Hannah J

as a surprise to most (including me) i finished writing my thesis by my deadline (July 2nd) and handed it in to the faculty office! it's a massive relief to no longer be writing all day every day and living almost entirely off vitamins and caffeine.. now, its just a whole lot of waiting around for the examiners to do their thing and send the theses back to me for revisions. I'm really hoping for only minor revisions, but i guess i'll wait and see!

I knew that it wouldn't be long before boredom kicked in and i wanted something to do with the new found spare time. thankfully, there has been plenty to organise for moving to New York (only 3 weeks away now). I've also got other bits and pieces to do for uni (got 4 papers to write) which i've been avoiding so far. But i'm now running out of time for getting those things done so now that i've had 2 weeks away from writing, i think its time to get back to it again.

I'm getting excited about the move to America, mostly i'm looking forward to the holiday in New York City! I havent thought much about moving up to Ithaca and starting another apple project..

its been over a week since the computer disaster and things are picking up. I've not yet managed to recover any data off the dead hard drive, but I've got it here on my desk and as soon as my SATA PCI card turns up in the post I'm going to have a good try. But, it seems that my dutiful backing up has paid off and I've not lost much - let that be a lesson to anybody writing a thesis - always backup, it makes life so much simpler!

Writing has been going pretty smoothly as well. Now got 2 chapters in second or third draft, just have to get started on the other 2 chapters and I'll feel a bit better about it all (plus the general introduction and discussion). Only got 25 days to go now until submission. I'm not sure if i'm going to make it, but I'm sure going to try my best. I think that the writing will get done, its all that fiddly stuff with figures and references and stats that i keep pushing aside that i think is going to come back and get me...

Picked up my ticket to New York today, leaving on the 15th of August. I dont think I'm going to have much opportunity to think about it though until the thesis is done with. The excitement about going traveling again certainly hasn't kicked in as yet, though I know it will eventually. I've given myself about 5 days in NYC before I head upstate and start working. I don't think I'll plan to do anything much with that time, just want to let the fact that I've moved to NY set in.

Thesis writing has been coming along slowly but surely. Definitely moving slower than I would like, but at least things have been happening. The rewards system doesn't seem to be providing the motivation that I was hoping that it would, although that is likely due to the fact that I haven't really been sticking to it as I should be. I've been very tough on counting minutes and when I've reached goal times I haven't gone through with the reward - mostly because I'm trying not to spend money frivolously.

But, things were going along relatively well and stress free. Until Friday. I had the computer (MacBook) on, but I wasn't using it at the time. I heard the trusty fan speed up which usually means that something requiring my attention is going on, so i walked over to take a look. It appeared to be frozen with the spinning ball of death rotating furiously. I tried to force quit any applications but it wasn't responding at all, so I held down the power switch until it powered down. I started it back up again, but instead of the log in screen I got a blinking folder with a ? on it. it wouldn't go away after several attempts of re-starting. It was already pretty late so I decided to call it a night and hope that it would be ok after a rest and would be back to normal on Saturday Morning.

Sad-mac

Needless to say, I didn't sleep to well knowing that my thesis could be lost... Saturday morning came around with no difference to the computer - still wouldn't start. I rang the local apple repair centre who would not be open until Monday morning so I figured that I would have to fix it myself. Google to the rescue - I googled the confused flashing folder on the other computer and found that it meant that the OS could not be found and the general advice seemed to be to stick in the install CD and run the disk utility. So, I did this only to find that the disk utility wouldn't even recognise that I had a hard disk at all.

Not one to give up that easily, I tried all the other suggested fixes - resetting things, running utilities, I removed and replaced the hard disk in case it wasn't seated correctly. But nothing would work. I was pretty confident that I had narrowed the cause of the problem to be the hard drive. I figured that the best thing to do would be to go and buy a new drive and see if that fixed the problem. Simple.

I went round the corner to the local technology store in Alexandria, I took the drive with me hoping that they would test it for me. They wouldn't test it and then went on to patronize me for being a girl. the guy asked me who took the drive out of the computer for me! I said that I took it out myself and he didn't even attempt to hide his surprise. He then went on to question me about what the problem was and clearly didn't believe a single word that I said. On top of all that, they didn't stock 2.5" SATA drives and so began my search around Sydney to find one.

First I headed down to the apple shop in Broadway - they don't stock the drives either but they did say that my computer is covered by warranty and to bring it back on Monday to get it fixed - but the turn around time was estimated at 1-2 weeks which is time that I just don't have right now. They pointed me in the direction of a store where they were confident that I could pick up the right kind of drive. So, I went over to Ultimo to the suggested shop, but being a saturday they were closed. I found a place in Glebe who had 1 80GB drive in stock, but i figured that seeing as I was going to have to replace it, I may as well spend the extra $20 and get a 100 or 120GB drive. So I told the guy that I might be back. Then I went to a shop in Redfern but they didn't stock the drive either. By this stage I was getting a little bit frustrated! Next I went over to Crow's Nest and again found that this is a difficult drive to get. Next stop was North Sydney who again only had an 80GB drive. I'd had enough of driving around town and so I bought it.

Back home again I went about doing the replacement only to discover that I needed a size 8 torx screwdriver which is not something that I had... Back in the car and over to the hardware store... took a long time for me and the sales assistant to find it (at least this guy didn't treat me like an idiot for being a girl), but we found one eventually. The actual replacement of the drive was extremely simple and with the new drive in the computer started up and went to the OS X install screen. Before much time had passed I had the computer up and running again. 

