Thesis Stand-still

So I've recently become addicted to the following blog: http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com/. It may have just saved my life. Dr Inger Mewburn is a genius. The blog covers everything on getting things done, procrastination and writing techniques to your supervisor relationship to how to handle one's first conference. Most importantly it is far more approachable than large text books on how to write one's thesis.

So one of the things that is suggested in the blog (and just about everywhere else), is to maintain a blog oneself. Well I clearly have a blog, but it has never been maintained and it has rarely been beneficial to me. Before hand I wanted to write things to entertain others. Now I hope my blog takes on a more functional role: To monitor and quantify my progress with my thesis - and hopefully allow me to track where I am and not get lost in the ultimate "bigness" of it.

So... (the ultimate unspoken question of a researcher) how's research?

Well, in the first week of the year I wrote up my master's proposal. It was detailed, took me about 3 days and I felt very good about it. Not only that, but my supervisor was very impressed by it. In my proposal I had a very detailed (and unique) schedule. I chose, rather than schedule deadlines, to estimate the number of days each task would take me - and thus make it more flexible to sick days and such. Each day was only 5 hours (to cater for the fact I also have part-time lecturing duties). From my estimation, the thesis would take me about a year and 3 months to complete if I was diligent.

Unfortunately, although I created this wonderful schedule, I am afraid to look at it. I know for a fact I have lost about 30 days... an important 30 days or so of my thesis - most likely more. This is the result of a conference paper I had to publish, general getting settled into my new lifestyle as a lecturer and master's student and university delays - such as getting the laboratory setup (which is still underway). So now I have a schedule I don't look at.

In my proposal, I had written up my problem statement as far as I knew how it went. It felt valid enough - even though I knew it required a few more consultation with mining experts (and yes, my master's thesis has to do with the use of swarm robotics in a gold mining context) as well as a far amount of reading about swarm robotics and foraging.

So after a month of trying to nail down "What problem am I actually trying to solve?" - I've spoken to mining experts, geologists, looked at diagrams, read loads of papers on swarm robotics and foraging, I'd thought I'd happily written up my problem. Until the next day I read over it again and was full of doubts. I doubt the purpose behind my experiments. I doubt if I am really researching anything new. I feel so insecure and overwhelmed that I have reached a complete stand still (hence the emergency call for action to write a blog and pray for progress ). I'm too afraid to look at the literature. As The Thesis Whisperer so well described, in the blog post Reading like a mongrel, us students end up in a "reading death spiral". I'm at the point where I fear to look at another journal paper again, just to have its facts strewn around my brain in a big tornado.

I had "read" through tons and tons of material. Or so I had thought. I looked back on what I had read and I had simply made my way through about a total of 6 articles and skimmed through about another 6. And in the process I have increased my reading list by about 60 more papers I need to read. And it took me 2 months to get through those 6.

On the plus side, I have written up a fair amount of what I have read, but none of it feels good enough and none of it reads properly (in my opinion).

So, not only do I not look at my schedule because I know I'm so behind, I'm refusing to look at my problem and I fear looking at my overwhelming reading list or everything I have written (and if I do look and what I have written I spend ages panicking over every sentence).

So what was left? My simulation software which I have been slowly learning and my robots. So cute. Bless their cotton socks! However, after running a few existing simulations and running those simulations on the real robots (and trying to understand existing example code) I realized the depth I'm wading through NOT HAVING EVER DONE a course in robotics. I thought I'd be able to catch on with only the bits I need, but now I have come to think that I actually need a full introductory course on normal robotics - messing around with only a single one of my robots. This is of course a very frightening prospect.

