The Smell of Simulator in the Morning

When one first clones a simulator, it is so fascinating to be at the state where research begins again. It is fresh like napalm in the morning. Just as explosive and unforgiving. Mostly I will be wrangling the obscene amounts of work done by others to hack together a piece of work that will hopefully produce a paper. Either way the napalm will be ignited. the question is always, where do I start. 3 years ago, this was an easy question to answer, but these days, it just feels like more work then the benefit.