Sep 02 2013
4 Comments
Activities, Photos

Rhino-Hunting: Part 2

Rhino_2

Head over here to find Rhino-Hunting Part One // Rhino-Hunting Part Two // Rhino-Hunting Part Three // Rhino-Hunting Part Four

Last weekend, I continued my exploration of Southampton – camera in hand – taking photographs of my humble little city and seeking out more of the Go Rhinos! sculptures that make up the Southampton Rhino Trail. On this week’s excursion, I wandered round the rest of town scooping up pictures of the remaining lurking rhino, before taking a trek around Ocean Village and the marina, and some of the back-streets of Southampton.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the results of my efforts. Enjoy!

[Zinar7]

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Aug 21 2013
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PhD Fraud

PhD Fraud #12: Procrastinating Like a Pro

PhD_12

There’s a tendency, these days, for personal development and constant embetterment to be seen as the primary goal in life; that one’s sole purpose for existing should be to make oneself better in every way, to achieve higher and higher goals. We’re seemingly taught, from a young age, that we need to be successful, to prove that we’re special and that we can change the world if we just try hard enough. We’re pushed through school, then college, pushed to achieve only the best; and more and more young people are being funnelled into university and further education to continue this theme. We’re discouraged from ‘wasting’ our time watching TV, playing video games or spending hours glued to the internet watching videos of cats. And yet, this seems to be the natural habitat of your regular, everyday grad student:

 Jorge Cham, author of the venerable PhD Comics, has built up a solid reputation in public speaking through his entertaining seminar ‘The Power of Procrastination’, which I lapped up when he visited our University earlier this year. In it, he discusses the concept that thinking about “something else” through is actually beneficial for our brains, and certainly for our PhD studies. In other words, taking a break from your work to procrastinate is A Good Thing; or at the very least, not a Bad Thing. The key is in managing the procrastination such that it doesn’t become the ‘main event’ such that you don’t actually get anything done. I’ve certainly been procrastinating a heckload in between giving man-birth to 50,000-odd words in The Thesis, and I would probably get it finished a heckload sooner if I’d spent all that time avoiding silly things on the internet, playing video games and writing blogs (such as this one) – the thing is, if I had done that, then I’d probably have burnt myself out a lot harder and a lot longer ago, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to retain my PhD sanity this far into my research. I’m often at my most relaxed when I’m engrossed in the world of music, or hammering away at a video game like Gran Turismo 4 or F1 2011; concentrating only on the racing line, forgetting about all my other worries and only thinking as far ahead as the next apex. This is something I affectionately like to call ‘Senna Mode’:

SennaMode

It’s crucial to find an equal balance between your research and your mental health; often, procrastination gives our resident brain time to relax back into a tolerant state of affairs. More often and not, then, procrastination takes the form of an activity we’d rather be doing than what we actually have to do. We’re more likely to do something ‘fun’ in our procrastination time (read the internet, play in the sunshine, watch endless re-runs of Judge Judy on television) than ‘productive’ procrastination (sorting out files and folders, hoovering the office, writing passive-aggressive emails to the faculty telling people not to steal your milk). It’s important to schedule in time to properly procrastinate and relax, as sometimes the best solutions to difficult questions pop into your brain when it’s least expecting it. We’re always taught that structuring short periods of ‘downtime’ – taking a breath in the middle of the day, or actually spending a lunch hour away from the desk, and not feeling bad about it – has a positive effect on productivity but in practice, there’s an ethereal pressure to just keep going and ignore the fact that you need to have structure ‘break’ times.

Certainly amongst fellow academics and students, there’s a widespread feeling that we should be doing research every hour of the day, and that we should feel guilty if we’re doing something other than diligently working on our research projects. I don’t know about you, but I need my time off in order to let my brain recover, and churn over difficult problems in my subconscious. With research, we often feel like what we’re doing is the most important thing ever and much of our procrastination arises from a fear of doing things wrong or that everything we’ve done before has been seriously flawed. Of course, Your Mileage May Vary, but most of the time it’s my lack of confidence in myself and my work that causes me to constantly fret that my superiors will suddenly discover that I’m a complete fraud at this research business; and as an escape, I typically retreat to the bowels of the internet to avoid work until I have the confidence to get into gear again. Because it’s relevant (and because it’s awesome), here’s a picture from almost the dawn of the internet which proves my point:

Cartoon by Asher Sarlin from Elephantitis of the Mind: http://www.ashersarlin.com/archives/2004/09/honestly_who_co.php

Cartoon by Asher Sarlin from Elephantitis of the Mind:
http://www.ashersarlin.com/archives/2004/09/honestly_who_co.php

Ironically for an information medium that now means everyone has the ability to download a bunch of high-class journal papers or get in touch with researchers on the other side of the globe, the internet is typically the bane of research these days; or at the very least, the bane of research students, as the strip from PhD Comics shown at the top of this page can clearly attest to. I tend to get absorbed in the internet when I should be working, and hopelessly worried about my research when I should be letting my hair down. Sometimes, I just can’t disengage from distraction, and remain hopelessly addicted to checking Twitter every half an hour or spending ages picking songs for a ‘TIME TO WORK HARD’ playlist on Spotify and then only getting about halfway through before it’s getting dark and time to go home.

