A quick guide

For those of you who are new to my blog, I've organised it into four parts:

• random - could be about just about anything
• numbers - talking about maths or problem-solving stuff (not as boring as it sounds, honest!)
• music - what I'm up to (or listening to) musically
• life - more traditional blog fare - what I'm doing with myself at current.

I've written one of each tonight to celebrate my return to blogging. Consider this the tapas bar of blogging, feel free to read whatever suits your own taste :)

Numbers - Ask me

Random - Computer games

Music - Updates of a musical note

Life - Remember me?

Ask me

When I was in the midst of writing this blog, I got a surprising amount of interest from friends about a few of my numbers-themed posts. A few of my ideas and thoughts in this section have tapered off (as evidenced by my "Part 1" posts) but I'm keen to get some going again if anyone wants me to explore the intricacies of Pass the Pigs, Cribbage, or anything else - if there's something that I can (relatively quickly) explore using the power of numbers, then post an idea in the comments thread. I'd love to see your thoughts!

Otherwise, most likely I will be posting in this thread sometime soon about my thoughts on choosing teams for fantasy AFL games, as the season is coming up and my good friend Oz will no doubt be applying pressure for me to get my team organised...

Computer games

If you haven't met me, or haven't worked it out by reading this blog, I'm a bit of a geek. And I like computer games. I haven't played nearly as many games as most of my similarly inclined friends, but I like to think that I get a lot of value out of the games I do play. And the game that got me through to the end of my PhD is Borderlands. Like many of the games I've played as a poverty-stricken student, it was very cheap (in this case free - I got it as a gift). Though I only started playing a few months ago - a couple of years after it was actually released - the lack of eyeball-exploding graphics didn't stop me falling in love with it. I've decided not to buy any more games until I finish with this one (no Skyrim or Mass Effect 3 for me!) - and I mean really get the most out of it.

So far, despite having a thesis to finish, and then only two weeks' break before getting back into work, I've managed to rack up over 100 hours playing the game already and have almost finished all of the game's achievements*. I like to think of myself as a completionist and it's irked me that I've never truly had the time or energy to master a game at the level of a true obsessive (except maybe for Team Fortress 2 - but there are way too many people who are far more talented than me at it) - so hopefully this game will be my first chance!

The other thing I really wanted to talk about is this:

When I first heard about it, it seemed almost too good to be true for someone who has enjoyed both the Super Mario Brothers and Portal series. Some real love and talent has gone into this, and best of all it's free (thus not breaking my promise to Borderlands) and open source! It's available here.

I'm currently trying to finish the game so that I can get access to the special cheats (some of which are shown in the trailer) - I'm sure the novelty of this game will wear off fairly quickly, but at least for now it's breathed new life into an old classic for me :) I kinda hope that people try to do speed runs of it in the same spirit as the original Super Mario Brothers, like I talked about in a previous post. I think it'd be really impressive to watch!

* for the uninitiated, a set of arbitrary challenges scattered throughout the game of varying levels of difficulty.

Updates of a musical note

Sigh. I couldn't resist the pun in the title. I neglect you for nine months and this is how I repay you - my poor, masochistic audience.

Due to thesis finishing, my musical pretensions were put almost completely on hold until recently. However, I plan to correct that with a vengeance. Find below my evil plans!

Though I haven't had a lot of time as mentioned, even so EP preparations have continued in dribs and drabs and we're now at the stage where we (by which I mean Dave) have collected enough material to put together all the tracks! This is not a promise that it will be done really soon. This is music production: there's almost certain to be something that we didn't notice before and have to fix, and these things always take longer than you'd think (also, truth be told, we're both lazy) - but things are happening. If people are still interested, I could put another track up here - a couple of others besides Longest Night have been mixed down. These are the tracks of the EP (in no particular order):

Green Eyes
Longest Night (already up)
Survive You
Didn't Know
The Garden


So vote for the one you want to see on here :)

As far as new stuff, I haven't done much songwriting for a long time, but there are a lot of songs that I wrote or partly-wrote a while ago to work on. So maybe I could write another EP! Or at least, have material for gigs and bands and so forth.

