Dissertation writing
Reading Time: < 1 minute A dissertation is a lot like creating a specialised website. You gather hundreds of bits of information and amalgamate them into a collection of articles.
My week started at 10 this morning and was over by 1300 this afternoon. It was a lecture and a seminar about Brian Winston and social determinism in relation to the media. It’s a theory which is exploring whether social factors affect the technology that we use. I was taking notes during that lecture but not with pen and paper and without a laptop. Instead I was using the O2 XDA minis. It’s a really nice device and I’ve had it for over two months now.
What I love about it is it’s size, being about the size of my palm it’s large for a fun but tiny for a laptop. It’s got a big display and a sign out keyboard. It’s also got a good scribling interface which makes handwriting notes just as easy as typing. It’s a friend that played with this feature and I’m quite impressed.
The reason I love it is that it’s got all the features you’d expect from the i-phone but in the windows operating system and for a European market. The fact it’s got a keyboard makes it ideal for fast typing of sms. I often find myself writing over 200 characters because it’s so simple.
Checking e-mail is a doddle. Simply download the gmail interface and connect to the web. The download of messages is easy and intuitive. It’s a shame that data transfer over gprs is still expensive otherwise it’d be perfect.
I’ve made a skype call with it and it’s worked well. I was able to make a phone call to a mobile phone and talk and hear myself at the same time. Being alone that’s complicated but I know it works.
I bought a program and that makes the synchronisation extremely straight forward. I have contacts, pictures and some word documents synced on the ibook and the mobile phone this way.
It’s perfect for students and I really enjoy using the device.
I’m speaking as someone who’s owned at least 5-10 mobile phones over the past few years.
Since I finished my dissertation my biggest time sink has been listening to podcasts. For some reason, I download the entire series of podcasts and work through them one at a time until there are no more. It’s a way of relaxing. It’s also a way of getting information quite easily.
In London, I hardly ever leave home without the iPod whilst in Switzerland due to my driving I can’t listen to podcasts when traveling by car. When it’s on foot however I can.
I found a loop that I do that’s about an hour’s walk and if I chose to I can make that loop last a shorter or longer amount of time depending on which paths through the fields I’ve chosen. Over the past few walks, the rain started falling onto me but it was warm enough and the rain so weak so as not to inconvenience me.
During this podcast listening, I’ve learned a lot about technology and the opinions of a team of people. I’ve seen the evolution in attitude between various podcasters. We see the evolution from being fairly new at certain podcast programs to being quite weathered in by the entire process. As a result, the content is more relaxed and feels more familiar. It’s more familiar to me as well. I know these individuals now, as they’ve talked over time. It’s not quite as remote anymore.
As I listen to podcasts I’ve started to think that they’re not that innovative. They’re doing what radio did years ago but rather than concentrate on music and other such topics they concentrate on technology and those behind the scenes. In so doing there’s been a shift from a celebrity culture of films and music to one of the bloggers, web developers, and more. We’re in a time when being online is so easy and so normal that everyone is there. Within the past 8 months, Facebook has gone from having two or three of my friends there to over 200. That’s quite a big shift, quite a change.
The online world is no longer the realm of the geek. In fact, it would seem that being online is no longer a geeky pastime.
I was also thinking about how social networking websites have become the new portals. Remember yahoo, Altavista and others attempting to become portals, the starting point for most people’s web experiences. Now Facebook, at least within my real-life circle of friends, seems to be the most important. Everyone seems to be there now, or almost. How long will Facebook remain popular?
Just put on some music and now I’ll tell you about a typical day, just two weeks before the end of uni life for me. My phone is set so that it rings every morning at 9 am and the reason it gives me is “catch a flight” because I had set that particular alarm to wake me up before one of my numerous flights.
It doesn’t often get me out of bed, I usually snooze till about 11 am and that’s when there’s noise from the cleaners. I open up the laptop and I start surfing around the world wide web syncing up with what’s happened whilst I was sleeping. It’s not until about two hours later than I do something productive like get out of bed, take a shower, and then get on with the public phase of my day.
a few times I’ve woken up and got straight into one of the three assignments that are due within the next three weeks. I stop working when either it’s at least an hour later or I’ve run out knowledge and because it requires research I decide it’s easier to get sidetracked by something else.