The conclusion of this post, therefore, is a call-to-arms to put productive procrastination into practice; to work hard when I should be working, and to party hard when I’m allowed to loosen up. So, my new goal, therefore, is to apply ‘Senna Mode’ to my work – to only focus on the task at hand, and to think only about the current problem and not the plethora of other problems that plague me – and ‘Andrew W.K. Mode‘ to my playtime. When it’s time to party, we will party hard.

PartyHard

[Zinar7]

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Aug 20 2013
4 Comments
Activities, Photos

Rhino-Hunting: Part I

Rhino_1

Head over here to find Rhino-Hunting Part One // Rhino-Hunting Part Two // Rhino-Hunting Part Three // Rhino-Hunting Part Four

On Sunday I spent a merry afternoon troddling around downtown Southampton, taking photographs of my humble little city and following the Rhino Trail which marks the Go Rhinos! event which is organised by Marwell Wildlife to support conservation efforts & exhibit and bunch of local art and design. The result of the project is that, for a 10-week period over the Summer, there are 36 life-size (ish) Rhino sculptures dotted around Southampton that have been designed and decorated by local artists. It’s a super idea, and it certainly brightens up a dull trudge to the shops to see your trail populated by hordes of brightly-coloured and painted rhinoceroseseseses.

Because I have a massive ‘Collector’ gene in my body somewhere and I’m now armed with a fancy new camera, I thought I’d go trekking around my wonderful, vibrant city and take photographs of all the rhino, as well as some of the other sights of sunny (well, sometimes) Southampton. [I packed my in-line skates, but because of weather-based inclemency and a lack of nice surfaces down the lower end of town, I didn’t actually end up on them, harrumph.]

Sunday’s jaunt was my first proper hunting expedition on the Go Rhinos! trail, and I covered most of the rhino located near the docks and the centre of town; I endeavour to head out again in a couple of weeks to hit the streets (except on my skates next time) and snipe down the remaining beasts. It was certainly a pleasure to wander round my adopted hometown without a proper agenda, and it was nice to explore some of Southampton’s more nook-ish crannies and interesting areas, rather than merely visiting the usual haunts.

Anyway: without further ado, here’s a catalogue of my first rhino-hunting expedition. Enjoy!

Head over here to find Rhino-Hunting Part Two //

[Zinar7]

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Aug 12 2013
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PhD Fraud

PhD Fraud #11: Post-Thesis Bucket List

PhD_11

A couple of weeks ago, I signed and submitted a form which officially says that: “I, <author>, intend to submit a full PhD thesis for examination within the next two months.”

Yup, I’m officially on the path to submission. I can’t say that I’m not ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED by this sudden turn of events, but I suppose that it was inevitable that at some point I was going to have to hand in something vaguely thesis-shaped. It’s just that four years seems like an awfully long time, and it’s rather a shock to find that it’s almost at an end and I’m only two months away from having to hand in something that could ultimately define my future career. It’s certainly alarming to think that I could (potentially) be a fully-fledged Doctor by the end of the year. Still, being so close to The End has made me start thinking about what I want to do after I slap The Thesis down on the examiner’s desk and hence cease to be a full-time slave to its corruption. I’ve therefore formed a “Post-Thesis Bucket List™” of things I’d like to do (or hobbies I’d like to get back into) once this damned Thesis is completely done and polished. Because posting a bunch of whole life-slash-career ambitions would be intensely dull, these are just a bunch of short-term goals and ambitions that I’d like to fulfil once I’m back to being something resembling a normal human being. I’m talking FUN STUFF and achievable things and whatnot; not just a list of “I WANT TO GO SWIMMING WITH DOLPHINS HURR” stuff that everyone wants to do but probably won’t ever get round to. Incidentally, I may not actually get round to doing some (or any) of these, but it’s good to at least have plans.

