For all of those who did not know, I have been heavily cranking on my dissertation proposal for the last three months and have not had much time for anything else. I finally had my proposal defense and oral qualifying exam yesterday, and the verdict is... I passed. I could not be happier right now. I am actually very excited about my proposal work. I think it has the potential to make quite an impact in the computational fluids community. And at any rate, I am just amazed I was able to string together about 12 100+ hour work weeks. For those of you who are interested, my proposal can be downloaded here:
http://users.ices.utexas.edu/~evans/Proposal/proposal.pdf
And my proposal presentation can be downloaded here:
http://users.ices.utexas.edu/~evans/Proposal/Presentation.pdf
Careful though. They are both quite long (at my research institute, we tend to present our proposals after 80-85% of the research has already been done).
In other news, I have discovered the joys of Torchlight recently after purchasing it for my Mac for four dollars. I have to say its one of my best four dollar purchases I have ever made. For those of you who don't know, Torchlight is a standard hack and slash game which was created by many of the developers of Diablo 2. Think of it as a spiritual sequel to Diablo 2. The result? A great stress relief tool. The only flaw is that the game has a paper thin plot. But then again, sometimes you just want to hit the orc over the head without thinking about things like plot.
I have also decided to start casually reading again. I am starting with Neal Stephenson's Anathem (I adored Snow Crash and have been trying to read Neal's other novels since), and I am going to finally read William Gibson's famous cyberpunk Sprawl Trilogy after that (Neuromancer, Count Lisa, Count Overdrive). I also want to check out The Well at the World's End, a late 19th century fantasy novel which has been cited as a big inspiration for Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The book actually now lies in the public domain apparently. As I have not taken the time to do some casual reading in a few years, I would love any ideas. I tend to read anything that is thrown in front of me, but I often drift towards fantasy and sci-fi.
Anyways, I gotta run, but I just wanted to say I am glad to be back in the blogosphere.
http://users.ices.utexas.edu/~evans/Proposal/proposal.pdf
And my proposal presentation can be downloaded here:
http://users.ices.utexas.edu/~evans/Proposal/Presentation.pdf
Careful though. They are both quite long (at my research institute, we tend to present our proposals after 80-85% of the research has already been done).
In other news, I have discovered the joys of Torchlight recently after purchasing it for my Mac for four dollars. I have to say its one of my best four dollar purchases I have ever made. For those of you who don't know, Torchlight is a standard hack and slash game which was created by many of the developers of Diablo 2. Think of it as a spiritual sequel to Diablo 2. The result? A great stress relief tool. The only flaw is that the game has a paper thin plot. But then again, sometimes you just want to hit the orc over the head without thinking about things like plot.
I have also decided to start casually reading again. I am starting with Neal Stephenson's Anathem (I adored Snow Crash and have been trying to read Neal's other novels since), and I am going to finally read William Gibson's famous cyberpunk Sprawl Trilogy after that (Neuromancer, Count Lisa, Count Overdrive). I also want to check out The Well at the World's End, a late 19th century fantasy novel which has been cited as a big inspiration for Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The book actually now lies in the public domain apparently. As I have not taken the time to do some casual reading in a few years, I would love any ideas. I tend to read anything that is thrown in front of me, but I often drift towards fantasy and sci-fi.
Anyways, I gotta run, but I just wanted to say I am glad to be back in the blogosphere.
Cool. Always was a cyberpunk fan, though never made it all the way through any of Stephenson's work. Never finished the trilogy of Gibson's either, though I read -- and enjoyed -- neuromancer, white noise, burning chrome, etc. Great stuff. Speaking of, we should find a cool coop game on ps3, you should come over, and we can destroy a la halo style for a few dozen hours :) ... one of the only proper ways to wash away the sins of the academy, imho :) ....
ReplyDeleteAnyway, done and done, woohoo!
I have to agree with the coop option. Blowing away bad guys is the only proper way to destress =P.
ReplyDelete