Initial Conditions

Blue: Jonny Foreigner cheating
Orange: Bad refereeing
Yellow: Overpaid players don’t care about playing for England
Light green: Ashley Cole
Purple: Player who makes defensive error
Light blue: England’s Brave John Terry
Dark Green: Bad tactics from Fabio Capello
Lime Green: England beaten fair and square by a better team (no scapegoat)

[of course it might be that none of these apply and England win the thing. Fair play to them if they do.]

Blue: Narcissism

Orange: Teachers talking about being on holiday

Yellow: Anchorman quotes

Green: Pranks caused by people leaving themselves logged in on someone else’s laptop

Brown: Stuff I actually want to know!

[ please be aware this is just a joke and I actually (mostly) enjoy facebook status updates!]

Hello,

I’ve been awfully busy lately, so haven’t had a chance to update this blog or Unpsorting Conduct very much. Sorry about that! I’ve just been spending lots of time on my work, and with that, church and small group, I barely have time to think, let alone breathe! I think I might have to restrict posting to weekends…

I just wrote my season preview on Unsporting Conduct, so go there for something a bit more substantial.

Thanks!

My friend Elena has started a new blog, the main subject of which will be science and cooking.

Find it at http://myhbar.wordpress.com, or click “myhbar” on the right. Extra points if you get the pun in the title..

Ok folks, I’m really sorry I didn’t explain the last post properly, or at all really.

What had happened was that I’d just finished watching Match of the Day and suddenly found myself thinking a whole lot of things that weren’t related to the football.

I was going to write a different post, so I had wordpress open, and just decided I would write whatever I was thinking about. What resulted was what you read- effectively a stream of consciousness linking about five or six things I was thinking at the time together. 

To make it more simple, I was getting frustrated by my lack of articulation when it comes to serious issues (covered in the first two paragraphs). I then moved on to express my disappointment at an area in my life I’m struggling with, and the last two statements are directed at two different specific people- the first seeking advice (somewhat rhetorically), and the second to someone I felt I’d wronged recently, who’s probably not going to read it.

I was in a kind of strange mood because that day everything was a bit weird and certain things happened that made me think about mistakes I was making, and somehow thought that  this would be therapeutic. The jury’s still out on that. 

Meantime, thanks for your concern. I’ll make a point of marking clearly any such posts in the future!

Hello,

I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while, things have been kind of busy. I’ve been through a lot this last week. If I told you everything, I don’t think you’d believe me! 

But I’ve been doing some thinking and thought that maybe it’s time for a change. Would anyone miss the subtle blend of wit, cynicism and humour that’s made Initial Conditions so popular over the year(s)? What if I posted less regularly, but with stuff that actually mattered? I haven’t told anyone yet why I named this blog Initial Conditions. I guess it’s never come up. 

What does actually matter? Anything? Sometimes it feels like that. Forgive me for venting, but it’s at times like this that it feels as if Sisyphus had a better deal than me, but at least he had the satisfaction of getting his rock to the top of the hill, even if he knew it was going to roll down again. Urgh. No you’re right, I’m over-reacting. Worse things happen. Like what? Doing the right thing comes naturally to so many people. If you know the secret, please teach me.

I’ve let you down. I’m sorry.

Things are a bit busy for me at the minute, so I’m suspending regular blogging features for a while.

Customers should be aware that Initial Conditions still offers excellent value for money, and the decreases in blogging are in line with inflation.

My apologies.

In the meantime, you are welcome to have a look round in my previous posts, or look in my old blog, which can be found here.

Thank you!

It’s very good, go see it, if you don’t mind them taking liberties with established history.

I had a great time in London, and I’ve come back with much to ponder, and also many photos. Unfortunately my computer gave up the ghost when I was there, so these will have to wait, but I will write some stuff when it gets better!. I’m writing this on a PS3 though, so that’s pretty cool…

I sometimes get questions as to what happens along the road to getting a PhD, and since I just started the long and arduous process of producing a thesis, I thought it might be worth explaining the process. So here it is (I’m afraid I’m a bit science-centric here):

GET A PhD IN THIRTEEN EASY (?) STEPS

1. Get a 2:1 or (better) a first in your undergraduate degree, thereby making your parents proud enough not to question why you’re taking another four years out of gainful employment.

2. Meet your supervisor. He’s there to give you advice on all sorts of issues, but mostly on where you are wrong. While you’re there, you might choose a topic. But you might not, it’s not essential that you do so in your first year.

3. Read, read and read some more about your general field. The good news is that you can borrow books for twelve weeks (as opposed to the four undergraduates get). It’s probably here that you realise the enormity of your task.

4. At the end of your first year, you might have been lucky enough to get to the stage of reading academic papers. That’s lucky, because they’ll be a great help when you write your end of first year report and give a half hour talk, which determines if you’re actually good enough to do a PhD. Most people get through this.

5. After passing, you keep up the momentum and hopefully gain enough knowledge to decide on a topic. Having done that, you can..

6. .. narrow the research. Hopefully (after many months of tearing your hair out and wondering why you chose this path) you will end up with a few nice results at which point you can..

7. .. plan your thesis, a document of varying length (but no more than 70 000 words please) which is supposed to contain original, relevant and publishable work.

8.  Write your thesis. 8 weeks before you submit (that is, hand it in for final examination), you submit an intention to submit for admin purposes.

9. Submit your thesis, the point of no return. It varies when this happens, it could be after two and a half years or after four. It is then sent to the examiners, who will then set a date for the dreaded..

10. VIVA. An oral examination, where you have an internal and an external examiner, who will grill you mercilessly about your thesis and ask you why you’ve made so many typos or got a minus sign wrong.

11. If you show sufficient knowledge and are full of win and awesome, you will pass, but may be asked to do some corrections on the thesis. You will be given a few weeks or months to do this, and when you do..

12. Submit a final version of your thesis to the college office. It is convention that at this point you are entitled to call yourself “Dr”.

13. Graduate and enter the real world because there’s no higher qualification to obtain. Become a Post-Doc (basically a fixed-term researcher at a University) until you get a lecturing position or sell out to industry. Or neither..

Anyway, I hope that was informative!