So, without further ado, here is the list:

  • Get tattooed (specifically the AFI bat on the cover of the Days of the Phoenix EP)
  • Find time to get out and get on my skates more
  • Get some damn exercise (see above)
  • Start a punk/chiptune band with myself on guitar and myself on Mario Paint
  • Write a novel for NaNoWriMo
  • Sort out my shitloads of CDs and put them in alphabetical/chrono order
  • Acquire GTA V and play the shit out of it
  • Go karting and shit at TeamSport Crawley (International circuit) and pretend it’s Mario Kart
  • Fix the humbuckers on my guitar and re-string the beast
  • Read all the books that I’ve had piling up for ages
  • Legally change name to ‘Doctor Thundersmash’
  • Get back to doing reviews of games and stuff
  • Go and get a job or something

I guess the list is hardly world-changing, but is really just intended to redress a balance that I feel has long been a problem during my PhD; the complete lack of motivation or energy to do anything that’s not just research or sleep. I look forward to being able to take weekends off, or go home of an evening without have an overclocking brain still ticking over with my PhD problems & issues and far too tired to think about or doing anything remotely hobby-ish. Largely, my sole hobby during my PhD research has been video games and cosplay-making, but it’d be nice to once again broaden my interests when I’m rid of the sapping effect academic research tends to have on time, motivation and energy, and the prospect of actually cross the finishing line very soon is genuinely thrilling; though, at the same time, completely terrifying. I can see the chequered flag now, and I just need to #KEEPPUSHING.

KeepPushing

So how close am I to finishing? Well, I’m currently on Draft 1.2 of The Thesis, and it’s done the rounds of my supervisor (who didn’t immediately do a facepalm, which must be considered progress of sorts) and I’m spending time addressing his comments and rounding up some of the sections of work I still need to finish the work for and write up. For a good, long time (up to around a few months ago) it felt like The Thesis wasn’t progressing at all; I’d open it up at the start of the week and close it down on a Friday afternoon with little visible progress. Within the last few months, though, the document has certainly been growing in leaps and bounds: the main text (ignoring the preamble and postamble, references, etc.) is 142 pages and 40, 000 words; 184 pages it total, plus 28 further pages of appendix. As it stands, I’m fairly optimistic that I’ll have something that at least looks like it might be a competent piece of work; even if it turns out that the examiner doesn’t agree with me. Either way, I suppose that there’s no going back now, so if it turns out to be a monumental failure then at least they can’t make me go back to the start and do it all over again, so it’s the final stretch for me.

It’s a little difficult to see how far I’ve come over the last four years, primarily because (as it turns out) four years is a fucking long time. It’s always been difficult to keep the whole thing in focus, purely because of the sheer scale of the endeavour and that it’s such a heavy beast. But now, when I’m in the throes of wrapping everything, trying to tie up loose ends and attempting to patch up those gaping holes, things are starting to come together and it’s the fruits of my labour are beginning to be reflected in The Thesis. It’s by no means a perfect document nor an accurate reflection of all of the trials and tribulations that I’ve hammered through in the previous four years, but it does form the basis for demonstrating that I’m a stronger person with experience of trying to push through tricky research, often in the the face of adversity or technical/theoretical difficulties; at least, I hope it does. I guess I won’t know for sure until at least the end of the year, but either way, the hand-in day itself will be a major milestone, and received with much celebration. ‘Til then though, I’d best crack on. Geronimo.

20percent_more_awesome

[Zinar7]

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Jul 23 2013
1 Comment
Work 'n' Stuff

UK Space Conference 16-17/07/2013 – Personal Debrief

Last week was the second UK Space Conference, so along with a couple of colleagues from the Astronautics Research Group, we headed up to steely Glasgow to put up and run the University of Southampton exhibfaition stand at the Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre (SECC) for the 16th-17th of July. All things considered, everything went pretty well and we put on a good show; nonetheless, here’s a few of my thoughts about the experience and what happened at #UKSC2013.

UKSC-UoS

Having sorted out shipping all of our exhibition materials up to Glasgow via DHL the preceding Friday, Ben, Rhys and I hopped onto a plane from Southampton Airport at Monday lunchtime to arrive in Glasgow in the afternoon. Grateful that our exhibition kit had all arrived at the on time (and in one piece), we set to work on fitting it all into our 2 m x 3 m display area. We set up the big stand, a couple of pull-up banners, the display counter and a table-top touchscreen PC, and hung the neon-coloured Southampton High Altitude Re-Usable Platform (SHARP) cubesat from the roof of our display (and its parachute) to attract the eye of potential visitors. With almost ruthless efficiency we erected everything in (unofficial) record time, ensuring that everything that could be duct-taped down was duct-taped down – either for the safety of passing hobbits/children who are in constant danger of the main stand collapsing and falling on them, or to avoid expensive pieces of equipment going AWOL during a busy conference. At this stage, I’m fairly sure that stock prices of duct-tape go through the roof every time we organise an outreach event, so we should probably look into some sort of sponsorship deal.