Around 2 pm I go for a walk, as an excuse to listen to a podcast. I get myself what is required for a sandwich and get some ice tea. Time to relax whilst eating.
Until this point there’s a chance I haven’t been sociable so I walk over to the uni library, it’s only 5 minutes away so it’s no struggle. As I arrive there I go from one friend to another, getting a little insight into how well they’re doing with assignments.
With certain people you find that they’re halfway through the dissertation, others are finished. Some were working on their advertising module course work and others claim not to have started writing. I’m glad I have. (slight understatement)
There are a few groups of people I hang around with. Sometimes I go to a venue and I film a friend’s gig, as happened or I go to the SU bar (which hasn’t happened for the past two weeks and won’t happen before next Monday. The third option is to hang out with more friends in halls.
Once I get home I do some more work, sometimes another two or three hours. I found that at one point I was so anxious and worried about my work that I couldn’t go to sleep before I had progressed with my dissertation. I’m lucky that way. My mind has become the perfect nag. I’m grateful for this.
Sleep is easy, I lie down, pull the laptop screen down and see that it latches. Listen to my ipod and fall asleep.
Today is a great day for a number of reasons. The first of these is that I woke up early, which means I slept enough. The second of these is that I dropped into university and was sad to see all those empty bedrooms, which shows there are some good memories from halls. The key to today was getting my dissertation grade.
That’s the reason I dropped by the uni. Tired of the anxiety and worry of grade results I heard from a friend that the results were there. I went and checked my grade and in the process saw quite a few others. One friend I traveled with got a 70 so I’m really happy for him, this being the top grade out of those I looked at.
I found that I was in agreement with the feedback I got, mainly that I should have concentrated more on the socio-economic side. Part of the reason I didn’t was that it was hard to find data on this topic. If I did the exercise again I would work harder on doing better.
Another good piece of news is the following. My MacBook Pro and the software I ordered have been shipped and they should arrive around the 11th of June. I’m really happy and looking forward to this. It means I have a new toy professional tool to play study with.
I dropped by the apple store and took advantage of the wifi at the apple store for a few instants and did the geek thing, watching a mediocre presentation of Imovie. I think I’ll try to get to one or two more advanced shows, see what secrets I can pick up in the process.
I am approaching the five kilometre mark now. I am getting close to being able to run five kilometres in a row once again. It is paradoxical that I find running hard, compared to walking and cycling. I was able to run up to 13 kilometres before. Now I’m aiming for half, to a third less.
If I ran somewhere flat I would find running easier. One of the challenges of running in this landscape is that it undulates. In theory I could also run around in circles like others do. I could run laps, rather than a long circuit but I don’t want to run around in circles. I am considering running around in a circle for the 4.8km run. I want to run around in that circle to focus on achieving the distance, rather than struggling to cope with the contours.
I have a tendency to speed up and wind myself, and then I struggle to regain my breath. I don’t give in and start walking. I just try to get my breathing and heart rate to lower, without having to stop or slow down. I sped up yesterday because I saw that people were going to cross my route, and I didn’t want to get stuck behind them. I succeeded.
I am working on my running ability but I don’t think I like running. I find it hard. I don’t find it relaxing. I have been reading about the 80/20 rule of training, and it’s good to know about it, but it doesn’t apply to me yet. I am not a runner so all runs are beyond comfortable talking pace, for the moment. With time I will slow down my fitness will increase and walking and talking will be simple.
For now the goal is to reach 5km in a single run. Once I reach the desired distance I will work on feeling more comfortable running that distance, as well as work on speed.
I wish I was more inspired to write better posts, but that will come. We are still in winter and when I start going for more interesting activities my post worthiness will increase.
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Romans? Anything on Gibbon? I may be the only person in the entire world who’s reading him right now — and loving him.
http://www.main-vision.com/richard/romans.html is what I wrote about the Romans