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I’ve been talking to a lot of people and there is hardly anyone that seems to take the re-write seriously. Most people see the writing phase as the end of the work. There’s a secret I’ve been hiding for some time now. Re-writing gave me a twenty percent boost in grades. That’s the difference between merit and distinction. That’s the difference between a 2:1 and a distinction for the dissertation. Now take into consideration that the dissertation is worth 45 credits out of 120 for the year. That’s a large enough portion that if you create a good piece of work your grade will increase and your degree may be worth more. I’ve been talking to people, taking an interest in their work practices and this is what I’ve found. Most people are around the 5-6 thousand word mark whilst four or five are completed. One person is up 23,000 and must cut down on what’s written. Most of these people aim to write from 1-3 thousand words a day and rarely go to see their supervisor. As a result, they’re relying on luck more than other factors. Luck’s great but when you’re at home and your parents ask, “so how did you do?” the answer won’t be “stop asking me”. Instead, it’ll be. You’ve seen my work, you’ve seen the time and effort I’ve put into it, now let’s just wait and see whether it’s paid off or not. Of course, pleasing your parents is always rewarding but there’s another motivation. The better the dissertation the more useful it may turn out for when you’re looking for work. Twice I’ve found work thanks to my website… don’t do much for that. Last year I listened to a journalist and he told the students taking one course to focus their dissertation on a topic that would help them gain employment by demonstrating their in-depth knowledge of a topic, for example on conflict within one region. It’s 0130am and I pushed myself today. I didn’t feel like writing, I forced myself. I wasted quite a bit of time but whilst I review my results section I can write the key points and write my conclusion according to that section. Remember, people don’t want to keep flitting back and forth to understand what you mean. goodnight.

There is a copy and paste culture on the web and I don’t like it. When you go to Digg, to Youtube, to myspace and other websites what you find are short comments. They’re contributing nothing to the debate, in fact they make the online experience online less enjoyable. There has been quite a vocal outcry from certain people about the HD DVD codec and how forcing articles to be pulled down and deleting user accounts was going against their user rights. In fact, there is nothing of the sort. It was nice to see that these users would be held accountable for the content they link to and provide. Adding fuel to the fire Kevin Rose said something in his blog to the effect that since so many people feel so strongly about this issue he would not pull down any more links. I don’t agree with this. There’s a level of mob rule which I think is counterproductive. There’s all this talk about user-generated content and networking. Ok. Where’s the original and innovative content. Simply digging a story and putting a few remarks is not enough. Do some journalism, do some research, learn the topic inside out and then post an informed opinion. I’m not going to be part of sites where accountability is irrelevant. It’s irresponsible for them to publish such information. It’s also given a massive PR boost to Digg.

Being at the stage I’m at, and having discussed the work with the tutor there are three things I must make sure to do before handing in the work. The first task is uniformity. I need to go through two or three sections and make sure that I tie them into the overall structure of the dissertation work. It’s meant to flow from one section to another. That’s something I’ve got to work on. The second thing I’ve got to work on one or two paragraphs, make sure that the information that I wrote down is comprehensive and there’s no so what question left in the air. The final task is to make sure that I have a clear dissertation title and write the dissertation conclusion according to this. Once that’s done I’m pretty much done with this most major of assignments and it’s been a great learning curve. I think it’s been the best learning experience overall that I’ve had in University.

I’m almost done with uni but it’s so hard. I’ve been working on and off on three projects now for at least three weeks and I’ve spent so much time on these projects that today I finally met my saturation point so I left the computer behind and dropped down to the bar for a drink or two and for company. There were only a few people watching a football match and no media students from my year. They don’t have the luxury I have, of being able to leave everything for an hour or two before coming back to it and I do. I took one of the booths and sat there thinking of nothing and doing nothing. It was nice to do nothing but rest, the only sound was football and then some music. When I went outside a very amusing conversation was to be listened to and I laughed, feeling the pressure decline at last and being more sedate once more. It’s so great to think that in a week I’m done, that I have complete freedom. I can’t wait and I could get it within three or four days if I work really hard. I’m no longer worried about the calendar, no longer worried about the deadline, no longer unable to say dissertation without feeling a sudden excess of stress. Instead, I’m calm, relaxed and it’s really nice. I just can’t get to writing anymore. I’m going to have to re-write my conclusion taking the main points from my analysis and making sure that it’s clear and concise, a paragraph per point, and a summary for the conclusion. That’s the results and conclusion that I’m talking about. Long live the end, the end of my academic workload, and the beginning of adulthood once more. Three years in the making.

Zattoo is a little bit of code that allows you to watch streaming television from the comfort of your laptop rather than using a television or other device.  It’s better than Joost because they don’t discriminate against PowerPC users. It means I can watch BBC 1, 2 3 4, ITV, C4 CBBC, BBC news 24 (that’s the crappy England only version). I’m happy to see this change. I had tested it months ago in Switzerland and found the product interesting. You can read more here.

