Introductions and Establishing Common Ground

Yesterday I attended the first of what is a three part training programme run by the Center for Professional Learning and Development.  The other sessions are intended for later in your PhD, while this first one is ideally suited to those of us a few months in but not yet a year into the research process.

The day did not start well – having forgotten to set an alarm, and forgotten that Mrs Llama wasn’t setting one either I woke up at 7.20am, and was out of the house five minutes later – as I had to catch the 7.32am train to Nottingham (for the third time in 6 days).  I made it, and actually remembered just about everything I needed (pen, phone, note pad) although I was horribly unshaven.  Before the session we had to prepare a 50 word plain English summary of our research, aimed at the non-specialist and make sure we were familiar with the national Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF).  The latter was easy as we’d had a session in the RPC about it.  I’d also produced the former a few months ago when I was originally booked on this workshop (one of the weeks that I had a hideous cold).  But running late meant that I left it at home (no time to boot the computer and print it), which meant I spent some time in the library before the workshop writing it.  Not a bad thing, given that the more I had to express what I’m doing in different ways, the more I think I’ll be able to explain what and why I’m doing it at the drop of  pin.

The day started with the usual round robin of introductions and explanations of what our research was all about to the select grouping of 8 participants, most of whom I knew from the delights of the RPC.  After an ice breaker of finding common experiences (slagging of Skegness being a major one) the first task was to draw a pictorial representation of the effective researcher.  That’s the last time I let on I’ve had life drawing lessons as I ended up being the artist and presenter for this bit – despite my team’s mockery of my steam fat pig (it was a boiling kettle representing under pressure).  It was a good start to the day and got our brains going.

Problem Solving

Yes the classic problem solving session which involves building something.  I am notoriously great at problem solving and utterly crap at building things that move, so I made sure to take an advisory rather than hands on role in this Apprentice like task (building an air car).  Our team excelled at planning and sorting through effective requirements…and sucked at keeping an eye on the clock and spotting we’d overlooked a critical failure factor (our car as designed was TOO big).  As with all these kinds of tasks I was employing my gamer brain to spot the workarounds in the rules (Cheating? No! Bending the rules – certainly! Employing psychological warfare…maybe!).  From this session (which incidentally our disaster of a car somehow won) I took away the lesson that planning is important – but it must not come in the way of the doing.  Also time management is critical.

Tuning into Your PhD

The next session took the form of a group discussion where we dug into some of the fundamental questions behind our work – the what, how, why, who and when issues.  This was a good refresher, though it did slightly retread ground we’d gone over in one of the RPC sessions.  We also went over some project management tools like mind mapping, drilling down, risk analysis and everyone’s favourite Gantt charts.  The simulated Gantt chart was about robbing a bank…which for some reason (I’m blaming years of RPGing) I seemed to be able to plan exceedingly well.  Nice to know there’s a career for me in ARV if the PhD doesn’t work out!

Working Effectively with Others (1): Research Collaboration

The next group task was a biggie, we had to talk about our research (this is where those 50 words descriptions came in) so that our teams could understand them.  Then we had to identify commonalities and try to come up with a form of overlapping collaborative project, plan it, and then present it to some funders.  I wasn’t too happy with the direction my team took – it seemed a little less coherent than I might have hoped.  Though we were also a bit hamstrung by the requirement that everyone speak in the presentation and ideally we needed or should have spent some time to rehearsing.

Trying to write a marketing presentation pitch with 4 relative strangers in ten minutes is not ideal (but it is challenging!), and we certainly suffered a bit when we came to do it live, in that we weren’t as polished as I think we could have been.  I think, on reflection, I should have been a bit more strident about pushing for clarity of objective and purpose within our hypothetical project.  That might have helped us all out more.

A lesson for me to take away, be a bit more forthright when you don’t agree on something.  Clearly if the car incident earlier hadn’t highlighted it, I think this demonstrated once again I’m never going on the Apprentice.  I’d be fired in week one.  Okay, the fact that I’m not a money-grubbing self-deluded egotist probably counts against me too

I think though our group might have gelled a bit more, if we’d had an extra hour to work on this together, as we were just about getting into a performative state of mind around the time we suddenly had to down tools and go present.

Working Effectively with Others (2): Managing Professional Relationships

If the earlier bank heist task hadn’t revealed my inner role-player, then this one did.  Split into the same two groups we took the role of a PhD Supervisor and candidate (my group being the student).  We had a brief and had to plan for a meeting with each other, where each of us had points to get across.  After hearing the professor outline what he needed us to do, I made a rather sarcastic comment about how nice it was to see that he did care; since the brief we had described him as very distant.  It was a useful exercise in seeing the other person’s point of view, and in terms of things to think of next time I meet my supervisors very useful indeed.

We also did a short exercise around this related to the Myers-Briggs type indicators, though we didn’t actually do anything along the lines of working our our exact types (I’ve known I’m ENTJ from past training).  The idea being here to situate ourselves along a single continuum ranging from exacting, meticulous feedback to big picture, visionary support.  I kinda naturally tend towards the latter, and perhaps fortunate though that my supervisors balance our between the two extremes.  The key lesson here was the kind of feedback we prefer and the kind we get will vary, and thus we need to take steps to manage that relationship so we can access that which we need.

Conclusion

The whole day was supported by an excellent reflection journal and supplementary notes, which highlighted which elements of the RDF each bit fitted into.  The course used to be a two day event, but the trainers commented that it was hard to get people to commit to two consecutive days.  The notes did touch on the elements we missed out on, such as learning cycles and stage and a team task where the rules are changed halfway through; which sounded fun and useful.  All the same by making it a single day with notes there probably wasn’t a lean second throughout the day, which made for a highly effective learning experience.

I can strongly recommend this session for any PhD student in their first year or so, even though some of the elements were familiar to me there wasn’t anything I would have skipped over.  The trainers were both engaged and engaging, and really engendered the kind of open, friendly but intensive atmosphere that makes for a really effective experience.

All in all it was a highly enjoyable, entertaining, thought-provoking and informative day – and probably the highlight of my week, going back to cracking the books today is going to seem a little dull in contrast.  However, it has certainly helped me relocate in my own mind and enthusiasms just why I am doing this doctorate and was time well spent.

Monday

Must remember not to use it to play car-games

With the coursework all finished for the academic year, this week finally sees me able to focus my attention squarely back on my research.  Something I’ve been frustrated about not being able to spend more time with over the last month.  Today I’ve been typing up interviews (got through two of them, or around 60 minutes of audio) which I was quite pleased with.  However, I’ve given in and ordered myself a foot-control pedal.  It’s something I’ve known about for a while, and now they can just jack into the USB port of my PC it should make the hands-free control of the playback a snap.  It also means I can spend more time typing, and less time taking my hands off the keyboard to pause and rewind.  I imagine though it’ll take a little while to get used to it, so I’ll cover my experiences here!

Tomorrow, I plan to spend the day reading for the vast bulk of the day, to give my hands a bit of a rest.

Tuesday

Didn’t Duran Duran record “The Remix”?

Read Remix by Lessig, a book I’d started reading last month and then had to put to one side to do all the RPC coursework.  It’s a good book, and as I’ve read all his earlier books it’s really interesting to see how his writing style and arguments have come on.  Peppered throughout with real world examples and interviews, and notably an excellent essay by a student on just why they “pirate” music (free lunch, yes please, who wouldn’t take it!), Lessig does make a powerful case for his central theme – criminalising youth through legislative efforts is not advisable. While allowances he argues must be made to allow the digital remixing by the amateur, non-commercial individual, he does argue that for the professional sphere that (c) needs perhaps less modification.  A second central plank is his examination of the economic dimension of (c) and aspects of social production. Here, rather than looking at the entirely social productivity of efforts like FOSS (c.f. Wealth of Networks by Benkler for more) he examines the hybrid models like Wikipedia, Google and Amazon where total exclusivity is not claimed and yet commercial stability has been achieved. There are some similarities with the hybrid model of open access that might be worth considering.  Finally he introduces the ideas of Read Only/Read Write culture – the former being the consumer model of the 20th Century and the latter the ideas behind remix. Historically we had a remix culture (folk songs), but this was slowly erased by (c) reform in the second half of the 20th Century.

Having finished this thoroughly interesting read, I went on to sort out some bibliography issues and engaged in battle with RefWorks online again for a while to close out the day.  Research posters day tomorrow – keep feeling like I should have spent some time revising my research notes, but I guess if I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing by now I never will.  A little nervous as not quite sure what to expect tomorrow from the assessors.

Wednesday

Not a great night’s sleep, worrying about today’s research poster day which saw me taking an early train to Nottingham and the City Campus.  As usual I was the first one there, but I needn’t have rushed as the promised boards for the posters didn’t turn up (due powercuts and floods we were told) until after 10am.  It was nice to have the chance to chat to my fellow RPC PhD students, and in some cases finally put names to faces.  There were some genuinely really excellent posters from my group too.  Once the posters up, we then had to wait for various academics to come and see ours and grade them and our ability to talk about our work.  I got seen by three, the most senior of whom was…pretty caustic about my theoretical aspects.  Not quite crucified, but her certainly didn’t mince his words or scorn – being told that currently “It’s not a PhD” was an especially hard body blow to take.

