Richard Crooks's Website
Other Stuff
Do you ever find that stuff just doesn't fit anywhere else? Well that's what this is. See I don't biology, data and canoe all the time, I like to rant, drink alcohol, be silly, cook and generally have an existance. This is stuff I do that doesn't fit anywhere else.
Sensible Things
Sensible things about useful and interesting topics that are interesting, thoughtful and generally useful and interesting to wider society. They also reflect interests I have that don't fit into the general categories of biology or canoeing.
Ontologies help making data science much easier, and greatly benefit both medicine and canoeing. But what are they and how do they do it?
A simple tool that extracts a reference from PubMed and formats it for use in documents and webpages without needing to use dedicated reference management software, which to be honest is better, but harder to use unless you have a lot of references that you use regularly.
I like gin. I have also made gin, and here you can read about some of my entirely sensible gin making exploits.
Insane Things
These things are expressions of my frustration with various aspects of wider society, and are slightly insane. I'm not sure if there's some cross-over between these are sensible things, because I guess one person's sensible is another's insane, right?
The block button, rather than being a thing that cowards use on social media, is actually the best button to use on social media.
People bemoan modern degrees, but also demand the education system teaches skills that are useful for the workplace. This is inconsistent.
People think because they have opinions they can get away with saying what they like. Often their opinions aren't even opinions, and even if they are, it's not a ticket to say anything without consequences.
You're not annoyed that celebrities share their opinions about subjects outside their expertise, you're jelous they have a larger platform than you.
Vast swathes of people forget that until the widespread availability of vaccines people, from all sections of society died from infectious disease. They refuse vaccines by raising safety concerns about implausible outcomes while overlooking real risks. This does the same thing for excuses not to eat vegetables.
Have you ever noticed that there are incredibly angry people on social media who have difficulty using various aspects of written language correctly? This script slightly mocks them by turning any piece of text into something they might have written.
I was buying and selling a bunch of stuff on the staff buying and selling notice board and thought I'd make my adverts a little bit more inventive than simply selling a chair. Read my silly small ads here!
Remember when there was that screenshot of Al Jazeera viewers laughing at a terrorist attack in London? Well this is how the same process can be used to make Bill Morneau look like a comedian.
Have you ever met up with a group of people, decided to order pizza, and instead of getting just your pizza, you get a slice of your pizza as well as slices of everyone else's unwanted pizzas because people think it's a buffet? Stop doing this!