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So, it's been a while.
Three whole months since a useful entry, in fact. So it goes. As you may have guessed, Advent Science totally imploded fairly early on when I realised I really needed to write the sessions in advance, not on the night. I have no doubt it's possible to put out that volume of information each night for 24 days and have it be correct, complete and coherent, but I wasn't able to do it. Maybe next year I'll actually do the prep :)
Work is work, and continues apace. My department has me doing a lot of XSLT and Python at the moment, and I'm finding that the latter isn't the terrible language I was sure it was a while ago. Syntactic whitespace still bugs me somewhat, but at least it isn't Perl... It's maintaining my interest without any trouble, and while it's a really big job, it breaks down into small achievable sections such that I get a sense of progress, which is nice.
At home, the house is pretty much sorted out now, though it could use a spring-clean. Everything works, there isn't too much mess around and I'm slowly getting used to the idea of having a living room for, you know, living in. I still spend most of my time in my bedroom, which seems like a waste of a space. Have to address that.
LARP is mostly going well (although see the following post). CUTT will start back up soon, I'm looking forward to the next Odyssey game, and I await more details on Empire with interest.
Anything else? Not much of significance. I have a new bicycle, which is nice for the commute (the gears and brakes work properly!). It's a Raleigh Oakland in British Racing Green, with aftermarket Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres. The latter have taken my puncture rate down from two or three a month to zero in three months, and I highly recommend them for use on harsh commutes. My commute isn't too bad: cross the river by footbridge, cycle along beside the Cam for a bit, cross Newmarket Road and then follow Coldhams Lane to Cherry Hinton, then down the High Street and left at the crossroads. Thirty minutes / four miles each way, which has to be good for me, and it's all the nicer now it's still light when I get out of work in the evening.
Well, the trip to Cambridge went well. I managed to get there in plenty of time, due to having taken the entire day off work, met my friend Pufferfish for coffee etc, then headed out to ARM HQ. The recruitment evening was pretty good: several tech demos running, including a pair of speedcubers and a big 3d display driven by a smartphone GPU, and several people from ARM who were advertising posts in their departments. I got some fairly positive noises from processor toolchain, verification and technical publishing, and will be following them up soon. Not bad, given my lack of preparation.
After work comes fun, so they tell me. Pufferfish led me back through the Cambridge bus system to her house, where I stayed the night, and the next day I saw a bit of Cambridge, had lunch with a group of friends from up here and went home. I ended up travelling during the tail end of rush hour, and there wasn't a seat to be had all the way between Cambridge and Brighton. So today I have tired legs, but I'm glad I went. Saw friends, and a new city, and somewhere I might well end up working.
Today I'm not as strong as I'd like to be, mentally. I'm tired, can't shake this headache and my legs and shoulder are playing up. So it goes. I wish I were a better person: stronger, able to shrug off things like this and get on with life. I guess that one's a work in progress.
Speaking of progress, I have five copies of my DPhil thesis in my bag. I'll be handing it over the desk at Sussex Uni at about 1615, and that'll be it, done. Thesis finally staked. Thank goodness for that.
...fuck.
So, here I am in Cornwall. Tomorrow will be Craig's wedding, and the reception, and hopefully it'll be good. Tonight, I'm sat in the bride's parents' garden, with a buffet and a group of people, some of whom I've even met before. And it's alright.
But, my heart's in a field in Banbury, I can't deny it. I'm missing Maelstrom event 2 for the wedding, and I'm ok with that, and I'm missing the people I'm not with (players and characters). There's a gazebo set up here that I daren't enter, because it might throw me into the wrong brain.
Have a good event, guys. See you when you get back. I'm off to have a good time.
Currently proofing thesis, before sending it to the publishers tomorrow morning. One hundred and sixty pages of dense material that I know, but can't skim because I need to catch typographical errors that have missed other readings.
By which I mean I'm kinda paranoid that this, in a hundred years, will be the only record of my life, lodged in the dusty depths of the British Library, and that any mistakes I don't catch will be recorded unto eternity. And that future scholars that read it will point and laugh if it isn't utterly perfect in every possible way.
I'm missing one person, and have just made the conscious decision not to go to London on Wednesday to see several other lovely people because I don't really have the time.
When I'm done with this edit-pass, I need to try to finish my CV and make a creditable attempt at writing the paper I should have been writing last week, but had to back-burner due to continuing faults and failures in the project that is my immediate source of funding. More on that later. I have coffee, and an IRC connection, and some Daft Punk on the speakers, to keep me sane and processing.
Tonight, I fear that it may not be enough.
So. Nearly done.
So nearly done.
My corrections have been accepted, and the postgraduate office has received notification of this within the deadline. I'm on course to graduate in July, in the stupid hat and weirdly multicoloured robes that Sussex Sciences DPhils wear.
Now, I just have to find a bookbinder and give them a PDF they can work from, and get a hard copy in to the postgrad office by the 17th of July. Doable. That, and polishing the CV, and all the rest await, but for the first time in a long time, my todo list is shrinking faster than it's growing.
That, and a relaxing weekend that recharged reservoirs I didn't realise I'd depleted, and maybe I'm starting to get a handle on life again. Here's hoping.