Into 2015

Well I managed to work another couple of days before the Christmas break but nothing too eventful occurred.  Then a nice break, only slight marred by coming down with a fluey cold that lasted pretty much the entire time (still got the remains of it).  Smashing, not quite the relaxing break I’d hoped for.  Still new year here we are and on with some more work.

• A Long Expected Reading
  • A variety of reading this week, somewhat interrupted by my unexpected Tuesday outing.  All the same read a book on hegemony (Bocock, R., 1986. Hegemony) and another rather splendid one on the impact of digital disruption (Weller, M. 2011. The Digital Scholar) on academia.  Both were quite useful, with the latter being a lot more readable and digestible; which after all the Marxism and Foucault of late was a blessed relief!  Weller’s book also had one of my favourite phrases I’ve read of late – the creepy tree house syndrome – a phrase the author uses to describe the unwanted/undesirable invasion of academia into students’ social media spaces.  Conjurers up a beautifully disturbing (and accurate) image in my mind, and I’m in total agreement with it.
  • I also dipped my toe into the waters of a book entitled Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University (Canaan & Shumar, 2008))- but as this isn’t 100% important to my theory chapter, I’ve pushed it to one side until I finish this chapter off.
• The Two Seminars
  • Media Communications: Tutorial
    • Bit of a damp squib this week as it’s a 1-2-1 tutorial slot to help the students on their first bit of coursework, and despite advertising this fairly heavily no one showed up.  Spent the time reading a book and looking up hopefully for customers every few minutes.  Answered a few online queries for my students on their profile article but that was about it.  I do hope that means they’re all going great guns on it…but I could be mistaken.  Next week’s seminar is given over to tutorial time too, so here’s hoping a few of them need help!
  • Face to Face to Facebook: Public sphere
    • Pretty poor turnout post Christmas still (6/24) which is a bit depressing.  We’re on the history of the press/contribution of the free press to liberal democracy.  In a week when the events in France around Charlie Hebdo have highlighted the importance and value of free speech in an democratic world, I’d have hoped more students would have come along to discuss it.  Did get a bit of discussion going around the issues of the public sphere, Habermas and censorship…but could I get the students to work as a group?  Hopefully as we move into broadcast media for the next few weeks there’ll be a resurgence in attendance.  Honestly, I remain shocked by the poor level of attendance at seminars; as a UG myself we missed them at our peril, as they usually made far more sense than the lectures (and that’s always been my aim – to contextualise and demystify the lectures each week).  Either I have some brilliant students who will ace their coursework without me…or old faily will be coming out again when the time comes to grade their work.
• The Breaking of the Data
  • After my tutorial slot I met up with Sharon, one of the research librarians at NTU, to talk about research data management.  This was fun, and I confess we did have a bit of gossip about other professional matters too.  However, I was mostly there to be a tame academic to talk about what kind of data I collect, how I curate/protect it, ethical issues around depositing it in any way (of which there are quite a few) and mechanical issues.  Was a mite longer than I expected to be chatting, but all the same one of the most positive experiences of the week.
• The Road to Glyndwr
  • I can now exclusively reveal I’ve been appointed as an external examiner on a couple of degree courses.  Many months since I was first approached, but all the paperwork’s finally gone through!  I am deeply honoured and chuffed at the same time (while lightly apprehensive of what I’ve let myself in for!).  Looking forward to being involved though all the same.
• An Unexpected Journey
  • Sadly not to Hobbiton, but rather the Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI) with Mrs Llama.  She’d managed to bang her head (twice) on our chicken run over Christmas, and despite visiting our local surgery for advice was still feeling rather concussed and worried that she’d damaged herself more than first realised (as is often the case with cranial injuries).  So after another visit to the doctors she was sent to A&E in Leicester during what can only be described as the day of near collapse of the whole accident & emergency system across the UK.  The care she got from the doctors and nurses was first rate, sadly the waiting times and conditions were pretty awful.  While she waited, I made myself scarce and plonked myself in the Percy Gee (Leicester University’s student union) to work for the day; discovering along the way that their signage is awful and their toilets hidden away from any casual visitor*.  A long, cold but relatively productive day was had while I killed the 5hrs the Wife was in hospital.  Didn’t see anyone I knew, despite mentioning I was there a few times on social media.  Mrs Llama for the record is okay it seems, but still only recovering slowly.  We’ve bought her a new hard hat for the garden to avoid any recurrence of her injury.
• An Unexpected Cancellation
  • I was rather looking forward to hearing my Director of Studies speak at a research seminar on Wednesday about the Crisis of Labour in Capitalism and the Commons (right up my street!), but it was cancelled on the day.  Boo, my dept doesn’t do enough of these sort of things, as I’d love to hear from all the staff about their research on a regular basis, so this was a real shame.  Hopefully they’ll reschedule it soon!

