Although I did indulge in a small sms frenzy at the time, I completely forgot to blog the fact that the examiners’ reports on my MPhil dissertation came in last week. They were very kind, and the thesis was officially passed with no corrections. I’ll put the .pdf online in the next week or so.

Well, I submitted my Masters thesis yesterday. I completed two years to the day after I commenced – how Virgoan of me. Now we wait for the examiners’ reports to come in, but we try not to think about that. And might I say, cheap champagne never tasted so good! Sadly, this is the end […]

I have a new post at photosynthetic molecules. Check out the alchemists’ drawings Tim posted too.

I have just (finally) finished a full draft of my thesis. And I thought to myself, “why just run around the halls of the department waving it around?” Blogging about it seems a sensible thing to do. (besides it’s too heavy to wave at unsuspecting people). I am so relieved, and quite shocked that i […]

I thought it would never happen to me, seeing as my blog tends to circulate around a fairly stable set of topics. But people are coming here via some really strange Google strings. For example, it seems I am in some way a mecca for the section of Australia’s criminal element looking for lock pick […]

Since I am deep in the thesis completion space at the moment, I keep being surprised by the perfectly cogent fragments of writing I find buried in discarded notebooks or ‘older’ drafts. They come in handy. I’m less pleasantly surprised when ideas that seemed like epiphanies at the time (on the ferry, at 3 in […]

Slight case of sunburn after picketing and marching with my colleagues in support of the national action led by the NTEU (National Tertiary Education Union) today. The strikes are part of an ongoing campaign against the federal government’s “reforms” of Australian higher education, which include university funding being tied to compliance with State governance and […]

I’m off to Sydney for a few days – back on Monday.

As I sat down on the CityCat (a rather suave catamaran ferry thingy that travels up and down the Brisbane river) to travel home from university this afternoon (feeling extremely hot and crumpled), I noticed the girl in the next seat was reading The Secret History – a book that has never left my Top […]