shineslikerubies

is she hanging out with her dad?

Am pretty sure she's actually hanging out/in the photo with a friend of mine from school.

atrouser - I know what you mean by feeling like a fraud; I know bugger all about it this stuff!

THIS! Totally how I am feeling today. As I near the end of my first year, I am feeling like I have just wasted all my time because I think everything I've been looking into has been wrong. On the plus side, feeling very motivated. Fear of failure will do that to you, I guess.

My actual conference presentation in the States was pretty horrible. I was way out of my league/over my head. But I met lots of amazing people, got great ideas, and am actually about to head back to the States to speak on a panel thanks to the conversations I got into whilst there. Totally life changing, even though I completely stuffed up my talk. So just being there is half the battle, I reckon.

I'll cross my fingers for you.

Ghoti-Max, I like and hate it. I love the development of ideas, and love the thrill when something seems to be really coming together. But because I think through writing, and my ideas really develop when I try to pull them all together, I feel like I spend a significant amount of time developing an argument and writing things, and then realise that my angle was wrong, or that I had failed to develop part of the argument that (later) becomes critical. It's all the whole point, but I just get a little dispirited at having written words that I'm really happy with, only to have to scrap them later.

And congrats on the conference Trousers! Excellent opportunity for you. Well done.

Something I hate about the PhD... sometimes I have thoughts about my work that feel good and complete and like I am actually getting somewhere. And then I read more/think more/come back and revisit those ideas later, and I realise that everything I thought was ok is actually naive/incomplete/illogical/incomprehensible. And then I have to start rewriting things.

And the writing goes ok, and I start thinking that what I'm working on this time is actually pretty ok, and definitely better than what I had before, and it starts feeling like this time I might have actually had a break through.

... and then I realise that nope, actually those ideas are naive/incomplete/illogical/incomprehensible. Again.

Thus the cycle continues, and I wonder whether I'm ever going to write/think something that can stand the test of even a few months - much less hold up over a couple of years. This is what I hate about the PhD.

And your on-time, if you can. I've been spending a bunch of time at conferences, unconferences and so forth lately, and it has made a huge difference to me, being able to chat to other people working in different areas of my (and related) field. It really helps develop new ideas and means that I don't feel nearly so isolated as I otherwise could/would.

It also means that I actually feel like my work could actually be important to someone, because I get more immediate feedback. And that's kind of nice in itself.

I DAFSFFS'd and this didn't seem to have been posted about, but apologies if this is a double up. Some of you might be interested in contributing to the Digital Culture Public Sphere. This is a chance to shape Australia's digital arts and culture policy, so it's good to get involved. Check the website, contribute to the discussion on Twitter (#publicsphere) or contribute to the Wiki.

yeah, we are a city filled with bogans.

hey ghoti-max, that's pretty interesting. in a lot of ways, they are like amateur collectors everywhere (there are guys in australia who run plane museums etc), whose passion for collecting and their objects is massive, and they do acquire very important collections - but they are not always collections that have a ''fit'' with any mainstream museum purposes. so it can be hard for a science museum (for instance) to accept a whole collection that takes up huge amounts of storage space if it doesn't fit with their intended purpose.

the pinball collection there looks amazing, and certainly could find a fit in the right museum... but they'd need to find someone to champion it, i think, and to show how and why the collection is important. is it to an art museum? hard for them to justify time/money on pinballs when they might lost the chance to buy paintings. a design museum? that would be more likely, or maybe a technology museum. often at the art gallery i work at, we have people approach us wanting to gift us things that just aren't appropriate for the collection, and so sometimes you have to say no, even though you hope someone takes it so that the object isn't lost.

Yep - pretty sure Lambton pool has a slide, and diving platforms. The Ocean baths are pretty awesome, as is King Edward Park, as devines said.

If you like your pubs dingy, like a big outdoor teen party, then go to the Lass O'Gowrie. Afternoon lawnbowls at Lowlands is pretty nice, and close to Darby street (which has the best food).

The new museum just opened a couple of weeks ago. It's not massive, but is pretty nice, and it's located just near the harbour, so could be a nice reason to walk around down that end of town too.