UKSC-DAMAGE

The University of Southampton’s space debris evolutionary model, DAMAGE

The conference began in earnest at 0900 on Tuesday, where I was immediately required to abandon the stand in order to deliver a talk in the opening session the conference, which was the ‘Have Your Say’ Soapbox session: a couple of months back, delegates were invited to submit a 140-character abstract for a 5-minute presentation slot, with those selected to give the presentation then required to finalise a 140-word summary and a set of 5 presentation slides that did not exceed 5 minutes but which fit into the main topics of the session covering “current industry and academic projects, new results, proposals for new work and availability of support and funding.” Taking my recent work on the ACCORD project, I submitted (with the help of Ben) an abstract entitled ‘A Web Tool for Spacecraft Manufacturers & Operators to Promote Sustainable Space Operations’, with the aim of introducing our new ACCORD environmental impact rating for spacecraft which measures future, prospective spacecraft designs for their potential impact(s) on the space debris environment in Earth orbit.

UKSC-Soapbox

The talk went fairly well, though I can categorically say that the strict five-minute slot was indeed very restrictive (but in a good way), and that the sight of your presentation slides slowly filling up with a red border as you approached the five-minute limit (and the threat of the microphone being cut off) was certainly an effective way to get speakers to conform to the time restrictions. Sadly, I didn’t win the prize of an iPad that was being toted for the ‘best presentation’ of the session, but I think I pulled things off fairly well – it was certainly the only space debris-related talk across the whole conference and, looking past the blinding stage lights, I could see a few members of the audience photographing my slides for future reference, so hopefully I raised some very valid awareness about our work on ACCORD. I definitely stressed out far more about the talk than I honestly needed to, but I always tend to get butterflies at these sorts of things.

[if you would like to download, or view, my presentation slides from the Soapbox session, you can find them by clicking here]

Returning from the stand after my talk, it was immediately obvious that we’d made the right choice to exhibit at the conference: despite the expense, hassle and energy required to purchase a slot and fill it with attractive marketing gear (and three post-grads), we were the only major UK ‘space’ university (aside from the Open University) to properly exhibit at the conference, and I think that this was good certainly from the point of view of ‘reaching out’ to industry and also trying to talk to students prospectively looking at careers in the space industry. It also helps that the space industry is scattered with graduates from the University; in particular, the current Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, Dr. David Parker, and the Chief Engineer, Dr. Richard Crowther – it was certainly nice to hear so many ex-students talking about their time here with some fondness. That being said, following a thorough survey of all the free pens we could steal from other stands, the generic University of Southampton pens we borrowed from the Faculty were by far the cheapest-looking ones at the conference and to blame, in no small part, for how few got picked up by visitors and how many we had to bring back to Southampton. For next time, I’d definitely be interested in getting some proper (and classy-looking) Astronautics Research Group ones, or at least Aero/Astro department ones.

P1000338

Our stand was positioned fairly well (an end slot near an aisle, and visible all the way down the main aisle) and nestled between the stands for the  National Physical Laboratory and Thales Alenia Space, so we ended up getting some pretty good footfall from people either walking through or passing by, and certainly plenty of questions. In retrospect, it would have been really handy to have one of the actual academics there (and not just three post-grads), but I think we fielded most of the queries pretty well in the most part. In our shipment, we’d send up a heckload of University prospectuses, leaflets and flyers (on everything from the whole Uni down to Faculty information) and a lot of this stuff came back – I guess we just overestimated the demand for paper materials, but it was better to have plenty left over than risk running out of publicity material. The same happened with ACCORD flyers, as we kind of over-estimated how many people would test/check out the new spacecraft rating system (head over here if you’d like to find out more), so we have plenty of ACCORD flyers to take to other events, or distribute by hand to spacecraft designers & manufacturers. In retrospect, it might have been worth going round some of the other stands when the exhibition hall was quiet and asking if they’d like to take a few minutes to test the rating system, but alas, we didn’t. Oh well.

And on that bombshell I shall end this post, but before I do, here are a few more of my photos from the conference. Enjoy:

UKSC-UoS_stand

[Zinar7]

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Jul 13 2013
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PhD Fraud, Work 'n' Stuff

PhD Fraud #10: Welcome to Plight Club

PhD10

It’s come to my attention that, in these intermittent posts about my trials and tribulations of PhD research, I’m usually complaining about the research process or releasing some of the negativity and frustrations of it all.

Well, for a change, I thought that I’d offer a few tips for current and prospective PhDers (what I’m going to tentatively call ‘Plight Club’): if you’re someone just starting on the path to a PhD, or even a grizzled veteran like me who’s going through a rough time, then maybe there’ll be something useful in here for you. Welcome to Plight Club.

1 (a). Talk to your Fellow Plighters.

If you’re having difficulties in your PhD or research, there is absolutely no shame in talking to others about it or admitting that you’re struggling. Often, with a PhD, such a personal relationship is developed with the research and it can be hard to admit that things aren’t going well. Likewise, when it comes to talking to others (other postgrads, family, friends, supervisors), it can often be easy to pretend that things are going swimmingly as you don’t want to seem like you’re ‘behind’ or not as successful as everyone around you (SPOILERS: no-one is ‘WINNINGS’ at their PhD, no matter how much they might say or pretend they are).