So out of fear I am doing nothing. I am currently at home (it's the Easter holidays - which I had scheduled at least 3 double days (5 hours x 2 per day) of work. ) and I am doing bleeding nothing. NAAAATHING. I have instead watched a ton of detective stories with my mother and slept late and read fiction books about sociopaths. I felt ill for most of it, migraines and the such - but I have a feeling it is all in my head. I am behind on lecturing work and I have no car (it broke down - 3 weeks ago and is still not ready). As a result of avoiding my M, I have avoided EVERYTHING. No work, no Master's, no band practice, no following up of car admin. I managed to complete a website for my boyfriend's mum and I have joined a new musical project in the mean-time - ENTIRELY unrelated stuff to the general functioning of my life and progress towards my life goals.

The weird thing is that it probably isn't as bad as I think it is. Although I feel totally lost, I probably have made a fair amount of progress. The reading I have made was most likely the most important literature in the field, my problem is probably too specific - I may be able to lighten the load and make it less specific. I know I have a bit more reading I need to do for my problem (probably only 2 more important papers, rather than 20 papers). And all the things I have already written are probably entirely acceptable, with only a small amount of editing required. I will probably find the basic robotic syllabus entirely doable in a week or two and all the lecturing work and admin I am behind on, will probably be over in an hour or two on Tuesday. And I feel like my supervisor doesn't know what I'm doing, but my co-supervisor should get involved soon and he will know. As for being behind... A month behind, means an extra month - just an extra month. It will result in an extra few years of thesis doing. Stand back and quantify. It just ain't that bad.

So where to from here:

1. Look at my schedule - determine how behind I am (in exact 5 hour days) - if I determine that I am 2 months behind, I will accept that as okay and move on. Because it is okay. It really is
2. I will go read a single paper - the one that is pressing on my mind the most. Just one and it will be okay.
3. I will contact my supervisor and demand he gets my promised co-supervisor officially involved
4. I will look into a basic robotics syllabus.

I am luckily part of a very awesome group which we have christened: Master's Club (or M. Club for short). It's just a group of Computer Science master's students - a group of friends really. We meet every Monday night, go get some food, and we ask that all time horrible question: How is research? I have found some solace and companionship with my fellow M. club member - whether it is complaining about supervisors or topics - I am not alone.

Other Blogs

Been bouncing around these holidays and I realized that my own blog was even lamer than I thought. I figured I needed to update, but only on examination of how often others update their blogs did I realise that I update mine so little I may as well not have one. So I'm gonna be making some seemingly pointless updates until I get into the hang of blogging regularly

Here are some AWESOME blog's that are keeping me entertained & inspired:
http://www.sadbirthdays.blogspot.com

http://so-many-animal-calls.blogspot.com

http://udioja.blogspot.com

http://www.brianvanwykphotography.squarespace.com

Hope everyone had a Merry Consumerism Day & Happy New Years to all!

Just like the space inbetween

So it's been an entire semester since my last blog post.
I decided to blog today because tonight we are celebrating my 21st Birthday and since this is a relatively important event and I should be running about stressing about my hair and nails, I decided writing a blog post would be more constructive.

I've thought up a number of possible things I could blog about today. I could blog about the latest uprising in progressive music, I could talk about my current studies, I could talk about my latest life experiences, or I could perhaps reveal one of my poems.

Instead I'm going to talk about the flow of consciousness & the strength of the creative urge.

"Just like the space inbetween" is the name of this post.
It came to me yesterday. For some reason it kept repeating in my mind. For the rest of the day, as soon as I took a look at my Security in Computing text book I was immediately reminded of the it. I can't identify it's origin, and I'm yet to work out what is just like the space in between. The mystery of creativity and the mystery of one's memory. So I decided to run a little experiment.

Where is the first place to start when you don't know where something comes from?
Google It!

Two notable things appeared:

Firstly,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoQEd7qzpEc
A song by a band called How to Destroy Angels.
Very dark and stunning track. Here are the lyrics

All the blood lying on the floor
Sense the crowd expecting something more
Opened up, proudly on display
What we tried so hard to hide away

Blinding light illuminates the scene
Trying to fill the spaces in between

Arms entwined in a final pose
Narrative drawing to a close
Still remain the things we couldn't kill
In your eyes I can see it still

How we choose the framing of the scene
Hate begins to spill across the screen
Blinding light illuminates the scene
Trying to fill the spaces in between

It seems to be about a Murder Scene - where the killer is obsessed with his own theatrical nature of his killings. Perhaps the death of a model. Whatever. I like the song a lot. Thank you random thought! I may have discovereda new band.

