An end to hoop-jumping

Just now, I got the email finally telling me that my thesis has been approved by a meeting of Academic Senate and I can finally graduate. No more hoops! This is the penultimate step in a long series of tiny achievements:

• Write final version of PhD thesis (the longest step!)
• Send thesis to supervisors (then deal with their comments - this can take months)
• Send thesis to School for a final pre-submission check (then deal with those comments)
• Send thesis off for examination by two experienced international researchers (ok, so one of them was from New Zealand - still counts!), wait for several months...
• Deal with those comments, send through to Head of School (along with evidence that I've actually dealt with those comments and not just ignored them)
• Get thesis approved by the Head of School (an important step - it means I never have to edit it again!)
• Make realllly sure that I haven't made any typos or formatting mistakes, then send thesis off to be bound in shiny pretty books
• Get books signed by the necessary people then give them to the Graduate Research Office

and, finally,

• Get my final thesis approved by the Senate and be placed in a graduation schedule.

So now all I have to do is wait for August 11th and graduate! As you can probably see, the main problem with getting a PhD accepted is that there are so many steps that you can never be sure when to go all out and celebrate - in a way, it sucks out a little of the joy because there's no single defined endpoint. Though doing a PhD certainly feels like doing a marathon, the analogy stops at the finishing line because instead of one big ribbon to run through at the end, there are a lot of little finish lines along the way! So I decided a while ago to save the biggest party for graduation day - the day I can finally call myself Doctor.

Changing seasons

In front of our house, there is a Japanese maple tree. As autumn has plodded along its colour has been slowly changing, to the point now where it is an incredible deep, rich red in colour. These photos really don't do it justice - I'm sure I'll be taking more and trying to capture it properly until it finally sheds all its leaves for the winter.

Life has slowly been settling back into a routine. I think I'm finally getting used to doing full time work! Even though some of the work is very similar to the stuff I did while I was a PhD student, it feels very different - I can walk away at 5pm without any guilt, and if I do any extra work it's because I want to, not because I have to.

One of the things I was looking forward to most was actually having disposable income, and I'm still waiting - a profusion of bills have meant that I'm still almost as poor as I was before I started. I can at least console myself in the knowledge that if I were still doing my thesis, I might have been in serious trouble - running out of PhD scholarship meant that I had to work part-time to help support myself and deal with Centrelink all at the same time as finishing the thesis, which wasn't good for either my financial situation or my sanity.

One thing that makes the struggle to get on a sound financial footing that little bit easier is knowing I have a mainland trip booked for July - I'm really looking forward to going on holiday and continuing to be paid!

For the past few years I've only been vaguely aware of the passage of time, stuck in a haze of work and procrastination. Having more of a life now has certainly helped to keep me more in the moment, and especially having a growing kitten in our house. We've only had her for a little over a month, and she's already getting much bigger...

It's amazing how quickly things change - looking back, I don't think there's a time in my adult life where I would have been able to predict what would happen over the next year or two. Something unexpected always seems to come up and change things, for better or worse, in small ways and big ways. Watching the change of the seasons always makes me wonder what the next surprise is going to be!

Kitten

Well, we finally went out and got ourselves a cat. We'd been wanting one for a while but what with finishing a PhD thesis and living in a no-pets apartment block near the university, it was obviously going to have to wait until things were a bit more settled. And now they are! 

We got her within a week of the landlord giving their permission - we were unsure whether to get a kitten or a full-grown cat but when we met her at the RSPCA it became quickly clear what our choice was going to be.

Her name is Minnie and like any kitten she only has two modes - asleep or all over the place. As someone who hasn't had much experience with pets at home since I was quite little, I was worried about the responsibility of looking after another lifeform, but it's really not all that difficult - make sure there's always food and water, that the litter tray isn't looking too horrifying, and make sure she doesn't get into anything she shouldn't (by far the hardest part), and we have a happy, well-adjusted kitten to keep us company and keep us entertained!

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!

