21st Mile

Right, I feel like I've reached the 21st mile of a marathon and I'm hitting the wall. After a very long hiatus I've decided to post again. Since I've last posted I've written and edited six chapters and a paper and am currently writing chapters 7 and 8 simultaneously. I can definitely see the finish line, but the last five miles will be the toughest... I hope to post a few presentation/thesis

1 chapter handed in, 6 to go. Lordy.

One chapter corrected by my advisor, six to go. Getting a bit overwhelmed as I need to do this roughly at the rate of one chapter per two weeks. The work is done and I have something written for most of them, but they have to be cleaned. Oh dear.

Heaven's Carpark

I took this on a recent observing trip to La Palma, Canary Islands. The bottom half of the island was covered in clouds for the whole trip, while the astronomer's residence and telescopes had blue skies. This is the residence carpark, with the clouds pictured below. One of my office-mates pointed out that it's like a photoshopped image of Heaven's carpark.

Who to talk to?

I havent been posting lately because I've realized that I only have a few months to finish writing, and reduce one more dataset. I still have to do some error analysis on my results which involves learning some more statistics. I don't know if I can do it by my first deadline.

It's starting to get me down... I don't know who to talk to about it. But I'd like to, for stress relief. I can't talk

Isn't google clever?

By some coincidence, I discovered this article on Google's spellchecking capabilities today, Spelling For Muggles, while also realising the difficulties some scientists have with spelling. One of my colleagues who works in instrumentation could tell me anything I wanted about physics or astronomy, but when he asked me to check an email for him, I noticed it contained numerous phonetic spellings/

Lots of very good PhD links on one page

Good Links

Writing a Paper

I've been pretty bad lately at posting because I'm writing my first paper (my first first-author refereed one, that is). I've been working all sorts of hours and it's gone through numerous drafts. I haven't even passed a draft onto my advisor yet. I'm finding that there's nothing harsher than the inner critic and I keep cutting down sections. I'm questioning both the writing and layout afresh