Much of the time, everyone is so wrapped up in their own research that it can be difficult to find to talk about personal matters beyond “how’s your research going?” or ” did your conference paper get accepted? “. Get to know the people who  sit and work around you – not only will it make the project less lonely, but they’ll also be able to reassure that no PhD is easy, and that they’re probably having just as many problems, and suffering just as many setbacks, as you are. It’s also good to have time each day to ‘reset’ and come back to your work feeling refreshed after a quick coffee and a piece of cake or something. And hell, even if you don’t feel any better about your work, at least you have cake, and that’s never a bad thing, right?

1 (b). Talk to Other Researchers.

As I already mentioned, a lot of the time spent doing a PhD is done alone, usually facing a computer screen trying to make your code work, mending some broken piece of experimental equipment or trying to work out what the hell your results mean. Since a PhD is usually a very specialised area of research, this means that, invariably, there aren’t that many people around who can help fix your problems or dig you out of a sticky situation. So, don’t be afraid to randomly send emails to other academics/researchers studying elsewhere. They’re not monsters; they won’t bite. They’re real human beings, and if they’re worth their salt as academics of a particular field, then they’ll be happy to help out someone if they’re struggling. Don’t forget that even seasoned academics probably struggled through the PhD process, and so will inevitably relate to your woes when you send a ballsy email  saying “ZOMG THIS STUFF IS TOO HARD, I’M REALLY STUCK CAN YOU HELP ME PLEASE THANK YOU 😥 .” Also, putting your name (and/or face) out there will come in mega-handy when you start jetting off to various conferences/workshops to present your research, as you’ll at least meet familiar faces/names when you’re making your first steps into the the ‘public eye’ of research.

It’s not a foolproof system, as you’ll likely get the odd academic who either ignores all communication (or just gets so much in their inbox that they can’t keep up) or comes across a little gruff, but most academics are SHOCK HORROR actually kind of nice. As long as you’re polite, clear and concise with your requests and/or problems, then even noted experts will be happy to at least point you in the right direction to how you track down a solution. In a world where even the most distant fellow researcher is accessible via email or Skype, then there’s no harm in reaching out. Who knows; maybe you’ll get through your stickiness and find answers to your problems, or at least feel that you’re not alone.

2. Use Mendeley.

One of the constant battles of a PhD is squaring up against the tens/hundreds/thousands (delete as applicable) of academic papers relevant to your field, and being able to efficiently locate citations or reference other academics’ work in your own writing. In the digital age, gone are the prospects of having to maintain a well-catalogued library of paper copies and books, as everything is in PDF form these days; however, efficient management of these files is still tricky, and can lead to lots of headaches when trying to find a particular paper or piece of information.

In this vein, Mendeley is a staggering piece of kit. It keeps all your papers in one place (it has a PDF viewer as well so you don’t need to use Adobe Acrobat) and lets you make notes, highlights, annotations or download referencing data from the web. You can sort by authors, publication; you can add your own tags and keywords, and collect similar papers in folders; plus, you can access papers in your library from the web and from any location. It has a Word/LaTeX plugin as well, letting you ‘Insert Citation’ from your word processor and it’ll include the reference; then when you’ve finished your paper/thesis, just hit ‘Insert Bibliography’ and it’ll compile your reference list for you. Oh, did I mention that it’s free?

Essentially, it does for PDFs what iTunes (etc.) does for mp3s, and while other programs like EndNote offer similar experiences, Mendeley is just better. Download it here, you can thank me later.

3. Write EVERYTHING Down.

A PhD is, naturally, epic. You’ll cover so much material, think about so many things and touch on so many concepts, that you’ll quickly lose track of minute details.

– Done a new experiment? Document it properly so you can go back and check your results, or you can repeat it again if you need to.

– Had an idea in the middle of the night? Write it down in case you’ve forgotten by the morning.

– Have a deadline or somewhere you need to be? Write it down, as you don’t want to miss a supervisor meeting if he/she has a busy schedule and is not in their office for most of the time.

Keep some paper with you at all times; from a notebook you carry around with you everywhere, to a pad of paper and a pen when you inevitably reach a ‘EUREKA!’ moment in the middle of the night[*], to maybe even some shower crayons you can use to write out mathematical equations on the bathroom tiles during your daily bathtime routine. And if you’re slightly more 21st century than writing things down, get a dictaphone or use a sound recorder app on your smartphone; even an desktop/mobile app like Evernote are kind of handy, and have the added benefit that you’ll remember to write down your ideas but then go ahead and lose your notebook in the pub or something.

[* It’s worth bearing in mind that I’ve never had a ‘EUREKA!’ moment, despite my best efforts to instigate one by spending as much time as possible in the bath, bah.]