Secondly we have,
http://the-space-in-between.com/
The Subtitle is: “…that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).”
It turns out it is a blog of a Ms Stacy Oborn. She is a photographer and a writer and her writing is gorgeous: "This space is the pre-verbal second draft of my interior monologue" she says in the preface. I'm still sifting through her words but am so far fascinated...

As I delved deeper into the hidden cracks of Google's web-crawled knowledge, things started to get a bit weird....
I discovered a load of tosh about Astrology, Sacred Geometry and Matrix Energies and the sort of garbage which I just don't have the time for. What frightened me the most were the strange art movements:
http://inbetweenspaces.org/category/constellations/
http://www.spaceinbetween.co.uk/
Not to mention some odd blogs: http://sirojs.wordpress.com/

There is a also DMB Song called The Spaces Between. Hmmmm...

Still I was no closer to working out WHAT these spaces were and what they were between and what was just like them. Something familiar was shouting in my head.
I decided to look back into my writings from a young age. This took me back about 10 years ago... And since it is my 21st Celebration today I realise how much I have changed since then. What I am now were the dreams of what I wanted to be.

Page after page, drawing after drawing and I was yet to find these spaces.
I was reading the last page of a green covered book which was falling apart I'd paged through it so man times in my younger days and I found a snippet of writing, a poem I suppose:

Waiting by the Glass Window
===========================

I'm the lost face on a moving train
The tear drop falling with the rain
The spaces between in an empty frame
A 7th dice after the gambling game

I'm waiting by the window
on this train to nowhere
Waiting by the window
where glass tears trickle down my face

By Jade.

So these spaces, were in between the sides of a photoframe?
Just pure sadness. This poem is a good example of what I call my grey side. The quiet sad girl that I used to be.

So what was just like the space in between the photoframe? Why did that occur to me yesterday....
I'm still working on that, but I have my suspicions...
As for empty photoframes I think they could be a positive thing... still waiting to be filled with experiences. The only photo's I see now are on facebook so a photo frame would be a refreshing change.

Now to go do some planning for my 21st and worry about my nails and hair. :) Hopefully next post will be soon

Distance, Desolation & Isolation

I wrote these 3 in December 2010. There is a 4th post that I dont have on me which only was written in February which I will add later. Desolation has been discected and turned into a song by my band Paint. (Desolaaaation Desolaaation Roaaaad!! ;) ) I was in a weird place then. I sent the first 2 of them to a friend as a request for assistance. The friend never read them. They were very important to me and that friend never read them. That friend proceeded to betray me. Perhaps the fact these were never read was a warning sign.

I think it is time I put them up. The other 2 are likely to be turned into songs as well. So here they are. In all vividness.

Distance

We linger in our loneliness,
Far too long, does reality become distant.
But a thin stretched veil of existence.

Farewell friends. I can’t reach you from here.
You were the one’s to bring me to grips with my own truth.

Out here, in this grey misty ocean of grey solitude.
The mind can do naught but wonder the paths of the present, past and future.
Frequenting the narrow tightrope between these states

Knee deep in the black, glassy sea.
I have no reflection.
The fog is cold and thick and still.

I begin to walk
towards a sound
the ring of a high pitched bell

The black water clears
And I set upon my grey beach.
Shining shells of solitude crawl up the silver sand in natural lines.

The fog has lessened, in fact
It is plainly gone.

It lies only towards the horizon at the seas edge.
Clouds, a sheet of clouds cover the heavens and only a paled while shining beacon that is the sun, lights the land and pulls the silver glitter off the sea

I am the greyelf.
And welcome to my realm.

Desolation

Desert. The seas have dried.