Now came the issue of getting my backup files back onto the MacBook. Thankfully I've been relatively fastidious about doing backups, although not as good as I should be... my last full back up was about 8 weeks ago onto my external drive, but the important thesis files backup to my .mac account every hour. So all in all, not too much of value was lost. I've lost about a month worth of emails and a lot of PDF files of literature that I've downloaded over the last few weeks, I've also lost some music and photos. But so far, I don't think that I've lost much in terms of important files.

While I haven't lost much in terms of data, I have lost two days of writing time which is a little annoying, especially seeing as the clock is counting down now with only 34 days left until submission. But, on the bright side - my computer runs nice and quickly now!

I have no idea what caused the drive to fail but I've got the broken drive and I'm going to try and recover any data off of it that I can, but I'm not going to be too hopeful about it. I'm just glad that I've been backing up as often as I have, although definitely going to go back to the weekly backups now!!!

Last Tuesday I went into the triplej recording studio and had my second "live at the wireless" experience! This time it was a much more intimate affair with an audience of about 18 or 20 people which was pretty great as I was standing only a few feet away from Josh. As expected, his music sounded great live so I was stoked that i got to be a part of it. I'm looking foward now to the day that triplej starts to play the tracks that they recorded so that i can say "can you hear me? thats me clapping in the background!." My favourite song would have to have been "Monkey with a drum" due solely to the fact that it featured a banjo and glockenspiel. Clearly, I'm now inspired to tune my own banjo and learn to play this great tune!

Josh pyke

In terms of all things thesis, there are now only 9 weeks to the ever looming submission date which i optimistically set to be June 30th. but, things are coming along and slowly but surely the thesis is getting written. I'm soon going to be approaching the third goal for which the reward was going to be going to see Josh Pyke at the Metro Theatre, but seeing as I already got to see Josh courtesy of triplej, I might change this to buying the new album...

the new motivational system has been going fairly well, although it really is surprising how little actual time is spent on the task at hand. I can spend the whole day at work, but i pause the timer when i'm not writing - so when i'm on the phone, or talking to other people in the lab, or having coffee... as a consequence, more work is getting done than previously, but still not quite as much as i had anticipated. but, its a gradual process and i'm sure i'll get more productive as time goes on. 

I reached my first goal and bought mario kart 64 on the vc which is a pretty fun game, although a little too easy to finish... I've reached the second goal as well, but i've not yet fulfilled the intended reward as yet.

but, in other exciting news i get 2 tickets to an exclusive triplej recording of josh pyke! Triple J were giving away tickets over the weekend, i first called in on saturday afternoon with no luck, but then heard the call again later that night so i rang in again and got to speak to Dave Callan who gave me tickets! (well, he put my name on the list anyhow).

the conversation went a little like this:
dave (speaking extremely quickly): "hi are you in sydney and do you want to go to Josh Pyke?"
me: "yes!!!"
dave: "ok, whats your name?"
me: "hannah"
dave: "that's a palindrome!"

then he said the date and time and venue but it all happened so quickly, that i'm not sure if he said monday or tuesday. so in all likelihood, i could be at triplej studios tonight! but, i think i'll have to call them today and find out whats going on, although dave did say that they would call of text me with confirmation of the details - but you just dont want to leave these things to chance!

It was time to do something to shift this procrastination writer's block. And so, I've gone back to a method that has worked for me in the past - positive reinforcement. I've compiled a list of things that I want and ranked them in order of value from lowest to highest (at the lowest position is a wii vc game with the total value of about $10 and in the top spot is the apple tv at $449).

Then I went and got an account at tick to keep track of the hours that I spend on my thesis and I even got the dashboard widget working to make time recording simpler. I worked out how many weeks I have left before my planned submission date of June 30th (that's only 13 weeks away now!) and then how many hours I think it will take to write (I've gone with 490 hours as a starting point, but there is some flexibility here). So now, all i have to do is complete the hours of work to get me the first reward and work my way up the list.

I'm actually really motivated and excited about starting now - it's amazing how quickly my brain responds to rewards!

well I've been super sick for the last 10 days or so, but I can feel the motivation creeping back in as the antibiotics do their job... My supervisor gets back from a week in Vietnam next week so there is a definite push to get something written before she gets back!

I went to see Ross Noble at the Enmore last Saturday night, but due to the current illness, I ended up leaving during intermission. What I did see though was as funny as ever! Unfortunately, it was his last date in Sydney, but as he still has another few months around Australia, I can feel a road trip coming on!

Speaking of road trips, TripleJ's 1 night stand is going to be in Cowra on April 20 which seems like as good an excuse as any for a trip out to the country to catch some great Aussie music. 

So, I have roughly 4 months to go before I have to submit my thesis... Ordinarily, this wouldn't seem like a terribly difficult task but I seem to have been struck down with writers block. I have great results, a huge stack of references, a great progression of work which gives a great story... but, for some reason I'm struggling to sit in front of a computer day after day and type.

I think about my thesis all the time, I'm constantly re-arranging topics and chapters in my mind and piecing together all the bits and pieces into a more and more logical order. I think about the results and what they mean and how they compare to previous work, I even dream about apples. If i spent 10% of the time i spend thinking actually writing, this thing would be finished already. But, I'm far from finished. And each day that goes by without so much as a word written, the list of things to do gets longer and longer. And the more time that goes by without progress, the harder it becomes to get back to it.

I've tried setting deadlines which just drift by - despite their colour co-ordinated ical reminders. I've even tried external motivation by guaranteeing my supervisor specific pieces of writing by certain dates. I think that procrastination is the natural enemy here. There are simply too many things going on which seem so much more interesting to me than writing.