Just knew I should have gone with this poster

*engage sulky teenager mode*

I’m fully aware the theory is the weakest part of my research proposal at the moment, and something I’m trying to develop – indeed my supervisors advice has been that we will develop it over the 3/4 years of the study.  At times I feel like I’m slightly hobbled as unlike a lot of people in my school I’ve not come through an Arts and Humanities degree path.  It think this goes a long way to explain why this bit is a real struggle for me.  If there was just some book I could read that would give me some insight, I’d pay good money – but all the texts I’ve picked up so far have just muddied the water a lot.  I think I’m going to have to have some discussions with my supervisors about this more, as the guy’s comments really shattered what little self-confidence I have about my research.

The other two reviewers were a little less challenging, though I still struggled a bit in my explanations (managing to blank the word “ethnographic” at one crucial point – arg!).  So no idea how well I did in that, though i was told my poster was fine.  At least I don’t have to worry about it being forwarded to any further internal competitions, pretty sure that’s all dead in the water for me.  Just do hope I’ve done enough to get a passing grade.  Not my finest of moments I fear, and I think I felt pretty rubbish when I couldn’t pick up anyone else getting anything like the grilling I did.  *sigh*

After the poster session a group of us retired to the delightfully named Spanky Van Dykes (!) bar across the road.  A fun couple of hours there in conversation and companionship slightly soothed my fevered mind.  Then took the long train ride home, and sorted out some administration issues, and tested out the pedal for transcriptions.  Going to take a little getting used to, but honestly I think it’s going to really help.  Hopefully a good night’s sleep will restore my self-confidence and enthusiasm a little.

Thursday

Img by C0L0SS4L-ST1NK3R

Still a bit down after the adverse comments on my work from yesterday, which is rather impacting on my motivation to do anything today. Not helped my multiple family medical traumas that are going on at the moment as well, which aren’t exactly leaving me free of cares and ready to refocus and redouble my efforts.  That said I’ll be using my pedal in anger today for the first time and do some more transcriptions.  Hopefully this will help get me going on something useful, while freeing me mostly of the need to think to much.

[Later] Three whole interviews transcribed, which is somewhat of a record.  Especially considering I had to pop out for an hour to get a new tire for my car.  The pedal has already repaid my investment, and I’m almost kicking myself for not buying on sooner.  Still in a funk even by the end of the day, despite Mrs Llama’s best efforts to cheer me up.  This week does seem to be the week that keeps on kicking me in the ass emotionally.

Friday

Another day leaving for Nottingham before tea of breakfast, and still suffering under a bit of a funky cloud; despite last night’s highly enjoyable Eurovision semi final (2) – all my favourites went through, that’s not happened in ages!).  I’m here for the RPC Conference, organised by the 3rd year PhDs, papers by the 2nd years and supposedly attended by us 1st years as well.  However, from a straw poll of my cohort on Weds I suspect there will only be a smattering of folks from my group there.  Which is fine, it means I can spend the day listening quietly and chatting to a potted plant in the corner of the room.  An old conference technique of mine on those days when any shred of self-confidence seems to elude me.  Today’s one of those days sadly.  However, maybe it’ll spark my grey thinky thing into action hearing other people’s work and perhaps pull back some of the mists around theory that are dogging my waking and sleeping hours at the moment.

[Later] Well as events go, today’s was pretty much symptomatic of the whole RSP.  Turning up to be greeted by what appeared to be the cast of The Apprentice squabbling about organisation, being told I was an “external guest” which meant I didn’t get lunch*, a programme, coffee or a name badge – well let’s just say as a veteran conference organiser with over a decade of experience…I’ve had people walk out on conferences for much less!  It wasn’t a good way to greet people and certainly gave a very poor first impression.  Oh, and there was the small matter of hearing that thanks to the estate services while the posters from Wednesday were up somewhere, they’d been transported in a bit of a numpty manner – and were folded (!) and in one case ripped beyond hope.  Nice…

Still no matter, I thought, these quibble shouldn’t spoil matters – doubtless the content of the day would be engaging and that’s what really matters.

There were some good sessions (thank you Kornelia!), that were some brilliantly off the wall sessions (fly in/on/outside the room – loved it) and then there were the large majority of the rest which were…erm, not that brilliant.  Some of them had interesting content and weren’t that well presented, certainly if the remit was to explain matters to a multidisciplinary audience.  Others were just bizarrely structured that they didn’t really communicate anything.  This was a source of some frustration as some of those in the latter category were, in the abstracts, really quite fascinating sounding bits of work.

Thankfully the main key-note was interesting, even if it did delve into crowd-sourcing and Clay Shirky’s work with which I’m more than a little familiar already.  The other keynote was from an avant garde film director and was…erm, yes, I’d say interesting except that might need some clarification.  It was interesting in the empirical sense of watching a film maker’s journey from student film maker to artist.  But on the other hand while I could kinda see how this relates to the research student’s journey, the films left me pretty cold.

*cancel sulky teenager mode*

Fly her apart then!

At the end of the day when it was announced that this year’s conference was great and an improvement on last year’s, I honestly felt the need to make a sanity check.  Hopefully next years will be better, since muggins here and my cohort will be presenting at it**.  Still, the day was not a waste as I did catch up with a couple of people, had a few ideas of avenues to explore more in my own research and reading, and was reminded that I’m actually a pretty good public speaker.  Nipped out to catch the (one an hour) train as soon as everything ended as I was kinda glad to make myself scarce though, but mainly so I could get back home in time to take Mrs Llama out to see Star Trek: Into Darkness.  A film, much more in my oeuvre…

*I think I could have got lunch in the end, but suffering a massive attack of low self-esteem I went off and explored the library instead.
**Assuming I’m still doing the PhD and have not been run over by a rampaging academic again

And now for something completely different…

I love Eurovision (and probably as a consequence am a bit of Europhile) – and so having bought the album for next Saturday’s final (and the semis) am having my first listen to it.  Thoughts follow based on the tunes alone, and not the performances (which can often uplift a middling track into something special).  Oh my biases should be noted

• I prefer original language rather than some tortured form of English, and indeed some of my favourites over the years have been in languages where I have no idea what is being sung.
• I also like something that doesn’t sound like it’s being belted out by whatever X-Factor contestant has been auto-tuned onto the stage.  Give me complexity  give me something unexpected, give me something challenging.
• I seem to prefer male vocalists over female on average, though I’ve yet to hear a man belt out a power ballad as well as a women in the contest!

Or failing that, just give me Lordi back!

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Follow me on twitter (@llordllama) Tuesday and Thursday (semi-finals, 8-10pm BST) and Saturday (final, 8-11pm BST) for my live tweet commentary - which will probably get more sarcastic as the evenings wear on…

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Albania: Identitet (trans: Identity). Strangled techno vocals and…erm, forgettable if pleasant enough. (lang: Albanian)

Armenia: Lonely Planet. Can’t really place this one other than generic modern pop in terms of structure and content. Loses marks for me for not being in Armenian when the vocals might have sounded better. (lang: strangled English)

Azerbaijan: Hold Me. Another piano opening with what I could swear is a French entry, except it’s in English. Gentle opening minute, shifts to power ballad for the next 30 seconds, then into orchestral bit and then rinse and repeat to fade.  Written by a computer, a committee or by random selection.  (lang: Englishish)

Austria: Shine. Would like to like it more as it’s perfectly competently sung, but this is from Austria, home of the daft entry for many a year.  How very dare they send someone who can actually sing! Not terrible, not brilliant, and very much on the side of pretty-much OK. But more than that, nah, that would be too generous.  Does have key change though. (lang: accented English)

Belarus: Solayoh (trans: Sorry – that IS the translation).  A little bit of a Grecian feel to this one, which won’t hurt it in the points, even if the lyrics are…yes, a bit odd.  It does mention the cha-cha-cha, so one can’t totally dislike it.  However, the English isn’t brilliant in scansion so I’m still not 100% sure what it’s about (lang: Euro-English)

Belgium: Love Kills. At a first listening it sounds like Coldplay. And I don’t mean that as a compliment as I can’t stand their brand of chewing gum for the ears. And then a techno beat arrives.  How post-modern (not). Would do well as a song over the credits of an independent film, and you know as it goes on I’m starting to slowly like it.  Okay, the hook is actually quite catchy – could this one finally go through the semis? (lang: accented English)

