I Have Answers

Or at the very least I have the continuation of questions raised previously...

1). I'm leaving the whole passport issue until I hear about this job I've applied for. If I get an interview for a job and if this leads to employment then it's highly unlikely that I will have time for international travel between now and the end of the year. If on the other hand I don't get it then some jetset getaway may be exactly what I need to celebrate finishing my thesis.

2). The whole paper thing just bugged me, it really did. Seems like such bad luck, regardless of differing approaches that someone else should publish a paper on a subject I have covered just as I am about to submit my thesis. However, on reflection, they are two different accounts of the area and I'd like to agree with my supervisor that my approach is more readable than that of the authors of this paper... This could be because I came up with and wrote my chapter, but hey, that's just how it is.

3). I am looking forward to The Dark Knight much more than The Incredible Hulk. It's going to be a heck of a long summer of cinema: Iron Man, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Incredible Hulk, Wall-E, The Dark Knight... Regardless of international travel plans, the Edinburgh International Film Festival is in June... They're not announcing their programme until early May, but I'm already trying to figure out whether or not the timing of the EIFF and the possible timing of my viva will allow me to head north of the border again.

4). Someone else has clicked yes on Spark now! According to Spark I am "more desirable than 61.34% of people" - my picture has been seen over 100 times, and out of those only 5 people in total have clicked yes... Spark and other applications like it are terrible. If only I wasn't strangely fascinated by it...

When thinking about the end of the world, some people worry about GM foods, the rise of the machines or zombie apocalypses. I, on the other hand, am becoming increasingly convinced that Facebook is going to play a large part in the end of civilisation.

In other news, progress on my last chapter is not going as well as I had hoped. I still think that I will finish my draft of it before I go to work for the Graduate School again next week, but I don't really see how I could finish it before Easter. That said, last week I was convinced that it would take me days and days to finish my previous chapter, and yet that was suddenly finished. Perhaps I just need to motivate myself better, stop procrastinating about notation and just get something written rather than stare at a blank page.

I have 70 things on my list of 101 things now; I'm not convinced that I will have all of these on my final list, and I might rejig them a bit. There seems to be an overlap between how I'm categorising some of them at the moment, so trying to straighten that out. Though I will mention them on here as I start and so on, I am going to start a separate blog to keep track of my progress. More on that in the next month (start date: Tuesday April 22nd 2008).

I'm off to play squash in a few minutes, so I'd best leave it here.

More soon, perhaps a Wordless Wednesday tomorrow.