Haven’t posted for a while due to essay deadlines, exams and just generally being busy…
Blink
This week’s Doctor Who was a bit weird, not to mention depressing. The Weeping Angels were extremely creepy, perhaps one of the most frightening (in terms of both visuals and what they do) Who monsters yet. The story itself was interesting, although I think it might have been better done as a two-parter with more clues as to what was happening rather than only involving two people being sent into the past. Still waiting for Mr Saxon (I have suspected for some time that he is the Master in disguise, and Russell T Davies has dropped some recent not so subtle hints which seem to confirm this) to appear in the flesh though—perhaps this will happen in the final episode of the series.
Dissertation
I finally have a dissertation topic! After chasing various potential supervisors and getting to stages ranging from ‘initial discussions’ to ‘promising topic and bibliography followed by person disappearing off the face of the Earth’ (or at least not replying to emails, which amounts to the same thing nowadays), I eventually managed to go over my ideas with one of my tutors and knock out what I think is a promising area for research. I have also learnt from past mistakes—this time I set a definite date for the next meeting, rather than leaving it to the endless void that is ‘I’ll email you about it’.
The topic itself is something along the lines of ‘the representation of ancient warfare in modern video games’. Whilst it may sound like a thinly-veiled excuse to play Rome: Total War under the auspices of ‘researching for my dissertation’, it’s actually something which I wrote a PhD proposal for as part of my SAGE component (yes, something useful has come out of SAGE!) and the programme director picked up on for some reason. Basically, I’ll be looking at what ancient authors wrote about warfare, and how closely that is reflected in computer games—although obviously there’s a bit more to it than that. No one else seems to have looked at this area in any detail (similar studies tend to concentrate on modern warfare and particularly the representation of the American armed forces), so it should be an interesting topic to research.
Flat hunting
The other thing which is stressing me out a bit at the moment is trying to find somewhere to live once I move out of my current flat in a week’s time. I know I can always go back to Bury (in fact I’m there at the moment) so I’m not panicking too much, but I’d rather not stay there for too long as it means a long trek in for meetings. On the other hand, I’m not sure if I want to sign a contract before mid-July in case a particular opportunity which I’ve got my eye on bears fruit.