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drcuriosityMy first scholarship disbursement's come through, so I now have a positive cashflow again. Hurrah.
Went to see the optometrist yesterday. She seemed to like having someone she didn't have to talk down to about human vision. All up, new spectacles (exam, frames, lenses, 10% discount) are going to cost me $812.90 - hooray for having a suitably abnormal prescription. Still, in 7-10 working days I'll have glasses again, which means getting a lot more reading and coding done. I got bad eye strain from overdoing it during my summer crunch research (which they still haven't paid me for). The eyeballs themselves are healthy, but they're still marginal on endurance for doing a lot of focus work. Which is pretty much everything I do.
Speaking of focus, the PhD progresses. I'm looking at research in virtual environments, primarily with application to education. I'd like to get to a point where they're more of a useful tool than a curiosity, and there are definite advantages for a number of people who don't work well in traditional classes. It's an area that's had a lot of marketing hype in recent years, but the ground's still fairly fresh for conducting fundamental research.
One of the major steps there will be identifying and categorising problems with existing technology, and looking at how to solve them. I've got a few ideas I'd like to pursue already, but there are two important things: making sure I'm actually moving towards solving a problem rather than creating an intellectual sideshow, and making sure that I'm making an actual novel scientific contribution rather than just an applied software integration project. Ideally I'd like to come out at the end of three years and still have a passion for what I study (and hopefully reasonable employable), so I don't want to just latch onto the first idea that settles for long enough.
It'll be an interesting process, certainly. I have the bones of many synthetic worlds to stare at and much hype to cut through. Now I just need the eyes for it.
Went to see the optometrist yesterday. She seemed to like having someone she didn't have to talk down to about human vision. All up, new spectacles (exam, frames, lenses, 10% discount) are going to cost me $812.90 - hooray for having a suitably abnormal prescription. Still, in 7-10 working days I'll have glasses again, which means getting a lot more reading and coding done. I got bad eye strain from overdoing it during my summer crunch research (which they still haven't paid me for). The eyeballs themselves are healthy, but they're still marginal on endurance for doing a lot of focus work. Which is pretty much everything I do.
Speaking of focus, the PhD progresses. I'm looking at research in virtual environments, primarily with application to education. I'd like to get to a point where they're more of a useful tool than a curiosity, and there are definite advantages for a number of people who don't work well in traditional classes. It's an area that's had a lot of marketing hype in recent years, but the ground's still fairly fresh for conducting fundamental research.
One of the major steps there will be identifying and categorising problems with existing technology, and looking at how to solve them. I've got a few ideas I'd like to pursue already, but there are two important things: making sure I'm actually moving towards solving a problem rather than creating an intellectual sideshow, and making sure that I'm making an actual novel scientific contribution rather than just an applied software integration project. Ideally I'd like to come out at the end of three years and still have a passion for what I study (and hopefully reasonable employable), so I don't want to just latch onto the first idea that settles for long enough.
It'll be an interesting process, certainly. I have the bones of many synthetic worlds to stare at and much hype to cut through. Now I just need the eyes for it.