Bulgaria: Samo Shampioni (trans: Only Champions). Thank you Bulgaria, one of those countries I’ve voted for in the past – ethnic sounding instruments fused with an Eastern-sounding power-pop number.  Catchy, even if the title sounds like a kind of mushroom.  Without Turkey this year, this may be our only chance to have one of these kind of numbers in the show – and I’m now aching to see the stage show that goes with it.  Powerful voiced singer, and a structure…well you know how all those Turkish numbers normally sound?  Well this one has collided with Wild Dances drummers and some pipes.  Could be we have a winner here… (lang: Bulgarian)

Croatia: Mizerja (trans: Misery). Power chords opening goes into a gentle boy band Ballard. Sigh. Come on EuroSong, I thought we got over this fad a few years ago. Nice voices, predicable structure and melody. (lang: Croatia)

Cyprus: An Me Thiamáse (trans: If You Remember Me) Not sure if the slow hand-clap in the middle is for the singer to speed up or not, but she’s got a lovely crisp voice and excellent vocal range.  I might have liked something more exciting than this X-Factor style song to really let her shine.  Still, will probably go down well in the votes.  There might have been a key change in there too, but I’m not 100% sure as it didn’t scream, KEY CHANGE at me (not in the spirit of EuroSong that!) (lang: Greek)

Denmark: Only Tear Drops. Has a penny-whistle (one of the few instruments I can play anything on) so bonus points, and perhaps a slightly fokey feel, which if they play this up with the stage show would not be a bad thin at all.  Quite catchy, I rather like it and I’m not sure why – one of the few tracks I turned the sound up on a first listening to experience it more. Loses points for rhyming ”loose” with “rules” though. (lang: Euro-English)

Estonia: Et Uus Saaks Alguse (New Order Beginning With): Nicely voice female vocals that fall pleasantly on the ears. And a piano.  There are a LOT of pianos in the contest this year.  Where’s Dima when you need him?  I’ve been very fond of the Estonian entries over the years, and while this one isn’t going to blow me away I could easily listen to it a few times.  Could do well on the night(s) if the lass can sing as well live as on the recording. (lang: Estonian)

Finland: Marry Me. Sleigh bells? On a musical number? In May?  Has Christmas been moved? Actually it sounds like Jonathan Coulton’s classic Chiron Beta Prime.  That said this is pop first and foremost, and pretty good pop with that.  I should really hate this I sense if I had any taste/class/musical training, but Grud help me if I can’t help bopping along in my chair without an ounce of self-consciousness.  Deserves to do well for the sleigh-bells alone, so probably won’t. (lang: Engrish)

France: L’Enfer Et Moi (trans: Hell and I). Kinda groovy cool, like a smoky track from a mid-1980s movie bar/love scene. Likeable, but doubt it’ll do that well.  (lang: French)

Germany: Glorious. More techno-house coupled with a female voice, and probably the most anthematic of the tracks I’ve heard.  To quote Hugh Dennis, it’s got a good beat.  Couple with a decent stage show should be a good number on the night, even if it’s not Germany’s best outing of recent years. (lang: English)

Georgia: Waterfall. A duet, something that’s a bit thin on the ground this year.  Despite being in English it’s damned fine English again.  Builds slowly, and perhaps a bit formulaically into an anthem-like structure, which is at least a bit more dramatic than other entries.  Almost has a Bond theme feel to it, although maybe it’s more than a little X-Factorish.  But again find myself liking it in spite of myself. (lang: English)

Greece: Alcohol is Free. Despite managing to reference the only thing still functioning in the Greek economy this one is really fun/danceable/high energy. Say what you Nice one.  Will do well, could be a winner. Slight Madness ska feel to it, which doesn’t do it any harm at all! And perhaps a hint of the classic Moldavian sound too.  (lang: Greek (I think) and some strangled English)

Hungary: Kedvesem (Zoohacker Remix) (trans: Darling). Haunting little number which picks up a little pace as it gets going, and I will confess I was tapping my foot along to it a bit.  Quite likeable indeed, but will it score points?  Could do, might not. Worth a re-listen, as I found myself singing along in phonetic-Hungarian.  So let’s upgrade that to very likeable, but still not sure it’ll be strong enough to clinch the title – but one to watch! (lang: Hungarian)

Iceland: Ég á Lif (trans: I have a life). Clearly this is a recipe for a delicious Icelandic salad “Egg on leaf, egg on leaf” goes the lyrics.  Mnn, I’m hungry. Oh wait, there’s a gentle little song with male vocals too.  Would be a great backing track for a supermarket looking for a song to go over an ethical range style of advert.  But as a contest winner? Nah, I doubt it. One key change and yes…a piano.  Clearly they were going cheap in Malmo. (lang: Icelandic)

Italy: L’Essenziale (trans: The Essential). Okay I speak (and sing) some Italian so I’m always a little biased in their favour. Gentle on the ears, nice melody. A refreshing change after some of the high energy stuff of other acts. I doubt this will do especially well, but damn it I like it! (lang: Italian)

Ireland: Only Love Survives. Starts out sounding like the Turkish entry with all the drums. Trying to be a bit house-trance or something, but then it gets going and it just sounds like a thousand other songs of the past decade of Eurovision, and not the good ones. Basically when you expect a shift in the music…there it is.  Was this written by committee? (lang: English)

Israel: Rak Bishvilo (trans: erm?). Another plinky-plonky piano partnered with a female voice.  Scores points for a title that sounds like a character out of Star Wars though. Builds slowly, but never really stretches itself into power-ballad territory.  More powerful song than Bonnie’s though. More than one key change too, but then the singer sta-aaaa-rrrr-tttts siiii-nnnnn-ggggg like that, and you realise it’s just more X-Factor style dross. (lang: Hebrew)

Latvia: Here we go. Opens as though we’re listening to an updated version of the Beatles, singing a popular football chant. Then it turns into a bargain basement lite-rap. Oh dear. Lyrical complexity is not high here.  Then there’s this bit towards the end with what sounds like someone doing a scratch-remix with a CD like a wedding DJ after too much vino.  Oh dear, oh dear. (lang: oddly accented English)

Lithuania: Something.  Powerful bass-guitar hook to get you into this song, before the drums come in.  I always do like a spot of the daddy-guitar (thank you Murry), but then the song gets going and suddenly it just feels like something I’ve heard a thousand times before.  Shame, as for 10-15 seconds this sounded like it was going to be a classic track. (lang: Engrish)

Macedonia: Pred Da Se Razdeni (trans: Before the Sunrise). Thumping beat. Eastern underscore. Moody vocals. Another would be Turkish entry, just not as good as anything they’ve sent of late.  Not keen on it really. (lang: Macedonian and Romani).

Malta: Tomorrow. I challenge you to not start singing “Raindrops keep falling on my head” to the opening to this one!  But it’s played on a ukulele, one of the other few instruments I play so get’s more marks as a result.  Plus it’s plucky old Malta, and who doesn’t love them! (Okay, most of the voters in EuroVision usually, more’s the pity!). Toe tapping fun which will probably get a large granny vote .  To be honest this one started to grate on me before the end, despite the ukes. (lang: Euro-English)

Moldova. O Mie (trans: A Thousand). Bit of a shocker from one of perennial favourites Moldova, a lone female singer.  Yes there’s a smattering of X-Factor about her, but I rather like her crisp tones and powerful delivery that’s drowned out by a drum line.  Can hold a note without warbling, and the song is powerful and well delivered, but not sure it’s catchy enough to win.  But a credible entry all the same.  No unicycling smurfs though I bet in the stage show, which will cost her my votes! (lang: Romanian!?)

Montenegro. Ingranka (trans: The Party). Oh great more Euro-Techno…and then it turns into something more bizarre with a very deep voice that speeds up.  Melodically a real car crash.  Structurally very interesting. An audience pleaser? Hahahahaha, no. Novelty act on the other hand – could be entertaining in the semis, because no way is this making it to the final!  Sounds like it mentioned Foucault in the lyrics which means I should give it more votes. But I won’t.  (lang: Montenegrin)

Netherlands: Birds. If you don’t want to open your wrists after the first 30 seconds of this one, well done. Depressing. Sounds like a old French song, but in English. Good singer but this just isn’t doing anything for me. Well except getting me down. (lang: Euro-English)

Norway: I Feed You My Love. “WTF” was my first thought on hearing the opening of this, but then I did ask to be challenged.  Perfect soundtrack for one of the Resident Evil movies or something like that – and boy does it build into something a bit more powerful.  So maybe that wrong footing at the start was good as this one is really growing on me.  Looking forward to seeing the stage show – should be something special! (lang: accented English)

Romania: It’s My Life. Could be this one contains my single favourite (bad) lyric “Love is like a mountain in the sky, Love is hard, so hard“.  Well, yes.  Mountains ARE hard…  Turns into a falsetto club mix shortly after that which is a bit of a shock. But keep listening to the lyrics to this one, if you’re some ROTFLMA by the end of the song you have no soul.  Will so not get out of the semi-finals or I’ll eat my hat.  Mmmmmn, hat. Oh probably scores the award for the highest voice in the contest – and it’s a man! (lang: Euro-English)

Russia: What If: Another lovely female voice. Starts slow, but with perfectly natural English lyrics and delivery too this kinda gets hooks into you after a couple listenings. Despite myself I quite like this, as it slowly evolves into a power ballad - and boy can the lass hold a note.  Maybe a bit X-Factory, but will likely score well. At least 1 key change. And this is Russia so you know she’ll do well, if she can hit the notes on the night. (lang: perfect English!)