Distractions

It's been pointed out I spent all of May without posting!  I suspect there will be much more of this neglect to come as the thesis reaches crunch point.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but even now in what I hope are the dying months of the thesis it still seems such a long way away, especially when I'm surrounded by such talented people who clearly know what they're talking about.  Even now, after four years, I feel like I don't know what I'm talking about, and somehow I'm supposed to write hundreds of pages worth of material by the end of this year!

I've suspected throughout the course of the thesis that I'm not really cut out for long-term projects - I think I have some kind of academic ADHD in which I find a problem really exciting but get bored and want to move onto something else before too long.  This kind of short-term obsession is a reason I write posts about random things like analysing cribbage hands or Pass The Pigs - because I find them really, really exciting and interesting... for a while.  Then I find something else and forget about what I was doing before!

It's been really hard to stay excited about the same project when there is so much else going on.  I've heard some people say that doing your PhD is the most rewarding part of your whole academic career - I can honestly say that I really hope not.  While I have learnt a hell of a lot which I am sure will place me in good stead for future jobs etc, it has been one of the most self-esteem crushing, depressing and difficult periods of my life.  I suspect once I find my niche I'll be a lot happier with my lot in life, but suffice it to say I never want to do a PhD ever, ever again!  Having said all that, it is nice to see the work I've been doing over the last few years finally start to come to fruition.

Anyway, now I've had my three paragraphs of emo, these are some of the things I would probably be playing with if I weren't trying to concentrate on my thesis:

There is a thriving community of people out there who spend their time on something called tool-assisted speedruns.  Basically, they use whatever means necessary in order to complete a game as fast as is physically possible - way faster than a human could ever do by themselves.  This involves things like exploiting the hell out of whatever glitches happen to exist in a game, using emulators to slow down the game to get that perfect jump, saving the gamestate before a difficult point and doing a section time and time again until you get it absolutely perfect, and pausing the game for a few hundredths of a second before coming across a difficult enemy just so they behave in a way (based on the random number generators in the game) which means you can get past them faster.  I'd love to spend some time writing computer code to try and optimise some of this stuff and make it even faster - people have already written relatively simple AIs for Super Mario Brothers that work really well:

Another thing I'd like to do is work out where the hell all these pink Nissan Micras are coming from.  If you don't know what I mean, perhaps this will refresh your memory:

I'm starting to see them everywhere!  I'm starting to think I should take a leaf out of the book of the ecologists I work with and do some experiments to work out how quickly their population is increasing - so I know how long it will take before we're all overrun with them.

One non-thesis related problem that I did manage to solve was one posed by a friend who found it in a list of job interview questions for a job he was applying for.  The question was this:

You roll a die.  You can either take an amount of money equal to the number on the die (so a 5 would get you $5, for example), or you can choose to roll it again.  You can roll it a total of three times - if you choose to roll again the first two times, you have to take whatever you get on the third roll.

So for example, you might roll a 1, choose to roll again; roll a 3, choose to roll again; then roll a 2.  You have to take the $2 because you've used all your rolls.

For another example, you might roll a 2, roll again then roll a 5 and decide to keep it.  So you get $5.

So - over to you.  What should your strategy be to make sure you get the maximum amount of money?

Music - but not mine

Before I start, I'd like to say thanks to the people who actually read my blog and agitated for me to write in it again.  The fountain of wisdom that is xkcd suggests that only really boring people apologise for not posting more in their blogs... so I won't!  However, I will make what will be a pretty common excuse in the coming months - along with working, I've been very very busy with trying to get my PhD finished.  My current plan is to get it done by August - it's ambitious but it may actually be feasible.

I thought this time that I'd write about music other than my own.  For someone who professes to be a musician I really don't listen to a lot of other people's music, Powderfinger notwithstanding*.  When I do listen to music, I am strange in that I like to listen to a single album at a time - sometimes for days or weeks, constantly, while I work.  I've never really gotten into the listening to mp3s thing - I really enjoy listening to an album played in order (or sometimes on shuffle if I'm feeling adventurous) as the artists intended.  Lately I've had the chance to do this with a few different artists, so here goes...

