Holidays

Have nothing booked holiday-wise this year; has been difficult to book something when I've been going after jobs and waiting on my examiners to tell me if my corrections are OK. I've been waiting for noisms to tell me if there is a good time to visit him in Japan sometime in September.

Now, thanks to a link from Boing Boing (which is fast becoming my favourite blog, and I know it's been around forever but I only started checking it about three weeks ago) I think I might just go to Japan in September regardless of whether noisms is free...


Basically, girls in cosplay dress guide you around Akihabara! Genius!

(also on Boing Boing, an interesting post about raising a chimp as a human...)

Burned

Took the day off yesterday to do a few small errands, go on a little walk and then stand on the riverside with about a bajillion other people and watch the start of the Tall Ships Race as it left Liverpool. It's not that the ships weren't impressive, because they were something special to look at - it was just the waiting around, the delayed start... By the time a dozen ships had finally passed us (with the promise of another fifty something to come) my mum and I were just a bit fed up.

Oh well, at least it was a nice day.

A little too nice... Finally we got a little sunshine. Just before we left the house I thought it might be a good idea to take some sun cream, you know, just in case. While I was there, standing on the riverside, I thought it might be a good idea to put a bit of cream on my neck and arms, because the sun was shining down on them, and I was facing away from the sun.

I never thought to put any on my face or - and this is crucial - take my sunglasses off.

Cut to yesterday evening, 8:30ish. "Nathan," my family say as one, cracking up, bent double with laughter, "Go and look in the mirror." To use their (rather cruel) words, I "look like I've auditioned to be Batman's sidekick." I'm not really red, not badly sunburnt, but enough to really see where I had my glasses on.

Sigh. The little things are sent to try us.

What To Do?

When I posted about Dr Horrible a few days ago (and by the way, you have until midnight tonight to go and watch it for free - it's brilliant, watch it!) I forgot to mention that I submitted my corrections on Tuesday. Quite a good feeling to get them handed in, but then comes the stress from just waiting to hear if they're going to be accepted. So far I've just had my external write to say that he got the file... No idea how long I'll be waiting.

Still, it's not all stress. Sent off my passport renewal form on Wednesday, so am hoping that I'll have my passport soon, have the freedom to travel. Have come up with a plan for the next few months (if the jobs that I'm currently applying for don't come to anything), and am sure that I will survive by giving maths tuition.

It's sunny today, but still pretty cold. Crazy that it's July and we've had virtually no summery weather at all this year. The wind's picking up again too. All probably the result of global warming, but well, one would hope that a side effect of global warming would be that it was warm...

Today: write postcards, write one piece of flash fiction, get down my plan for a piece of maths I'm working on (no rest for the wicked), and I'll also probably spend some time sorting through things for my other 101/1001 challenges.

So... How are things?

Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog!!!

This morning I watched the first part of "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" and it really is a winner. Great characters, catchy songs and a neat reversal of the superhero-can't-be-with-the-woman-he-loves trope. And it's also very, very funny! Act I was released yesterday, Act II goes live tomorrow and Act III follows on Saturday, and they're all online and free - but only 'til Sunday! So act now!

(after that I think you can get them from iTunes, and a DVD will apparently be out in due course)

Seriously, I can't recommend this highly enough for sheer entertainment value: go and watch Act I right now!!!

Long time no blog

The corrections are almost done. Almost. This weekend I'm sitting down and reading through each chapter just to look for typos or clumsy sentences. Two down, five to go. Make the corrections Monday and Tuesday, send the drafts off to my examiners and cross my fingers...

I'd like to say that life then gets back to normal, but given that that will pretty much be the end of my PhD days, it won't really be normal any more. The job hunt goes on, but nothing has concrete has come up yet - I've found an opening in Edinburgh that I'm going to apply for, but I'm currently looking at going on an extended holiday of sorts in September. Hoping to come back and start providing private maths tuition again after that in order that I'm not hitting my savings while I look for more permanent employment.

Am hoping to also get into the swing of accomplishing things from my list of 101 things. One thing that I'm going to start working on is sending 101 postcards; if any of you want a postcard from Liverpool then let me know! Email me at "Nathan (dot) Blah (at) googlemail (dot) com" and who knows, in the near-ish future one could be winging its way to you...

