Article Index

I’ve been blogging for quite some time, though not always consistently. I started writing on Blogspot.com in 2006 and over the years have documented my music and travel adventures. This continued throughout my PhD and in 2013 I migrated everything to a Weebly site. Now my website is generated via markdown + pandoc, and I plan to post content more regularly on topics related to linguistics.

2024

01 Feb: Some notes on LLMs in real-world contexts (Part 1)

Large language models (LLMs) seem to be all the rage these days, with the release of ChatGPT last year sparking a lot of conversation and interest. There have been quite a few efforts aimed at getting.. (more)

2023

18 Nov: Website redesign (markdown + pandoc)

As you might have observed, I recently updated my website. Although it’s been on my mind for awhile, I finally got around to it because I had a good template to follow and I’ve learned enough about bu.. (more)

08 Jun: Teaching ‘Language and the Computer’

Last semester I taught an introductory Natural Language Processing (NLP) course at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. I wrote a thread about it on Twitter (now X) but here is a slightly expa.. (more)

2022

23 Jan: In case you hadn’t noticed…

The pandemic has been a bit nuts. Add a new baby on top of a toddler to all the requisite adjustments required for managing the new expectations of COVID life, and you have a recipe for lack of produc.. (more)

2020

14 May: Automating the coding of implicit motives (Paper announcement)

The past week has been quite exciting, as we’ve been in the final stages of preparing a final manuscript on machine learning. I’ve been rather quiet about this collaboration since the end of 2017, wha.. (more)

2019

16 Sep: Computer-assisted syntactic reconstruction

Things have been quite busy over the last year or so, when I last posted. My wife and I moved to Zurich with our 4-month old, I helped organize a workshop on word order here at UZH, a proceedings volu.. (more)

12 Sep: ICAAL 7 Proceedings volume

!Picture Planting rice near Jowai, NE India At the end of last year the ICAAL 7 proceedings volume was published by University of Hawai’i Press as a special issue of the Journal of the South-East Asi.. (more)

2018

24 Jul: Fieldwork in Myanmar

I just returned from fieldwork in Myanmar, where we spent several days training staff and students at two different universities (Mandalay University and Yangon University of Foreign Languages) in fie.. (more)

21 Feb: Moving to Zurich

The last post was a bit of a brain dump to make sure I didn’t forget a few lessons I learned, in part because I knew I was quitting the job that involved doing ML type things. While I was working t.. (more)

2017

03 Dec: Neural Networks: Some lessons from text classification

I have been quite lax with posting here mainly because I have been working very hard on a difficult problem. My current job involves (among other things) trying to automate a psychological coding s.. (more)

18 Aug: Open Science, Data, and Linguistics

One of the concerns that has occupied my mind for that past few years is the question of data accessibility in the field of Linguistics. I am happy to announce that the data that underpins my gramm.. (more)

03 Aug: Bibliography Management (BibDesk)

In a previous post I discussed some of the benefits I discovered in using LaTeX with LyX as a front-end. Another extremely useful tool to learn how to use is a Bibliography manager. If you are like I.. (more)

16 Jun: LaTeX and LyX for (thesis) writing

One of the first things I did after passing my PhD confirmation exercise (like a qualifying exam in the USA) was to research the best way to write my thesis. As a side note, I use the word ‘thesis’.. (more)

23 May: Backing Up with Git and the Cloud

My next post was intended to be about streamlining a workflow by using various LaTeX authoring tools and a bibliography manager, but last week my Mac died. It is an older computer admittedly (from .. (more)

06 May: Analyze tone and plot: A Praat script for exploring, analyzing, and visualizing or plotting F0 (pitch) tracks

Along the lines of some of my previous posts on tools for linguistic analysis, I thought I’d post a quick update on a Praat script I’ve been working on. While not part of the series of posts I.. (more)

24 Apr: Using Git for Linguistics

Recently, I started to explore using Git to maintain and organize my data. This includes both the primary data I work from as a linguist and the various kinds of data I produce in the form of written .. (more)

12 Apr: Grammatical Analysis: the Transcriber-Toolbox workflow

This is the fourth installment in a series of blog posts where I discuss some of the tools I use for linguistic analysis. In a previous post I described the tools I use for processing and converting v.. (more)

26 Mar: Praat and scripts: an introduction

In this third post about linguistic tools, I’ll be discussing software that I use for acoustic analysis. Praat is one of the premier acoustic analysis tools available for computers. While there are pr.. (more)

13 Mar: Recording and Processing linguistic data

When you discuss doing language documentation and description, one of the first things to know is that you have to collect language data. The primary source of language data is people who speak the.. (more)

05 Mar: Linguistic Tools (Mac/PC)

When I started my PhD program in Linguistics (language documentation and description), I had some experience with linguistic analysis, but not to the degree that I had to learn in order to complete my.. (more)

01 Mar: Transcriber 1.5.2 released for El Capitan!

Just a quick blog post to mention that one of the tools I use in language documentation and description, Transcriber, is newly repackaged for use with OS X El Capitan! This is a big deal because previ.. (more)

23 Feb: 4 Practical Tips for Pursuing A PhD

Recently I’ve been thinking about what I wish I knew about PhD study before I began. When you start out to do a PhD, there are many things you have to learn that are not necessarily directly relate.. (more)

19 Feb: AI websites

This website is newly updated! I just redesigned the layout and will be making it a bit more writing-oriented over the coming days and weeks. The reason for this is because of a realization that while.. (more)