San Marino: Crisalide (trans: Chrysalis):  One of those small countries where eventually everyone gets the chance to participate in EuroSong. A bit of a torch song, all be it one that does pretty much everything you think it might – a yearning that builds orally and musically as the track continues.  Really tries hard in the last minute, with two key changes and enhanced beat.  Not sure if I like it as a complete package though. (lang: Italian)

Serbia: Ljubac Je Svuda (trans: Love is Everywhere).  Well if you were looking for a thumbing beat with a powerful female voice screeching over the top, then this is your lucky day. Sadly sounds like another X-Factor cast off performance, funked up to sound modern and relevant.  So with that in mind, the fact that the tune is quite catchy and I have no ability to pick winners in any contest probably means this one will win.  It shouldn’t, but it probably ticks enough demographic boxes.  Either that or nul-points in the semis. (lang: Serbian)

Slovenia: Straight into Love. Another techno intro and then into a female twinkly ballad  which doesn’t work for me (though looking at the singer I might have to increase her score on the night!). Keeps wanting to change into Kate Bush “Running up that Hill”, and the techno beat then returns. Disposable.  Still if the singer is pretty enough she’ll garner some votes. (lang: English)

Spain: Constigo Hasta El Final (trans: With You to the End). Always one of my favourite counties to send great EuroSong acts – some because they’re just fun (but awful  and some that are awfully good.  This one opens like something out of Battlestar Galactica (not a bad thing). Pretty voice on the lead singer and a rather more complex musical structure than a lot of the other tracks on offer.  A bit more rock than pop (huzzah, come back Lordi) with a Celtic edge.  I would like to hear more from these guys (lang: Spanish)

Sweden: You. Who? Me? Another Coldplay-esque track with a warbling singer who puts about 5 syllables too many into the word You which is pretty damned impressive singing.  Sadly I don’t like this one, could be the accented English grates on the ears, or maybe it’s the proto-yodelling that passes for his vocal talent.  Can he actually hol-ololo-d a note? (lang: Euro-English)

Switzerland: You and Me:  Not the old kids’ show.  But hang on a minute, is this from the Hobbit soundtrack? Oh no, that means I start liking it! Slightly folky rock which could be a dark horse – except no one votes for the Swizz politically so probably won’t get to the final. Shame. (lang: accented English)

UK: Believe in Me. Should have been called Please vote for me, it would have been more honest.  Why not try singing that over Bonnie’s lyrics in the chorus?  Go on, you’ll thank me!  Anyway, heard this on the radio yesterday and I did not dislike it. But love it? Vote for it? Even if I could…questionable. One of the stronger songs (and singers) we’ve sent in years, should in an ideal world end up half way up the votes. Won’t (thank you Mr Blair and Labour) due to political voting. Unfair on Bonnie – especially as it contains a God-damned key change and everything! (lang: English, naturally)

Ukraine: Gravity. What a sultry voice this singer has, like liquid velvet on the ears in the opening moment of the song (hope Mrs Llama doesn’t read that!)…and then someone goes and spoils it by adding TOO MUCH DRUM MACHINE over the top, and unneeded backing singers.  This with Zlata’s voice alone would have been a great song, and maybe on the night they’ll pull back on the backing and let her voice sing through – but if not it sounds too much like they’re trying to drown her out, which is a mistake.  Is there a key change in there? Oh and it sounds like she’s singing “My Brother Lee” not “My Gravity” (lang: accented English)

Thus it appears this is the year of the piano!  And after all that who are my favourites:

1. Hungary: ByeAlex (aka Alex Márta). I just love this track I’ve decided, and considering he’s a philosopher - well if you’ve been following my blog that probably wins it for me.
2. Spain: ESDM:  El sueño de Morfeo. One of the more talented performers and very interesting tune. Love the celtic bits, and the folk rock combo and as I said above, worth hearing more from these guys.
3. Greece: Koza Mostra. Because they’re Greece, always good fun, always high energy.
4. Georgia: Nodi Tatishvili and Sophie Gelovani. Dark horse candidate!
5. UK: Bonnie Tyler. Hey, it could happen. But probably the first UK entry in the past 5 years I’ve genuinely liked. Since Scooch okay.

[Edit: Post Final: Well Denmark won, well done! On the night I voted for Romania, Malta and Hungary, the latter remaining my favourite but the other two really growing on me from the final.  Greece would have got my 4th vote had I made one.  UK was...terrible, sorry Bonnie - it wasn't well performed on the night]

Monday

If you’re wondering about the title this week…

And read on and it’ll all become clear.  Although, somehow I’ve managed to spot an allegory for open access and the publishing industry in the dialogue between Captain Flack and Nick Fisher (00:09:17).

Nick Fisher “You can’t put a poster there.  The people who own that hoarding have to be paid when you stick a poster on it.  Then they pay me, and I put it up”

Capt Flack “Very well, the law’s the law. We’ll just have to go home”

Of course in an open access world (academic) Flack could just bypass the middle man of bill poster (publisher) Nick…

Bank Holiday, post marathon recovery (big blisters on both little toes, but I was 8 minutes faster than last year, so I’m happy). No work was attempted.

Tuesday

Research poster planning today.  Having done a thumbnail sketch last month today I had to try to pull some text together for it.  On one hand it’s a total embuggerance* that I can only really build it in a Microsoft product – and I don’t have access to MS Office at home.  I could build it in Open Office, but Writer is just not versatile enough.  Given more time I might have considered using some FOSS type package, and 3rd party PDF converter – but then I don’t have an A3 colour printer to run drafts off either.  I’ve used publisher so many times over the years in various jobs, I find it very easy and adaptable to use too.  So tomorrow I’ll need to be on campus to do the handle turning part of the exercise.  Increasingly getting to the point where I’ll need to get a laptop or upgrade my PC and stick a copy of Office on it, as I don’t want to be forced to waste the best part of two hours* of the working day driving to and from campus.

Wanted: Ideas for poster designs

On the other hand though, it was good to force me to sit down and think through what the poster was trying to say. Yes it’s about my research proposal, which let’s face it is only the most embryonic form of my studies still, but at least that focusses it all down.  I was able to draw not only on my RD1PA *shudders* but also my recent philosophy essay for certain turns of phrase I’ve used, and points made.  That helped, but of course I’ve had to simplify things so they’ll make sense a bit more to a non-specialist.  Bit worried that it’s all too wordy though, even in tiny 8pt font.  Also spent some time photoshopping a couple of simple images to use in the background to give it a bit more eye-appeal.  Suspect though it’s not going to win any prizes, but so long as it’s servicable, I’ll be happy (probably).

*(TM) Mr T.Pratchett Esq

**or 5 hours, if the potential relocation of Mrs Llama and I goes forward as planned

Wednesday

On campus to work on the poster for a couple of hours.  The delights of trying to figure out how to colour print wasn’t easy (though obvious once I realised), but really useful to be able to have a 25% scale copy to work from.  As I feared far, far too wordy and will need editing in a number of places for near-gibberish phraseology   The method and theory bit really is damned weak too, but as my theory is supposed to be something I’m working on throughout the PhD it’s a bit difficult to slam something in there now (even though there are marks for this – sigh).  As I’ve mentioned before, unlike some of the other’s on the RPC I don’t have a handy-dandy out of the box theory to use.  Still, I guess I like a challenge…

I have though stuck in a link to the “best video on open access ever made” (not my words), a little something I made waaaaay back in 2007.  One day I will go back and make a new/updated version – but today is not that day!

So just me here then…

There was supposed to be a meeting of the PhDs in my dept, so I had to abandon my computer at 11am.  As a lot of PC class rooms are increasingly booked solid from here on out for 24/7 for exams – this resulted in people pouncing on the slot as soon as I got up, great another obstacle to producing this bloody poster (see how much I am enjoying this).  And would you believe it, no one else showed up for the meeting.  Can’t say I was surprised as my good chum and fellow PhD Lidia and I had agreed over an online chat that we thought it was only going to be us two and she was likely to be busy.  *sigh*  Lidia and I had a long wash-up chat later in the day where we discussed the inability of all these baby-academics to have a sense of community and shared culture enough to get them out of their study pods and into a meeting for an hour or two every month.  Hell, given that it’s voluntary we’re on a hiding to nothing – given the numbers in the compulsory RPC have been dropping through the floor this year – if people won’t show for credit bearing sessions how can we ever get them to show up off their own backs.

