The Blog

 Perhaps a more relevant post...

Friday night I finished a first (the numbering gets muddy, but let's stick with first as it's the first time the boss has seen it since 2004 when he declared it "good enough for an assignment, I guess") draft of the literature review chapter (aka the monster chapter of doom that will not die), which came in at 11,600 words (not including pictures, which count as 1,000 each, right?) and entirely too much trauma.

4.1 chapters left to draft and edit. I'll be done before you know it.

Labels: hating myself, thesis ftw, writing

 I am such a boring person at the moment...

So I sat down on Monday to do a quick edit / runthrough of the chapter I wrote last year that the boss hadn't gotten around to reading because he's lazy, since he actually wanted to get to reading some of my stuff at long last. Six days, six pages and 2,000 new words later, I'm done, save for one equation that needs checking against the one in my notebook, because I think I'm down a factor of B_φ,s. *yawns* Ah well, time to get on with the real work I was going to do this weekend.

Actually, first I'm going to go fetch my washing from the line, as it may be dry and I don't trust this weather. But then I'll get on with the other work. And after that I'll have some fun.

Labels: losing sleep, marking, phd, thesis ftw, writing

 Moderately Large Image Ahead...

This is what I spent my weekend working on:

(Based upon figure 2 of Greene (2001).

Labels: art, astronomy, don't ask about the commas, never going to graduate, protostars, star wars, thesis ftw

 Writing all night long...

Stuff I've been trying to articulate to Liz as she reads the books: what do you see in him again? - on Edward and Bella's relationship.

Today I got some more work done, finally finishing my rewrite / edit of section three of the paper and getting deeply into the fourth, which is much more scary. Hopefully it won't take as long to figure out, but it's not seeming likely at the moment, as I'm very confused about these things. Stuff is falling into the star rapidly, but it's all a bit confusing after that. Tomorrow I'll see the boss and we'll talk about that.

Labels: a godawful mess, thesis ftw, writing

 In Summary...

I haven't finished typing up everything I wrote yesterday (decided I needed sleep more than a real wordcount last night), but with half a page of equations to go I've hit the goal. Yay me! Now to do it again this month! .... *snores*

Pity about the paper. Best get on that now.

Oh and today's item for heaping scorn upon is my calendar: "Rose is a shop girl from the present day. From the moment they meet, the Doctor and Rose are soul mates. As they travel through history and across the universe, the Doctor shows Rose things beyond her imagination. She starts out as an innocent, fettered by earthly concerns. Now she is an adventurer will home ever be the same?" I should note once more that in this enemies and allies calendar, K9 and the TARDIS both get a month, as do the werewolves and those cat nurses from that one episode that time, but not Martha, Donna, Mickey or any other human who isn't St Rose of the Powell Estate.

Labels: 1000 words, InaDWriMo, thesis ftw, writing

 Time for a break...

Promised myself I wouldn't work on the paper today, as I'd had enough and could barely stand to read it. So instead I wrote three pages of thesis. Wow, that's just awesome and I should do that more often. I love derivations. They rock. A few more days like that and the first section of this chapter will be done.

Nothing fun to report today, as I'm on dial-up and essentially have no internet. Now to finish off a few presents for the Heidi and then sleep at last...

Labels: Heidi, InaDWriMo, knitting, latex ftw (but not the fun sort of latex), thesis ftw, writing

  Hmm...

Well hey, I'm becoming increasingly certain that I'm not going to make the "getting the paper done" task this month, but the word counts are still more or less on track and I'm feeling okay about the paper stuff I have written. I even spent today on that "write something intelligent about the figures" thing, but it feels like it's going slow because like all journal papers it's two columns of tinytext and getting a quarter of a page written is a huge task but not very satisfying from a "watching my pagecount leap forward" perspective.

Today's lesson: \allowdisplaybreaks[1] is your friend. Especially when, like me, you have giant blocks of equations that you'd like lined up wherever possible. This nifty little command allows the blocks of equations to be broken up and split across a page break so that you don't have whitespace all over the place whenever one of those blocks gets bumped to the next page.