Still grey.

In my hands is a brain.

I’m surrounded by brains. They buzz
So powerless & unprotected
Waiting to be meddled with.

Poke my fingers into the brain and manipulate it
Not unlike that of a puppet master
It jumps & whinges a little
Electric sparks rise over the lobes

I left go of that brain. It floats a little.
& pick up another. I do the same.

This one lets out a shriek. Piercing. Chilling.
Then it wilts into a light grey green.
I let it go and it sinks a little.
I pick up another and tear it into 2
Just let it float off.
One more giggles at my touch.
I stick my fingers into its folds and it goes into fits of hysteria

I crumble this one between my fingers (how easy these brains crumble?)
and a thousand different laughs emit from each piece
And they fall to my feet.

3 brains start ramming into me. I wave them off with a hand.

The desert.
The faceless man. Spoonface I call him.
Indentation. Meditation. Reflection.
Myself in reverse, but still myself.
Myself bent, but still myself.

Brains buzz around us.
I remove his jacket.

He lunges forward and grabs my head with his hands
His formless fingers push through my eyes, into my mouth and my ears and nose
He reaches my own brain and starts squeezing.

I can feel his fear. Or is that my own?
He has formed nails which keep digging and digging
And digging and digging.
Scratching away chunks of pink, grey, white matter

He hits a standstill and his hands (if you could call them that) retreat.
Has he found the life source?
In his hands he has torn out a blue glowing ball. Digital?
The glass ball is flickering and buzzing with a blue light.

He holds it before me.

I feel the strongest urge to bury it. Bury it into the desert sand.
It flickers. That makes sense.
I start grabbing brains and breaking them open to see if they have this life force.
None of them have it. Why do I?

Spoonface man looks at me.
I see only my upside down face distorted in the curves.
There are no cavity’s in which I can tear into his mind. I see only my own.

The ball is in my hands.
It buzzes. It glows brighter.

Isolation

10 million layers between me and you. Between me and them.
I’m on a beach. Pure white.
A wind is blowing picking up the sand in sheets.
That cloud would tear into anyone’s feet.
But not mine.

Meanwhile I vibrate the chords of my tangible existence
While tightly bound in this amber caccoon, impenetrable.
It is in here I wait and sleep and dream.

It starts to rain on the beach.
Acid rain.
I hear the patter from outside.
A towering wind swirls around my caccoon. Dragging sand & tears with it. Up up up.
It’s melting.

The caccoon has sprung a leak.
How can acid taste so sweet.

What does one call the space that exists between you and your cage? That small gap of air.
What would you call it when it filled up with water?

Acid burns my sensitive skin.
Yet it also burns the caccoon
From the inside out.
Caccoon melts… melting.

From the puddle forming at my feet life has spring.
Tendrils, leaves of the plant entwine themselves around me
I must help them get closer to the sun.
I support them and feel comforted by this.
It blossoms around my face – into bright blossoms.
Similar to those of the day lily.

For there is sunlight. Still in the rain is there sunlight.

Swarms of white barbed creatures gather across the sand. Back and forth they run making patterns in the land.

My body is entwined in growth
The caccoon of stone is now solely a pearlescent mess at my soles.

My white feather insects are distracted from the sand and approach my destroyed shell.
Hundreds of them.
They appear to be soaking it up. Devouring it.

I cant describe the sound they make. I’d call it a mixture of a cats purr, a birds’ tweet and a cricket on a hot summer day.

One of the assumedly female creatures flew up to my face and cooed into my ear.
A feline insect. Strange. Beautiful.

It whispered something I understood. But in a language I’d never heard before.

Trinkets from the past

Throughout my childhood I documented my life in some form or another. I have a million books which I have filled with stories, discoveries, essays, arguments, drawings & songs. So now I'm going to start a trip back into past Jade. I've been documenting my life for 11 years (I dated it! Yes). Every now and again I'm going to post an entry from past Jade. Looking back certainly has been a fascinating experience.

