Life in Oxford

I've finally moved into Holywell Manor, and started my life as a graduate student at Balliol. "Started", here, should strictly be taken to mean "vaguely acknowledged by the university", as I don't have access to my email account, wireless, the internet in my room, a supervisor or anything else bar the library (haven't tried to take any books out yet)... very helpful.

More than just being in academic limbo I've in personal limbo as well, since all my stuff only arrived today (4 days late) after arriving here a full week too early 1and being left in the Manor entrance for 3 days until %$&#ing UPS picked it up again, sent back up to St Andrews then back again, and finally arriving in a very battered state. I have yet to unpack, but I'm half-afraid to discover what state my printer, espresso machine and crockery will all be in.

But things are starting to fall in place. I've got my brand new bod-card (basically the university card), with a recent (unflatteringly stretched and low resolution) mug shot on it. I managed to score a free bike (yes, legally, I guess it was my lucky day), as well as figure out where I could get decent and cheap cooked food (namely down the road, in Linacre. And hopefully will all be unpacked, settled in, hooked up and ready to go.

That's all for now. I'll post some updates when I can. Remember: for a steady flow of vaguely coherent blogging on my part, don't forget to check out my twitter feed. Be seeing you!

Quick on the fly update

Haven't updated this blog in a while (7 months, to be precise). Loads of deadlines these days, and exams just around the corner, so while my usual self it urging me to procrastinate by doing activities such as this, my rational self knows a bit of self-moderation. In a stunning compromise, I'll settle for posting a quick and dirty update:

• Finishing up Philosophy MLitt. I've been working on mathematical logic and Gödel, and on anti-logicism in philosophy of mathematics. Have also been writing on Qualia (oh joy), which is destroying my mind (and wasting my time, as well as everyone else's, probably). I'll be writing my dissertation over the summer on the topic of revising Poincaré's petitio argument, and linking it to contemporary work in the "mathematics first" school of thought. How Quinean of me...


• I got accepted to Oxford next year, to read Computing at Balliol for at least a year (ending in a MSc). Quite excited about it, although it'll certainly be a different kind of work than what I'm doing now. I don't mind if there's more of it, as long as it's less taxing (and less frustrating, at least part of the time) than what I'm doing now. Also looking forward to being slightly more employable at the end of it.


• Going to the US for a a week, this summer, and also spending a combined total of two weeks in Paris (across two trips) and a week in Geneva for a Metaphysics conference (with, amongst the speakers, Crispin Wright, Kit Fine, Stephen Yablo). Will most definitely be fun, despite my slight aversion to metaphysics.

That's about it for now. Paper due on friday. Three exams in a week and a half, over the course of four days. Work to do...

---

PS. Have updated my philosophy blog too, and plan on updating it a bit more over the summer. Keep checking it (or use RSS) if you're interested.

If you're stalking me, or simply are just that Web 2.0, I'm also posting on twitter now. Will be happy to follow your feed if I know you.