Speaking of bands... there's bad news and good news. The bad news is, The Solution's talented drummer George Begbie has left the band to concentrate on his own musical ambitions. Considering the amazing stuff he's coming up with, we'd be committing a crime against music to hold him back (go see him play, he's awesome) - it's not a tabloid magazine acrimonious breakup, and we're not plotting his death any more than we already were when the band was together ;)

The good news is, this is by no means the end of the band - myself and vocalist/guitarist/bassist Ariel Pascoe are still keen to keep things going and have finally gotten back into rehearsing. Soon we'll be gracing Elizabeth Mall with our presence for some acoustic busking sets, and after that... who knows? We have a potential new drummer lined up, so watch this space.

On a slightly different note (there I go again), I've been considering joining a choir for a while - it's always looked like great fun and good practice for ear and voice, which I think will be very useful to self-taught little me! I went to the Open Night of the Tasmanian Song Company and quite enjoyed myself - so I'm thinking of joining up. Would be interested to hear peoples' thoughts!

Remember me?

My last few posts have had apologies for not posting more often, but this is truly ridiculous. As has been pointed out, it's been 9 months since I last posted. On the bright side, at least I have lots to talk about!

In fact - screw it. I'm going to make a blog post for each section of the blog as a reward for my long suffering readers. And I promise to update more often in future - though seeing as I only have to beat 9 months, that isn't all that much of a promise...

So. To start with - life.

Over the last couple of months, so much has changed that even now I'm only beginning to adjust. I'm a creature of habit, and it takes me a long time to deal with change. But I think all the changes have been for the better!

The biggest change has been submitting my PhD. That's right - it finally happened, 5 years almost to the day from when I started, and a month ago today. Though I still have to await my examiners' judgement, and try to publish the results from the thesis in academic journals, for the most part the thesis is out of my life. My feelings about it have been incredibly mixed - I'd prepared myself leading up to submission day that everything wouldn't just hit me all at once, and I was right. The feeling was more one of tiredness, numbness and a small but growing sense of relief. My brain really couldn't process the fact of it all being over, and it's only over the intervening time that I've been able to relax, realise that I don't have to worry anymore, actually move on with my life and think about doing new things without twinges of "thesis guilt".

And there's been plenty to move on to! For one, we hatched the hare-brained scheme of moving house in the final weeks of thesis writing. It was incredibly stressful but thanks to being fairly organised about it, we survived without me killing anyone and now we live in a house - an actual, entirely separate house all to ourselves - in Kingston. I haven't lived in a separate house for 6 years, and in the 10 years I've been living out of home and renting it's the first time I've ever had a lawn to mow*! It's incredibly freeing to not have to share a washing line, washing machine, walls, floors, ceilings or a backyard with anyone, and - as someone who really appreciates my personal space - I'm not sure I can ever go back!

When planning for the end of my thesis, I decided that I would try to get work as soon as possible due to my increasingly horrifying financial situation - but in the event of that failing, I could use the time to relax and recharge ready for whatever work I could find in my chosen field. Fortunately for my bank account, the first option worked out and I managed to get a job in the School of Zoology (the same place I did my PhD) as a temporary postdoc. This is the first time I haven't been a student since I was probably 4 years old, and is the first time I've ever had a full time job (other than a 3 month stint with CSIRO as a Vacation Student**). So after a badly-needed two weeks to recharge at home after handing in my thesis, I'm straight back into work.

I've been doing it for two weeks now and am really enjoying it - I have my own office, I'm doing work I really enjoy, and am actually being paid well for it! And I've been eased into it gently - I almost feel guilty going from constantly and hectically working or thinking about my PhD and not being paid, to working 9 to 5 at a reasonable pace, being able to go home and forget about work, and being paid for it. Almost :)

It's a change I've been dreaming about for many years now. I'm finally ending my life as a student and able to start thinking about the things I want out of life as achievable rather than as far-flung pipe dreams. Not to mention the shiny things I'll now be able to afford to buy ;)



* I'm sure the novelty of that, at least, will wear off very quickly...
** - which, while being a great experience, didn't pay particularly much!