James A Campbell
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rtbecard.bsky.social
James A Campbell
@rtbecard.bsky.social
(he/him) Former bird dude, current fish guy; currently based in Berlin. I'm into ecology, stats, bioacoustics, and artificial light.

Currently working as part of this ETN: https://www.msca-ribes.eu/
Is anyone old enough to remember how videogame piracy protection worked in like 1994? On my Amiga, to play "Indiana jones", I had to open the instruction manual to the stated page and read off a code.

This is basically how the "new" 2-factor authentication works at Freie University (Berlin) now...
September 29, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Has anyone heard of "The Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Sciences"... reviewing job applications and this journal came up at least twice...

Is this a sketchy predatory journal? Or is it a legit remote sensing journal with a weirdly specific name?

#GIS
September 25, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Just discovered the subreddit r/AdamDriverCats
September 9, 2025 at 12:24 PM
My google newsfeed was already like 90% grocery store tabloids... But now it's AI boosted grocery store tabloid trash 😮‍💨
August 25, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Last Aquatic Noise conf. post...

Slide from John Potter's keynote.

Like 9/10 ppl see only squares in this image... But in cultures where they live in round huts surrounded by round livestock fences, most of them can only see circles.

Yes, I promise there are infact circles in this image...
July 4, 2025 at 8:22 PM
A depressing closing, aquatic noise conference (Prague). #bioacoustics #academiclife

Discussion on the confrnc's past funding from US agencies and how it's gone for the foreseeable future.

Next conf will need to signif cut costs and there are discussions on alternate funding models.
July 4, 2025 at 7:15 PM
Best poster at #AN2025. Tillman Spellauge used lasers to measure the resonance frequency of superficial sensory hair cells on snapping shrimp.

He showed the hairs are sensitive to sounds around 2kHz. This supports previous observations that they can hear *without* their statocysts (i.e. ears).
July 2, 2025 at 8:15 AM
#AN2025 conference, Prague: William Wu just presented some underwater measures we made in the river Spree, Berlin. The spectrogram shows what a passing ubahn sounds like from the perspective of a fish in the Spree. #bioacoustics

(Repost as i wrote the wrong last name for William the first time...🤦)
June 30, 2025 at 10:21 PM
(1/3) Johannes Baltzer (i believe?) presents the most beautiful example of modal dispersion i have ever seen.

A seimsic airgun recorded at a far distance. (See thread)

#bioacoustics #AN2025
June 30, 2025 at 10:16 PM
I know I'm out of touch from most of society with my hatred for all things AI...

...but if there is 1 place on the internet I expect to read/listen to human beings, it would be the fucking github documentation page for open source bioacoustic analysis software.
June 24, 2025 at 10:45 PM
If I wanted to reproduce this excellent figure (Bucker 1964) in my own paper, what would be the proper etiquette?

Can I just remake a high-res version, then mention in the caption its a remake of Bucker 1964, or are there more complex copy-right issues here?
June 20, 2025 at 11:31 PM
I want to give a shout-out to modern CSV. It reads and edits csv files... and *NOTHING* else.

This means no stupid errors in your csv files due to formatting you never asked for --- yes, you can go to straight to hell excel auto date formatting! #rstats #academiclife

www.moderncsv.com
June 18, 2025 at 1:13 PM
New #FishSci #AcousticTelemetry positioning paper: PMC-TOA positioning.

I used adaptive importance sampling & mixture distributions to position fish in environments prone to tag reflections. Mixed with post-processing, this gives great tracks!

doi.org/10.1111/2041...
March 17, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Just discovered r/aww. Amazing. www.reddit.com/r/aww/s/St3k...
March 16, 2025 at 11:32 PM
On behalf of Canada, I'd like to apologize to all Dutch ppl...

I had no idea we culturally appropriated your beloved stroop waffles. In typical fashion, it seems like we just added maple syrup and called it Canadian (which honestly sounds like an upgrade).
March 12, 2025 at 9:09 PM
Very happy to read my institute newsletter this morning and see IGB Berlin [@leibnizigb.bsky.social] has stopped posting on twitter.
January 13, 2025 at 10:58 AM
Bavarian festive junk food i spotted in a small town grocery store. Pretzel shaped salami, with very... traditional male targeted advertising.
December 23, 2024 at 4:39 PM
I've been using jetbrains mono, and absolutely fell in love with it. Wonderful ligatures, and I can squeeze so much code on my screen while remaining easily readable.

I'm also aware of fira code. Curious to know if anyone knows of other code-friendly mono fonts out there? #R #Rstats
December 17, 2024 at 11:58 AM
Does anybody else use makefiles in their #R / #RStats analysis workflows? I'm obsessed with them... huge time saver when you have large collections of dependent scripts.

Modify your your code, press build, and all outputs are automatically updated.

I wish I figured this out years ago...
December 9, 2024 at 12:55 PM
I feel like dark times are ahead for academic writing...

I have never once googled chatgpt... But google autocomplete is assuming i want to write my thesis with it!?

How many students had to ask this for it to show up in my autocorrect list?
November 20, 2024 at 7:50 PM
For biologists wondering why understanding the physics is relevant: Here is a spectrogram recording of a seismic air gun (see alt txt). The "J" shape is a result of modal dispersion, a consequence of normal mode propagation.
October 23, 2024 at 3:13 PM
#Innovasea president on why they don't sell open protocol receivers to north america: it would be too confusing for customers... 🤔

The panel discussion at #ETN2024 was transcribed and should be available at some point.

#fishsci #fishsky #acoustictelemetry
October 17, 2024 at 10:03 AM
Jelger Elings presents the "good intentions" of the upcoming Swiss telemetry network at the #ETN2024 conference in Spain.

#RIBES #FishSci #Fishsky
October 16, 2024 at 12:53 PM
For the sake of my home-office mental health, i take occasional r/chonkers breaks through the workday.

This is peak internet.
September 29, 2024 at 9:29 PM
Do you work with large #acoustictelemetry networks?

Ed Lavender just put out a new model for tracking the paths of aquatic animals through these networks.

You can:
- Try the new R package here: https://buff.ly/4dDzcPW
- Check out the preprint here: https://buff.ly/3AA0ibR
#fishsci #fishsky
August 22, 2024 at 11:06 AM