Another episode of writer's bloc

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http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1159

This is exactly the point I am in my writing. I've got my existing and about-to-be-submitted papers, and I've been moving text around, inserting bits here and there. I've gotta get my act together and actually make it look like a thesis and not a series of publications.

I stumble upon two situations which cause me grief: (1) the writing and rewriting of sentences that I already understand, but have trouble communicating an idea in a concise manner, and (2) just not knowing what else to say.

Situation (1) is not a fun place to be in. I get lost in time sometimes and get stuck on a sentence/paragraph for hours. Situation (2) isn't too bad, cause it clearly is a signal that I should stop writing, and work things out on a whiteboard, or hunt down articles and do more reading.

I mention grief, but it's not that I don't enjoy this process. Sure there are non-fun periods of time. But that's part of it. Overall, I have a vision in my brain how I expect things to turn out.

But my main adversary is TIME. I resent the calendar as the days are whizzing by now. I've got so much I still want to do, but there must be a point where I just have to stop the ideas and get the writing done.

Whiteboard frenzy

Thought that it would be productive to have my own whiteboard at home, and I will hence be able to save paper with my doodling. And I'll be able to take photos of them without embarrassing myself! (Coz I take photos of whiteboard stuff we discuss in my supervisor's office, lest I forget anything. He used to find it odd, but now he uses his new iMac to do the same thing!)

Papers, papers, papers... !!!

Thinking aloud on which papers I actually do have lined up... Let's see which's sure and which's possible:

(1) Work with F. Review on methods. I'll need to write and collect more literature. Should finish a draft in 2-3 weeks.

(2) Work with boss M. Proposal of a new model. Running experiments which will last for another 3 weeks. I can't say how long the writing will take for this yet. Since this is first-hand work with boss M, he's keeping a close eye on the model, algorithm and code, and that in itself makes it take time as the feedback loop is more frequent. Not that this is a bad thing, it actually makes the work validate itself, though I keep rewriting code more often.

(3) Work with boss M and Z. Estimation of parameters from new model applied to current methods. Just yesterday, boss M pointed out that there is another possible paper out of our work in (2) that can be piped into Z's work. No time frame for this yet as it largely depends on (2).

(4) My own work. Validation of our previously-published method. A project that is on stand-by soon as I can find time for it. Should be open and shut as I've got the framework done.

(5) Possible work with R. Proposed new method for different organism. I've not met with R for a while (since last year). This is all up in the air, and I'm not sure I can think this up in time for the PhD to end.

Ok... now, what are the chances I finish at least ONE before September?!

A conference and a little competition

A conference

I'd been mumbling a while back about not being able to afford attending conferences this year, especially with the "downscaling" of scholarship top-ups (meaning there would be none). Added to that, I've got to save some money for A's application for a visa this midyear.

Good news is, boss M announced that he is setting aside some money for all of us in the lab to attend a conference in late September. The catch is we have to present work there. No big deal, we always expect to give talks in meetings/seminars, so this is actually good!

At least I am sure I'll have at least one more conference to add to my CV without spending too much.

Publishing papers and funding

Every year, we used to receive a constant top-up to our scholarship from boss M. Since the money is scarce, he's set rules on how he's going to allocate it. In fact, he's set up a sort of "competition" amongst us.

So how it goes, is that for every paper we publish, we'll get an *award* for it. Each paper is worth half of the top-up I used to receive yearly. The paper has to be work accomplished with the lab.

The thing is, if we get productive and publish papers more, he's actually going to have more problems with money. That was funny, but he welcomed the challenge and opened even his own pool of money (for his own funding) to us, should we publish more. He's more than happy to oblige. So what came forth from here is not really a solution to the money being scarce. But it turned out to be a better set-up I should say.

I've got at least a couple of papers lined up. Let's see how it goes!

A successful talk

In our most recent lab meeting, I gave a presentation on my work. I'm happy to report that it went very well. It certainly cleared my doubts that what I was doing made sense to other people. For a while I had been worried that the simulations I had designed and my plans for reporting the results in a specific manner would be undecipherable to others. After yesterday, I'm glad that they understood what I was doing.

And as a bonus, big boss seems happy and excited with it. He thinks I should hurry and get it published.

So back to work!

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I have some stories to tell as well about conferences and scholarships and such... But I'll save those for another time.

Updates

Since the beginning of the month, I've commenced tutorials at the School of Maths. I've met with all the groups, they seem like polite and able students. It takes a while to break the ice, especially in a course like Linear Algebra and Calculus. So with the rolls still not finalised and the session just started, and as I usually say, let's see how it pans out as time passes.

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So I've officially ditched C.

I decided my multi-dimension array issues is just not worth troubleshooting anymore. I've since migrated all my code to PERL now. Speed is not so much an issue anymore. So the more pressing issue is to get the code working, and working correctly.

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One thing that I still have to implement is the sampling in the simulations. The current structure of my arrays, hashes and variables changed when I migrated to PERL. This makes the sampling different, and I have to re-implement it. When I was using C, I had a code snippet (from my supervisor) that accomplishes this. It's a bit different now with my new structures, so I'm having a think through how to write my loops and distribution arrays.

Another demo

Looks like I'm being eyed to teach another course in Maths. I was asked to do a demo for Stats for Life Sciences on Wednesday. My name was forwarded to the course handler/lecturer after the demos I gave for Linear Algebra and Calculus. I'm not as experienced in Stats as in the other courses, so this makes me a bit nervous. I wouldn't mind not doing it, but the course handler knows me from the lab. It'll be embarrassing if I mess it up.

I'm grabbing a library book on the way home today to spruce up my Stats.