Month: December 2006

DIY cobbling

Does anyone in Oxford have a hot glue gun that I could borrow?

There are a couple of places where the upper body of my shoes is peeling back from the plastic sole. I’ve gone to some shoe repair places in Oxford, but they all say that they do not repair trainers. I’ve only had these snazzy North Face shoes since March 2006, and have come to appreciate their Gore-Tex based water repelling characteristics, as well as their unusually good grip and torsional rigidity. I may not feel invincible when I stamp around in them (that is what hiking boots are for), but they do the day-to-day work of walking unusually well.

My original plan of trying to drive a needle through the sole and then back through the upper, so as to stitch the two together, seems to falter on dual grounds:

  1. It is unexpectedly difficult to drive a needle through the sole,
  2. the whole operation threatens the waterproof membrane that represents much of the value of the shoes.

If I have learned anything from my very limited exposure to the British National Health Service, it’s that glue has taken the lead from stitching, in the repairing of fissures in external membranes.

The maintenance people at Wadham College seem unwilling to lend me a glue gun: possibly because they witnessed the demonstration of my less-than-superb coordination during the game of pool on Christmas Eve. (Note to potential lenders: injuries incurred by me upon myself or others in the course of using your equipment are not your liability.)

If Operation Glue the Shoe succeeds, I may turn my adhesive attentions to the snap fastener that has fallen off the ankle of my carbon gray Sportif convertible cargo pants (as opposed to the identical olive green, brown, and white pairs, each from a successive year of usage).

[Update: 3 January 2007] Thanks to the hot glue gun lent to me by Ben Saunders, I have glued the tears in my shoes shut. I have also tried to re-assemble my broken mini tripod, and re-attach a snap fastener to my favourite pair of cargo pants. We shall see which holds together best.

[Update: 5 January 2007] It would appear the glue of the hot glue gun variety is not strong enough to fix my shoes. I should have expected it, really, given that the force exerted on the sections that have split has been great enough to split them in the first place. Does anyone have an alternative idea?

[Update: 15 January 2007] As of this morning, three of the four gaps initially fixed with hot glue had broken open again. Strangely, the one that did not was one of the largest. Since I am returning the gun soon, I decided to try once more – filling as much of the space between the outer portion of the shoe and the Gore-Tex living with glue as possible. I carried out a small trial with rubber cement, and it seemed a substantially worse option, largely because it lacks the bulk to actually fill the gaps.

[Update: 6 March 2007] My shoes need to be glued again. One of the four seals made in mid-January has now failed completely. Two more have failed partially.

[Update: 8 March 2007] The shoes have been glued again. In the two worst-affected places, the volume of glue now present (from both repairs) is such that it can be felt easily when the shoes are worn. That said, no longer being able to see the exposed Gore-Tex membrane must be a good thing.

Turkey 2006 photos: sixth batch

These photos are in addition to those that have already been posted on Photo.net and Facebook.

Topkapi Palace Arches

Arches in the Courtyard of Favourites, Topkapi Palace.

The Golden Horn, Istanbul

The Golden Horn: Istanbul’s strategic natural harbour.

Fish vendors, Istanbul

An unstable place to buy a fish sandwich.

Blue Mosque

The Blue Mosque in the evening.

Sleeping Turkish cats

Sleeping Turkish cats, at around 10:00am on our last morning.

A variety of spices in life

Deities and guns, Pitt Rivers Museum

Two things that I did not know previously about spices, but learned while eating white peppercorns purchased at the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul, during a break from reading this evening:

The difference between black and white peppercorns is somewhat similar to the differing means by which white and red wine are produced. Black peppercorns are the dried fruit of Piper nigrum, a flowering vine. The colour is the product of browning enzymes released from the fruit’s flesh through the application of heat, after picking and before drying. The important odour-contributing chemicals present in black pepper are part of a class of molecules called terpenes. White peppercorns, by contrast, are the product of fruit that has been soaked, decomposed, or otherwise removed – leaving only the seed to be dried.

This strikes me as somewhat similar to how red wine is produced from juice that includes skins, seeds, and stems – whereas white wine has such elements filtered out. The chemical result of their inclusion (called maceration) produces the tannins that give flavour to red wine. Those who are restricted to the appreciation of the cheaper examples of both varieties might find it useful to know that red wines contain more congeners than whites, and thus are more likely to leave you feeling rotten the next day (though the relevance of these molecules to the situation seems to be disputed; some argue that hypoglycemia, dehydration, and vitamin B12 deficiency are more to blame). Red wines also include tyramine, an additional metabolic toxin absent in whites.

One molecule mentioned frequently on this blog is capsaicin: the hydrophobic, colorless, odorless that makes chili peppers spicy. It does this by virtue of stimulating vanilloid receptors of subtype 1, normally sensitive to heat and abrasion. I thought that normal table pepper relied upon the same substance, but it actually depends on a molecule called Piperine, potentially notable for the fact that it interferes with biochemical pathways relevant to drug metabolism.

More thesis anxiety

In search of inspiration, or at least a renewed sense of direction, I had a look at the brick-like Notes of Guidance and the IR Booklet to see what I could learn about the thesis on which I am working. Of the two, the booklet is more informative, though the guidance provided is sparse and any hopes of finding inspiration are likely to be rapidly dashed:

The MPhil thesis, of not more than 30,000 words, is submitted at the end of the Easter Vacation of the second year, and forms part of the final examination. The subject of the thesis should be agreed with the supervisor well before the end of the first year. In some cases, MPhil theses require original research on primary sources, but in others, particularly where conceptual or theoretical issues are involved, it is enough to demonstrate mastery of a complex subject.

