Making progress ...

Despite the attractions of lots of warm, sunny weather in London this past week I have been able to knuckle down and make some real progress with my thesis. I sent some more stuff to my supervisor for review and comments today and now the biggest task ahead of me is to do all the corrections he gave me a few weeks ago. Hopefully I will be able to give him the remaining chapters by the end of the week!

Haven't had much chance to take any more photographs - or upload existing ones to Flickr. Will be heading of to another conference at the weekend. This promises to be a really great location - Stockholm - and since I have never been to a Scandinavian country I am really looking forward to it. Also, I have the added luxury of not having to give a presentation (although I do have a paper accepted at the conference). Convinced one of the co-authors to present instead :-)

Nothing particularly exciting to report at the moment. Back to more writing and writing ...

Exhaustion is no fun ...

As the deadline for getting a completed version of my thesis to my supervisor draws even closer, I am finding myself working harder than ever. It is not that I am a stranger to long hours - when I worked for Sapient, 12 hour days were pretty much the norm - but I can't say I enjoy this. Particularly when I find that writing about stuff that has already been done and written about (in papers) is the most boring thing imaginable. Trying to come up with new ways to say the same old things is harder than it sounds. I am now at the stage where I am no longer concerned about producing an elegant turn of phrase, or wording the explanation of a technical concept 'just right'. Instead I am just going to churn out the necessary material for each chapter and edit and play around with it once I have let my supervisor read through it. This is probably the approach I should have taken from the outset - but what can I say, you live and learn I guess :-)

Oh well, only a few more weeks of this slog - hopefully after that I can relax a little and this feeling of constant exhaustion will pass.

Thinking inside the box ...

Thinking inside the box ...
Originally uploaded by akbandara.

Finally got some time to walk around Nice and take some pictures - check out the album linked into the previous post for the complete set. There are a number of interesting sculptures and architectural features that caught my attention so I thought I would share. My particular favourite was this one - a head in a box!

Nice is nice! :-)

Old Quarter
Originally uploaded by akbandara.

This is a picture of the Old Quarter of Nice as seen from the roof terrace of the Grand Hotel Aston. The welcome reception of the conference I am attending was held there last night.

In warmer climes ...

Spending a few days in Nice at the moment, attending a conference for work. I have a presentation to give tomorrow afternoon and tryong to write up some more of my thesis in between the various sessions. What can I say about Nice?? ... well, it is very nice! :-) Weather is warm but not oppressive; the surroundings are really pretty and I am trying take as many pictures as possible. Will get around to posting some here soon.

Well, I should focus on the presentation that's is going on right now - so will sign off for now. Hopefully will make some progress with my thesis over the next couple of days and be able to post some more stuff soon.

New toys ...

Well, I bit the bullet and bought myself a digital camera (Sony S40) today. Main reason for urgency is the upcoming trip to Nice (followed by trips to Stockholm and Portugal later in the summer) and the desire to start maintaining a photo blog. Inspiration for doing this is from Soumya (see www.soumya.org) who has created a beautiful photoblog site - I highly reccommend it.

Look forward to more pictures and travel blogging here :-)

Writing, Travelling ...

These days I am completely bogged down in writing up my thesis - having a really hard time motivating myself to get going with this. Have to go to a conference next week, which hopefully will give me some time away from the office to get going with my writing.

Hoping to turn these pages into more of a photoblog - although I do have to get into the habit of taking more pictures if I want to do that :-) ... Perhaps I should invest in a digital camera of my own so that I can do this properly.

Well, time to go off to work now. More writing to get done - pity it won't happen on its own!