Table of Contents [PhD Zero]

Had you asked me a fortnight ago how confident I was about the prospect of hitting the ground running with the PhD, I would have answered with a fairly optimistic 'very'. It's not as if I've spent the last two months either gallavanting around America, playing any number of (fairly crap) Xbox games or becoming a familiar face in the local Wetherspoons, right?

Well, for all intents and purposes, I've gotten down to business now - although one could argue that the gloves are still on, since technically I'm neither registered with the university as a student nor on the payroll of the EPSRC yet. Which I guess makes me a fraud. An anonymous, unpaid fraud. Regardless - I have a desk, an office key and an ever-increasing awareness of both of the opprobrium to come and the misplacedness of my initial confidence.

I'll preface by mentioning that I'm using a Mac to write this blog post. And there are issues to address.

Yo dawg, I heard you like recursion so I put a function call in your function call in your function call in your functi-

I have long operated a policy of never purchasing iAnything from Apple - I figured that if they can throw iPods out dime a dozen in magazine competitions it was surely just a manner of time until one fell into my lap. In the four years I've stuck to this dogma, Lady Luck has proved herself a Steve Jobs fangirl and I've received nary a penny for my efforts in apathy. Until recently.

When my place was confirmed, I was told that I had been allocated a thousand pounds to purchase a new machine. My previous (burned out with thermite shortly after hearing this news) laptop was a Tesco Value job, bought amidst furious tears that my desktop PSU gave out a week before a coursework hand-in and seemingly powered by the same. Since everyone else in the Functional Programming Laboratory uses a Mac or a *nix machine, it seemed wise to get one, since I could easily ask for help when needed. Having used the beast for a fortnight now, I can safely say that the last time a machine made this little sense to me, George Michael could still drive in a straight line.

Technoracism aside, I genuinely love my new workplace. Cue the obligatory spat of descriptive photos...

The rest of the room is pretty empty for the time being, as there's a spat of people leaving the University and about as many people joining with me (although none quite so keen, it would seem). Pictures of the office with people actually IN it are going to have to be promised for a later date, I'm afraid. 

High point of the last two weeks? Easy. Dual monitors.

Twice the porn, in half the time!

There's an old adage that paraphrases quite neatly, effectively saying that even if you're the top of your class as an undergraduate, you're still pretty much the most useless researcher in the world. It's true. Whilst it may seem evident to most, you're basically hand-held throughout the entire BSc process - which may explain the panic associated with the individual dissertation. Postgraduate study appears at first glance an entirely different beast - the major stumbling block so far seems to be where to start: academic papers seemingly have a habit of circularly referencing themselves, so much that actually working out the definition of something supposedly simple (angelic non-determinism, anyone?) requires a string of Google/Wiki/IRC requests. I've been advised by at least one person to start by reading books rather than papers...but what when your books look like this? Are there audio books? simple.wikipedia topics? Facebook fan pages? [0 of your friends like this page. Be the first!]

Nonetheless, I have a bevy of papers that I've set myself to task with (mostly related to Haskell, monads and compiler theory, as it's probably wise to start by reading the things I'm meant to be...right?) - of course, by reading, I mean scanning over, realising I understand nothing and giving up before starting drinking by noon. Which might actually be a good idea, since in the last week I've discovered that I know nothing about a fair whack of topics in which I thought I had a good grasp. Surprisingly though (and I add this for the sake of fellow sufferers in second year abstract algebra [!]), I managed to answer someone's question about the definition of an automorphism despite having no idea about it when I actually needed it, proving that you apparently absorb more group theory than you think when you're busy drawing cocks over everyones notes.

In light of this, I almost feel bad for slandering Prof. Hoffmann's good name back in the revision period of '09. Almost.

Whilst I'm on the topic of looking like a cock...in the spirit of actually proving my conviction to giving a toss about what I've signed up for, I started joking around that I was going to get a lambda tattoo on my inner right wrist. As is the nature of oft-repeated ideas, it took hold and I'm actually pretty dead-set now. The question is, at what stage on the scale of 'nerdy lambda calculus tattoo ideas' do I hit and stick? To demonstrate either side of said scale...

 

That is - either one with a humorous quip behind it ("Oh? You want to see my ID?") or the full-on god-damn Y-combinator for full dedication-to-the-cause points? Decisions...

On an entirely different - and closing - note, I'm due to move into my resident tutor flat within the next week. I'd have moved in already, except the flat in question is being entirely refurbished (read: gutted and re-IKEA'ed) - I'd love to admit that I'm as excited as a five-year-old boy on Christmas morning at the prospect, but since the process of moving in indicates the nigh-arrival of three hundred freshers and several fire-alarms, it's more like said boy running down the stairs and remembering that he's Jewish.

This means that I get to change neighborhood from somewhere where this happens... 

Lenton, I'm actually going to miss you.

...to this.

No seriously - I was just trying to cook a pack of noodles with this flamethrower...

I can't wait.