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one draft, sent to Tasmania
Feb. 2nd, 2012 08:00 pmAs our two weeks in Glasgow draw to a close I report that working at "home" when "home" is a short term rental apartment in a city far from one's real home is rather like working at home as a PhD student. By this I mean that motivation to actually work varies drastically from day to day, ranging from totally lacking on some days to working long hours and not going to sleep till after 02:00 on others.
What have I accomplished during my time here?
My focus has been cleaning up the loose ends and finishing that paper from my PhD research. Sadly this involved needing to ( re-do some calculations )
So now that I have new calculations, using the revised version of the program, that give the same answer as I got years ago, I have finally done the rest of the work on the paper--it now is much shorter than the last version (down to about 3,500 words, as compared to the ~48,000 words of the thesis from which this has been distilled), says only what it should, and has conclusions explicitly spelled out. The figures have also been revised and cleaned up, and the lot have been emailed to Tasmania for comment from my erstwhile adviser. I hope he likes it, it would be nice to get it submitted for publication before the month is over.
In other news I am not amused by the UK postal service. When we arrived in Scotland two weeks ago we stopped by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clovis_t's home and picked up the stuff he has been storing for me for a year. It is mostly stuff that I am glad to have back (and in many cases have been wondering where they have been--fearing that I had lost them in the move), but there is a bit more than easily fits into the two suitcases we have as luggage allowance between us. (We brought one down, and the other suitcase was amongst the stuff we picked up.) No problem, we though, we can simply post the rest back--I haven't had it for a year, what matters if it takes another few weeks? So we boxed it up (he got a box from the company at which his class is being held), and today I carried it off to the post office. Where I found out that in this country one may only ship a package via "surface mail" if it is less than 2 kg, and my package is about 10 kg. This strikes me as odd--every where else I have been they prefer to ship the larger packages by surface, and save the air mail for the light stuff. Not here--here they want to send it by air, and want £68 to £108 for this package, depending on if we want it there next day delivery, or if we are willing to wait five days. No thank you! I am not going to spend that much to post it, not when the airlines only charges €20 for excess baggage. It will not be as convenient to have the third piece of luggage, but we can tie the box to the rolling suitcase with a leather belt and it will be fine.
Tomorrowlord_kjar should have only a half day of class (during which he will take the exam) and then we will take the train to Edinburgh, where we will stay with clovis_t and do some sightseeing on the weekend, before we fly home on Sunday. That will be nice, but we are also both really looking forward to going home.
What have I accomplished during my time here?
My focus has been cleaning up the loose ends and finishing that paper from my PhD research. Sadly this involved needing to ( re-do some calculations )
So now that I have new calculations, using the revised version of the program, that give the same answer as I got years ago, I have finally done the rest of the work on the paper--it now is much shorter than the last version (down to about 3,500 words, as compared to the ~48,000 words of the thesis from which this has been distilled), says only what it should, and has conclusions explicitly spelled out. The figures have also been revised and cleaned up, and the lot have been emailed to Tasmania for comment from my erstwhile adviser. I hope he likes it, it would be nice to get it submitted for publication before the month is over.
In other news I am not amused by the UK postal service. When we arrived in Scotland two weeks ago we stopped by
clovis_t's home and picked up the stuff he has been storing for me for a year. It is mostly stuff that I am glad to have back (and in many cases have been wondering where they have been--fearing that I had lost them in the move), but there is a bit more than easily fits into the two suitcases we have as luggage allowance between us. (We brought one down, and the other suitcase was amongst the stuff we picked up.) No problem, we though, we can simply post the rest back--I haven't had it for a year, what matters if it takes another few weeks? So we boxed it up (he got a box from the company at which his class is being held), and today I carried it off to the post office. Where I found out that in this country one may only ship a package via "surface mail" if it is less than 2 kg, and my package is about 10 kg. This strikes me as odd--every where else I have been they prefer to ship the larger packages by surface, and save the air mail for the light stuff. Not here--here they want to send it by air, and want £68 to £108 for this package, depending on if we want it there next day delivery, or if we are willing to wait five days. No thank you! I am not going to spend that much to post it, not when the airlines only charges €20 for excess baggage. It will not be as convenient to have the third piece of luggage, but we can tie the box to the rolling suitcase with a leather belt and it will be fine.Tomorrow
lord_kjar should have only a half day of class (during which he will take the exam) and then we will take the train to Edinburgh, where we will stay with clovis_t and do some sightseeing on the weekend, before we fly home on Sunday. That will be nice, but we are also both really looking forward to going home.
