Congratulations, hope all goes well next week :-)

Hi Button,

I did my upgrade recently and my report had to be 12-13k words with a brief introductory section. I think my 'brief' section was around 500-600 words so as your report is shorter I would aim for about half of that so it becomes like an abstract. However this depends on what else you have to have in the report. Mine was 5k lit review followed by methods, results from pilot study and a plan for the thesis as a whole so I could get away with having a longer introduction.

I think around 200-300 would be OK considering you only have 5k words to play with.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14370878

apparently that story about IE users was a hoax - see above

they must have put quite a bit of effort in as the BBC went to the effort of contacting a statistician from Cambridge

I've got, PM me your address

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14370878

Came across this earlier, apparently if you use Internet Explorer you have low IQ. Just as well I use Chrome then! :p

I use Microsoft OneNote for to do lists, organisation and general note taking - I type up anything important that I've written on paper.
I only use Word if I'm writing something quick that doesn't need to look good but otherwise I use LaTeX. I'm a fairly recent convert to LaTeX after Word nearly died when putting my MSc dissertation together (although it may have partly been due to my old laptop - have a nice shiny new one now).
I use Matlab for everything to do with my data i.e. processing it, plotting it up and calculating stats. Once you've mastered the basic syntax it's fairly straightforward to make it do what you want it to do (most of the time). I can only make simple graphs in Excel as the new version just looks way too confusing.
I use Mendeley for reference management and it's set to export all my references to a BibTeX file that I can use with LaTex. I did start off using onenote for references and notes on papers but as Sneaks mentioned it was a pain switching between screens so I just use Mendeley now.

All of the above is done on my laptop running Windows 7 but at uni I have a Linux desktop with a whole bunch of other stuff which I won't go into. I think I'm the only one in my office doing a lot of programming and was told that my desktop looked scary when it was running through some fairly straightforward (to me at least) code the week. I'm still a beginner when it comes to programming but I know my sup is expecting me to learn Python at some point which really does look like a scary programming language!

Hi Natassia, yes I did mention using OneNote in another thread.
I've been using it since my MSc but really got to grips with it this year for my PhD. I have several different sections in my OneNote notebook. These include a To Do section where I keep my lists, a log section where I keep track of what I've done and any little ideas that spring to mind. The log section started when I was at the beginning of my PhD and doing lots of reading but couldn't 'see' what progress I was making so found it useful just to quickly write how many papers I'd read that day so it felt like I'd achieved something. I tend to write in the log daily and have a separate sub page for each day, it's mostly filled with ramblings with some useful stuff. I also have section for writing up notes from meetings with my sup, also sections for courses I've had to do, a list of useful websites etc.
The most useful section I have at the moment is 'analysis' as I have just finished processing the data and plotting it all up for my first experiment and I use this section for writing my initial interpretations and ideas before using these notes for writing up something coherent. In this section I have attached the files for each of my figures so I can have the notes alongside them which I find helpful.

Essentially instead of writing stuff by hand in a notebook I do it all electronically, this is mainly because my handwriting has gotten so bad that it takes me a while to translate what I've written sometimes. Also means that pages won't have tea/coffee marks on them which is a bonus.

It's also possible to back up the notebook, you can save pages or whole sections separately as pdf files which I should probably get into the habit of doing sometimes. My notebook also 'lives' on my usb stick so every time I plug it in when the notebook is open it is synchronised onto my stick. Also means that if you use another computer that has OneNote installed then you can plug you usb stick in and your notebook will be there.


Hope this helps :-)

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I don't think there is a way of recording things on focus booster, I think it just tells you how many 'sessions' you've done. (Haven't really looked though) I also use Microsoft OneNote and have a section where I keep a log of what I've done alongside my to do lists and I'm going to start putting my session totals in there as well. It would be good if they could add something like that though.

I'd just like to say thanks to Stoll for posting the link to the 'focus booster' I installed it today and think I got more work done today than I've managed over the last 2 days! Since passing my first year upgrade I seem to have slowed down. I've been doing some data processing which is necessary but tedious and repetitive and I get distracted easily but I managed the equivalent of 10 tomatoes today and the processing is now finished. Now I can try and figure out what my graphs and stats show, the fun bit!

The best thing is that it is an app which can be used offline which is good for me because I'm not very disciplined when I have my laptop online. I purposefully don't have wireless at home and have to disconnect the modem from the desktop computer when it's not being used and plug the modem into my laptop so it takes a bit more effort to get online as I have to physically move between rooms. I'm just not very good at logging off and getting back to work though :$ so I also installed the 'stayfocusd' extension for google chrome which restricts internet access during working hours.

I had shoulder length hair when I started last year but was always tying it up because it irritated me so went for the chop about 6 months ago and it is now jaw length and very low maintenance (it was before anyway). I wash and condition every day and dry naturally and that's it. My hair curls up at the bottom naturally and it kind of looks like I've spent ages with a curling tong but in reality I do nothing with it and have never really bothered with styling my hair as I am a bit lazy :p

1. no
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good luck with your research

I now use LaTeX after Word kept threatening to die during my master's dissertation and have recently completed my upgrade report in LaTeX. Once I'd got the hang of the commands it was so much easier to put the document together than in Word.

Yay congratulations Mog!! (up)

(mince)(mince) pies for you too

now we can get on with some proper research :-)

Hi I also use BiBTeX for referencing with LaTeX. I use Mendeley as a reference manager and there is an option to export all of your references to a BiBTeX file which can then be used for doing your references. It works quite well although it does need to be compiled a few times before it will run properly. If you choose to use BiBTeX then make sure you have the natbib package installed as this gives you a range of style options for your references and will let you do them in the style of some journals if you want.

Just had my upgrade viva and I passed! Am now officially a PhD student!!! :-)