And as I’m not their line manager,  it’s not my job to kick-’em in the ass and remind them.  We’re all adults you know…

Came back home after a bit more editing to work more on the text of the poster in the comfort of my house, with hot and cold (mostly hot) running tea, nice toilets and no chance anyone will filtch my spot if I pop away from the desk for a few moments!  This poster is taking far too long IMHO, and I’ll be glad to see the back of it.

Queen’s speech today – and I see the government want’s to look at IP law again.  Combined with next year’s DEA snooping laws, this doesn’t bode well I suspect for the average non-corporate creator.  Flipping vectorist capitalists running this country…

Thursday

On campus not long after 9am to re-edit the poster and play with the layout.  It still have about 200% too much text and I will try and cut it down – but unlike a real research poster I’ve not got any results to present, nor interesting charts to display.  Not to mention there are marking criteria for this thing, which means I’ve got to include (I feel) more to score marks, and less to generate an discussion with anyone who reads it.  I think if I ever have to do one of these again, it’s going to be one image with a title and a giant question mark!  And that’s it.

After a couple of hours of this I had a long meeting with my supervisors to discuss what I need to be doing for the next few months.  I think they might just have left me some time to sleep and eat, but not much!  It’s nice to be challenged but I’m still feeling more in need of a holiday than I have for a long time.  Just as well I love what I’m doing, or I might throw a wobbly I think!  Guess that IS the joy of the PhD process, you are looking at something that engages you, rather than just performing the 9-5 grind.

I came home after the meeting to lunch and then work on trying to edit the word count down on the poster, and spot other little tweaks and the like.  Somehow this took most of the afternoon, but I think I’ve got the final version sorted.  Spot more crafty photoshopping too, as I decided the images I did on Tuesday weren’t good enough.  All those hours I spent at York and Sheffield teaching myself Publisher and Photoshop, continues to pay dividends it seems – more than a lot of the other things I learned there.  Yes Soft Systems Methodology, I am thinking about you!

Alan Davis’ art – magical!

Tomorrow it’ll be  another 30 miles round trip to campus to finish the poster off, and get it printed by the printing unit; but at least it’ll be done.  Just as well, I’ve got to be on city campus for three training sessions next week Mon/Wed/Fri so that’ll be any remaining time used up!

The afternoon ended with a notification that I’ve had a paper accepted for a conference at Nottingham.  Ooo-Eeep!*** I’m speaking on the same panel as my supervisor. Great, no pressure to perform there then!

***I actually made this noise.  Sounding a bit like Crazy Chrissie from Dr and Quinch.

Friday

Looks like my brain has failed.  Checked my online diary for next week and turns out I’ve only got two training things next week, and two the week after. So one more than I thought, but thankfully a little more spread.  This is good as it gives me Mon and Tuesday to dive back into my fieldwork and crucially my background reading again.  This has really been neglected since Easter, and following yesterday’s supervisory meeting I know I’ve got a whole heap more to do.  Ideally my supervisors want me to split myself 50/50 on field work and background work, which seems a good goal and will certainly help me structure my day.  Might try to do a bit more theory than practice for a few weeks at least in order to balance out the scales a bit.

Anyway, today I left home before 9am (or the crack of dawn for we students, how I ever used to leave for work at 6.20am in one of my old jobs I’ll never know) and went into the library for the final slog on the poster.  Was glad I’d done the bulk of the editing of text in an offline file yesterday, as this left me more time for proofing the layout, colours and images.  I’d love to say it’s the finest poster ever made, but it’s far from it.  I’m no designer and there is still too much text for my personal taste – but it is done.

Not me waiting

Have to say the Printing Unit at Clifton Campus and the Graduate Office both excelled themselves today in terms of service, friendliness and all-round efficiency   Was a real pleasure using them both, and that left me on an extra big high to come home and try to write-up the notes from yesterday’s meeting.  Given the free-ranging nature of the discussions we had, trying to put them into some semblance of order is a bit of a challenge.  Lucky I’ve got all those years of writing minutes then!

And just as I was about to log out of email I got a message from the philosophy tutor that my latest piece of work is marked and ready.  I hate opening these documents, and I get a real fear of getting a lousy mark.  I know I didn’t spend anything like as much time and effort on writing this last piece of work as I did the two previous assignments, and while the feedback each time has been positive and valuable - well I don’t like getting the score.

But on this occasion  turns out I’ve actually got a higher mark than the previous pieces.  What a nice way to end the week – I’ll just go through and read the comments, run off a copy for my files and then call it a week.

Aka a chance to catch up with the most recent Doctor WHeasel videos. The previous three are here.

Introduction: Kaja Marczewska

As I mentioned in my regular post, I spent Saturday this past week at the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University at an event for PhD students and new Humanities* scholars.  I’ve been waiting for a while to go to my first academic conference or workshop, and when I saw this one I thought it was very much up my street.  Since I was covering all the costs of attending out of my own pocket, I didn’t want to jump at just any event.  However, when I suggested that maybe attending this might be a good idea my supervisor excitedly said “No, you MUST attend this”.  Interestingly even though I wasn’t giving a paper I still had to submit a short precis of my research and the reasons why I wanted to attend, which is not something I’ve had to do before.  However, I think the practice of getting used to writing about my research is something that’s going to a regular co-occurrence in the coming years.

The event was titled Forms of Innovation: Humanities, Copyright and New Technologies and promised:

A one-day workshop for doctoral students and early-career researchers will explore key questions in copyright, open access publishing as well as the challenges of authorship and attribution in academic social media practices.

What follows are my fairly brief personal notes and impressions from the event, rather than deep analysis of the sessions.  Where possible I’ll link out to any resources or papers covered, but as you’ll see some materials aren’t available in the open domain for reasons that I hope will become clear.

The day was introduced by Kaja, and covered the background to the project and the event.  This is the first in a series of events linked to the project, which is backed by 6 Universities and is AHRC funded; and the plan is to run 6 events in total and cap it with a conference.  While the project is only for a year, it is hoped that it may gain longevity and funding beyond that, and hence be able to offer further events beyond 2013/14.  The event on Cardiff on remix cultures sounded right up my street, but given that I was self funding to attend Durham (no change out of 100quid in travel and accommodation) I’m not sure I can afford to splash out again so soon.  On the other hand there is an event forthcoming at DMU on the 26th July on the importance of communicative space within interdisciplinary research, which would be cheap enough to get to for me, and given my interest in scholarly communication I think I can justify the time to attend.

Session 1: Prof Ronan Deazley: Copyright for Humanities Scholars

The session by Ronan was an excellent start to the day.  Having battled…sorry, worked with academics and copyright for a number of years in all my recent posts, and since free culture, rights law and creative commons are research interests of mine I was very engaged.  We were lucky enough to have some physical copies (yes that old, “Not in digital yet to avoid (c) issues” issue) from the CREATe centre, which is the RCUK Centre for Copyright with which Ronan is very involved.  In his session he highlighted the logical flaws that underlie much of modern copyright law – copyright is instant in the creation of a work (unless, your employer claims it contractually), and yet in order to access anything on the web that is copyrighted – technology creates a copy in order to function.  Of course this also raises issues with academics giving away the rights in their work to publishers, in exchange for dissemination, that under law their employer actually owns, and old and familiar issue to me – though I suspect not all scholars.

He highlighted something that I wasn’t particularly aware of, that the (horrible, ill considered IMHO) Digital Economy Act’s monitoring and infringing actions come into force from April 2014.  This where your on-line use will be monitored, and where rights holders can espy potential infringement you will receive a warning letter, and thereafter punitive legal action.  This still leaves as foul a taste in my mouth (police state anyone?) as it did when the act was rushed through parliament in 2010, a legacy of the last government that’s smouldering away like a discarded firework and will likely have horrendous implications for many in the UK.  Especially given we have no exceptions under law for the use of materials in parody or satire, unlike the US with their first amendment.  I foresee a media fire-storm next year with this one.

Ronan meanwhile moved onto to discuss the issue around (c) and incentivisation.  One of the oft quoted roles of copyright, is to provide incentives to authors to produce further work by protecting it from being reused/repurposed by others before a certain period.  However, the mood in the room suggested that the current UK law of Life+50/70 for creative works is hardly an incentive to create – after all do we really care that our work will be unusable easily by others until long after we are dead?  You only have to look to the states where the media and entertainment industries would dearly love these periods to be extended – so that IP they’ve come to own can continue to generate revenue for them for decades.  However, within the room it was agreed that (c) does at least protect moral rights, in that work created must be attributed to the author and not subjected to derogatory treatment – thus allowing them to gain prestige as a result of their labours

He also considered further issues around (c) being a barrier to dissemination and research (hello OA).  Interestingly due to changes in the 1988 Copyright Act orphan works that had fallen out of copyright in some cases fell back into copyright, through to 2039, which is a problem for those scholars wanting to use it.  He illustrated this with a page from a late 19th Century wages book, filled in by two men.  As the firm was long out of business and the two men untraceable, a scholar wanting to reproduce this, would strictly speaking be placing themselves at risk.  Some orphan works though revert to Crown copyright, which might make things a little easier.

