I can’t decide whether to spend the next two hours frantically revising or deliberately relaxing. Whatever I do the whole PhD defence will be over soon. By my next blog post, actually.

If I hadn’t been preparing my defence I would currently be legally downloading Norwegian, copyrighted music for free from musikkonline.no. Dagbladet reminds me which bands and songs I might want, and kindly provides direct links. It is, truly, a strange way of […]

Survived part one: I officially passed my trial lecture. There were no questions, just a strange sort of end, but Marie-Laure said afterwards that she liked the golems 🙂 I even had a nice dinner with Lisbeth, Torill, Jesper and Marie-Laure, before […]

Therapy for the anxious young woman about to defend her PhD: Put on all the music that’s ever made you crazy happy, the older the better, the more memories of dancing with girlfriends the better, the more buoyant the words the better. […]

Today’s my trial lecture. At 4.30 pm. Tomorrow’s the actual defence. From 10.15 am till about 2 or 3 pm. Anyone who’s interested is welcome to come and listen; it’s in Auditorium B at Sydneshaugen. In Bergen. In Norway. But you’re not […]

My daughter’s got the flu and can’t go to school. It’s supposed to be my week (I’d worked out the sitter, me picking her up later, her hanging around before the party tomorrow night) and I felt so guilty asking her dad […]

Nearly done with the trial lecture, except the visuals, which may end up being rather minimal. Still working on the twenty minute presentation of the whole thesis, for the actual defence on Tuesday, and the Answers to the Seven Points of Criticism […]

Second Life, There, and other non-game virtual worlds are going to fail because there’s nothing to do there except have sex, writes Greg Costikyan. More or less. This is part of the Great Discussion of what really constitutes a game, which Jesper […]

Urg. My trial lecture is the day after tomorrow. In 45 hours and 15 minutes I’ll be nervously waiting outside the door to Auditorium B with the prodekanus, the opponents and the head of my department. When the hands of our watches […]

The University of Trondheim provides an etiquette guide for the nervous PhD candidate planning his or her defence and surrounding celebrations. They even tell you what to wear: pent formiddagsantrekk for the trial lectures, for instance a light-coloured suit, or a slightly […]