16 Feb: February 2017 Update

This is my first update in a long while, as I notice that this blog hasn’t been updated since 2015. I blame life and the ease of posting short updates on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Since my l.. (more)

2015

25 Dec: Hanvon e920 Review: Part 3

This is the final installment of my review of the Hanvon e920 (PLUS) - you can read Part 1 (my reasoning behind purchasing it) HERE and Part 2 (how I got it and changed the language mode) HERE. In.. (more)

22 Dec: Hanvon e920 Review: Part 2

!PictureHanvon e920 PLUS box This is Part 2 of my review of the Hanvon e920 e-reader (mine is the PLUS version, which I think is the second generation), Part 1 of which is HERE. When we left off I was.. (more)

20 Dec: Hanvon e920 Review: Part 1

The last year has been quite busy - I completed my PhD, got hired on a 1-year contract as a postdoctoral Research Fellow, and have since returned to India and done many other things. Needless to say, .. (more)

02 May: A Grammar of Pnar

!Picture The last few months I’ve been a bit lax in posting, in part because things have been quite busy. In January I presented at a workshop in Nijmegen, and most of February-April was spent edit.. (more)

2014

10 Dec: Hong Kong

!Picture Signs on a protest barrier. !Picture Protest at Central. !Picture Hong Kong street. After the Philippines I spent a couple of days in Singapore to relax, and the next stop was Hong Kong. My f.. (more)

03 Nov: Cebu update

!PictureWelcome to Cebu I promised a few updates of my travels, and I’m off to Indonesia this weekend, so I figured I’d better write a couple blog posts this week. First up: CEBU! This always reminds .. (more)

29 Oct: How to play ‘Breathe Deep’

I’ve been traveling a lot the last few weeks, holidaying in Cebu (where I learned how to scuba dive, which was fabulous) and Hong Kong, and I’m off to Indonesia next week. My church also released a ne.. (more)

01 Oct: Phuket holiday

A couple weekends ago I went to Phuket, Thailand with some friends. We found a really great deal and just decided to go for it. Initially it was just four, but then two friends wanted to come, and two.. (more)

17 Sep: An update and a Praat script

Well now that I’ve submitted my thesis I have been happily doing other things than writing. Among which, moving house (I’m staying with a friend for a couple months), planning adventures, hanging out .. (more)

31 Aug: Thesis Submitted!

!Picture I finally submitted my PhD thesis last week. It has been a crazy final month. The reason I had that deadline was that here in Singapore (at least at NTU) all PhD students are given 4 years of.. (more)

12 Aug: Silver Lake

I haven’t had much time for blogging recently, since it’s crunch time on my thesis. I was working even on the brief holiday (that’s ‘vacation’ for all you Americans) I took to the US for my brother’s .. (more)

29 Jul: Deictic Demonstratives (Contd.)

!Pnar deictic demonstratives In my last post I discussed the concept of deixis and illustrated deictic demonstratives in Pnar. Pnar’s deictic demonstrative system combines gender clitics with largel.. (more)

26 Jul: Deictic Demonstratives

At the Himalayan Languages Symposium last week I gave a talk about deixis. This grammatical feature is essentially ‘pointing’, and words or morphemes in language can point to various things, so gramma.. (more)

23 Jul: Andaman Languages

!Picture I mentioned that Dr. Anvita Abbi gave a great talk at the Himalayan Languages Symposium on her work on Great Andaman in the Indian Ocean. Here’s a map just to show you where that is. c.. (more)

18 Jul: Himalayan Languages Symposium

Yesterday afternoon I gave a talk at the Himalayan Languages Symposium, which was held this year at NTU. It’s the 20th meeting, and has generally focused on languages of the Himalayan region, which is.. (more)

06 Jul: Eureka! moments

Last week I had a Eureka!* moment. I love these moments - when you’ve been trying to figure out a problem (could be big, could be small) and it is frustrating you to no end, and then finally you brea.. (more)

29 Jun: What is a ‘Linguistic example’?

I realize that some of my posts haven’t been as clear as they could be. Specifically, I talked a lot about interlinearized texts, but what does that actually mean? Well, the thing about language is th.. (more)

26 Jun: World Cup Ghana!

So my team did not make it through to the next round. They played a good game against Portugal last night, but it just wasn’t good enough. Too much ball control, not enough finishing power. A ton of m.. (more)

25 Jun: Life vs. Computers

As I’ve been working with code to try and do some programming to get the computer to format my text properly, I’ve run into some issues. It’s got me thinking… You know how computers think… wait, y.. (more)

20 Jun: Linguistic Tools

This past week I’ve been attending a workshop on the linguistic notion of Affectedness that my co-supervisor Frantisek Kratochvil organized. It has really helped me think about possible ways this feat.. (more)

06 Apr: Open Mic at The Beast

I’m beginning to explore the local music scene here in Singapore, and this past Thursday I went to the open mic night at The Beast. The restaurant and bourbon bar has a great southern country feel wit.. (more)

02 Apr: Corpus

!Picture For the past week or so I’ve been working on getting my corpus of transcribed and translated texts into shape. The word corpus is from the Latin word meaning “body”, and in this case ref.. (more)

30 Mar: Chain REactions

This morning I was sweeping the kitchen while the washing machine was on and swept behind the machine, pulling the drain hose out of the way. A few minutes later, after taking out the trash, I returne.. (more)

27 Mar: Back to..?

!Picture So I’ve been lax for the past few months in updating this blog. I guess I’ve been a bit busy with other things. That’s my excuse anyway. A 500-page dissertation to write, an undocumented lang.. (more)