With respect to academic dissemination he noted that many publishers actually do offer a non-exclusive license to publish, as an alternative to the standard CTA (copyright transfer agreement) that transfers all economic rights to the publisher.  However, these are not normally trumpeted and need to be asked for.  He also suggested changing the terms of the agreement before signing it, though some of the younger researchers in the room suggested that whereas a professor might get away with that, their own power in that regard was more limited.  Personally I’ve always fallen back on the SPARC License to publish in this regard, as a more standardised and recognised approach.  He also mentioned the EU normalisation of copyright, which related to this, brought items that were in (c) still in any EU country, back into (c) in the rest of the countries.  So for example Spain has an author’s life +80 years rule, hence items in the UK went back into copyright.

The session finished with us breaking into groups to discuss copyright issues, concerns and experiences as they related to our own work.

Session 2: Dr Martin Eve and Dr Caroline Edwards: Open Access Session

After a very nice lunch in a very posh part of Durham CastleCaroline (@the_blochian) and Martin (@martin_eve) ran a session on open access, highlighting a number of issues that were familiar to me and some that were less so, coming as they did more from an academic than a practitioner perspective   I was interested to see an academic draw the “cost of journals outstripping ability” to pay diagram, that as a librarian I’ve been familiar with since the late 1990s.  It seems some things take a while to percolate down/up to academics!  However, it was acknowledged that the current age of austerity is most certainly brining this issue into sharp relief for many academics, although they noted that for many years researchers have been effectively isolated from the financial burden of publications; librarians have been doing their jobs too well keeping things going.

There was a rather nice little illustration in their slides about what OA wasn’t (which I’m paraphrasing here and I’m sure they’ll correct me once I tweet this blog post if I’ve err’d):

• Not a bypass of peer review
• Not denying that there are costs in territorial work
• That it doesn’t relax plagiarism
• It’s not elitist (i.e. “Academic work shouldn’t be in the PUBLIC domain, oh my no!”)
• It’s not universal (by a long way)
• There are issues with both Gold and Green OA (sustainability and ethics of paying more on one hand, issues around citations to versions of documents).

Possibly my favourite phrase, and one that I might just need to get a t-shirt of was “Academic capital makes the journal world work“. There it is, shorn of any Marxist connotations of revolution  or overthrowing the system.  Without the knowledge capital gifted by the academic community (through those aforementioned exclusive licenses), their efforts as editors and peer reviewers; the journal world would rather swiftly grind to a halt.  Although I would temper this with a phrase I read recently that “The publisher cares for the academic about as much as the slaughter-man cares for the cattle“; though that’s a bit more rabble rousing, but neatly illustrates that academic outputs are just grist for the mill.

The second half of the talk focussed on the (very exciting IMHO) Open Library of Humanities.  While you can read more about it on the site, they referred to it as “a big bucket of stuff”, or perhaps more accurately a mega-journal, which feeds to other open access journals in a range of fields, and removed from such considerations as “monthly”; items will be published once they are through peer review revisions, speeding up research dissemination and moving away from a model predicated on physical distribution of bundled research.  In order to gain credibility they have 100 major scholars promising articles in order to make it an attractive destination for other scholars to publish within.  This is certainly one to watch.

Session 3: Dr Ernesto Priego: Humanties Research, new media and issues of authorship and attribution

The last session of the day was given by Ernesto (@ernestopriego) and focussed on his work in establishing the Comics Grid, as an open access journal using blogging software.  This ticks two boxes of interest for me, open access and comics.  I can’t claim it’s scholarly level of knowledge, but US and European comics have been a passion of mine since childhood – as my attic stored long boxes, bound copies of Asterix and numerous graphic novels filling my shelves will attest! *ahem*  The Comics Grid is again like the OLH a born-digital resource designed to be read online, and fully peer reviewed.  It too has embraced a more rapid publication process, and has mastered a short form of communication, aiming to keep content regular, fresh, readable as well as scholarly.

Ernesto discussed that through his experiences running this (with his editorial team) that he has encountered that fear of (c) issues are a big block for many academics when it comes to open access.  He talked more about the practicalities of running the journal/site, which included the generation of a DOI for every item created ion the site.  He also opened up the debate into thinking how future scholarly dissemination and peer review might function in an open access environment   Regretfully I was flagging a bit at this point (thanks to the noisy hotel neighbour who kept me awake half the night) so my notes sort of petter out here.  However, I do recommend you have a look at the Comics Grid, as it’s very impressive.  We were even treated to a preview of the new look the site will be getting in the near future.

Wrap Up

The day ended with a wine reception and general discussions.  I confess as I had a three hour drive and a full Sunday working ahead of me, I slipped out rather earlier than I would have liked, as the delegates were an excellent selection of scholars with some fascinating insights.  It would have been nice to have more than a sip of wine (damn driving!).  Hence, it was regrets that I slipped away from an excellent event with a lot to think about, and a few more contacts in the scholarly community made.

The hash tag for the event was #FormsInn, although some earlier tweets went out on the longer #Formsofinnovation, you’ll probably spot some of my tweets in there.

*Yes, I managed to avoid cracking the “Oh, the huge manatee” joke all day. You should proud of me.

Monday

Today was my Project Review Panel meeting.  At this the idea is you present a brief presentation to your supervisor team, and the institutionally appointed internal assessor.  Then the assessor gets to quiz you about any and all aspects of your proposed research, and goes off to make a recommendation to the School Graduate Research Board as to whether or not you can progress, and any amendments that need to be made to the proposed research.  Having spent nowhere near enough time to be happy with the presentation during Sunday’s preparation, I was up early going through my notes and rehearsing my talk.  I’m lucky in that my research is within a field and environment that I’m quite professionally familiar with, however, saying that and justifying it to academics with years of experience in applied humanities research is a whole different matter.

The Project Review in many regards had been sold to us as our first taste of that most dreaded of PhD elements the viva – and thus I approached it with that in mind, an oral defense of my research.

Hence, needless to say I had a bit of a sleepless night and arrived at the room where I was to present fairly early.  Having mooched around the nearby computer labs to calm my nerves, at 9.55am I went into the room to find…well, I was the first one there.  I spotted my supervisors a few minutes later coming into the building  and I thought I saw my internal assessor.  As it turned out it wasn’t him, and a few minutes later we had to shout and bang on the window to attract his attention as he nearly headed into the wrong building!

Loss of assessor averted, and after introductions I went into my talk.  Now like most people I had prepared some slides.  Sadly to (everyone’s) surprise the room lacked a computer or a projector.  This didn’t especially bother me, as I’ve had to lecture more than once in the past sans-expected equipment, and to be honest I was talking about something that’s pretty much been my full time focus for the past 7 months.  Thus if I couldn’t talk about it now, well then I certainly wasn’t fit to progress on with the research!

Personally despite my nerves I felt it was a very positive discussion and the whole team in the room had some good suggestions for areas I need to think about, or explore further in developing my work.  I did manage to suppress a wide grin when I was told I had an excellent and extensive bibliography, especially for a PhD at this stage.  All those hours of reading paid off it seems!  I was also able to bring in some elements of the discussions from the conference at the weekend, and aspects of the scoping interviews I’m doing at the moment; to give the proposal that up-to-date edge.

We will still talking when the next room booking folks turned up, and so we continued the discussions in the corridor outside for the next 15 minutes.  Thankfully we weren’t outside anyone’s office.  Some good ideas came out of the discussions, not least of which the suggestion that I could turn the tables and make use of my assessor as one of my research interview candidates.  That might be…interesting!  Now I just need to wait to hear formally what the assessors and graduate panel’s judgement is, and then I can relax.  Hope I don’t have to wait too long.

Having done this I came back home, lunched and ran another of my enjoyable and informative telephone scoping interviews.  After that I confess the past 8 days of work kinda got to me and felt a bit burned out, and thus beyond this blog I can’t really cite much more I’ve achieved today.  Ah well, 4 interviews tomorrow should see me back on the old work horse once more!

Tuesday

As I expected a day of interviews, and one or two nice comments about this blog. Thanks, I think I’m writing this largely for myself as a reflective aid, but it’s really nice to hear that other people are getting a little something out of it as well.  This site is never going to get major traffic, unless, you know, I say something really controversial or discover the cure for cancer of something; but it is nice to know that I’m not writing into a total vacuum   It also helps to keep the writing muscle engaged I think, given that one of my assessor’s comments yesterday was that I should be writing chunks of my thesis from here on out pretty much on a regular basis.  I think writing up my methods and outcomes from the interviews will probably be one of the early bits, though I suspect a framing/introductory chapter will by default be the first thing I’ll need to concentrate on.  Doubtless my supervisors will have ides when I see them again next week to discuss my activity and focus for the coming months.

Given my hectic schedule of the past week or so (this marks day 9 on non-stop work) after the interviews were over I went for 12 mile walk to clear my head and stretch some non-thinky muscles for a change.  I’d say I did it to relax, but at the speed I try and walk, relaxing doesn’t get much of a look in!  Still, it’s the last long walk I’ll do before the marathon this weekend down in Wiltshire.