4. Try some Tomatoes

My major failing is procrastination (future PhD Fraud post coming on that subject very soon), and it’s usually a constant battle to avoid getting distracted from my work by the plethora more interesting things that exist on our watery, blue sphere. I’ve tried many techniques and methods to combat this but with minimal success, but found solace in the wonderfully simple MyTomatoes tool based on the Pomodoro method.

It doesn’t work so well with experimental PhDs, or those that aren’t desk-based or involve other activities that mean you’re not in one place for long stretches, but if you’re involved in a lot of reading, writing or programming during your studies, then a time management technique like Pomodoro can be good for structuring your time such that you focus on the job at hand, but are given lots of small breaks (in which you can quickly check Facebook, news or whatever) as a reward for 25 minutes’ hard work.

There are lots of free resources all over the web for Pomodoro stuff, and you can easily find a tracker/application/browser-based site that suits you. MyTomatoes is good insofar that it tracks both your work-periods and your breaks, and also lets you write down what you did in each tomato period, which can be very helpful for cataloguing  progress and reminding you how much you’ve achieved throughout the day.

As I said, it doesn’t work for everyone, but for those who have a difficult time concentrating on the task at hand it can be a godsend. Give it a whirl.

5. Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down.

If you ever feel that your research is causing you more stress, worry or frustration than is good for your health, then stop. Life is really too short to let work-related matters define your well-being,

Your supervisor should not be your master; they do not own you, so if you’re being pressured into taking on extra work or doing other stuff that you don’t want to, and which distracts from your PhD (which is likely causing you enough stress as it is), then learn how to say no to extra work, student teaching or supervision. Focus on your own work, and making it the best that it can be.

No-one ever said that doing a PhD had to be easy, but it shouldn’t rule your life; no matter what your supervisor might think. If things are genuinely tough or you can’t cope, then there’s no shame in getting out of things for a while or seeking professional help. Finishing the PhD might feel like it’s life-or-death, but in the grand scheme of things, it really isn’t. Just give things your best shot, or at least the best shot under the circumstances. If you don’t (or can’t) make it out of the PhD process with what you wanted, then don’t stress over it; life has far more to offer, and you’ll still be able to find something fantastically fantastic to do with your life, and unless you’re desperate to waste away live your life in academia, then chances are it won’t stop you getting a pretty rad job.

And if you ever feel alone, just think about all the other Plighters across the globe – all struggling to make traction in the research world but who will ultimately get there in the end: I’m certainly one of them. I still haven’t figured out a way to ‘WIN’ at the PhD process, but hopefully I’ve passed on a few of the things I’ve learnt to keep me at least on even keel. Let me know if you have any success trying them out, or have other Words of Wisdom that you’d like to share. Peace out.

[Zinar7]

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Jun 12 2013
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PhD Fraud

PhD Fraud #09: At World’s End

PhDfraud09

Around a month ago, I received news about a journal paper I submitted nine or so months back: following a significant period of open discussion and peer review, it was “with regret” that the paper “would not be accepted for publication”. I’ve presented papers and oral presentations at conferences before, but this was my first submission to an academic journal, and I’m technically still to have something properly published at this point. As a late-stage thesis student (heck, I’m supposed to be submitting by October, eep) with ever-decreasing time to focus on PhD work, that’s a bit of a concern and it’s been rather difficult to figure out how I dig myself out of the misery-hole. Oddly enough though, despite a brief period of nervousness and dejection, I’m keeping fairly buoyant.

Perhaps I’m just coming to the realisation that, regardless of the quality of my thesis or whether I actually get awarded a PhD or not, all of this will be over by November and I’ll be able to move on with my life. I’ve been doing the same research for four years, and it’s probably not a massive surprise that I’m kind of bored with it. For a long time, I’ve not been able to see an end in sight, and I’ve always felt so far away from any sort of situation that I’d be confident (and happy) enough in my work to submit it for scrutiny. But since I now have a firm, fixed deadline of the 1st October that I must submit my thesis by, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I can’t keep going indefinitely, no matter how much more I feel I need to do. There’s no time for al of that ‘extra work’ that I keep thinking I need to do, so all I can realistically do is put together everything I’ve done already and manoeuvre it into some sort of order. At the moment, my efforts are focussed on whipping my thesis into shape and trying to plan what little ‘jobs’ it’s feasible to complete in the remaining few months. There’s no sense getting overly worried about failing, since my fate has largely been decided by this point – if what I have will only give me an MPhil, then so be it; irrespective of the outcome of the viva, I’ll be free to do something else, and I’ll be ready to take on the next challenge.  And with that comes a sense of pseudo-closure.

Strangely for an academic (and even more strangely for an engineer), I kind of enjoy the writing process. I certainly find it more satisfying than wandering around in the fog of genuine research: I’ve always enjoyed being creative, particularly in the form of writing, so I quite look forward to exploring the word-space and trying to communicate things in a readable, interesting way. Over the last couple of years, I’ve tried to resurrect my passion for creativity as a method of jettisoning some of my extraneous frustrations.

