Links and recommendations

1) This article by Brian Leiter on the State of the [Philosophy] Vocation is very interesting.

2) I never got into the Social Bookmarking stuff, but Sympoze looks interesting - "social bookmarking for philosophers".

3) I also have yet to really make the effort to use any reference archiving tool, but Zotero is a firefox plugin for that purpose, and as such I imagine it would be very handy for those who do.

Any advice on using referencing software? A word document with a list of everything I've read currently works well for pasting references into my work, as well as keeping track of articles in case I forget where I found something. Is there anything a more complex piece of software adds to this, and which I can keep on my USB stick? (I use more than two computers, so if it can't go on the stick, it's a real pain to use).

4) I've gotten back into programming recently.

Python is a brilliantly simple and clever language, and generally does everything a programming language should. The Pygame module makes using Python for anything graphical amazingly simple, though it might be a little slow for larger projects. Finally, Notepad++ is a nifty little editor, and it's compatible with almost any language you might want to write in, so it's nice to have a copy around anyway, for html, php, and so on.

Both python and pygame also have excellent documentation and tutorials for those who have never tried programming before. If you haven't, I'd recommend it. Programming is fun, and it's also a nice way to stretch your brain in your lunch break.