I have certainly managed to wander into a complex subject. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to pin down exactly what it is my subject comprises (see my thesis seminar presentation).

I cannot help but feel that I was thrown headlong into something that I have never really understood. While being made to write a Research Design Essay and receiving commentary on it was certainly a good step, I still don’t feel as though I know what sort of work is meant to go into this thing. Which literatures do I need to read, and how much do I need to grapple with them? What constitutes an original contribution to scholarly discourse?

More and more, this project seems like a particularly massive hurdle to be jumped, in the dark and without much in the way of practice, rather than a project with inherent usefulness or value. That said, this grim perspective may have a lot to do with darkness, the relative emptiness of Oxford, on-again-off-again illness, Christmas solitude, endless ongoing problems with the student loan people, and related frustrations.

The most pragmatic thing to do seems to be:

  1. Finish writing projects unrelated to the thesis
  2. Read two or three former M.Phil theses on related topics, and with similar methodological issues
  3. Step back from theoretical reading, in which I feel hopelessly bogged down, and do some specific reading of secondary literature on the Stockholm Convention and Kyoto Protocol

With much more specific information on my supposed case studies under the belt, perhaps it will prove easier to decide which theoretical literatures I am meant to read, and what I am meant to take from them.

[Update: 9:30pm] Perhaps the strangest thing about all of this is the fact that I was doing better and more original work back when I was at UBC. Then, I had five courses a term, each with its own material but also offering the scope for directed research. At UBC, I was frequently writing papers that, if they were good enough, could be published. Here, I haven’t written anything that would be publishable, even if it was an amazingly brilliant treatise on the subject at hand: the subjects have been too generic, the scope for inventiveness too narrow. The thesis is meant to be the ultimate counterbalancing to that, but I would rather see the weights on either side of the fulcrum more evenly balanced.

24 days down, 19 to go

The Oxford winter break is now halfway over, with three weeks remaining. Somehow, that rather changes my thinking with regards to the accomplishments so far. Having spent two of the three weeks so far in Turkey, and dealt with what limited Christmas related activities I had, I feel less bad about not having completed masses of thesis reading or writing yet. As it now seems quite unlikely that I will be going anywhere with Sarah P. before the break is over, that leaves me with a good block of time to push my way through my enduring to-do list.

I should probably have anticipated that searching for jobs right around Christmas would be all-but-impossible. The fact that nobody will respond to emails within about a week of the celebration makes a lot of sense, when you consider all the stress and staffing problems that it necessarily involves. Hopefully, once we pass through the gate of New Year’s Eve, some connectivity and productivity will re-emerge among potential employers.

The plan, therefore, is to finish my developing world papers (including at least one external edit) by the 29th of December, without fail. That should keep me hopping during the next few days: from abandoned library to less abandoned coffee shop, for reading and writing respectively.

PS. I am really coming to appreciate TextMate. It has replaced TextEdit in my Dock, and I may even shell out the 39 Euros for a legitimate copy, once the thirty day trial expires. I especially appreciate how I can work on PHP files, .htaccess files, and the like without having to worry about formatting problems – and with colour coding to boot.

Christmas Eve

Fraser Long contact juggling

Without a doubt, this was the first Christmas Eve in which I:

  1. Cycled well over 10km
  2. Ate chips with hummous, balsamic vinegar, and salt from a kebab van for dinner
  3. Demonstrated my relative ineptitude in the playing of pool
  4. Found myself in the Purple Turtle (a notorious and bunker-like student bar) at 1:30am

All told, it was almost infinitely better than last year’s experience of sitting alone at my computer in Wadham College. Many thanks to Antonia’s brother Fraser: for teaching me about contact juggling, winning graciously at pool, and generally making the evening far more social than it would otherwise have been.

Turkey 2006 photos: fifth batch

These photos are in addition to those that have already been posted on Photo.net and Facebook.

Goreme at night

Goreme at night, taken while out stargazing with Ivanka.

Turkish child with basketball

Ussuf, the young man who beat me at basketball.

Ping pong partners

Ivanka and the special education teacher, with ping pong rackets.

Raki and backgammon

Raki and backgammon.

Blue Mosque and other buildings

Blue Mosque and other buildings.

Merry Christmas

To all my friends who I did not have the chance to send a Turkish postcard / Christmas card, I hope the holidays find you healthy, happy, and in the company of those who you care about. Thinking about friends and family members all around the world, I am reminded of how lucky I have been to meet such a diverse, fascinating, and caring group of people.

While the time since my return from Istanbul has certainly not been as productive as I might have hoped, I am optimistic that the sheer terror evoked by fast-approaching deadlines will soon have me churning through pages and hammering out paragraphs. As they say: “A graduate student is a device that converts coffee into research papers.”

The X-Files in retrospect

Unproductive pre-Christmas days are reminding me of evenings long forgotten. Specifically, those taken up in watching The X-Files and being terrified about all the pseudo-scientific content therein. These days, I am more appreciative about the opportunities the series provided to the emerging film and television industry in Vancouver, as several of my friends could describe on the basis of their personal experience.

I remember evenings after the point where my paternal grandfather replaced our television with one three times the size, in order to watch the World Cup – an event that had less than zero significance for me at the time and has not much more now – when I would watch new episodes of the X-Files and be unusually unable to sleep before the school days subsequent.

It is interesting how The X-Files was concerned to the point of paranoia about the dangers of government secrecy, whereas television today has largely embraced the mindset of the ‘War on Terror.’ 24 is an example that is shamefully compelling.