Today's nifty link: Eric, by Shaun Tam, a cute little picture book about an exchange student who comes to visit.

Labels: a pity party for one, InaDWriMo, latex ftw (but not the fun sort of latex), thesis ftw

  Worked up about the Festival of Gemma...

Had a lovely lunch at David's restaurant on Sunday (followed up by leftover pizza for dinner tonight *grins*), and watched tv with mum afterwards. Tonight we're curling up with our knitting and NCIS, so she can perve on Mark Harmon some more. Tomorrow's the big day, so I better remember to wrap her present.

I'm starting to wonder if I haven't set myself enough to do for the month, if I can write ~900 words a day on good days. We'll see what happens tomorrow when I have to spend some time working out the theory behind this stuff so I can explain it.

Labels: gemma, InaDWriMo, never going to graduate, thesis ftw, writing

 I can't see the screen anymore...

Well, it's Friday and so I'd better update on progress. I think the introduction of the paper is closer to being properly first-drafted now, though I haven't really gotten the overarching narrative together yet because I can't quite find the story I want to tell. But there are words talking about the book the story resides in which has to count for something. As you might be able to tell it's time to move away and let it percolate in my brain for a bit and figure out what needs to go in the other sections.

Labels: InaDWriMo, thesis ftw, uni, writing

Okay then...

So, while most everyone I stalk online is either participating in NaNoWriMo (one of these years they're going to fix the name) or moping that they don't have time for it, I've realised that I need bullying and encouragement to make it even a little bit of the way through writing my thesis. After much procrastination I decided that I'll be unofficially participating in InaDWriMo instead, with a goal of 10,000 words of thesis and my paper written.

This does mean I'm going to be boring and not posting much aside from word counts for a month, but you can deal with that. You are all clever people, after all. And this will hopefully keep my mind of other crap in my life at present.

So, bring on the encouragement. Nag me if I'm slacking on posting (I'll try and do it every four days), and I'll admit my many flaws. I'll also try and figure out a good way to include equations in the count, since my thesis is full of them.

Labels: InaDWriMo, paperwork, thesis ftw, urge to kill rising, writing

Party Time!

Today I emailled the boss a more or less "complete" draft of a thesis chapter. For all that it's chapter two, this is the first time I've actually sent him something for this project (honours was 5.5 years ago now, it hardly counts), so I'm a little terrified, but he replied back with a promise that "[he's] looking forward to making comments ranging from the bleeding obvious to the sublime", so I'm going to hope for the best and celebrate the achievement that saw me working all long weekend and not regretting a second of it.

Said celebration has taken the form of a visit to my favourite restaurant here in Cambridge, where I had a delicious Latvian potato bake, a beer, and dessert has just been delivered. I think I may have earned it.

I take it back. I don't even know what one could to earn this - it's simply indulgent and not even the long walk back to my b&b in the rain will see me deserve this kind of deliciousness.

Chocolate Wake-Up Cake, from the Rainbow Cafe.

Labels: cake, death by chocolate, england, phd, science, thesis ftw, trip09

   Only 78,800 to go...

Spent all day working on the thesis, and got a fair amount done, though it doesn't feel like it. Have 2.5 pages that I wouldn't be ashamed to show my supervisor (though a few notes to myself that are still in there would be a bit embarrassing) and some highly edited and tightened up plans for the rest of the lit review.

I'm still embarrassed that it's taken me this long to get around to doing it properly, and a bit bummed that my brain has decided to shut down in the last five minutes when I still have two more paragraphs to write before bed, but I'll just go to sleep early tonight and write them in the morning before uni. I've got my notes mostly sorted, now I just need to find the words and check the references when I've got my head on straight.

Oh, and I guess I need to actually get my original research working, but that's a problem for tomorrow afternoon when I check in with the boss (please let me be up to four pages and a plan for the next section by then).

Labels: 1000 words, phd, thesis ftw, writing