A Busy Bee

Hello everyone, thanks for your encouraging (aka nagging) words on posting frequency and regularity. I'll be sure to eat lots of Blog Bran to keep those posts coming on time :-)

Apparently half the bloggers in Nunavut are reporters or otherwise with literary backgrounds, so I feel at liberty to share some otherwise tediously boring details of my day:

I'm going to submit my masters thesis final-draft tomorrow; a 120-page document that I've spent the last week polishing, like the chrome fender of my pimping ride (academically speaking).

The examiners each get their own copy of the thesis and scribble all over it in red pen. Then I have to go through each copy, page-by-page, and fix all the omissions, ambiguities and punctuation errors. It would be a lot easier if this was in MS Word, but I have to use a typesetting program called LaTeX.

Here's what that looks like:
\scriptsize $R_{2} =\newline E_{k_{a_{2}}}(E_{k_{b_{2}}}(v_{2}))$&
\scriptsize $\sigma_{2} = P_{\beta}(2)$&
\scriptsize $k_{a_{\sigma_{2}}}$ &
\scriptsize $I_{\sigma_{2}}=E_{k_{b_{\sigma_{2}}}}(v_{\sigma_{2}})=D_{k_{a_{\sigma_{2}}}}(R_{\sigma_{2}})$ &
\scriptsize $k_{b_{\sigma_{2}}}$ &
\scriptsize $\varsigma_{2} = P_{\varphi}(2)$&
\scriptsize $v'_{P^{-1}_{\varphi}(2)}=D_{k_{b_{P^{-1}_{\varphi}(2)}}}(I_{P^{-1}_{\varphi}(2)})$\vspace{3mm}\\ \hline

I spent much of the day talking about revisions to another academic article that just got accepted. This one's a tough one. Although I started out as the main author, it has ballooned to include numerous authors. I have little experience trying to streamline the style and voice of so many people. The kitchen is crammed with cooks... and tonight's dinner features beef stuffed with chicken stuffed with pork with a side of potatoes, pasta, rice, couscous and 9 seasonal vegetables.

Fun photos will come another day.