Blog

Adoro Karnak, mas nem sempre consigo entender as misturas de referências de algumas de suas músicas e a música Cala a boca, menina (do primeiro cd da banda, Karnak, de 1994) é um desses casos.

A música foi gravada pela primeira vez por Dorival Caymmi, mas não é de sua autoria. Aparentemente, trata-se de um canto tradicional de capoeira. A colagem psicodélica do Karnak começa com a leitura (de arrepiar os pelos do cu, como diria Almodovar) de um trecho de um poema de Álvaro de Campos (heterônimo de Fernando Pessoa) na voz de Antonio Abujamra. Segue com a participação vocal de Tom Zé quase explicando o que seria cabula (palavra mencionada na letra da música) e termina com a voz de Marisa Orth ao fundo em uma aparente briga conjugal, lembrando o vocal feminino enfurecido am algumas das músicas de Itamar Assumpção.

Desisti de colocar links para todas as referências da música (tem outras que não inclui aqui por não ter entendido). Fica apenas o som e que a curiosidade de cada um faça o resto do trabalho.

Recently, I visited Caernarfon castle and it was the most impressive castle I have visited in the UK.

It is located in Caernarfon, north Wales. The access by train is not simple, but it worth the trip!

If you go for it, I recommend to combine this visit with Conwy (another small walled welsh city with a beautiful castle - about 40 minutes away from Caernarfon) and Chester (a English walled city packed with well preserved Tudor houses - about 50 minutes away from Conwy).

York is the kind of city that I recommend every time some friend comes from Brazil to visit me in Nottingham. The city is lovely, the streets are picturesque, the walk in the walls is very pleasant, the minster is impressive and there are a range of goods museums available (even though I did not like the rail museum - I apparently am not a train person).

If you are going there, I strongly recommend a visit to Shambles Kitchen, a local independent small "restaurant" located at the end of the famous Shambles street. The menu is reduced, but the two sandwiches I tried there (pulled pork and home-made pastrami) were really good!

The place is small, so not much seats available and do not expect anything special or fantastic, just very good sandwiches for a quick and relatively cheap bite.

If you are starting a more "professional" academic journey, as a master or PhD student, I strongly recommend that you use a reference manager to help you organize and keep track of the things you read.

The two main roles of a reference manager are: a) help you organize papers and books you read and b) facilitate citation and referencing when producing your own text. The most common options I know are EndNote, Mendeley and Zotero. The first is paid and proprietary. The second is free (of charge) but not open source (although very friendly with users). The latter is free (of charge) and open source, so it is my choice!

Below, I will present basic steps to set up Zotero, recommend some good practices, offer some specific tips that are useful for me and, finally, make some comments on advanced features.

The only limitation that is worth mentioning is the fact that Zotero does not have a built-in pdf reader, as Mendeley (I do not know about EndNote). So, every time you open a PDF stored on your collection, Zotero launches the reader on your system and you have to make notes, highlightings and annotations in it. I actually prefer this way (I like my PDF reader - Okular), but some people may prefer a built-in reader to stay always inside the same environment.

Most of the info in this post is also on this pdf that I used in a presentation at the 2017 PGR Conference - School of Education, University of Nottingham. Feel free to use and distribute it :)

Before the instructions, some comments on the interface. On the left you have the organizational features: collections (similar to folders) and list of tags (on the bottom). On the middle you have your entries (each entry can have sub-items such as the actual pdf file, notes written on zotero, images, etc). On the right you can see the metadata of the entry selected in the middle column (basic info such as authors, title, journal, etc), notes (you can use this features to attach your comments on the entry for instance), tags and a list of related papers. Note that Zotero can fill the basic info for you, but the other tabs have to the generated by you.

Setting it up

1. Download and install it;
2. Go to Tools → Add-ons → Extensions, and activate the integration with LibreOffice or Word;
3. Go to Edit → Preference → Sync, and create an account to be able to use groups and access your references in different devices;
4. Go to Edit → Preference → PDF Indexing, and install the plugin that enables Zotero to get metadata from PDF files;
5. Go to Edit → Preference → Cite, and mark Use classic Citation Dialog to have access to more options when adding a citation on LibreOffice or Word. I really think this is better than the "modern view";
6. Create a basic set of Collections (in the column on the left), such as “For the future”, “Unread”, “Favourite”, "Thesis", etc;
7. Decide if you are going to save all your pdfs in Zotero or not. The advantage of using Zotero for that is that you can easily find the pdf once you found the entry. The disadvantage is that the way Zotero organize the files is not so intuitive, so it is a bit complicated to find a pdf without Zotero.

Using it

The three ways to add a source are:

1. Using unique IDs, such as DOI or ISSN (click on the wand button). By far the easiest way and recommended if you plan to collaborate;
2. Dragging and dropping a PDF into the software (then, use the option Extract metadata from pdf after right-clicking the pdf). It does not work sometimes (it depends on how the pdf was generated);
3. Copying (control+C) the bibtex metadata (from Google Scholar, for instance) and using the option File → Import from Clipboard. Most websites offers bibtex format, but sometimes it is not complete (specially on Google Scholar).

In terms of organization, I recommend to use lots of tags (easier to combine) and be more selective with the Collections. Finally, check regularly the “Duplicated Items” collection to avoid surprise in the future when writing.

Specific tip

This is a suggestion I read online a long time ago and found very useful during my PhD.

Zotero allows you to create collections and subcollections, which can be flexibly reorganized and renamed according to your wishes. My suggestions is: create a structure of collections that mimics the structure of your thesis. Of course you are going to change your mind during the process, but you can reorganize the collections as well to keep some resemblance.

I found this useful to recollect in the future, when you start to actually write up your thesis, the papers you read in the beginning of your research. So, when you get to your Methods section, let's say, you can check the references on your Methods collections. This way, you do not have to rely on your memory.

Advanced features

Zotero's Advanced Search is extremely powerful, allowing you to create searches combining collections, tags, search on all the fields of an entry with regular word searches. Also, it allows you to save the searches in case you want to use them in the future. This can be very powerful if well utilized.

Also, Zotero organizes the metadata in a readable and intelligible database. That is the part I love about open source! If you need to fiddle with the metadata in a way that is not supported by the software, you can open this file using any database tool and read it! And script it!