My very musical friend Dave gave me an album for being a groomsman at his wedding.  That album was Arcade Fire's Neon Bible.

To be brutally honest, I was a little cynical after the first listen or two.  The last offering that Dave had bought for me as a present was some of Sufjan Steven's more experimental work, and other than a couple of standout tracks I found it a little too experimental for my tastes - so I was preparing myself for the worst with this new unknown offering.

But, to their credit, Arcade Fire's album really grew on me.  A lot of good music does this for me, but because of my preconceptions I wasn't really expecting this to - I would never have fallen in love with this album if I hadn't had a couple more listens to give it one last chance to impress me.  I recognised a couple of  songs from the radio - Black Mirror and No Cars Go, which I really enjoyed from the start - but over time, I grew to love many of their album tracks** even more.  Particular standouts are Black Wave/Bad Vibrations and Ocean of Noise - these were stuck in my head for weeks!  There aren't really any tracks I could count as "misses" - they're all tight and well thought out, and even at their worst provide enjoyable background music.  I might accuse the title track Neon Bible of being unmemorable; but then, it's part of a long tradition of unmemorable title tracks.

I love good emotive vocals and the lead singer Win Butler really delivers, particularly in the lesser-known tracks.  I'm not-so-much taken with the backing vocals of Régine Chassagne - on their own - but the harmonies between her and Win are for the most part amazing!  I tend to concentrate most on the vocals (in terms of both lyrics and melody) in terms of music I like, and to this end Neon Bible is a winner for me also: the instrumentation and various sound effects scattered throughout the album are always interesting, always tight and very nicely complement the vocal work.  I know (from listening to the album as I type) that there are a multitude of really nice hooks played by the keyboards and guitar in particular, but I wouldn't be able to remember most of them - they fit so seamlessly into the story the voices tell.

Anyway, I think I've ranted enough about this album.  Tell me your thoughts on this album if you've listened to it, and I'd be particularly interested to hear peoples' opinions of the other Arcade Fire albums.  Is this as good as they get?  Or am I really missing out if I don't give the other albums a try also?

* I've been avoiding writing a full-blown critique of all seven of their albums lest my fanboyish gushing send you all to sleep!
** I usually call them "B-sides" but my girlfriend scolds me for it...

I'm still alive!

Wow.  Just when I thought life couldn't get any busier.  Apparently moving takes a lot of time and effort.  As well as helping with a wedding.  And having three jobs.  And (still) doing a PhD.  And playing two gigs in four days - the second of which went four times longer than originally planned o.O

On the upside, we have a shiny new place (now just to unpack, grumble), money is starting to come in, and finally - finally - things are starting to settle into a routine once again.

Of course, now that things are getting less hectic I'm finding more things to fill the time with - Dave, now a married man, is finally getting the chance to get back onto my EP, so hopefully more work will be done on that soon!  And The Solution is back, and will hopefully soon be rehearsing regularly for the next gig, whenever that may be!

Seeing as I don't really have much exciting to show you, I'll show you something tangentially related to what I'm doing at work at the moment.  Reaction-diffusion modelling, which I'm working on now, uses a series of mathematical equations to determine the distributions of things in space - and depending on what you plug into it, some interesting things can happen!  Alan Turing (after whom these Turing Patterns were named) found that the patterns on leopards and jaguars are the result of chemical reactions that are modelled by such reaction-diffusion equations.  It's another example of how maths can - as well as helping us understand how things work - actually be aesthetically pleasing, which I love :)

Is this the real life?

Hullo everyone!

Thanks for all your support and suggestions on Longest Night and EP covers.  There were literally dozens of pageviews that weren't mine!