Not so long ago, I used to write a bunch of video game reviews (e.g. Prince of Persia: the Fallen King, Super Paper Mario and No More Heroes) as a method of expressing myself creatively. Even longer ago, I used to play guitar regularly (at least, privately in my own room), but I haven’t practiced regularly for like four years, which correlates almost exactly with starting the Dreaded PhD; I don’t doubt that the two are directly related. Through college and undergraduate stuides, I used to find that bashing away at my Fender Double-Fat Stratocaster at the end of a busy day would dissipate many of the worries and stresses of study and research. It was never to achieve musical stardom or monetary return; the passion was just to play. Quite why expressing myself musically seemed to be so effective for me in ‘killing’ off some of life’s stresses, I’ve never really been able to explain: I kinda always just put it down to the fact that I’m not very good at multi-tasking, so if I’m busy trying to keep up with fast chord changes and remember what note I have to play next, then I can’t possibly be stressing over research work or exam preparation. For whatever reason, this fact has largely been forgotten over the course of my PhD study, so it’s perhaps unfortunate that it’s only sunk in now, when I’m desperately close to wrapping up The Thesis for good.

Anyway, this has highlighted the appearance of a Stratocaster-shaped void in my life that I actively intend to patch up. Over the course of a few months, I’ve tried to re-forge my commitment to guitar-based noodling, although it turns out that four years of very little practice (maybe an hour total a month rather than an hour total every day or two) is not good for keeping your hands and reflexes in shape and it’s surprisingly hard to do even some of the basics. That, and the fact that I’ve probably managed to destroy my fingers and wrists with RSI in the intervening period probably doesn’t help. Either way, the upshot is that I (currently) can’t play at near the same capacity that I used to and that’s kind of a bummer, but hopefully only a short-term issue that can be remedied with just some Dedication and Willpower sprinkled over top.

It’s not like I was ever some kind of guitar virtuoso anyway – my flavour was always rhythm guitar; providing the backing sound for an imaginary set of remaining band members whose roles were never filled. No-one has ever showed me how to play guitar (not even in the days of YouTube tutorials), and everything that I’ve figured out how to do was figured out purely by ear, usually by listening to Green Day songs and trying to play along. For me, this is a very minor source of pride and I’d kind of like to think that I still have some sort of natural talent AT SOMETHING buried deep inside me somewhere; even if it isn’t academic research or scientific fame.

Anyway, I’m hoping that picking up my axe  more often will be a positive influence on both Work and Play; even if I do it just for my own ears and not anyone else’s. Heck, if I can’t be a stellar research student with a huge library of publications to his name, then I may as well use that empty library to turn my good mood up to eleven and make one hell of a racket, right? Rock on.

[Zinar7]

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Apr 27 2013
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Motorsport

6 Hours of Silverstone 2013: Part II

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A few weeks ago was the FIA/WEC 6 Hours of Silverstone, and after a week’s break while I’ve been away in Germany, I’m finally getting round to posting the second half of my best photos of the day. Hooray!

[Zinar7]

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Apr 19 2013
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Motorsport

6 Hours of Silverstone 2013: Part I

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Last Sunday was the FIA/WEC 6 Hours of Silverstone; opening race for the World Endurance Championship 2013, and the first major European outing for the Le Mans contenders. My camera and I headed up to Northamptonshire, and we had an awesome time; some of which is captured in the 45 or so (of a total of 1250) pictures that I’ve uploaded here. Anyway, without further ado, here are (the first half of) my photos from Sunday. Enjoy!

[Zinar7]

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Mar 27 2013
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Work 'n' Stuff

Big Bang Solent Science Fair 21/03/2013 – Personal Debrief

Further to my previous update (Science & Engineering Day 2013), last Thursday presented the Astronautics Research Groups’ second event in in National Science and Engineering Week (NSEW) 2013, with the arrival of the Big Bang Solent science fair to the Garden Court at the University of Southampton. This post documents the major goings-on of the day, what we can do to improve for next time, and also to share a few photos from our activities and exhibits. So, without further ado, onwards!