Here is a light-hearted, young and inspired piece. I must have been around 13 years old at the time. Quite sweet I think

The Cheat
-----------

In the beginning no-one could read her
Her eyes wore an empty frame
Cold stones then lit up in heat
And are now are billowing flame!

Not only in her eyes can you see
but upon her lips as well
Though her lips spoke not a word
Through her pout, one could tell.

Red lips glaring such teeth
In this slight fashion
Anger shown in red & white
The ultimate fury of passion.

A new fire burned off her
With strength that all could feel
For love, killed by betrayal
Creates a hell that'll make one keel.

She stormed across the room
to the one she loved.
She made all hold their breath
as she removed her silk glove.

For under that cloth was no longer a hand
but another burning fire.
All eyes watched her flame
As she played out her hearts desire.

;)

To my friends

I needed another post apparently ( according to my only official reader so far - Thank you Darren for being the lone-follower)

I started writing a long post about the silly characters I call my friends. Then I realised I'd be here all month.
So this is just a tribute to anyone who considers themself my friend :) Thank You for the good times (and the bad)

You're all awesome!

I Hate Everything!

My first geeky post. Took long enough. I'm just going to rant about the current frustration my geekness has caused me!

For my studies (3rd Year Bsc Comp Sci, for those who dont know), we have to complete this software engineering year project. Now, I won't bore you with details but anyone with a small coding background might find our project quite interesting.

Firstly, we have to interface computers with the Nintendo Wiimotes. (bane of my existence!)
Secondly, we have to create what they call a SOFTWARE VISUALIZATION from any (java) project specified by the user (ie create a graphical representation of one's code)
And lastly, we need to beable to navigate that through the visualization by using the Wiimotes.

All this results in a intuitive, multiuser, code-review tool!
Ok... so the idea is a bit obscure? But if you've had some programming background you'll know how tedious it is scrolling through lines and lines of code trying to find a single method or attribute. This system is going to aid that by representing a number of software metrics in the visualization
I invented our own metaphor for this software visualization which I'll go into detail another time. But fact of the matter is, it's gonna look pretty awesome. ... If we EVER get there.

We've spent months designing this system. We started coding last week and ALREADY we have a number of issues... GAH! It's these times I seriously question my choice of study.

Something that should have been seemingly simple: the BLUETOOTH connection between the WIimote and the computer system.
-.- Apparently not!
We've been struggling for 3 months with our prototype trying to get this stupid software to recognise the bluetooth dongle correctly and use the correct drivers. In the process we had to learn about the intricate working of what is known as the Bluetooth Stack. /* screams from background */
Here is a diagram of all the protocols that go into the workings of a bluetooth device



Our problem is occuring at the L2CAP level. -.- which is sitting BEYOND OUR CONTROL in between loads of other layers.
We've reinstalled software, drivers, bought new dongles, run on different operating systems and messed around in build scripts and still NOTHING will work. We've gotten a series of errors, none of which we can solve and every step forward leads to another wrist-slitting error. And no-one else seems to be having this problem! AAAAAH! I hate everything!

As a quick aside I need to introduce you to our mascot:

This is the I Hate Everything Kitten. The I hate everything Kitten epitomises mine & my team's outlook during times like these. I Hate Everything Kitten reminds us to not expect anything out of life. It also reminds us to maintain upmost cynicism with things like these and not expect sudden error-resolvement. I Hate Everything Kitten reminds us to close our eyes and cringe everytime we attempt to run our program! I Hate Everything Kitten reminds us that that only way we can feel satisfaction is through other's failure.

Thank you I Hate Everything Kitten. You teach us that it is better to be unhappy but alive, instead of at peace and dead... and in this way we are satisfied!

Enough of that.

I've also just had to redesign half th system. Which is a nightmare!
Apparently one either feel's awesome or shite at full moon. Full moon last night and I feel shocking >.< bleh!
But yea. I have to go get ready for a gig! Lets hope that works out a little better.