*Honestly…I never found them despite searching across 4 floors!  Ended up visiting a neighbouring building instead to relieve myself.

A Festival of Research (2013 Edition)

Monday

Just outside the training venue

This week all week is the post-graduate festival of research at NTU. Since I live and work off campus my only real participation will be attending a couple of workshops that are on.

Today I was at the Effective Researcher (1) session all day at the City campus.  My third and final visit to City in 6 days, and thankfully for the time being my last.  I’ve a session at Clifton on Friday, but that’ll just be a nice easy drive in rather than the crack-o-dawn train.

Tuesday

A day of behind the scenes family crisises* and drama didn’t make for an especially well focused day.  I managed to find time to transcribe another couple of interviews, though that had me working until just before 7pm with gritted teeth that I wouldn’t stop working until I hit at least a reasonable target for the day.

I also started to try and approach some more interview candidates, via a mailing list to start with but I’ve got about 20 names on my list to follow up with directly if that doesn’t bear fruit.  After the flood of the first round I’m being a bit more cautious, and also plan to be a lot more focused on making the interviews and swift and to the point as I can make them, but without sacrificing the qualitative richness of them.  In essence: less waffle from me, more active listening and then onwards to the next one.

Wednesday

Started work before 9am today, as intend to try and drag every last bit of time/work I can out of today.  I spent the morning plotting out the next few months of work in a bit more detail, since it was one of the things my supervisors wanted.  To be honest I wanted to do it as well, but the extra spur of someone else waiting on it for comment needled me into action.  I ended up using GanttProject to generate a decent timeline.  I’d looked at GanttProject last year when I was preparing my research proposal, but concluded I didn’t need anything that detailed at the time.  Compared to Visio 2000 and MS Project which I’ve used in the past for project management, it’s got a few flaws in terms of usability.  On the other hand I was rapidly able to work my way around the interface and generate the charts I wanted without too much effort.  Doubtless when I next come to use it I’ll find it even easier to use.

There was a bit of excitement around lunchtime with the arrival of the post delivering my new webcam.  Since Mrs Llama is going to be away a lot in the coming months, I thought it would come in handy.  And as she was working from home today we spent a few minutes Skyping each other in different rooms of the house.  Not really sure I’ll be using it for interviews mind you, as I might have to dress a whole lot smarter than I do when I’m here working from home normally.

My plans for the day were thrown into a bit of an emotional blender shortly after lunch when I heard that my father has to go in for an urgent brain operation next week.  I’ve been effectively estranged from my father since my parents divorced 30 years ago, so perhaps there was less of a body blow than if we’d been close.  All the same, it was distressing to hear from my step-sister how it’s impacting on his current (4th) family.  On top of Mrs Llama’s critically ill father (with whom we are close), this is a very stressful time for us both.  As a consequence I decided that rather than study, as I had planned, that I’d do some more transcription of interviews.  It was something solid I could focus on, as I suspected if I was reading I’d just start brooding or worrying about various issues.

Thursday

Oh look, it’s my two “favourite” people – Thatcher &

Today I mostly read a paper on open access and a book on neoliberalism.  As a consequence when Mrs Llama arrived home and asked how my day had been, I replied “I’ve been even more radicalised!” and proceeded to bang on about the perils of neoliberalism and free trade based economies for nearly 5 minutes before she went and hid in the bathroom.  It was a good book, and while difficult to read for me (I’ve never read much politics and even less economic theory) it was a day well spent.  Only about anther 30 books on my current reading schedule to go…

In other news I put out another call to repository people at UK Universities to do 10 minute telephone interviews with me.  Still over a hundred institutions I’ve not heard from, so hope I get plenty of replies!

