Finally finished pre-testing our collection tool! And with the use of the City Health Office endorsement, we got a 100% response rate.

Yay us!

And with that my sembreak officially starts TONIGHT and ends on Sunday. I finally get the chance to raise my feet and relax.

We're going to Bulacan tomorrow and I'll probably end up sleeping all day. But I hope I'll get the chance to take pictures(hopefully, the weather will cooperate).

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Playing around with royalty free textures from sxc. I think it looks too sad and contrasts with how I'm really feeling. Yayness...

 

I haven't shot a bunch of pictures in days. I miss editing pictures. *sigh* When will this thesis end?

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That's my sax! I haven't played it for a long while. Usually when I feel the urge to play something occurs that forces me to not play. Sometimes it is the lack of the reed. Sometimes I feel sick(It's icky to play with a cold because you just know that you are creating a wonderful place for you virus to "live" in).

Speaking of reeds, I seem to have experienced all the bad stuff that could happen to them. Chewed. Bitten. Dropped. Accidentally chipped. Fungal growth. The fungi really creeps me out(even though I already took 3 microbiology classes).

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I'm re-reading Dune again. I really need to buy new novels. And I lost my glasses; need to get a new pair. At least my parents are funding this new one.

I'm still alive and happy.

Our proposal presentation went well. No major issues arose during the open forum; in my view at least. Just many many revisions in the data collection tool and I really liked that.

During the small group discussion that followed, many issues poured forth. The issues weren't really surprising ones as we already anticipated them and made back-up plans instead they were brought up.

Big changes in the sample size and study population and some re-arranging and revising of the tool is all that we need to do. And we need to write down our operational definitions of study variables. Fortunately, we already made operational definitions, we just didn't write them down.

Tomorrow is proposal presentation day.

I just found a glaring error in our methodology chapter. Instead of saying we would be asking them to perform a demonstration, we wrote that we would be asking them questions. This is inconsistent with the data collection tool that we'd be using. I just have to ask my group mates to explain it during the presentation proper to avoid long discussions during the open forum.

Crap. And I still have to worry about explaining to the committee regarding the probability of making our study analytic in nature.

Good news: Tomorrow Up Dharma Down will be releasing their sophomore album.

Bad news: The launch is in Taguig and I can't go. Sadness...

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Yes, it's brown and orange. I feel that purple is too happy for this blog, not that this isn't a happy blog.

2nd draft and counting...

I'm really excited about going around Manila. Collecting data. Commuting.

Getting burned under the sun or wet under the rain or just plain dirty under the not-so-blue sky of Manila.

I even got a map!

But seriously, we have 36 days(12 whole days and 24 half days) to collect data and I am not sure if we're going to finish on time.

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New template. Still temporary. Goodbye yellow dude in uniform! But the black-white-green remains. I'll clean up once I have some free time. Most of the features are built-in features(so much for designing a blog) but we still have much freedom over the final template. And I like it because now I don't have to fiddle too much with that dreaded "position" tag. I just have to brush up on html, css and learn some xml(since blogger is using it).

Hanging out with classmates outside your special studies group is really great. Because of one group, I learned about the amazing Google docs and Zotero.

Google docs allow me and other people to work on the same document at the same time. It can even be used as an online messenger. I really love it. The only downside is you have to be online to use it and the laptop I use at school seem to have issues with connecting to public WiFi.

Zotero is a cataloging tool. It makes researcher lives so much easier. It allows a researcher to create "bookmarks" of papers he read and at the same time creates the proper citation entry for it. It even comes with the option to change the format of citation which is really handy considering there are tons of formats out there. The only issue I have with it is it doesn't work with Opera, the browser in the laptop I use. And you can't transfer information from one computer to another because it is attached to the browser installed in the computer.

Unfortunately, I learned of these tools AFTER we finished writing the first draft of our proposal including the reference. But, I still transferred our docs to google docs and used zotero in order to clean up our reference section.

Now I need to go back to work. I still have this nasty 4 question exam. Three years in UP and I am not used to essay type exams anymore. *sweat*

Putek!

Wala akong sembreak!

now for a picture I took last June:

In my brother's room because I don't "catch" the sunrise in mine.

Surprise! No pictures! Well... maybe later. I'm using my PC and the laptop is where the pics are at.

Thesis writing.

It is a really good thing that our thesis is a group effort. Right now, I'm lounging around and waiting for the output of my group mates. My main job is compiler and editor and our deadline is 5pm so I still have plenty of time before I have to go crazy.

I do have some writing jobs but I have done them and I really need to see what the others made so I could finish it. I fear for the Data Collection tool that I am not writing because I really don't want to edit that thing.

Minor rant: It sucks that so many journal articles are behind paywalls. I hate Elsevier and Blackwell Synergy and all so publishers who demand payment for things they just print and not write down. I hate that knowledge has a high cost and the money for payment do not even reach the researcher. I hate it that articles which we crave to include in our RRL are behind paywalls. If I ever become a full-time researcher I will never publish in those journals.

We finally had our grad pics taken(mantra: I will graduate with honors... I will graduate...)! So, it took the whole day to shoot everyone in our batch(46 people) and I was (un-?)fortunate to be in the last batch to be shot.

One of my classmates had a very interesting idea she stole. I don't know from whom but we tried to copy it.

I managed to fool a classmate to do my take on the above look.

And, I finally managed how to do that slightly wrong color effect on pictures.

obviously, I wasn't the one who took this...


and this slightly blurred one here.

But I still have to do the Thesis, Fieldwork and Clin Chem(one of our toughest subjects ever!) before I can call myself a BSPH graduate.

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I just had the most interesting Tuesday yesterday. I had to perform on stage, organize an event, take an exam immediately after the event and then finish three group projects that need to be submitted before 5pm. I was near-suicidal when I woke up yesterday.