Dustiness

Research topic

After the confusion caused by last week’s meeting with my advisor, I didn’t really know where I was going with my research. Thankfully though, this week my two supervisors confirmed that what I had originally been thinking (i.e. detecting and linking events on the web, broadly speaking) was the right path to be heading down, so I am much happier about the direction of my research than I was this time last week. Alas, I’m tied up in a compulsory seminar series (which I have to write about so there is no escape, and no lunch is provided! grr) for three days this week, so the prospect of getting much research done is greatly diminished. 🙁

Stardust

A few of the old guard of the Megalomaniacs went to see Stardust on Wednesday. I’m not entirely sure what the plot of this film is, it’s as if someone has taken bits of generic fairy tales and combined them into one storyline. The rating (PG) was a bit odd too, given the amount of (often extremely obvious) sexual innuendo (described as ‘risque humor’ by IMDB). The whole thing reminded me of Robin Hood: Men in Tights, with dozens of cameos from famous people, many of whom had featured in Men in Tights. Overall though it was an extremely funny, if somewhat confusing, movie and definitely worth going to see.

Freelance work

I’m still getting offers of freelance work, probably about one enquiry every fortnight as a result of people finding my CV (which I need to update at some point) on my website. I’m being ultra-careful this year not to take too much on, but so far the work has just involved small amounts of website maintenance and the odd bit of consultancy, which is a good balance between staying grounded in academia whilst keeping a foot in the real world for when (if?) I eventually return to it. I don’t really have time to sort out my company at the moment though, so I will probably switch it to dormancy status until I need it.

Anyway, I still have a few things to get done tonight, so I should probably re-attach myself to the grindstone…

Read this next

The first hurdle

4 thoughts on “Dustiness”

  1. Stardust (both book and film) is great. Don’t try demeaning by comparing it with Men in Tights

  2. I don’t know about the book, but the film was full of cameos, camp humour, sexual innuendos and a rather odd storyline – sounds almost exactly like Men in Tights. 😛

    (unless we are talking about a different Stardust film here?)

  3. Stardust is intended to be an homage to fairytales – it’s very much intended to be a Neil Gaiman equivalent to the Princess Bride.

    Also thw film is intended to be quite different from the book, but preserving the essential core of the tale. I’d very much recommend reading it – though I haven’t yet seen the film to compare.

Comments are closed.