Research and Modding Programs

Over the next few weeks, I'll be working on a paper about various aspects of insect farming. Among other things, this involves a lot of online research: looking up papers, saving them to some sort of reference bank, and citing them properly in my paper. It's a task that takes a lot of time and effort, especially if it's not done right.

Fortunately, I spent a large part of last weekend modding Skyrim-- searching the internet for good mods, downloading them to a mod organizing program, and making sure files are where they need to be and are used properly. It's a lot of work, but it's the only way for me to meet Frodo and his companions in every compatible game.

There's a great satisfaction that comes from installing several dozen mods and managing to not have the game instantly crash on startup. Time and effort are rewarded, but also careful planning. In a similar (but hopefully less complicated) manner, I got great satisfaction from setting up a reference-managing program and being able to save papers and their metadata with just one click, as cliche as that is. I'd like to thank the creators of both the mod-organizing program and the reference-managing program for making the technology so accessible.