[Later] Some good news, sounds like there’s been a little marked improvement with Mrs Llama’s father – this may count as the first good news I’ve had all week.

Friday

My final (or second) day of the research festival saw me on Clifton Campus for a session on engaging the broader world with your research (media, Joe Public, other academics) entitled Finding a voice for you and your PhD:  Thinking globally acting locally; the public and private world of academic research. It was a very interesting session, despite the slightly low turn out (only two delegates for the first hour before a couple more turned up).  As a result it was a lot more intimate and hands-on; which to be honest is no bad thing at all.  Some of the stuff we covered wasn’t unfamiliar to me, but all the same there were some very handy exercises to map who we’re engaging with and who we should be.  I’m certainly going to pull all the notes I made during the session out again next week and go back over them, as I’ve had one or two ideas about things I need to be doing right now as a consequence of the work shop.   Also I need to upload my poster to Academia.edu, just in case any random personage is interested in it – which I doubt!

Did come away wondering if I should offer to run a social media masterclass for the research festival next year, given that I’ve taught these in my previous life.  Wonder how one goes about pimping oneself out to do that sort of thing?  Not quite sure how the internal mechanisms work – maybe if I just drop it in enough people’s ears it’ll find the right person!

Drove home through what can only be described as near freezing wintry conditions.  May seems to have decided that it’s back to early March as far as the weather is concerned, and at this rate it’ll be snowing shortly!  The afternoon was a less than satisfactory productive session, although I did catch up on email correspondence.  Had a great email from one developer who’s a fan of the weasel (which was great) sharing some of his work on academics and data sharing (which was even better), and another from an academic at NTU who might be interested in chatting to me about open access as a result of seeing my paper.  That’s handy, really wasn’t expecting anything to come of that ****ing poster (yes, even a week later no love is lost on that poster).  Did a bit of transcription but then ran out of steam.

In two minds as to whether or not to work on Monday.  I know it’s the bank holiday, but feel I’m staring at so much reading and work to sort out at the moment that I’m not sure I can justify having it off.  On the other hand I had an idea on the drive home to turn my poster into a short video…so maybe I’ll do that as that counts as something a bit more fun and work!

Of Plague and Proposals

Monday

Came down with the start of what felt like a cold yesterday afternoon, and as the day progressed and my energy levels flatlined it came out.  Spent last night tossing, turning and running a bit of a temperature (surprised the bed didn’t catch fire personally), so consequently today I feel like drekk.  Not planning to do any work today as a consequence as concentrating on anything right now is next to impossible.  So shall try and remain warm and probably sleep at lot.

Blurg.

Over on the course discussion board, amused to see at least one of the posters is following my suggested “Me too” approach.  We had a debate before class last week about the boards, as we’re supposed to do “5 interventions” on each of the two of them (one for each RPC class).  Most people in the class just haven’t bothered, which means I expect the tutors will just fudge a “Turns out it wasn’t a core competency at all”, which is a crying shame.  Personally think would be academics need to get used to communicating and collaborating in online fora, and that the majority of my cohort can’t be bothered is pretty piss poor.  Wonder if they’re the same people who never speak up in class either?

Mood: Oh dear, I’m very cranky. Must be the cold talking – I’m clearly not fit to say anything much today!

Tuesday

Filthy, filthy cold.  Been awake most of the night since it’s one of those colds that lying down makes you feel a whole lot worse.  Hence grey thinky thing in my head still isn’t functioning right.  Which is annoying as I’ve finally gotten some feedback from my supervisors about my research proposal…and at first glance it looks like there’s a whole lot of work to cram in to get it to the standard they want.  Right now that sounds like an impossible task, and frankly I’d only make a mess of it or my essay if I did any work on it today.  Deeply frustrating as I’ve never liked losing days to being sick, and even more so when I’ve got these deadlines breathing down my neck.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to float in a hot bath to try and open my breathing tubes and then I’m going to wash my collection of hankies.  *sigh* Plans for this week pretty much wreaked so far 😦

Mood: Less cranky, more feeling shitty and sorry for myself.

