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

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.

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.

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.

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 .

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 .

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?

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…

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

1. 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.
2. My current lease runs out on June 30th
3. Until my grant installment comes in next month, I have more or less no money.
4. 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).
5. It may have escaped the Universe’s notice, but I have a thesis to be getting on with.
6. 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.