In the Middle of Difficulty

Blatant plug

Jamie Lawson — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 14:06:49 -0000

The lovely folks over at Null Hypothesis have accepted some pieces of mine. Hooray. There’s one about mobile phones currently up. Go see!

Living in limbo... on waiting for a viva and trying to make some money

Jamie Lawson — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:22:12 -0000

Ok, yes, yes, again a great deal of time has passed between the last post (in which I may have promised more regular postings) and this one, but what’s a boy to do? I’ve been… well, not exactly busy… perhaps preoccupied.

The big new is: I SUBMITTED MY THESIS. Yes, yes I did. Hooray. Took me exactly 3 years, which seems to have pleased my supervisor, but then, he’s in charge of my department’s RAE stuff so I guess it would do.

So, back on the 1st October I submitted me a thesis and then… I left Scotland. This made me pleased. I then spent a pleasant week or so in Newcastle with the Man-In-My-Life (MIML) before returning to Scotland, packing up my stuff and, finally, leaving.

Thesis: the album

Jamie Lawson — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:47:35 -0000

Oh, you know what might entertain you? I have a thesis playlist. The following tunes have been hammering away in my head for the past few weeks on constant repeat. I’ve added to it as I’ve gone along, it’s certainly helped me out. I post them here in case people are looking for songs to listen to while engaged in thankless and endless writing tasks. They did the job for me anyway.

Share and enjoy, I say.

The last mile is always the hardest.

Jamie Lawson — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:35:31 -0000

I apologise. I prostrate myself at your virtual feet. I abase myself, I am lowly and vile. I am worm.

Also, I haven’t posted for some considerable time and I am sorry.

The thing is though, you see, that I’ve been writing a thesis. Yes, I know, this blog was meant to be at least half about the process of writing a thesis, but the thing about writing a thesis, as many of you are no doubt aware, is that it does tend to absorb the rest of your life somewhat. I’ve been working 12 hour days for … 3 weeks or something. I am so tired I cannot feel my legs. I look like a tramp and can hardly string a sentence together anymore. Kids, don’t do thesis; it screws you up.

Some rampant madness involving a cat and a nursing home.

Jamie Lawson — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 15:42:01 -0000

Sometimes I worry about the world. Came across a story about a magical cat on the BBC and in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Staff in a nursing home in Rhode Island are reporting that their cat (yes, that’s their cat) can sense when residents are going to die .

Robot joy.

Jamie Lawson — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:16:30 -0000

To counteract the last post, here are some robots from Japan playing the taiko drums . It’s a very odd mixture of the postmodern with the ancient that is… more than slightly creepy. The robots involved are designed for sorting mail, I am told. I guess this classes as a hobby?

Via Crave .

Privacy and transatlantic flights.

Jamie Lawson — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:40:48 -0000

So, this isn’t a political blog by any means, but I’ve come across this news story in a few places today and… well… sorry, what?

Surely we should be getting a little more agitated that the EU is allowing the US unprecedented access to personal information of transatlantic, European passengers? Hunting around the internet, I discover that up till now, the US Department of Home Security has been allowed access to 34 pieces of information on EU passengers (first time I’d heard that), but this agreement had to be reassessed because, who’d have thought it, it wasn’t legal . So now, they get 19 pieces of information on people but they can keep it for 15 years and do… pretty much anything they like with it. This information seems to include not only credit card and bank details but also sexual orientation (as part of a disease control plan apparently… wait, what?) and what you ate on the flight. No one trusts vegetarians any more, apparently.

Call me old fashioned, but surely we should be a little more… outraged? The EU is, as I understand it, legally obliged to protect the privacy of EU citizens… yet is allowing the States access to information on a scale which would be illegal in Europe…

I mean… am I missing something? What on Earth is going on?

Hungry computers, science, creationists, teaching and only a little bit of Harry Potter

Jamie Lawson — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 12:24:12 -0000

Right. So, yesterday was annoying. After a week of more or less total inactivity, I wrote two most excellent paragraphs on the evolution of human facial attractiveness only to have them swallowed by my normally very reliable computer. In order to make myself feel at least a little productive, I decided to catch up with the blog postings and, suiting action to thought, I wrote a lengthy post about stuff. I hit submit… and the internet ate it.

I left work at that point.

Anyway, today I at least seem able to string coherent sentences together so maybe it’s no bad thing. Here’s some gubbins, trying to make good on my thematic promise for this blog…

Neuroscience to the rescue!

Jamie Lawson — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 16:21:27 -0000

Well, nice to know I am not totally mad. Or at least, if I am, then a great number of other people are as well. Phantom vibration syndrome it is. Ah, science is great.

I am Jack's soaring glucocorticoid levels.

Jamie Lawson — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:41:20 -0000

I am stressed. Extremely stressed.
I am stressed for the following reasons:

The man who said I could live in his flat for 2 months from July called this morning to say he was very sorry, but I can actually only live in it for 1 month from August.
My current lease runs out on June 30th
Until my grant installment comes in next month, I have more or less no money.
I have to go to a wedding in Bath on the 29th June. The train down and the hotel cost quite a lot of money. Which I don’t have (see point 3).
It may have escaped the Universe’s notice, but I have a thesis to be getting on with.
My tumble drier is broken again so the sweater I wanted to wear tonight to meet my boyfriend’s parents for the first time is sodden.