Wednesday

Finally managed something that approximated sleep last night (aside from a few hours around midnight when I got into a nasty cycle of panicking over never being able to sleep again).  Brain (and nose) still feeling stuffed with wool, but I’m hopeful I can do something useful today.  Currently debating if I can drag myself in for my classes this afternoon.  I don’t like missing them, but then neither do I want to sit in a hot stuffy room sniffing my way through them.  Perhaps if I dose myself up on painkillers I might be able to make it, but we’ll see.

I am feeling deeply frustrated at the loss of working time this cold has provoked, which is good news in some respect as it means I must be getting better.  On Monday I wasn’t feeling much of anything emotionally other than feeling sorry for myself; so where’s there’s life there’s hope I guess.  To start my brain slowly getting back into work mode I’ve just filled in a large survey from the Uni asking about the research student experience.  Tried to be objective in my answers as there seems little point in ranting about the elements of the study that have frustrated me (lack of personal workspace, low levels of interaction with other students, zero interaction with dept beyond supervisors, relative isolation, research methods module) and have highlighted as much as possible the good points (research philosophy module, support from supervisors, satisfaction with the challenge etc).  Think I’ve highlighted the same points in my interim report as well, which I suspect I’ll need to chase my supervisors over shortly.  Clearly the RPC course needs more emphasis on managing your supervisor as at times it feels like I’m supervising them in terms of getting feedback and responses to emails.  Ah, what it would be like to be based on campus and be able to pop my head around the door!

Mood: Frustrated but muzzy headed

Thursday

Fairly quickly become apparent yesterday that I wasn’t fit to go anywhere – and thanks to Vic and Mohamad who sent me their feedback on the sessions (Intellectual Property and Grounded Theory) I feel I didn’t miss too much.  It also sounds like it was a heavy and long couple of sessions, so I’m doubly grateful.  Today for the first time all week I actually feel human enough to drag out my papers and start thinking about doing some editing/writing again.  The RD1PA is going to have to wait until tomorrow at the earliest as I really want my head to be clear, but I plan to work more on my philosophy essay.

Speaking of that, got the feedback and mark on the first essay yesterday – but I couldn’t face opening it until just now.  Not being one of lives natural philosophers, I was very pleased with my mark and the feedback is pretty spot on.  Some of the flaws are ones that I was aware of, some I think are an artefact of my writing style.  However, I will now be able to take account of them and polish off the other book review and get that submitted.   I know each bit of coursework doesn’t have to score that highly, a pass is good enough, but I’m damned if I’m going to hand in any piece of work that I’ve laboured over to make it the best I can!

Mood: Finally optimistic

Friday

Well yesterday’s efforts were a bit limited to checking the references and citations and organising myself for today, and a few hours reading one of my introductory philosophy works.  But today I’ve finally been able to put in what I could happily call a decent’s days work.  The philosophy essay is essentially done – a whole week before deadline too; though I will give it a brief read and polish on Monday morning before submitting.  This time I shall not be risking Western Power Distribution cutting off my power at the last moment!  I’ve actually used the university’s file storage area to archive a copy as well, so if the power goes out, this time I can jaunt to university and submit it there.  Of course once I move further away from Uni later this year, jaunting over’s going to be more of an issue – so perhaps that’ll be the point at which I either invest in a UPS or laptop device to keep me stable during times of power-outtages.

Delighted today as well as a book on Marx and another on psychoanalysis turned up.  As they cost me mere pennies (and postage) they’re going to be a useful addition to my personal library.  Next week though, I am going to have to pull some long and focussed days to really go over my research proposal and make the modifications my supervisor wants.  I would have prefered to have started on it this week, but since the damned cold wouldn’t have let me do any critical thinking (let alone any critical writing) it was never going to be a good idea.  In some regards getting the essay out of the way means I now have nothing else to focus on but revising the RD1PA.

I am still a bit stressed by the whole process of getting this research approval sorted, as my supervisor’s attitude seems a little too laid back – especially in contrast to what I’ve heard in my research practice course.  I don’t want to rush this, but it would be nice if I could feel like he was on board with the relative urgency of getting all my ducks in a row ahead of time.  After all, the end of the month isn’t that far away…

Mood: Relieved if exhausted!