There are about nine days left before the deadline and I’m up to revision five of my dissertation and I’m feeling fairly happy about it. i’ve spent two days working off the printed copy before transferring these changes back to the electronic version. I’ve got almost everything I wanted to do done for today. The next step is to get all the graphics, tables and the bibliography in order. In this detail alone I may expect to spend two or three hours if things go well. I’m happy to have got this far as I can still change anything that i feel really needs changing.  Tomorrow I may attempt a smooth read, making sure that everything is  as it should be.

Last night I was feeling good about how my dissertation was going so I got my shoes on and walked to the cinema, feeling good about what I had achieved in the day. I went from my dissertation being a collection of words on the computer to it being printed out for visual inspection. What I found as I looked through the thousands of words I have written is that I am quite happy with the way it’s going and thought that I’m going to meet the target date for the handing in earl, if everything goes well from here on. When I went to see Shooter I really enjoyed the film. I often find that I prefer war films to other genres because although the story format is always the same the way the story is more engaging than many of the other styles of films. It’s great fun to watch explosions, to watch works of great precision. I also approve of the choice of women selected for the film. It’s a nice distraction from what I’ve spent most of my time looking at recently. i.e. words on a screen. I’d recommend people to see it.

Spending almost all of the time when you’re awake to complete your dissertation is hard, especially when you slept no more than six hours after a good night out. I’ve spent almost all the time I’ve been awake working on my dissertation and it’s progressing well but there is still work to be done and although sometimes I feel good at other moments I feel like it’s never going to be completed. That’s a good sign. By this I mean that I’m going through all this pain and stress, wanting for it to be finished but as it’s written it’s a matter or re-organizing and elaborating on certain points rather than typing the whole document. I’ve got the time and resources to add graphics, tables, write the bibliography, and more by the deadline. I’ve still got more than a week but I’m pushing myself to get as much done now rather than later. When discussing the dissertation with a number of people they seemed to find the topic interesting therefore I hope that when it is finished and people get an opportunity to read if they enjoy the process. Long live the handing in of the dissertation when I shall burst into laughter from the relief I will feel.

person “you walk fast” me “I like to walk” person “I thought you were rushing somewhere” me “nope, just stride as I walk” On average every step I take is two and a half times longer than most people therefore I cover distances in half the time it takes others to do the same. That’s because I love walking. I used to walk an hour a day after high school and the distances expanded over time. One day I wanted to create a gps track to see what it looked like so I walked nine kilometers within the space of an hour. I wasen’t even tired at the end. Last night I went to a house warming party and the night finished around 2 or three in the morning and walked with a friend to the bus stop. I waited, and waited until I got bored. A bus came but when I asked whether he was going my way he told me “look at the front of the bus”. His arrogance made my mind up. I’d walk from Aldgate east, via Bank and temple to Traf. Square before catching the night bus I wanted to catch and going home. It’s a long walk. At moments I ran, then I walked. I was listening to music so that was fine. At one point an accounting student asked me the way to where he was going so I chatted with him for a while. He was walking too slowly and it’s too late at night to hang around chatting so I told him which landmarks to use for navigation and started walking at my cruising speed again. I covered big distances. I saw St Paul’s, I saw the Tate Modern tower and I saw the London Eye, quite far, I thought. Didn’t deter me. I walked past the club boat and people were standing on the pavement whilst others were making the way home. Caught up with them within thirty seconds. They turned right away from the bank but I continued. The London eye was getting bigger. I passed the Savoy where I saw a few police cars and some people chatting. I don’t know what it was about. I  passed the royal horse guard hotel, good memories of two nights spent there before a flight to New York. I turned and started to head from the river towards Trafalgar Square and spotted the N18 in the distance. Great. I ran, with big strides that conserve energy by covering a lot of ground. I got to the bus and saw whether he could let me in before the bus stop. No luck. I started to run. I ran across the roads of Traf Square, watching out for traffic of course, and got the the bus stop. I was slightly out of breath but I had run fast enough so that I was waiting for the bus. Conventionally other people  have to run to keep the bus from running. I got on. Sat down at the front and looked at London as it slid beside me, one bus floor below mine. Cars were around, drunks were waiting for their respective buses and heading home as well. Time to daydream. I arrived at Sudbury as the sun was rising. 7 minutes till the next bus, ah well, that’s not so bad. Finally I got home, decided to have some crisps before going to sleep for a few hours. That was a nice walk. I really needed it. Hardly any traffic, no slow movers in front and no people to avoid. Just the way I like my walks to be.

At the moment I’m re-reading the dissertation and going through every paragraph individually to make sure that the content is good. It’s currently floating at about 9900 words and I’m feeling fairly confident with the content. there is still work to be done but within the next three or four days I hope to be done with this piece of work. Once more I went walking around the library and I met almost only girls from my course quite amusingly. They’re at various levels of stress as you’d guess. Some are quite confident, feeling that they’re well on their way whilst others prefer not to talk about the subject. through the status messages that one guy put on Facebook I thought that he had progressed really well but a message today led me to the opposite conclusion. It would be inferred from what he has written that he has not done as much work as I had thought initially. In other news, I tried working on the work experience module but I found that I simply ended up angry so I gave it up as a bad job. It’s curious how that happened. I’ll work on it in a day or two when I’m feeling more open to it.