Merry Christmas
Quick thoughts from today:
- I now have every James Bond film on DVD, thanks to my sister.
- Doctor Who was awful—if you haven’t watched it yet it’s probably not worth the trouble.
- Purchasing the majority of presents for yourself from other people online and then getting your mum to wrap them immensely improves the whole experience.
- Christmas gets boring the older you get—I think this is only likely to be reversed by marriage or additions to the family.
- I really need to get a move on if I want to email my supervisor a draft copy of a conference paper by Tuesday.
Still busy, have a huge number of things to get done before I am back at work next week…
posted by Paul at 10:41pm on Friday 25th December 2009 | 3 Comments »
Master of Philosophy
Yesterday I had my MPhil viva, which somehow I managed to pass, despite having spent the last two weeks worrying about it. I still have to make some minor corrections requested by the examiners—things like “this section would be clearer with a diagram”—but assuming that I complete those by Christmas, I’ll get the certificate sometime in the new year and will have five more letters to add after my name.
On top of the thesis corrections, my supervisor has asked me if I’d like to write a paper for a conference, which I’ve agreed to do (with help and guidance), but after mid-January (the conference deadline) I will have left academia altogether. This feels a bit strange, as for the last six years I’ve been either studying at or working for the University, or writing up my thesis. In some ways I regret not sticking with it for another year or so to get the PhD—I would have quite liked to be Dr Waring—but I don’t think my heart was really in it, and a research grant, albeit untaxed, pales somewhat in comparison with a full time salary.
posted by Paul at 10:20pm on Thursday 12th November 2009 | Comments Off
LugRadio Live 2009
At an hour which should never be seen on a Saturday morning, I hauled myself onto a train to Wolverhampton for LugRadio Live 2009, after Lucy kindly let me have her ticket. I hadn’t been to previous LugRadio Live events, but I’d been assured that they were not to be missed.
Starting with the good stuff—the venue was also easy to get to from the train station and seemed to have the capacity to cope with the numbers (some people were standing up during talks, but there were plenty of free seats too). The talk on OpenStreetMap was both interesting and entertaining, and Gervase’s discussion of his first computer program had us all in stitches. I also had chance to meet up with people who I hadn’t seen for a while and mock Pokebook. 
On the downside, the programme left some room for improvement. Most speakers had a one hour slot, which is fine if you are prepared to talk for that long, but most weren’t. This lead to an embarrassing moment at the end of two of the talks I attended, where the speaker finished after about half an hour and tried to keep the questions going to pad the remaining time. There were also two “no shows” that I was aware of, which was a real shame and quite a high proportion of the total number of speakers, although it’s something that the organisers have no control over.
In comparison to OpenTech—an event of a similar size and cost—LRL seemed a bit subdued. However, on its own merits, LRL stood up reasonably well—albeit to a lesser extent than I expected from the hype—and was worth attending, though it will be interesting to see what happens next year.
posted by Paul at 10:24pm on Saturday 24th October 2009 | Comments Off
Currybeer web site
For those of you who are regular or potential Currybeer attendees, the social event now has a new web site, currybeer.com, and two mailing lists for announcing and discussing the socials.
For anyone who hasn’t been before, Currybeer is a social event in Manchester, held on the first Friday of each month. The premise is simple: we go the pub, drink beer, go for a curry, then return to the pub for more beer – hence the name “Currybeer”. Beer is optional and soft drinks or tea are acceptable substitutes, but curry is compulsory.
(The pedantic amongst you might ask “why not BeerCurryBeer?”, but that isn’t quite as catchy as Currybeer).
posted by Paul at 10:20pm on Saturday 19th September 2009 | Comments Off
Thesis submitted
I have now handed in my thesis—fully printed and bound. According to the graduate office, they expect the examiners to report within six weeks, so in theory I could hear back as soon as the end of October. However, I can’t do anything until the University gets back to me one way or the other. For now though, I have a backlog of freelance work to do and a huge pile of research papers to recycle…
posted by Paul at 7:53pm on Wednesday 9th September 2009 | 1 Comment »
Thesis finished
After almost two years of research and writing up—a process hampered somewhat by needing to combine both tasks with running a freelancing business or having a full time job at the same time—my thesis is ‘finished’. At 121 pages, it is quite a substantial tome, containing about 80 pages of solid text, 30,000 words and 118 references. Including the supplementary technical reports, the whole thing grows to 150+ pages and 40,000+ words. Alas, it will probably only be read by five people in the entire world (myself, two supervisors and two examiners). 