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Our stand and presenting team (Ben [spaceman_ben] and I, plus a few other stragglers) were once again out in full force at a brisk 0845 on Thursday morning  to put our stand and kit together; smugly earlier than most of the other stands exhibiting that day, leaving us plenty of time to soak up the free coffee and biscuits and to gently rib the other delegations who’d scheduled considerably less time to sort out their kit. Our setup was largely the same as for the previous Saturday, albeit with a few modifications to our LEGO Mindstorms demonstration, resulting in the substitution of Aquabot with a new, space-debris themed rover, Debrisbot:

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Saturday’s headaches were largely derived from the fact that Aquabot‘s mission of collecting coloured balls into its jaws provided unexpected sources of unpredictability: for example, our demonstrations of placing balls in Aquabot‘s path meant that visiting children were inclined to try picking up the balls and rolling them (sometimes with great force) into the rover’s maw. This was fine, except when it happened just as Aquabot approached the edge of the ‘green’ area, such that a ball would get stuck under the NXT colour sensor when the rover reached the  green card and hence would not detect that it was imminently going to crash into the makeshift (albeit perhaps with one less ‘f’) cardboard wall we constructed to make sure balls did not roll everywhere. In addition, we hadn’t accounted for the fact that children would ‘lean’ on the cardboard wall and bend it completely out of shape, meaning that its ability to contain both Aquabot and the coloured balls to the table area was severely impaired.

Given these points, it’s not only a miracle that we did not have balls rolling loose all over Building 85 but that we actually managed to get to the end of the day without any of our balls inadvertently going home in children’s pockets (or worse, mouths) for a permanent holiday away from the University. So, to remedy these, we decided to get rid of both the balls and the cardboard wall – by eliminating the other functionalities of the NXT colour sensor aside from the ‘am I near the edge of the table?’ detection using the green card, we could reinstate our previously-abandoned ‘is there object in the way?’ detection function using the NXT ultrasonic sensor to make the rover recognise any solid objects that we placed in its path (which we couldn’t use before because it kept detecting the balls themselves and tried to avoid them rather than trying to collect them). So with that, Aquabot was gracefully retired and replaced with Debrisbot; a rover programmed to sense nearby objects (which we assumed were nearby space debris fragments) and perform “collision-avoidance” manoeuvres to avoid impact. And in most senses, Debrisbot worked pretty well.

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Not brilliantly well, though. There were still quite a lot of issues arising due to the NXT ultrasonic sensor’s narrow field-of-view meaning that there would be an object to the left- or right-side of the sensor that wouldn’t be detected; or other cases where there was too little energy being reflected back to the sensor (where it was sometimes absorbed by the object, or reflected in a different direction), and the the rover didn’t detect object properly and would drive into it anyway. The idea was for Debrisbot to be roving around, avoiding bits of junk as necessary, but sometimes it would just clatter into it anyway, or turn around and get objects stuck under the tracks; doing ungainly pirouettes and wheelies before falling over like a boss.

So, an executive decision was made to transform Debrisbot from a debris-avoiding rover into a debris-sweeping rover; charging around the ‘black’ area, pushing the ‘junk’ objects into the ‘green’ zone like a giant space snowplough. And with that, a significantly greater level of success was observed, as within minutes, all of the bits of ‘junk’ (made from Tic Tac boxes stuck together and wrapped in black duct tape) would be pushed to the edge, leaving the black region of ‘space’ safe for satellite operations. Debrisbot was essentially just driving around in straight lines until it encountered the edge of the ‘green’ (and hence wasn’t aiming for objects at all, just ploughing them if they happened to be in the way) so it would be even better if Debrisbot was able to ‘look around’ for bits of junk and then explicitly move towards them, but that’s a larger task for another time. For the moment, though, Debrisbot demonstrated pretty much what we wanted it to in a nicely simple way and leaves plenty of room for improvement. Not bad, little buddy.

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The event itself was pretty enjoyable – essentially an event to get schoolchildren interested in doing science and engineering, and involved around 600 children from the nearby area visiting for the day to do some fun, science-based activities, talk to people in college/academia/industry [delete as applicable] who ‘do’ science and stuff for a living and to get an idea about future careers and stuff.

Our main drive for exhibiting was to demonstrate our research activities and show the youngsters that activities in ‘space’ are happening here in the UK, and to prod them towards taking up such work in their future education, if they want to. It was also interesting to find out how many young people are aware of the  space debris problem, and to ask them for ideas about how we could go about resolving it: while Debrisbot was hardly the most efficient (or successful) method of demonstrating how a space debris sweeper system might work, it did the job and (I hope) gave the visiting public a new perspective of the space debris problem and the ‘sort of thing’ that could be done to manage it.

Anyway, an enjoyable day: the Space Junker stuff went down pretty well as usual, with some visiting students managing some staggeringly high scores, and we certainly gave out of a lot of our ‘Space Systems Engineering’ worksheets which contain information on our research, details of how to access Space Junker online, and also a few puzzles and stuff. So, to round off the event and, indeed, this post, here are a few of my other photographs from the day: we’re not sure when we’ll be taking Aquabot/Debrisbot out on the road again, but I’m sure he won’t be in the garage for too long. Hooray!

[Zinar7]

EDIT – Our activities were recently published as a blog post from LEGO Education UK! You can find it here: http://legoeducationuk.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/space-research-with-a-little-help-from-lego-mindstorms/

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