybe I'll work on some stuff for @engrxiv. Can't be furloughed from work you don't get paid for!
Furlough day means doing some work around the house and contemplating the barrage of email I'll have to deal with tomorrow.
home ownership, mortgage
Refinanced out mortgage today to a 15 year at 1.875%!
Will save us around $90,000 over the life of the loan.
Ugh, tried to upgrade my server's version of PeerTube and something went wrong. It completely wiped the existing install and now the backup won't restore and I can't successfully complete a fresh install either.
email, work/life balance
I've been trying to do a better job of staying off of work email on the weekends. Of course this now means that I've come to dread Monday mornings and the first look at my computer.
- Keybase
- devinberg
- Director
- @engrxiv
- Non-profit
- https://www.openengr.com/
- Website
- https://www.devinberg.com
- Support
- https://ko-fi.com/devinb
Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Working to make engineering knowledge and education more accessible.
Joined Jan 2018
