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So, this weekend was supposed to be set aside for doing the last of my corrections and polishing up the thesis for handin on Tuesday, as well as getting a couple of little builds for Socks And Puppets out the way.
Then I got a phone call.
Turns out the University of Sussex Fencing Club is once again running the Brighton Open this year, a big fencing tournament that sees a wide range of skills and people from all over the country. Naturally, it includes a cafe, armoury and bake sale. Except... one of the armourers is in Finland, being trained for his new job, and the event's too big for one armourer to handle alone.
I was the club armourer for oh, going on five years: I basically kept that club's kit cupboard running with duct tape and string till we got a budget, then bought and maintained all the kit they currently use. I happen to like them. So when they called me, asked me to hop back into the saddle and get them out of a bind, of course I said yes. I need to be there at 0830 in the morning on Sunday the 8th of May to set up pistes, spin up the armoury, lay out a workshop, ...
Waitaminute.
What am I doing still up? *z*
That was ... oddly less stressful than I'd imagined. Like, a lot.
Today I had my DPhil viva voce examination, and passed with minor corrections (which is normal). This, in itself, was lovely, of course. What was somewhat more lovely was that it was ... almost easy.
The examiners get copies of my thesis a few months before the viva, they read it, then I give a presentation, and they ask questions to make sure that (a) I wrote the thesis, and (b) I understand the field, not just the tiny bit I wrote my thesis on. Apparently, my thesis was written with great clarity, and I answered most of the questions they had in the presentation, so there wasn't too much to say in the end. Most if not all of my corrections are typographical in nature, or requests that I add a little more detail to a given section. In particular, my external examiner told me to stop underplaying my achievements, which was a nice boot-to-the-head piece of perspective after spending five years elbow-deep in this field.
Once the examiners had agreed their verdict, called me back in and shaken me by the hand repeatedly, we all went off for lunch in the cafe and discussed nuclear reactors. All a bit anticlimactic, really ...
I'm now really, really tired, all of a sudden. The next few days I plan on taking very easy, as my brain is entirely toasted at the moment. Back to work properly on Friday, just in time for the weekend.
But yeah. I'm a Doctor, technically (not actually until graduation, of course). How'd that happen?
Bit strange, that. I've never been asked to give a reference before, and now two in one day. Still, I'm happy to do it, for the most part, and it's nice that I'm apparently now a trustworthy source for such things. Curious. Oh well...
So, give a reference. Take a reference, well... I'm trying to ease into the whole thesis-writing thing by writing a series of case studies on system-safety failures (currently Nimrod, THERAC-25 and Ariane-5, but I suspect more will turn up whenever I get bored of the bits I'm writing later). I've no idea which if any will make it into the thesis, as several of them are kinda the same and they're not all really relevant to the topic, but it gets me back into writing long documents instead of code snippets, which is going to be necessary, of course. The actual writing probably restarts Monday next week, with the technical introduction, but one thing at a time. I'd start it tomorrow, but tomorrow is full of meetings, which are a necessary evil.
To bed, then, so I might sleep and be ready for an awesome tomorrow. Or something.
*poof* So many things happened since last update. Life is busy. Dan is busy. Overbusy, in fact: I'm really looking forward to September, when most of this nonsense will be behind me and all I have to worry about is writing up. And funding, but ... well, we'll deal with that when we have a minute.
This weekend, I went to London for Aquarion and fyrheafoc's housewarming in Hackney, north London. They live on the 17th floor of a rather nice building that can see most of London from the balcony, nice airy flat with slightly scary lifts. There were a few people there I know, and a Good Time Was Had By All. There was much frothing, and drinking, and we played "Eat Poop You Cats" (apologies for the style of the linked site, blue is not a good background colour...). I believe my phrase was the only one to make it around the entire group without being radically chinese-whispersed, which is kinda puzzling, but then it was a geek phrase and a geek group... *shrugs*
On Sunday, we went to Camden Market. Well, we meant to go to Camden Market. Instead, we went to an awesome art shop (Cass Art, in Islington) and Forbidden Planet, then went to Waxy O'Connor's for lunch. Waxy's is an irish pub in Camden, with a tree inside. It's on four levels, goes down forever, and serves great food. Well worth the visit, if you have the time and are in the area.
Then came the time to go home. This was trickier than it should be, because I was trying to get from Piccadilly Circus to Victoria, to catch a train back to Brighton. This is normally fairly simple, but complicated by the fact that of the three underground lines serving Victoria, two of them were closed for heavy maintenance and there was a football match on. In London. Involving Manchester United.
Man. U's fanclub is not small. I had to let three trains pass the hugely overcrowded platform before one arrived that I could get on to. When we reached Victoria, the contents of the previous trains was still on the platform, and we had to step out on to a packed platform. It took us about five minutes to shuffle the length of the platform, packed across the entire width and narrowly avoiding falling on to the track. I have to admit, my opinion of football fans went up a fair way there - no shoving, no shouting, just quiet, orderly, considerate shuffle-walking along the platform and up the escalators.
Still, good weekend. I've realised lately that I seem to treat weekends as days filled with NULL, and get all resentful if people try to make me do things on them, as it takes away my doing-nothing time. Since this is plainly ridiculous, I decided to treat this weekend as filled with a housewarming and good people, and it seems to have worked. The loss of my precious doing-nothing time doesn't seem to be a problem. Cool.
I love it when this sort of thing happens. Shenzhen is a HUGE industrial district in China, home to a large number of electronics manufacturers and fabrication plants. There is a 'blog' of sorts called Hack a Day, who try to act as a showcase of new and interesting hacks that people have created, remixing machinery in their local environment, building a web-server that fits in a matchbox, or whatever. Their quality can be a bit variable, in that some of their 'hacks' are rather obvious or contrived, but I guess we all had to start somewhere. Anyway, Hack a Day have created a few hacks in their own right, one of which is a rather handy little bus analyzer called the Bus Pirate.
Hack a Day made a deal with a company in Shenzhen to make Bus Pirates, and sell them to hobbyists who read Hack a Day. They're currently sold out.
They're currently sold out BECAUSE the Bus Pirate manufacturing line has completely exhausted Shenzhen's stock of PIC24FJ64 chips. There are Bus Pirates sitting around that are complete, save for this small but vital chip. That's ... a non-trivial number of chips.
Yay, Internet, for allowing this kind of thing to happen. Across the world, thousands of hobbyists have decided they wanted a Bus Pirate, and accidentally depleted a world industrial centre of a fairly common part.