They’ve given me a new desk. They being the university, and the stated reason being that health regulations require everyone to be able to adjust the height of their desk.
Now this is obviously nonsense. We already have height-adjustable chairs, which give you the full range of body-to-desk relative positions. The real motivation, I suspect, is [...]
This morning’s internal post brought a dynamic initiative from the university: they’re going to enhance my employability by a modest capital investment leveraging my existing information processing skills.
No, really, they’re making me more employable … by giving me money to buy books with.
They have no idea what they’re in for…
(For those who really need the [...]
So I’m back home and back online, after two full-on weeks in Dublin. There’s not much to show for it really, but below the fold you’ll find a few photos and reflections. The short version: ESSLLI was fantastic fun but not very relevant for my PhD, Dublin is a great but very expensive city, and [...]
I just got my official one-year evaluation from my supervisor, which ensures that my contract will indeed be ratified and that I get paid for another year. Actually I got the damn thing back to proofread (I’m getting a name for it…). I was particularly tickled with the summary: “The supervisors are content with the [...]
A wee insight into what I and my colleagues in the Philosophy department actually do for our livings.
Short version: wait for summer.
Longer version does not include any stories of getting lost.
I had the rather surreal experience this afternoon of being woken up by the warning cries of (if I remember correctly) a putty nose monkey. No, I haven’t been travelling in Cameroon. Nor was I at the zoo. I was at a workshop on language evolution.
The defence is over, I passed, I’m officially Tikitu de Jager, MSc. The Dutch equivalent, which I am also entitled to, is ‘Doctorandus’: Drs. Tikitu de Jager. (The possibilities for confusion with this one in New Zealand are evilly tempting…) Better still, I graduated ‘cum laude,’ which I find slightly surprising and wholly delightful. Geek [...]
At very short notice, my thesis defence will be this coming Monday (August 29th), at 17.30. Floris Roelofsen is also defending, at 16.00 in the same room. The location is the Euclides building on Plantage Muidergracht, room P0.17. (Please contact me if you need directions.)
The topics of the two defences are “Logical Perspectives on Distributed [...]
I handed in my thesis today at 12.
Actually, I handed it in at 12:55, making the person with an appointment at 1 wait. Why? Because while I left home this morning in plenty of time to print the required two copies of my thesis, I left behind the front pages, signed by my supervisor and [...]