PS: I still have the edge of the cold – but am no longer infectious (sorry, Mrs Llama) and am open and available to visits from friends, well wishers and international dignitaries once more.

Carry on Editing

Monday

In my book review essay last week (the full version rather than the cut down submission) I was writing about what McKenzie Walk terms the vectorist industries (those entities, be they corporate or powerful individuals) who control the vectors of communication.  I rather like the term as opposed to the rather more politically loaded capitalist –  I mean, according to Gov UK, greed is good…sorry, capitalism is good for economy.  You know the sort of  corporations that make up the vectorists, the big multinational media empires for one, academic publishers etc.  The kind of folks who demonize piracy because it is EVIL, while of course everything they do is above board, ship shape and Bristol fashion (to continue their nautical metaphor).

Which is why it always amuses me when the mask slips – as it as in the case of JoCo and Glee in the past week.  Reflexivity moment here – I’m a fan of both Jonathan Coulton and Glee (though I stopped watching it a while back when it got a bit too repetitive .  Some time ago JoCo did a cover of the song Baby Got Back, along with a new melody; hence a derivative work and under the US 1st amendment for free expression and parody a permitted act.  Now we have Glee covering this song, with a melody that pretty much sounds the same.  Both sell the track for cash, but Glee is a product of a huge vectorist industry, and JoCo a niche geek parody song writer and musician (all be it an especially gifted one).  Now this is pretty much a performance of a work, rather than a derivative work – so surely you’d think there’d be an acknowledgement, credit and payment.  Oh no, in this case the stated vectorist position is that a cover of a cover is pretty much fair game to use, almost as if it’s shorn of anything like the copyright that they’d so tenaciously defend if the reverse is true.  If what I’ve read is true from their response it does rather smack of Big Corporate telling the little people “Everything you produce is in the commons for us to exploit.  Everything we produce is ours for you to purchase.”

I’ve somewhat simplified the issues above (not being an expert on US (c) law) but all the same I’ll be following the debate that comes out of this, to see where it all ends up.  JoCo is someone with a lot of allies among the free culture movement, so I would be surprised if it just goes away quietly.

Spent the day reading a few papers (which made a nice change) and then got back on with editing my brief RPC version of the research proposal.  Only need to cut 50% of the words to make it fit within the 1,000 word limit. *sigh*

Elsewhere I see that some scholarly societies have finally decided that open access might be a threat to their funding stream.  As one of my old bosses used to say, “These societies were set up to promote their members’ profession.  Overtime they started using their journal income to prop themselves up and in order to keep their membership fees down.  Now they’ve backed themselves into a corner and need people to buy their journals to keep themselves afloat.”  Less an attack on academic freedoms, more a need for societies to diversify their economic base perhaps?  I know there are quite a few societies that are doing just that, but given the focus the government has been making on OA being about “Science!”, I can’t say I’m shocked that non-STEM societies might feel themselves backed into a corner.

Tuesday

Woke up feeling a bit groggy this morning, suspect I might be coming down a cold.  Bad news in some respects as I hate having to waste days sitting there feeling snotty and sorry for myself, but good news in that this could be the first cold I’ve had since I became a student again.  Makes a change from working in a library where I’d come down with easily two or three colds a term on average, and sometimes more (due to the constant traffic flow of students with germs, and yet management always wondered why the sick rates were so high – duh!).  So the plans for the day will be editing of the short form research proposal as much as I can, and if I hit a point where my brain is just too fogged, I’ll call it quits and crawl into bed/hot bath and hope for the best.

[Later] Well if it was a cold it went away rapidly, so I’ll chalk it up to incomplete night’s sleep.  Today as planned I edited away on the short-form proposal, had a brief chat on the course discussion boards on the topic of word counts (still 400 over but think I can sort that tomorrow AM), a longer chat on twitter about various things, got a mention on the Simon Mayo radio show after being ambushed by the chickens and pushed in the mud and had just wrapped up things when Mrs Llama returned from her day out (first job interview of the week – there’s another one on Thursday!).

