How did it go yesterday Dee?

My uni has the 10% rule, but only on essays that have a fixed word count e.g. 1500. Words counts with a range e.g. 15-1700 are not allowed to use the 10% rule. But realistically, if you faff about with the line spacing and margins, no one will know you are 1000 off - not that I'm condoning that or anything :$

are the new england shirts tight fit? Or are they like usual footy shirts? i want to buy one for hubby but he erm won't look great in a skin tight one!

to be fair I'm supposed to be at my in laws bbq, but chose the better option of data analysis!

that is true about plagarism checkers - just check the small print.

I would say that no marker would know if your dissertation is 1,000 words short, especially if you have tables and figures. But what is your subject area? Have you needed to do method, results etc. and have you done necessary statistics?

Its quality not quantity. My Masters thesis was about 10,000 words I think, although may have been less. Where do you think you need to add writing?

Has anyone actually told you you need to add anything?

If you are worried about plagerism there is a student version of the program the uni uses to detect it, so you can self-check before handing it in,can't remember what its called though

and I'm working. Who's with me?

I can't work outside because a) I would get horrificly burnt and b) the dog next door barks whenever anyone goes in my garden

So I'm inside, curtains drawn (because the light hits my computer screen) and listening to Jack Dee audio book whilst shunting data between SPSS files.

This is the life!

Oh and I've got to go across the county to pick up hubby after he spends all day in a nice beer garden hmph :-(

OK I've played around with my data - I now have to re-create the files I made last week. so that's todays goal! :-(

For me, if I think there might be a chance of the stats techniques looking a little dodgy, I just whack in a ton of references that say its ok, so find a load of journals that say *something* statistical and back up your use of 33 participants.

Well he's now working so is out a lot, so when he is at home, I don't mind him doing what he wants. I'm getting him to put up another tv though - although mainly because of his love of cricket which is very boring. at the mo it gives me time to work at the weekends if he has a game and makes me not feel guilty. He sometimes compromises and plays with headphones so I can read in the same room (can't stand the shooting noises, especially if reading!)

If I could get rid of the guilt then I would love gaming - well girly games, like anything with Mario in it! He buys them for me, but whenever I pick up the control, I am always thinking I should be doing PhD work, so never finish a game. I've promised myself that when I do finish I will spend hours doing all my mario games!

I have learnt from this - after submitting a journal it took 6 months for them to get back, then I got accepted with a few amendments - did them, then ANOTHER three months. The only times they ever replied is when I emailed to query what was going on.

So my advice would be to send a freindly email to an admin person on the journal, or editor if there is no one else to contact. Just innocently ask "how long is the average turn around time for this journal" or something similar - I used my co-authors as an excuse e.g. my co-authors have asked me to contact you..... Make sure you quote your reference number and paper title.

It will prompt them to chase up the reviewers

I'm also wondering about this. I have 2 papers on the same issue, although the actual literature is different - there is a beginning paragraph giving some background statistics of the overall problem. I guess I will just slightly re-word but if it goes into publication, it will be SO obvious - but I can't exactly put in different stats!?

Is pro gaming, gaming you get paid for? or is it just that you spend far too much time gaming and are therefore in quite a good league of ability?

My hubby would LOVE to be paid for gaming, but he's not that good. It has stopped him doing his PhD though - he went through god of war, prince of persia, mario, etc etc rather than writing chapters. Oh and pro evo, call of duty, resident evil, bio shock, unchartered, dead space, the list goes on.

hmm my dentist is fine - he's a jolly south african, although I suspect he's a teency bit racist.

Have to second the evil smear nurse!

Although I think my scariest is my spinal consultant - who is the spitting image of Mario, but fatter. He brought in 12 other consultants to umm and arr over my bizarre MRI which showed I'm a very rare freak of nature. They talked above my head and he decided he was going to put me in for a laminectomy (this all happened in about 1 min) - then I piped up and admitted that I'd been reading about a new operation in BMJ which was very promising,(wanted to avoid laminectomy like mad) at which point he said "fine, we'll do that then" and I was pushed out of the office. Had to return 3 months later to have my spine sliced up and lots of scrap metal put in instead. He also came on rounds after the operation and forced me to get up and out of bed to walk around 4 hours after the MAJOR SPINAL SURGERY and then boasted to his students it was because of his good work - PAH!

well I created another data set, which again shows NOTHING :-(

I think there are a few dodgy cases in my data though that are skewing my results - but can't work out a simple way of creating scatterplots to have a look - the variables/groups are quite complicated, so think I'm going to take some time to pop it over to excel, where I actually understand how to make the graph I want!

My funding runs out in October and I'm told there is NO chance of it being extended. it seems slightly stupid that they only provide 3 years worth of funding when very few people actually finish in this time!