Stefan Czerniawski

Authoring a PhD This engaging and highly regarded book takes readers through the key stages of their PhD research journey, from the initial ideas through to successful completi…

@mobeena.bsky.social - the classic is by @patrickdunleavy.bsky.social

I hope you've sharpened the needle carefully

Sorry to have to tell you that the RAH was very much the place to be. The layering of the sound they seem to manage effortlessly is extraordinary.

You charge your toothbrush on the bus? That really is next level commitment to the cause.

I think the mortgage was small rather than the royalty large, but it was a mind boggling thought nonetheless.

I was once on a train to Cambridge with him. He pointed out of the window at East London and said that his house was over there and then, musingly, that he had just got a royalty payment for a book and had decided to pay off the mortgage.

In the mid 80s, Meghnad was a very active ESRC committee member and very kind to me as a very young and very junior member of staff - his combination of brilliance, energy and encouragement was remarkable.

That would appear to be the key word in the circumstances

The pasta museum in Rome. To which we appeared to be the only visitors, with the lights switched off in the room we had left and not switched in the room which was to come next until we were deemed to have spent sufficient time and attention in the room we were in. There were many rooms.

When given the chance they can comfortably outstrip many of us who came through the easy oxbridge access route. It is in their interest and in all our interests that we find them and support them.

We also know, when organisations take the trouble to look, that there are enormously talented people already in the civil service, often in junior grades in the delivery functions who have missed out on opportunities created by the education system.

Some interesting content, but the cloying prose style makes it unbearably unreadable. Some of the job has been done much better by others.

The only line I remember from many years ago reading child development books with a baby on the way is "Your job as a parent is to teach your child to reject you."

We did, and so he hasn't.

Musing on the content of the PID. I hope all the deliverables came through on time and budget.

Work phone is connected to work Teams so voicemails appear as a Teams alert and are helpfully transcribed in an email. Which I have just noticed rather deliciously arrives from
noreply@skype.voicemail.microsoft.com

#GhostsOfSoftwarePast

Who uses "uni" for "university"? I think much has been clarified by the many interesting comments this post has received. In Edit 5 below, I've tried to summarize what I think I've learned and what questions are still outstanding....

My own sample of one thinks of it as an Aussie import, but it's not a very reliable sample at the best of times. This looks a bit more systematic:

The age when you are too old to have watched Neighbours as a teenager

Still using it every day, still grateful

Double width B road? In Cornwall?? That's the A road, if you are lucky.

And extra points for encountering the double decker bus coming towards you when the road is barely wider than it is.

Rich in colours, textures and details

It was the founding tragedy of GDS that in asserting the primacy of user needs they lost sight of what was secondary and tertiary.

So the problem with where we are is real enough. And that problem is:

A: soluble
B: not soluble
C: not soluble starting from here

The predominance of C in many situations is widely overlooked.

And could presumably make it a condition of entry to the private land that there will be no photography. But if there by right, that too falls away.

Flowering heather

Very young acorns, still small and green

A distant view of the south downs across the low weald, under a grey sky frame by dark trees

A large gilt picture frame is mounted upright on wooden supports and standsby itself on rough grass. There is nothing in the frame.

The theme of the walk was unexpected framing

A sign reading in part: Private Land Please keep to the public footpath No photographs permitted

Not seen a sign like this before. Do landowners have the right to ban photography from a public right of way? @paulclarke.com? @gsoh31.bsky.social?

(the don't be a jerk rule obviously does apply)

Other games are also available

The shading of the map is telling - the central area appears inhabited, surrounded by terra nullius in which nobody could object to building a motorway through land empty of people who matter.

You might have to settle for a Wimpy

Sam Pepys gets to NPM a few centuries ahead of time

We'll expect a good fat book then