Ok, that last point sounded a little lame. Let’s just say it was the last thing I needed today.

On the positive side I went to see Vacancy last night. It was rather good, actually. Scary as hell also. And quite intense. Go see.

Daniel Dennet at University of Edinburgh

Jamie Lawson — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 15:33:03 -0000

Anyone in or around Edinburgh a week on Wednesday? Daniel Dennet is giving a talk at the University. Should be good. I saw Dennet speak at a conference last year, and can heartily reccommend it as an experience. If you can’t go, there’s a podcast for the whole series of lectures you can subscribe to. I might have to take that option myself.

Thesis progress and reaching the young'uns

Jamie Lawson — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 15:46:07 -0000

So, I’ve been writing this thesis now for a few months and my thesis box has a reasonable quantity of paper in it. Problem is that, having hit the ‘roughly-half-way’ mark I seem unable to increase the amount of paper any further. At some point, I expect to hit some sort of critical mass after which I will open the Red Box and see something recognisably thesis shaped, but this event seems so distant as to be almost irrelevant.

Although, as of last week, I have established that one of my thesis chapters is going to be about how nice it would have been if a particular set of experiments had actually worked, because now all I have is conjecture. Yes, writing that will be a thrill. Anyway, it will be done, and then I never have to look at it again and can move on to more interesting areas of research.

I was over at Pharyngula reading about how one of the casualties of all the crazy going on in the States is science and the teaching thereof . Apparently owning a handgun in Texas is now easier than owning a glass beaker. Of course it is. Meanwhile, chemistry sets are being immasculated. Couple all of that with the constant onslaught against the teaching of evolution in schools and we get a plummeting levels in the standards of science education.

The rollercoaster of academic life.

Jamie Lawson — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:17:16 -0000

Yes, sorry, been ages.

Much has occured.

Well, perhaps not much, but at least one big thing and that thing was HBES 2007 . Yes, this year’s annual meeting of the Human Behaviour and Evolution Society has been and gone and those of you who were there know what those of you who were not have missed.

Urban warriors

Jamie Lawson — Wed, 23 May 2007 23:39:24 -0000

Alright, I know I told you I was busy, but I’ve just discovered something pretty amazing via Pharyngula and am compelled to post about it.

According to predictions, yesterday was the first day in human history that the urban population of the Earth outnumbered the rural.

I must say that’s a rather remarkable thought. I feel rather priveleged to have been around for such an occasion, assuming the projections were accurate. Go cities, that’s what I say. Looking forward to being back in London this weekend, however briefly.

HBES 2007

Jamie Lawson — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:30:05 -0000

Going to be a brief one this.

I’ve spent all day getting things together for a conference next week. Off to Virginia for HBES 2007 where I shall be joyously defeating jetlag in an attempt to communicate my science to other scientists, rather than the public. Looking forward to it, underneath all the stress.

Anyway, the conference is being held in Colonial Williamsburg , which is a new one for me. Anyone have any hints, tips, places of interest for me to visit? I suppose essentially I’m after a nice bar or two, but anything else worth a gander would be nice to know about.

Anyone else out there heading over to HBES? See you there if so.

I’ll try to update again before I head off and hopefully will be able to keep you posted on the conference itself.

Right. Must dash. Cheerio.

Driven to Abstraction: on planning a thesis half way through writing it.

Jamie Lawson — Fri, 18 May 2007 11:33:11 -0000

So, a couple of weeks ago my supervisor asked me to produce a mock contents list for my thesis so that I could see how much I had done and what remained to do etc. This is no mean feat when you haven’t finished writing a thesis yet and are not really wedded to any overall structure.

Life After Research? Research Futures Conference, St Andrews.

Jamie Lawson — Thu, 17 May 2007 14:56:20 -0000

Last friday was the Research Futures conference for PhD students and Postdocs run by our local team up here in St Andrews. Interesting stuff, especially for a hapless scientist such as myself who is feeling… somewhat less enthusiastic than once he did about the prospect of a career in pure research. There were plenty of talks and stalls and interesting people to talk to, all gathered in the Physics and Mathematics buildings down where the real science happens. There were a number of different sessions all running concurrently on various different things; how to get postdoctoral funding from the EU, how to get a cushy job in industry, how to work for the pharmaceutical industry, how to be an academic and have a family to name but a few. The full programme, should you be interested in knowing what you missed, is available here . What follows is a general summary of the sessions I attended and interesting facts I picked up.

To make a start more swift than weighty...

Jamie Lawson — Thu, 17 May 2007 14:28:17 -0000

Well, the guys over at Nature have granted me blogging rights on this spangly new network thingy, so I’d better make a start, and what better place to start than an introduction?

Most of the David Copperfield stuff is either on my profile page or not hugely relevant. I’m a final year PhD student here at the University of St Andrews coming to slow terms with the fact that a career spent in research may not be for me after all. As a consequence I am flinging myself with limited enthusiasm at the post-phd job market and eyeing all opportunities with equal amounts of interest and suspicion.

This, coupled with the fact that I am (I gather) expected to hand in a thesis in October, means that this is a careers and thesis themed blog. I’ll be sharing my experiences of the coming months with all who care to glance at these posts and hopefully imparting some useful information. Every now and then I imagine I’ll put things up here that are neither thesis nor career oriented. You can probably ignore those.

Anyhow, I’ll get on with that. Nice to meet you, pleasure to be here.

See you soon…