First draft of thesis

After another week’s worth of work, I’ve got to the stage where I have a complete full first draft of my thesis, all the way from the abstract to the conclusions. It’s now in my supervisors’ inboxes awaiting comments, though at 30,000+ words and 113 pages I suspect it will be a while before they […]

Final chapter

I thought this would never happen, but I’ve just emailed the final chapter of my thesis over to my supervisors for initial comments. I now have until 14 September (allowing time for printing and binding before the final submission deadline) to iterate over the whole thesis as many times as possible to shake out any […]

Identify LaTeX symbols

Those of you who use LaTeX regularly (as I do, both for my academic work and other papers) might find this LaTeX symbol classifier helpful. Basically you draw the symbol you want to produce in LaTeX and it will provide you with a list of matching symbols and the commands to reproduce them. Far more […]

OpenTech, APIs and the T word

I was down in London last weekend for OpenTech, which was up to the usual high standard and full of useful talks on all manner of techy things. I made some useful contacts during the course of the day and have some ideas for how to take a couple of projects forward as a result. […]

All quiet on the East Didsbury front

Things have been a bit quiet as of late, work keeps me busy during the day and most evenings are spent catching up on admin (e.g. sorting out the upcoming UKUUG conference) or writing academic documents. Not being involved with FoE has freed up a lot of time, but it all seems to have disappeared […]

UKCOD trustee position

This may be of interest to some people reading this blog: UKCOD, the parent charity of mySociety, is looking for new trustees. I’m not sure how many places are open as the blog post alternates between the plural and the singular, and it’s not clear whether the position is arising out of a need for […]

Trundling along slowly

Thesis is still trundling along at an embarrassingly slow rate, I just don’t seem to have time to work on it. I have managed to finish another draft of a technical report and email it to my supervisors, but chapters 4 and 5 are still dragging their feet into the ground. Fortunately I think the […]

Clear out

I’ve finally finished handing over the membership secretary position of the UK Shareholders’ Association, posting down the last batch of paperwork earlier this week. I enjoyed the role as it was flexible in terms of time and I was interested in the organisation’s work anyway, but it took up just a bit too much time […]

Closer to completion

Still working on my thesis, though it’s getting closer to completion now. I’ve emailed two more draft chapters to my supervisors, so hopefully I will get some feedback at some point and smooth out all the rough edges before a final round or two or proof-reading. I actually enjoy writing it to an extent—especially as […]