Wednesday

Came into campus today as it’s the last RPC-A session today (course review – which I suspect might be a bit painful to experience due to niggles with the course that a lot of people have expressed).  But I also came in to kickstart my research poster design.  I’ve really only got a week in which to pull this one together, though thankfully having my panel review this week has at least brought some of my thoughts on the research into sharp relief.  The feedback from the assessor will be useful in this respect too.  It’s a bit annoying that as I don’t have the MS Office suite at home I can’t easily work on the poster at home.  Might play about with Open Office designer later and see if that’s a viable alternative, as I don’t much fancy sitting in a student PC class room for the next week (and given that the one I’m currently sitting in is at 35DegsC I might just melt before then!).

I did sketch out a design for a poster a few weeks ago, but now I’m having second thoughts about it.  Given that I’ve really only got an hour to work on it before class, I plan to just mock something up visually and see how that looks on paper (A3, can’t print to A1 easily!).  It’ll at least give me some guidance, and then I can work offline tomorrow on the actual textural content.

[Later] Well the feedback session about lived up to the rest of the RPC course, it had some good bits and some not so great bits.  And it didn’t deliver everything that was promised at the start, not least of which was the idea to record us talking us about our research again.  Waaaaay back at the start of the course we were recorded talking about our research briefly.  The idea was at the end of the course that this would happen again and then we could could compare how much we had improved in our thinking and communication skills.  Given that about 2/3 of the people on the course didn’t bother showing up for this last session, it was perhaps just as well.

We spent the two hours instead giving the (slightly nervous) tutor course feedback.  It wasn’t exactly cathartic as some of the complaints we might have aired didn’t really seem worth the while, given that this is the last year the RPC course runs in this format.  And given that we’re now beyond the course, there’s always a slight disinclination to say anything as it won’t be of tangible benefit to ourselves.  I think we did experience a little of the British reserve as well – if you can’t say anything good about something, don’t say anything.

After this slightly tense two hours a small group of us retired to the student union beer garden.  This might sound like typical student behaviour, but for me this was:

• a) The first time I’ve set foot in the union since I wandered through at the start of October.
• b) The first time I’ve been out with any of my PhD course mates socially full-stop.
• c) Probably the first time I’ve been in a pub in 7 months.

*sigh* My social life basically sucks, okay.

I always knew that living off and working mostly off campus and being a mature student wouldn’t make for an especially social time, but I had kinda hoped something might have happened before now.  However, this was a delightful couple of hours, and so I’m going to probably end today with a smile on my face.  Although having learned about a Spanish tradition involving a goat, a church steeple and the phrase “hurled from the top” I shall probably remain perhaps a little disturbed!

Oh, and we only left around 5pm because the union was hosting some kind of awards ceremony so they threw us out.  Been a while since I’m been thrown out of anywhere!

Thursday

Back to normality with a day interviewing, and transcribing.  Thought about doing some work on my poster, but in the end decided to think about it tomorrow afternoon in a bit more detail.  That way I can mull it over the long weekend and then crack into it full steam the following week.

Friday

Kicked off the day with my last currently scheduled interview (number 23 of a series, collect them all!).  There are still a few people I’ve semi arranged to sort out a date later in May, and one or two other people in locations (Wales and Ireland mostly) where I’d like to include their views and institutional thumbnail sketch in my work.  But with the poster presentation, and a week of training after that I’m a bit backed up with competing priorities.  So I think I’ll concentrate on these, along with transcribing and reviewing the interviews I’ve done to date – and then see where I am come mid-May.  Of course since I’m meeting with my supervisors late next week, they may well have a different view they’ll want me to take on board, so I won’t be making any more concrete plans.

The interview was great, and I spent most the morning transcribing.  After lunch I had fully intended to work on my research poster, however one of the regular irritations of working from home is having to clear the dining table and re-assemble my working space in order to actually work on things like this.  Hence it was 3.30pm by the time I had cleared the space, sorted my papers, and done all the filing of books, papers and interview scripts I’ve neglected for the past couple of weeks.  As Mrs Llama tends to arrive home around 5pm on Friday (and often with demands that I down-tools “Because the weekend is here!”, this didn’t give me much thinking time.  So I’ve now assigned Tuesday as a full on poster day, and Wednesday as an on campus day to work on the computers there.  Instead I finally sat down and wrote up my notes from the meeting on Monday, and shared them with my supervisors.  That way it’ll give us some focus when we meet next week to discuss my work plans.

I then spent a while debating the merits of Dragon Naturally Speaking (or similar) voice recognition software as a potential way to transcribe faster.  I think it doesn’t look like it would work, as it’ll have to cope with two different voices – but if anyone’s got any experiences with using it for interview transcribing (good, bad or indifferent), I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts*.  Certainly don’t want to fork out for a copy if it turns out to be naff.  My Amazon discount only goes so far!  Finally I sat down and went through my notes from last Saturday’s conference on Humanities, Copyright and New Technologies.  Good conference, and I suspect other’s have written more thrilling and impactful write ups; but I wanted to stick my own notes somewhere – and the blog is as good a place as any!

And with that (and this) post finished this brings together the longest week I’ve worked yet on this PhD 12 days straight.  Thankfully it’s a Bank Holiday; although always a sucker for more punishment I’m doing a marathon power walk across Salisbury plain this Sunday.  Hope everyone has a splendid bank holiday – and here’s hoping I don’t boil/freeze/collapse down in Wiltshire!

*[Edit: Some interesting thoughts here, and yep looks like nope is the answer]

Monday

Well this has been a day of interviews.  Most of this morning was spent travelling to Loughborough Uni to interview a couple of people.  Due to their odd parking arrangements (no easy visitor spaces) and the streets all around having a “No university parking!!!” rule I ended up parking about 1.5 miles away (I always forget quite how HUGE their campus is).  Still, what’s 3 miles walking – yesterday I walked over 25 miles!  Came back via the shops, had lunch and then got set up for my afternoon interviews.

I had two of them, and yet again more fascinating insights came out.  Both were quite lengthy, but as always I scribbled lots of notes.  Just as well because I didn’t think to check that my software for recording was switched on!  It wasn’t – I’d turned it off to do the phone test on Skype, and then forgot to turn it back on.  I know I clicked on the “record” button, it even showed “recording on” but, clearly there was some sort of software issue that resulted in it not bothering to record the conversations.

Pissed off was I!  Especially considering how giving all of the interviewees were once again, feel a bit like I’ve let them down. Cross with myself here.

However, my notes were copious and while I might have missed a little of the details, I quickly wrote both of the interviews up while they were still fresh in my mind.  Even managed to record a few of the authentic quotes.  Thank you pen and paper, once again you have proved more reliable than more advanced technologies.  I suppose on the plus side it did mean I’ve written up two interviews and have nearly finished a third, where I thought it would take me a bit longer.

Tuesday

Another day, another disaster.  Bit of a theme this week.  Two interviews this morning that went very well, and recorded perfectly this time.  Even one of my interviewees from yesterday offered to send me a few extra notes, bless them for their kindness!  Then I remembered I had a dental appointment – so ran out of the house.  Got there and back fine, but due to a long set of circumstances that I won’t go into here, my shiny teeth clearly confused me as managed to throw a pair of trousers into the washing machine with my mobile phone in the pocket.

Arg. Rescued it after two or three minutes and it’s currently drying.  Maybe it’ll work.  I suspect it might not. *sigh* Suggestions for a new mobile handset appreciated   Sank into a bit of a funk after that, but eventually emerged to transcribe two interviews.  And then heard some not so great news from Mrs Llama’s family.  It is not shaping up into a great week.

And it’s only Tuesday.

And I still haven’t done any more work on the philosophy essay that’s due on Friday. *double sigh*

Wednesday

Morning spent working on philosophy essay.  Annoyingly just got into it when I had to go out to the Research Practice Course.  Thankfully this is the penultimate week for this, which is good as it’s started to be more of a burden than a benefit now in terms of available time and activity.  This week we had a very good session on research ethics, which I wish we had had much earlier in the programme.  All the same it was a very interesting session.  Made me wonder that if ethics was taught to all school children, that maybe we might have a better society – rather than capitalist greedy ME TOO thought that seems to pervade our school system.  In the second session we looked at Environmental philosophy, during which I just about managed to avoid jumping on a soap box.  Just.  Environmental issues, and certainly personal life choices as they impact on our global biotica are something that keep me awake at night.  There’s only so much as an individual can do, and it seems society won’t do anything until we all fall into the environmental abyss.  Thank you UK Gov for setting an agenda to do things by 2050, when most of the people alive today will be dead or too old to care.  *mutters*

Oh, and yes, I managed to fall down my stairs at home and bruise my back and buttocks quite badly just before I went out.  Ow. Ow. Ow.  Bad week continues.  Managed to break one of the stair rods when I reached to grab hold of something to arrest my fall. Whoops.