I’ll be handing it in for binding tomorrow, and hopefully collecting it to hand over to the graduate office towards the end of the week. At that point I simply have to wait for the examiners to decide whether they want to bring me in for a viva or pass me on the basis of the thesis—either way the timetable indicates that I should definitely have a decision by Christmas, and in theory it could be as soon as mid-November.
The only question is, what do I do to fill the enormous gap that has been left by handing in the thesis?
posted by Paul at 10:39pm on Sunday 6th September 2009 | 1 Comment »
Autumn clean
This weekend I’ve been recalled back to my parents’ house to clear my old room so that it can be redecorated, which means going through the enormous amounts of stuff I’ve collected over the years and throwing out as much as possible. Some of the things I’ve found whilst sifting through the piles of paperwork and books include:
- A piece of art I bought in Paris ten years ago, still wrapped up.
- The Warped banner and a few books which escaped the library handover.
- Copy of the database schemas for Fuse FM (I hope they’ve changed the default admin password).
- Vote Labour poster (no idea how that got there!)
- Project log book, which thankfully no longer smells of perfume.
I also hadn’t realised how therapeutic it is to go through everything and make a concerted effort to weed out the unnecessary cruft, such as issues of computing magazines which are several years old and are therefore never going to be useful in the future.
On the thesis front I still have a few more small amendments to make – mainly minor changes to diagrams, restructuring a few paragraphs and adding a final conclusion. I’ve set a deadline of Thursday for the final version, so I can print it on Friday and hand it in for binding on Saturday – at which point it is over to all intents and purposes.
posted by Paul at 11:21am on Monday 31st August 2009 | 3 Comments »
Thesis (almost) finished
Got an email from my supervisor today, just a few minor changes needed to my thesis and a final summary of conclusions saying how brilliant the research is and then it is ready to submit! With any luck, I’ll be able to make the changes by Saturday, do one more full check for spelling/grammar mistakes, and then hand the whole thing in for printing and binding sometime next week.
posted by Paul at 6:25pm on Wednesday 19th August 2009 | Comments Off
First draft of thesis
After another week’s worth of work, I’ve got to the stage where I have a complete full first draft of my thesis, all the way from the abstract to the conclusions. It’s now in my supervisors’ inboxes awaiting comments, though at 30,000+ words and 113 pages I suspect it will be a while before they get back to me. In the meantime, I have to write another technical report describing how to run the proxy/parser software, which is mostly done and won’t take long to finish, and a final report outlining future work which builds on the thesis. There might be a conference or journal paper to write as well, though not until the final thesis is handed in.
Ideally now I would take a rest for a couple of days, but I still have a backlog of UKUUG work to process (emails to speakers from the recent conference, plus two newsletter articles and chairman’s report to write), a lightning talk to finish off for Manchester Free Software on Tuesday and freelance work to catch up on…
posted by Paul at 10:38pm on Sunday 16th August 2009 | Comments Off
Final chapter
I thought this would never happen, but I’ve just emailed the final chapter of my thesis over to my supervisors for initial comments. I now have until 14 September (allowing time for printing and binding before the final submission deadline) to iterate over the whole thesis as many times as possible to shake out any remaining typos, poorly worded paragraphs and confusing sentences. I just hope I don’t get asked for a viva (the examiners can dispense with the requirement if they think the thesis is good enough), otherwise it might drag on until Christmas…
posted by Paul at 9:41pm on Tuesday 4th August 2009 | Comments Off