Week Ten

Friday 09 December 2011: Readings in Pearce, Latour and Mauss. Admittedly concentration is not all it could be. In effort to regain focus am adopting a ‘new system’ for organisation of notes. Took a moment to respond to a friend’s request for help/advice on writing a museums-related project proposal--happy to do it but worried that I may have hindered more than helped. I woke up to find that my Twitter layout is ‘new’ and was at first worried that it was still hacked but have since discovered that admin seems to be automatically placing some of the accounts on the new profile style.

Thursday 08 December 2011: Polishing and publication of write-up to ‘The Attic’ of journal report for Dr. Albeti’s seminar visit. My Twitter and Facebook accounts seem to have been secured.

Wednesday 07 December 2011: Was informed today of paternal grandmother’s death at 4AM this morning. Attended Brown Bag Seminar with Dr. Sam Alberti on the subject of medical museums. Drafted the report for 'The Attic' about the seminar and sent the draft to certify some of the facts with Dr. Alberti. In addition to all other complications, online Twitter account appears to have been hacked; Twitter administration is ‘sorting’ the situation.

Tuesday 06 December 2011: Found possible angle/avenue for support of thesis of ‘gift’ as inherent to certain types of objects.

Monday 05 December 2011: Readings in Pearce, Latour and Mauss. Descriptive diagramming of possible convergence of spatial contingency and cultural interpretation towards the agency of objects (or again, perceived agency of objects . . . though am attempting to show that there is inherent agency within some objects; mono-mythic, objects-of-agency condition blended with popular media, resulting in the creation of a sort of ‘meta museum object’). Am allowing this problem ‘to rest’ while I return to the main subject of display dynamics as gift exchange.

Weekend: Research at home--review of online resources. Scheduling for monitor readings. On Saturday a number of us from research went on a ‘Museum Crawl’ hosted by Dr. Amy Barnes. After an invigorating day, we adjourned to a lovely dinner at Shivalli’s to ‘debrief’. This was absolutely essential to the well-being of the more sensitive among the PhD candidates after having discovered the infamous ‘Tiger Snuffbox’.

Week Nine

Friday 02 December 2011: Readings in Pearce, Latour and Mauss.

Thursday 01 December 2011: Library research study day; primarily Pearce, Latour and Mauss.

Wednesday 30 November 2011: Library research and Brown Bag Seminar with Kate Hill about ‘York Castle Museum’.

Tuesday 29 November 2011: Supervision meeting with Sandra. Went up to main campus to request appropriate letters of student exemption for council tax forms. Sandra sent out an inquiry to the general PhD community regarding:

Media coverage for Arts and Humanities Research Council funding. The precise criteria was along the lines of did anyone have a ready example of:

1. Media (presume news coverage, video, social media . . . blogs too?) coverage

of

2. Student projects: funded by AHRC but NOT with collaborative doctoral award

and with

3. NO external partner.

I personally was not able to come up with much and I don't think it was a matter of not looking in the 'right' places. I believe this criteria describes a currently unusual circumstance.

There are case studies listed at the AHRC for small grants that appear to meet the specified criteria in some cases. Most of the cases I found that seem to meet the criteria have not been reported in mainstream media or documented in video. Additionally, many of the reports I have found reported by the AHRC itself or are published by the researcher in the form of a personal blog.

In cases where there is a collaborator such as the BBC, a commercial, media-savvy collaborator or major institution, I observe that there some news reports (Royal Manuscripts research for example). Does this suggest that we in research are not the best at marketing or publicity? I'm also wondering if the economic climate means that collaboration is more the norm, as well as 'trusting' university-based _project groups_ that have professorial leadership? I was sorry not to have be able to contribute to Tallack's research.

I was also informed just before midnight of a bereavement: my godmother Nancy Hall.

Monday 28 November 2011: Preparation for supervision and ‘reconnoitering’ of general objectives. Reviewed current resources and updated the comprehensive annotated bibliography. There are still quite a few resources that I haven’t properly explicated. I need to set more focussed time aside to distill and properly cite quotes (and arguments) for future use.

Weekend: Research at home--review of online resources. Scheduling for monitor readings.

Copasetic?

Twitter got back to me quite suddenly and swiftly. Everything seems to be okay now. I am very grateful for that.

Breaking Radio Silence for a Moment While Missing the More Tenuous Connectedness of Things.

This is a test of the KEBS; this is only a test . . .

There was a time that the Gmail account was the Gmail account, Twitter was Twitter, Facebook was Facebook, Youtube was Youtube. Now with the 'ease' of 'associated' accounts--such as Gmail with Youtube, it's 'one stop log on' . . . except of course, if for example the Youtube you favour is not associated with the Gmail account you favour. There is also this tricky business of passwords. If you change a password for one account it would appear you might be changing for another account. Not very convenient. Sometime simplification actually complicates things. Right now, I can't sign into my Twitter account because it won't accept the information that I KNOW is the right information. Under the circumstances it may be a glitch, or the account may have been hacked or perhaps, I myself don't understand what is associated with what (in terms of account apps and passwords; I may have inadvertently changed my password for an associated account without realising it).

The reason I made the password changes at my Twitter is that for some time now, I have felt that at some point, my account had been quietly compromised. I had reports from friends that I was blocking and/or dropping them when I'm quite certain I've never blocked or dropped them. This is the sort of thing that some hacker might do, just because it is annoying and because they can.

Growl.

Moreover, it will be days apparently before this gets sorted. Until then, I am in 'radio silence' mode in-so-far as my Twitter account is concerned. It may sound silly but this is a serious challenge to necessary communications in graduate school. I suppose it does afford me an enforced time period of productivity away from social media networking but I am quite worried about this.

If my account has been hacked, or was previously hacked . . . what was the hacker doing in my name, that I don't know about? It is disconcerting. I'm going to try posting this to Twitter and see if it automatically works (the way my mobile has been working) . . . Then I am going to not post anything at all to twitter until further notice.

Evening Update: updating by mobile did work once, but then did not (work) the next time I tried. It is all disquieting. At least the seminar I went to this afternoon was pleasant.