Thursday

Only one interview today so I was able to not only get the essay all but finished, but also write the next draft of my research panel presentation.  I’m desperately short on time this week to give to this, and I’m very worried that I’m not going to do a good job on it.  I’m also a bit worried it’s going to eat most of my Sunday up writing it as well.  Today’s disaster was much milder in that I cut my finger open on an exposed nail on the stairs.

No, not one that I’d exposed by falling down yesterday ok!

Also heard back from an editor of a journal I write book reviews for.  Seems one of my reviews has got the publisher a bit annoyed – oh dear.  Re-read the review and decided I stood by it, which thankfully so did the editor.  Looks like I’ve another book to review in the next few weeks as well, which will be a nice change.  Then again it is on electrochemical dynamics so I might regret saying that.

Friday

A busy morning finishing and submitting the philosophy essay.  It’s far from perfect, but also far from slap-dash.  All the same I’m not that happy with it when all is said and done, and really wish I could have found more time/energy/enthusiasm to spent on it.  But it was done, and after a light lunch I jumped in the car and headed up to Durham.  You see I have a conference there tomorrow, and there was just no way I could do it there and back in a day from Leicestershire.  The drive up was…interesting.  Took two hours to do the first 50 miles (thank you Friday afternoon M1), and although I later drove right under the tragic accident on the M62 the rest of the journey actually wasn’t too bad.  I’ve not been to Durham in years.  When I worked at the University of York I went there a few times a year, so I’m fairly familiar with the city centre.

I was staying a few miles out of town in a cheap hotel (since I was self-funding the whole conference trip – my dept doesn’t have much in the way of cash to cover these things), which seemed rather nice.  Had free WiFi too and breakfast included for 10 quid less than a Premier Inn (my normal overnight resort).  Went out for the evening to meet a friend and her husband for pizza, beer and a spot of DIY Dalek construction from washing machine geekery.

Long story.

When I got back to the hotel I discovered there was a wedding reception in full swing. Joy.  I really needed a good night’s sleep, and thankfully it did shut down around 11.30pm.  Of course the couple in the room next to me took this as a signal for some all night wall-hammering, bed shaking, very demonstratively loud love making.  Thankfully only at 1am and 6pm…but it didn’t do much for a restful night’s sleep.

Resisted shouting “You go girl!” or similar encouragements through the wall…just.

Saturday

Conference day – very, very good.  Met quite a few nice folks, learned plenty, felt inspired.  Once next week quietens down, I’ll write this up.  Oh, had lunch in Durham Castle.  Which was nice.  Then drove home through a sunny, sunny evening which was lovely.  Or would have been had I not been so tired out from the neighbours’ antics the night before.  Made it home in record time (well under 3hrs), and in time to share dinner with Mrs Llama.  Okay, to fetch dinner for Mrs Llama and myself.

Slept the sleep of the dead.

Sunday

A hard day to get going – don’t like 7 day working weeks, but late morning I finally got on and wrote my presentation for tomorrow.  Had lunch, and then managed to drag myself away from You’ve Been Framed long enough to polish it, and rehearse a few times.  It’s not bad actually – a bit wordy but solid enough.  We shall have well (or not) it goes down tomorrow.  Dead nervous, despite my supervisor saying he felt very confident about me and the proposal.  This is the first viva-lite I’ve got to face, and while I’ve heard from other students that it’s not so bad – you can never tell.  For all I know I’m going to get someone who’ll rip me and my thoughts apart.

Right, now to sit back and finally have some weekend – while there’s still some daylight left!

Oh and yes, my rump is still quite sore. Ouch.

Monday

Today has been spent pretty much on the phone conducting three research interviews.  Once again three very different and three very information rich sessions, so my hat is off to the folks I spoke to.  Definitely think three interviews a day is probably my maximum, what with preparation and post interview transcription duties – not going to get these all done today, and suspect with my workload this week, that come the end of Friday I’ll still have a backlog.  But that’s fine, as these are just all very interesting sessions and I’m happy to devote the time.  Have a slight niggling worry my course work due in a week on Friday’s going to get a bit short shrift, but so be it!

Last day with Mrs Llama at home, before she finally returns to work after sick leave.  The house is going to be very empty and quiet tomorrow – which perhaps will be a nice change.  Will miss her really though.

Tuesday

More interviews and more transcriptions   This is hard work; well the typing up is, the interviews are honestly a pleasure to conduct.  That pretty much filled my day - in between a bit of tidying up as we were receiving visitors from Japan in the evening; my old friend Michael and his lovely bride-to-be Yuki.  It’s their wedding this Saturday so they were doing a bit of a UK tour before hand.

It was really great to see them and catch up.  Michael’s an English language teacher over there, and has been for the past four years.  He loves it out there and I can’t blame him, he seems to be having a great time.  They’re having a wedding blessing in October back over in Japan and I’d love to get to that.  Not sure if Mrs Llama and I will be able to work that one out – but we’re going to try as it would be great to have an excuse to go to Japan.

Oh and they left us some cookies.  I kinda liked them, Mrs Llama was a bit more doubtful.  More for me then!

Wednesday

On campus day virtually all day, but I managed to squeeze in 45 minutes or so of transcription before I had to head out of the door.  Before lunch (which no, I didn’t eat as usual on a Wed) we had the monthly/semi-regular meet up of the PhDs in my dept.  Or at least half of us.  Was a useful occasion just to catch up on what everyone is doing.  As the junior member of the group they’re all months/years ahead of me so it is very interesting and useful to hear their advice.  Have a few things to follow up as a result.

The session sort of broke down towards the end into “Understanding the British and British Culture” as the rest of them cross examined me on the idiosyncratic nature of living in the UK (I’m the only home student in the dept, the rest are all from far flung exotic places like Mexico, Poland and Saudi).  I think my lecture on “How to queue” will serve them all well, though I might have lost them when I got onto to explaining basic British tribalism through the analogy of Sileby and Mountsorrel.

A short RPC-A session on the practical art of making a research poster followed.  Useful, especially as we were using MS Publisher which I’ve years of experience using.  However, I’ll worry about my poster once I get the philosophy essay out of the way.  The final treat of this long day was a session in the philosophy module on Science and Its Critics.  When the tutor asked who had enjoyed science at school and my hand went up, we were all told that usually Arts and Humanities students don’t like science.  Not my fault I was top of the school*!  Not for the first time did I feel like the cuckoo in the humanities nest.  The session, like all the philosophy sessions we’ve had was engaging and a bit challenging, but thankfully not anywhere close to as challenging as Heidegger!

We were also presented with the feedback form for the B module at the start of the class, which was a bit odd – given we had this week and next week still to sit through.  All the same, I wrote fairly glowing praise as I have genuinely enjoyed these sessions; even if the coursework has given me nightmares.  Apparently from next year it’s not going to be taught to 1st year PhDs, but rather be an optional 2nd year session.  I think that’s to the RPC course as a whole’s detriment, given the often…slightly haphazard nature of  the other half of the module.  I suspect I might not have taken it if it had been a second year option, and that would be my loss.  I do hope they strong arm as many people as possible to take it!

*In Chemistry and Physics – shocking, I know!

Thursday

A bit of a chaotic day that left me utterly wasted at the end.  Had to be up at the crack of stupid (okay, 7am, I AM a student you know!) to drive my car into Leicester.  By 8am I was working on my final philosophy essay in the Uni of Leicester student union.  Rather than waste my time moping about the shops, I’d arranged to interview a couple of people from Leicester and De Montfort Universities in person.  As it was I also bumped into some old faces at Leicester and had a good chat.  Didn’t dare darken the doorstep of the library though, just in case they’ve still got their snipers out looking for (I jest).

Really good couple of interviews, with a few surprises from both of them, made for an enjoyable morning.  However, the couple of hours my car would take to fix turned into a whole day, so I schlepped across town, caught the train home and worked there until early afternoon.  Then back on the train to collect the car.  By the time I got in, having walked across half of Leicester twice and done the round trip two times as well I was shattered; though I managed a bit of transcription.  Bedtime couldn’t come soon enough!

Friday

For once I didn’t have to go anywhere, so a day of interviews, transcription and a couple of hours working on my essay.  As this one has to be short and clear (500-850 words) there’s even less scope for waffle.  But I think I’ve got a reasonable 2/3rds first draft.  Just as well as the deadline is a week today.  No chance of any work this weekend as the wedding is all day tomorrow, and I’ll need to take some time to relax on Sunday for what looks like being a very busy couple of weeks!  Did spend a bit of time trying to work out how to force Open Office to create a bibliography from EndNotes, and I think I’ve found a workaround.

Forgot to mention – that the return of Doctor Who has seen the return of the infinitely better plotted* Doctor WHeasel episode reviews.  Catch up with ease here.

*Certainly than The Rings of Akhaten – which was a bit rubbish.