Travel – Page 34 – a sibilant intake of breath

Son et Lumière

Between the 26th and 30th of this month, I am going to be visiting a friend in Paris. For obvious reasons, I don’t have a great deal of time for research. Is there anything that people would recommend seeing on a trip of this length, aside from the obvious? I would love to go for longer but, as it is, I will be returning home with just a few days to churn out an international law paper.

Also, is there any general information about Paris that would be useful to know? EasyJet should be depositing me at Charles de Gaulle at 5:30pm on the 26th. I will be leaving from the same place at 10:35pm on the 30th.

Devon photos III

The 96 acres of the former Wadham estate contain a lot of nice plant life.

They also have a flock of decorative black sheep that wander in the valley that runs down to Branscombe and the sea.

The light on our last evening was especially lovely: warm sunset light, filtered through a translucent cloud that reduced the contrast.

More interesting looking plants.

With the support of the Wadham Foundation, we had tasty food throughout our week.

Devon photos II

This house, just across the back alley from the place where we were staying, looks exactly like the white rabbit’s house from Alice in Wonderland doesn’t it? We’ll smoke the monster out!

Braced against the wall, this photo shows John contemplating an interesting archway in the former home of Dorothy and Nicholas Wadham.

The former bedroom of Dorothy Wadham, though the bed is a recent reconstruction.

While I was concentrating on getting my thesis written, most other members of the trip were more concerned with reading. While much was academic, Harry Potter and crime-fighting monks were not wholly excluded.

In my hermitage, I worked to compile notes and thoughts into a thesis draft.

Devon photos I

For those who were confused, the photos appearing while I was in Devon were not, in fact, taken while I was there. I had set them up to appear at regular intervals in my absence, so as to have some kind of new content appearing on the site. These are the first images from Devon that I have posted on this page:

This is the main area of the converted barn in which we were staying. I was the only group member to sleep in the smaller, quieter, and much colder ‘annex.’ We visited the main house once, for dinner.

This OS map shows the countryside surrounding the Edge Barton estate, where we were staying. On our first full day in Devon, we walked down the valley to the coastline.

The path down to Branscombe was a muddy one.

Here is the south coast of England. If this picture had been taken in the opposite direction, a large grounded ship could be seen.

Pheasants are pretty fearless animals. The camera was about a foot away when I took this.

Back in the loop

Sweet, precious connectivity. She has returned to me. In short, the week in Devon was about as productive as could reasonably have been expected. A solid amount of reading and writing was completed. Now, the thesis project is down to filling in some blanks, followed by retooling and editing.

The next few weeks will be busy.

PS. It looks like Mica won another contest while I was gone. You can watch the winning video online, though many long-time readers will have seen it before.

[Update: 8:00pm] The spam robots have certainly been busy. I have just finished removing their comments from the blog. The wiki will need to wait, since my internet connection at home is taking thirty minutes to load a basic page and I don’t want to spend all night in the Wadham Library.

[Update: 8:45pm] A few photos from Devon are now available on Facebook. As you can see, we were living in comfortable and attractive surroundings. Nicer versions of these images will show up on this site during the next few days, and perhaps on Photo.net as well.

Off in Devon (7/8)

When doing academic reading, you sometimes run into the equivalent of a slow moving recreational vehicle on a winding, mountainous, two-lane road. The thing has such bulk and you cannot hope to push it forward, and yet it would be perilous to circumvent entirely. As such, you get stuck behind it. I carried around Keohane’s Neorealism and its Critics for more than six months, in three countries, before finally deciding that my studies could proceed without actually reading the conclusion in anything but the most cursory of ways. A few bits of thesis reading have been similar, though I am not going to name names.

Off in Devon (6/8)

By now, I have doubtless crafted a groundbreaking and compelling document, in which every footnote jumps off the page with ecstatic energy. As such, I am probably strolling along the coastline now, looking southwards in the evening light.

Alternatively, six days of reading may have left me so utterly lacking in the ability to focus my eyes and perceive depth that I need to walk with arms outstretched in front of me, so as to avoid walking into walls.

Off in Devon (5/8)

Five days without web access has been the longest stretch I have experienced in about two years. It is amazing how utterly useless a computer now seems when it isn’t connected to the internet. First came the abandonment of gaming, in favour of blogging and chatting with friends by instant messenger. Then came the general abandonment of print media for online news sources (though I have hung onto my print subscription to The Economist). Finally, there was the selection of a research area where sources are virtually always available online. My transition to the web-embedded side was complete.

Hopefully, I have managed to keep my sanity. Quite possibly, doing so will involve painting an image resembling Slashdot onto a volleyball with a little painted Skype window in the corner. The other members of the retreat will probably be wondering who I am speaking to.

Off in Devon (4/8)

I wonder how different thesis writing was back in the days of typewriters. On one hand, many operations would be extremely frustrating. You would need to redo an entire page to correct a single error, for instance. On the other hand, people were probably less susceptible to being overwhelmed by the amount of information at hand. Furthermore, there is little danger of your typewriter getting toasted by a malicious script picked up on a dodgy website.

Off in Devon (3/8)

About 72 hours into this trip, I have 21 days left before the thesis actually needs to be handed in at the Examination Schools. Since it will need to be printed by the Friday prior (April 20th), it actually needs to be submitted for printing by the 18th. Hopefully I will come back from Devon on the 7th with something very close to being finished.