Smells like dinner is almost ready, so I'd best be going. More from me soon I hope.

Easy like Sunday morning

Apathy has set in with my corrections. Have only a few big things left to do, but feels a bit overwhelming, and overwhelming has now progressed to "oh I really can't be bothered."

Am going to try and think about my corrections today, but am also planning on writing a short story as part of my 101 things in a 1001 days challenge. Although I started one a while ago, it kind of lost its way; I think one which just came to me when I woke up yesterday morning has some legs, and I even have a title in mind, again, which just came to me.

But is it any good? Time will tell.

Also need to sit down and sort through things in my room today. Moving out is a while off yet, but need to start lightening the load that I'll be taking with me. Charity shops and eBay will be taking a lot from me over the next few months I think!

What does Sunday hold for you?

"Wordy" Wednesday - Rabbit

This is not going to turn into a blog where I just post links to cool things on Youtube... Well, I'm not actively looking to turn this into that kind of thing!

Instead of a Wordless Wednesday, as I've done a few times in the past, this video is quite wordy - in fact there are words all over the place.

Oh, and it's also (in my opinion) a little disturbing. In a good way.

Very poor choice of words

Sigh. Still over a month until The Dark Knight comes out in the UK...

Sigh...

Two Weeks?! Really?

Kind of surprising to me that it is over two weeks since I last wrote on here (not quite sure why noisms hasn't been writing either). Lots of this and that been happening, so I'll try and fill you in a bit.

(if you're interested that is - if you're reading this then perhaps you are)

Have started work on the corrections for my thesis. Has been going quite well all in all. Had to spend last week at home because the office was getting painted (except that never happened, the painters never turned up, and this being the University of Liverpool no-one is surprised); I got a lot of done in terms of planning my corrections, but not much in the way of actual corrections. Was this because I had ordered the first three seasons of The X-Files on DVD (they were very cheap)?

Maybe.

This week I've got a lot more done; finished most of the corrections in two chapters, updated all of the diagrams that needed changing, and corrected typos and grammar problems that I'd noticed in three other chapters. I spent yesterday working from home, and actually got quite a bit done; I was reworking one of the chapters, and when you get into it you can really let yourself go in thinking about how and why you decided to arrange things the way you did. It's crazy! Everything seemed so straightforward before, but now things are looking so much better in this chapter. It's quite cool to be working on it.

What else? Not having much luck on the job front. Haven't seen anything in the last week or so that I fancy; although I am starting to look further afield and trying to think of things that I could do that are slightly out of my area but I might be suitable for. Am also looking for a holiday this summer - the big debate at the moment is whether or not to consider going abroad as I need to renew my passport. Saw a return flight to Dublin for 2 pence including taxes which was a bit of a bargain. Am looking a bit further afield as well, but waiting to hear back on a few things.

Downloaded Firefox 3 for my laptop yesterday. Shiny. Not sure how the RSS feed stuff works yet - for some reason, despite mastering LaTeX, Maple, understanding the basics of webpage design and so on, I just can't quite figure out how to get RSS feeds to work... Want to set up and configure Thunderbird soon too, get myself ready for the day when I'm kicked out of the office and have to rely on my setup.

And that's about it. Read a few good books. One was Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother" which you can download and read for free under a Creative Commons licence; it's a good near-future thriller with some interesting points about the rights of individuals during times of crisis, and along the way I learned some pretty useful things about the digital world we live in now.

More soon, am trying to get back into a regular updating pattern.

That's It?

I had the viva for my thesis yesterday, and passed.

There was no parade, nor was there a party, an award, a presentation of the key to the city or a clip of me on the evening news.

Not that I was expecting any of that, but I was expecting something. Feels like a bit of an anticlimax. I mean, yes, sure, I've passed my viva and that's great, it really is - but it feels like there should be something more after three and a half years of work.

It's possible that I'm still just too exhausted from spending three hours standing and talking and doing stuff on the blackboard to really appreciate the significance of it all and bask in the knowledge that I have my PhD...

(or will do when I complete my corrections in the next few months and then attend a graduation ceremony in December)

I am happy that it went well! I should be writing a little more frequently in the coming weeks and months now that the pressure is off: my next big challenge is to find a job...

More soon.