My PHD Blog

I am attending / helping setup a conference at Portsmouth University on the 10th of September entitled "Informatics to deliver integrated care", (sounds a bit dry, but then I suspect that all of the conferences I will have papers at will be similar), run by SIHI. SIHI stands for Southern Institute for Health Informatics. Is that pronounced Sy Hy? maybe See Hee? No idea, I will find out on the tenth I suppose.

September 1st - only a month to go now.
How to fill my time as the boys go back to school? Well, that is quite easy I think. I have to do a review of the current work that has been done in the area of my subject so I have to gather all the relevant info I can. I have made a start already and found very little in my specific area. This is a bit scary, does this mean that others know that it is not worth working here? Does it mean that I have been searching for the wrong terms and when I get it right there is a ton of stuff and I can't get a new angle on it? Let's hope not.

On a totally off topic note, is it a coincidence that the latest release of an extremely popular computer game called Minecraft is released the day that the kids go back to school? Ha ha ha





I found a blog while looking for a suitable domain name for this site, entitled I Hate My PhD Hopefully I won't be feeling like this is a couple of years!

OK, the start is actually on the 1st of October, my wife's birthday actually, and but I think that I can safely say that I am nearly there.

I suppose I should put some kind of introduction here so here goes. My name is Mark and I am currently 47, married with 3 children, one of which is soon to start a degree course at Queen's University Belfast in law. (Of which I am immensely proud I have to say). The two remaining at home are currently in high school and we have high hopes for them too.

My PhD is currently entitled "Using Smart Building Technology to Improve the Quality of Life for Vulnerable Young People", however this may change over the next three years!

I am looking forward to this next part of my life, I have had quite a time of it over the last decade, running my own business, developing a serious illness, (ulcerative colitis), nearly dying a couple of times, starting a degree with the Open University, stopping a degree with the Open University as they changed things dramatically. Then I completed an HND, "Computing and Software Development" with Chichester University and moved on to top this up to turn it into a BSc, "Web Technologies" and the University of Portsmouth as a direct entry student, entering the final year. In this I obtained a first class honours degree and also managed to win a prize by being the direct entry student with the highest overall marks. Not bad for an oldie eh?

As I obtained a first in my degree I do not need to complete a Masters degree before starting a PhD so I can start this October after graduating in July of this year at Portsmouth and I am going to have the same supervisor in my PhD as I had for my final year project, Dr. Penny Ross.

Right, that will do for now, hopefully I will be able to update this blog pretty regularly, I certainly intend to but I expect that at some point I will have loads of stuff to do and not much time to write about it here so please be patient!
Mark

This blog is being written on Serendipity blog software. I have never used this before, having used the "big players" in the past, Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla! for example. I came across this one when looking around for something different to write this new chapter of my life. So, how does it look? I will be tweaking it over the next few months I am sure, but so far I am very happy with it. Let me know what you think.
Mark