So it turns out the miracle cure to my strange results, the correction of a significant processing flaw and subsequent re-analysis, has failed to materialise. My current batch of results are a little better in some aspects, but overall they are still just as strange, and equally difficult to explain.

Rats.

I just hope things get better when I start combining the different sets of results I have. I mean, I can discount a lot of the strangeness as mistakes, but some of it is going to take real effort to deal with.

Not that my progress is as good as it used to be. I was doing so well, for so long, but this whole having to earn a crust thing really takes it out of you. If only there were some great blogging benefactor willing to pay me to just continue with my PhD. Or maybe give me the winning lottery numbers.

In other news, I'm helping an undergraduate with his project, which will in turn help me with my research. In some way. Probably. He is interested in emotion in text, and we are going to use small snippets from my blog corpus. I have, of course, asked my data suppliers for permission to use their text, which will of course be completely anonymised, and so far things are looking good. Everyone seems fairly keen to be able to help out in further academic work. Hopefully as it is an undergraduate project, there whole thing should be done and dusted within the next 8 months or so, so look out for details around here somewhere. Heck, for being of the project, I may even get credit on any publications.

Of course, helping takes more time out of my PhD research, but since my supervisor is his supervisor, I'm sure he understands.

So, having not been around blogland for a while I've just found a comment made on my post on Blogging Etiqutte from last month, asking where I came across the idea that cross-linking was considered etiquette. And you know what, I'm not sure.

I think bloggers may have mentioned it in correspondance while I was collecting data. I seem to recall a couple of bloggers mentioning casually that "you should link people who link you." I've also spent a lot of time reading over various blogs, and have come across a number of instances where people delink someone because they were angry at being delinked themselves. "If you don't link me I won't link you" sort of thing. So it was just the impression I got.

I didn't read it anywhere as a strict rule. I suppose etiquette is not about what you must do, but more about what you should do. Indeed it's not necessarily fair to expect someone to return the link.

I guess the way I've seen it recently is that for so long I couldn't, and explicitly stated that I wouldn't return any links, I guess i'm playing for blogger karma by returning any I know of now. Especially with fellow academics interested in weblogs. Links within a specific community are more than just polite, they can be a great help.

Does anyone have anyone have any strong thoughts on this? I'm sure if you look around there are many discussions on this, but I just don't have time to look right now...

Greetings. I know...I know, let me explain it like this:

+ Silver Cloud: Got a filler role basically doing annotation for a project here. It's decent money.
- Grey Lining: Earning money requires time, time that is taken away from my actual research work.

+ Silver Cloud: My most recent strange results may be explained by an error in the processing I made before analysis.
- Grey Lining: I made an error in the processing before my most recent linguistic analysis, so I'm going to have to do it again.

+ Silver Cloud: Before that point I was making great progress getting lots of data.
- Grey Lining: Unfortunately data needs to be written up, put in tables, discussed at length and explained in detail.

+ Silver Cloud: Coming up with a snazzy thing is cool
- Grey Lining: Being able to sustain it, not letting it become just a fad, is tough.