Oh, and this week’s post title is inspired by the Carry on… movie series and a throwaway comment I made today.  If they were still making the films today I dare say Carry on Editing would be right up there with Carry on England in terms of laugh potentially.  Those of you who’ve seen that film will know exactly what I mean.

Wednesday

A few hours bringing the short-form research proposal to the very edge of the word limit finally (although still about 90 words over) before I was off to my double lectures of the week.  Sadly the anticipated session on case studies got cancelled and replaced with one looking at writing the short-form research proposal.  Something that would have be useful around the start of December, and succeed mainly in giving me loads of concerns that I’m never going to have the short-form or the full proposal in shape.  Think I’m hitting the 20% of the 80:20 rule, it’s almost there but this last 80% of the effort to finish it sufficiently is getting to me a bit; so on a bit of a low note this evening.

The session was followed by this week’s philosophy session on Queer Theory and Judith Butler.  To be honest I’m unlikely to ever use it, so the session was rather wasted on me.  However, some of the things my fellow students said during the session did nearly make my eyebrows pop off!  Seems I’m far more reconstructed and politically correct than I thought I was, I blame years of reading The Guardian.  So to counter that apparent shocking revelation, it’s time for something totally non-PC on gender identities…

Thursday

Clearly yesterday was far too exciting for me as I had simply a dreadful night’s sleep where my brain would not quieten down or shut off.  Finally got to sleep around the time I normally wake up.  Consequently I was not firing on all cylinders today.  Which in itself wasn’t too helpful as I had to drive into uni to talk through my proposal with my supervisors.  Since I finished it two weeks ago and had focussed on editing down and revising the short-form I had a feeling they’d have a few comments.  And they did, seems my logical progression of arguments and overall clarity are rather at a low ebb in it, although they consider the information is all there I just need to make it far clearer and accessible to read.  Which rather says to me…(skip to 1min – the embed code is ignoring my request to do that!)

They also said I can stop reading anything much else and just focus on getting this right, which is handy.  For once there’s something I don’t have to do, rather than trying to keep all the plates spinning at one.

Came back, lunched and then forced myself through eyes that were desperately wanting to close to write up the meeting notes and share them with Dave and Andreas; just in case I’d got anything arse/tit (technical PhD term there).  And then called it a day before I made a big mess of everything and crawled into bed to doze…

Recommended reading for today: a good article on the Jonathan Coulton/Glee issue from earlier in the week by Cory Doctorow in the Guardian.

Friday

A more solid night’s sleep last night (6 and a bit whole hours!) means I’m feeling somewhat more human today.  First things first – wrote and submitted my non-mandatory, non-credit bearing second philosophy PDP entry.  Only 150 words so a quick write and light edit is all it takes.  Why did I do it? Am I addicted to feedback? Nah, but I am interested in what Patrick (philosophy course leader) has to say, as this whole area is still so new to me that any and all guidance or thought is rather useful.  Also finished transferring across all my book notes from RefWorks onto the NOW (uni VLE) system as a collection.  Which means I’ll be able to submit that in a couple of weeks as one of my mandatory, non-credit bearing research practice PDP entries.  Hoops, hurdles, obstacles – we’ve got the lot!

In other news despite the activity around the Finch report last year, and a House of Lords inquiry last month (hello February) we’ve now got the BIS Committee having another inquiry.  Again all grist for my research analysis down the line.

Spent the day (in between visits from two postmen and two window cleaners – the excitement never stops in my office) working on the methodology section of my research proposal (full fat, RD1PA version).  As this has always been the bit that I was most concerned with, I wanted to lick it into shape before tackling the context and rationale parts again.  In many respects I know what I want to do, so next week I’ll just have to write about why I should be doing it.  For some reasons this backwards logic makes sense to me.  It also means I’ll start a new week fresh on the bulk of this that needs to hang together logically, where as the method is a little more standalone.  Think I’m almost there with it and on target for my 500 words as well, though one of the words in my research questions just doesn’t seem right to me today; so something to revisit after the weekend.

Yes I am down to worrying about individual words, but as my philosophy course touched on having the right word can mean all the difference in meaning.  But that’s it for the week as Mrs Llama has just arrived home so I’ll call it a day and go tidy up my papers downstairs.

And then on Monday, why I’ll…Carry on Editing…