Sorry about not posting for a while - life has gotten hectic.  A few of the things that have been going on:

• I have searched for, and found, a new place to live with a lot more space for me and my lovely partner.  We move in next week.  I'm excited!
• I have searched for, and found, a new job!  I will be a typist working from home.  Hopefully I can type fast enough to make it worth my while, I'm looking forward to having a bit more money as things have been getting pretty dire lately.
• I have been helping prepare for Dave's wedding, including attending his buck's night last night!  The wedding is in two days, so it's going to be a huge weekend.  After the wedding, we can expect to see more news on both my EP and his shiny new album!

Speaking of music, I have two gigs coming up!

The first is on the 26th of February at the Lark Distillery, as the support act for the amazing George Begbie launching his new EP "These Familiar Streets".  I've listened to these songs at length, and I can assure you that you are in for an incredible treat!  I can't wait to get my hands on this and future EPs from him, so come along and get in on the ground floor ;)

The second is on the 1st of March at Irish Murphy's with my band The Solution.  We haven't had the chance to rehearse or play for months and we're relishing the chance to start playing again, especially after our last gig unfortunately fell through.  We are so excited to play for you, and hope you'll come along and have fun with us!

Oh and as a final note, check out the blog list on this page, there are two thought-provoking and pretty new blogs to while away those lazy hours!

Christmas posting

Hello, my few faithful followers! (and the more common faithless ones)

I've been spending the last week waiting impatiently on the results of a job interview, checking email and my phone compulsively every few minutes just in case they've contacted me.  I've been sorely tempted to call them up and see if any progress has been made on the decision, but have managed to hold off so far.  I think I'll probably crack and check for news before I leave to spend Christmas with my girlfriend's family on Thursday - I'd rather not spend time stressing over whether I've got the job or not when I should be relaxing.  People seem to be divided on whether checking post-interview is a good idea or not... I suspect it's probably for the best to leave it where possible, as you'd expect to hear about it if you've got the job at least, and checking isn't going to change the result!

Musically, I've been working on new songs lately.  I can't really do anything towards the upcoming EP at the moment as my producer is away on holidays.  However, I have been working on getting some cover art with a very talented artist who just so happens to be the bassist in The Solution, the band I play in!  Expect to see previews of the cover art and music from the EP in the new year.

One thing I will reveal though, is my working title for the EP - I'm thinking of calling it "Windows to the Soul". I hope it doesn't sound like I'm taking myself too seriously, or sounds too emo, or anything like that... simply put, it's the only name that's stuck so far.  So that's most likely what it will be called, unless I get an outpouring of hatred towards the name - of course, the customer is always right ;)

I did a quick Google search just now and found that someone else has also used that title.  However, I don't think anyone's going to confuse my music with contemporary Christian music, so I should be pretty safe!  Oh someone else used it too... a DJ.  Yep, still safe.

Anyway, that's me for 2010 - hope everyone has a fantastic Christmas!

Enjoy this picture of a fluorescent hyperferret.

Metablog

I've only been blogging for a month now but am already getting into the blogger's obsessive mindspace of making it all pretty and readable for people, and making it easy for people to get involved.  On that note, you now don't have to have an account to comment, don't know why I had it set that way in the first place... sorry!

I've even linked it in a couple of places, most notably my facebook page.  I know a few friends have dropped in here from facebook... and wow, I just looked at the stats counter for this site.  76 pageviews yesterday, I'm pretty sure I didn't check in myself that many times...

So don't hesitate to comment, even if it's to tell me that I was completely wrong (I've already had a few interesting disagreements with friends on Ten Things I Wish Were Invented Already), or suggest something actually interesting to write about.  It's easier to comment now, so if you didn't bother before, you can now, with your very own Cloak of Anonymity*!  And it lets me know that people are actually reading this thing.  I admit, I can be an attention-seeker sometimes ;)

Also, kudos to whoever provided the six eight pageviews from Mac users.  Oh and one from an iPhone, well aren't you fancy!

* It gives +2 to potential douchery... just be careful in case I set the Banhammer on your ass!