Andrew Wilkinson

Today, three months after my submission, I had my PhD Viva exam. A four and a bit hour gruelling interview later and I'm told I will pass, subject to major revisions. I've got to admit it's not the result I was hoping for, but at least I've been told I will pass once I've made the corrections they want.

It's not quite as bad as the name "Major Revisions" makes it sound. It's mostly clarifying what is already there and moving things around a bit. There shouldn't be any extra work that needs to be done it's just that minor revisions imposes a one month deadline on submitting the completed, corrected copy. Given I have a full time job and will regularly be distracted by the bright lights of London I think it's reasonable to say one month is too short a time to make the amount of corrections they want.

It's hard to know what to feel at the moment, but I'm mostly just glad it's over and know that maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week but one day I will get my PhD.

Today, after one thousand three hundred and thirty seven days, two hours and fifty seven minutes I submitted my PhD thesis. Now all I have is the agonising wait to be examined on it.

After three days of battling my PhD software finally works under Windows. Got I hate Windows so much. I've got some many better things to do, but my supervisor said it really should work on Windows so I hope he's happy when I go to York next week having not done everything that I should have

I've just handed in my final piece of written work before I submit my thesis. Scary!

In July I have to give a presentation of the thesis results, but that doesn't involve any writing.

Right, I've had enough of working. I'm going to go home and not think about types, coordination or Linda for two whole weeks. I can't wait!

In order to help motivate my thesis writing up I have created a tool that will generated a graph of my thesis' word count every night. It also draws my expected finish time based on my average word count per day (assuming a 100,000 word final thesis) and my ideal average word count to finish exactly on time next year.

You can find the graph here and it will be updated at 11:30pm each night. I can't imagine anyone will actually want to track my writing up that closely of course, but then I want to :-)

Based on my writing up rate over the past two days I'll finish in mid-January - of course that assumes no weekends, no Christmas holidays and that I actually have enough completed work to write a full thesis...

If you happen to be wandering around the library and find yourself near the Lecture Notes In Computer Science section look up volume 3454. At the bottom of page VIII is my name, woo, go me! A while ago I refereed a couple of papers for a conference so now I have an acknowledgement in the proceedings :-)

The book is available online here, but probably only from within the university.

Who wants to touch me?
...
I SAID WHO WANTS TO TOUCH ME?

I've just been introduced to one of the new PhD students who is starting today - this unfortunately means I'm now in the third and final year of my PhD. I'd best start thinking about writing my thesis...

Woohoo, my paper has been accepted into the PDCS 2005 conference which is being held in Phoenix, Arizona, USA on the 14th-16th November.

Now to find out where the money to go is coming from...

Today I have achieved a major milestone in my PhD! I have a program written in C++ transparently communicating (using complex datatypes - in this case a list of strings) with a Python program through a tuplespace. This is the fundamental point of my PhD, I can't wait to demonstrate the system to my supervisor tomorrow!

The example program I have is a sorting server where a process drops a list into the tuplespace while another process takes the list, sorts it and places back into the tuplespace. I have the client and server written in C++ (using std::vector) and Python (using the built in list construct) and it doesn't matter what combination of languages you use it 'just works'.

Obviously I have a load of work still to do, and it'll definitely keep me busy until October next year, but I'm still on course to finish in the three years :-)

Time to leave work early methinks!

Tags: phd

Current Mood: jubilant

Current Music: Muse - Sing For Absolution

The Python and C++ libraries that I have been writing as part of my PhD work have now reached a stage such that you can send typed values Python -> Python, Python -> C++, C++ -> Python and C++ -> C++. My current test case have a Python dictionary being converted to a std::map. Now I could give a list of caveats as long as much arm, much it sounds much more impressive if I don't :-)

My paper for a conference in Austin, Texas has been completed and submitted. I've changed all my addresses over to my new house, all that is needed now is for me to finish packing and then move tomorrow.

I hope the weather improves, I'm going to a BBQ later...

My thesis proposal, which is basically my second year report, is finished and handed in a day before the deadline.

Woo, go me!

Now I just have to wait until the oral exam when I will be grilled by Alan and Colin...

Currently I have two supervisors - I have a temporary supervisor and my real supervisor who is in America. I'm writing a paper for a conference and obviously both have been giving me suggestions. The email I've just got from my real supervisor gives quite a few recommendations, but the most interesting ones are where he calls an equation suggested by my fake supervisor "bollocks" and where he suggests removing the section which my fake supervisor wants me to expand and make the basis for the entire paper.

Grrr! Andrew can't stretch both ways!

Hurrah! This morning I handed in the final copy of my qualifying dissertation to be stored in the departmental library!

53 pages, 67 references, 20,305 words.

The next assessment is the Thesis Proposal, due 31st March. I'd better get cracking...

I've written a one page summary of my PhD work for my temporary supervisor. If you're feeling bored it can be found here.

And here's a little bit of help for those only starting their PhD...

My supervisor now has a note on his door that reads "Back 10^th January".

Can someone please remind me why I decided to do a PhD? I should have got a job and saved myself all the hassle.

Well I've just escaped from a two and quarter hour long grilling by my supervisor and examiner. They basically ripped my proposal to shreds. Fortunately they made some suggestions so I don't think they're going to kick me out, I just need to make some fairly major alterations before they'll accept it.

The biggest problem was that my supevisor didn't have time before the deadline to read it and give me feedback, so this was essentially a draft copy...

Ho hum, at least I'm heading off on holiday tomorrow so I can forget about it for a while.