A good weekend

I have just finished a very good weekend.

It started at around 7 am on Friday morning, when I read my private email. There was a message from my doctoral supervisor who wrote "I think the changes you have made have certainly helped the narrative flow of the document. I've added a few comments for you to consider, but I think this is just about 'ready for submission' ... The effort you've put into this document really shows! Well done!". From his feedback, it seemed that all he was asking was for summaries at the end of four chapters. I worked on this on and off during Friday and Saturday, adding a few more paragraphs at the end of those chapters. When I thought that I was done, I took yet another look through the thesis and realised that there was a section missing, something that we had never discussed. The final chapter restates the research questions that were presented at the beginning of the thesis; following them were stated the aims and objectives of the research. Nowhere in the thesis was anything written related to those aims and objectives, so I thought it necessary to add a section (another page) discussing whether the aims and objectives had been realised. I finished this off then uploaded to the supervisor what I hope is the final version, at around 8 pm yesterday evening.

I also did some paying work for some of my clients.

Over the past few days, I have been copy editing a book entitled "E = mc²" by David Bodanis; something went wrong when converting the epub format to mobi (which is what the Kindle wants), so I had to go through the entire book and fix the formatting. I didn't really read the book - I look forward to doing so in the next few days - but one part captured my interest, about an astronomer called Cecilia Payne, who in 1925 concluded in her doctoral thesis that the sun is about 75% hydrogen, and not iron as was previously thought. The scientific world ignored her until someone else (a man) arrived at the same conclusion. Her findings were ignored because she was a woman. While I was reading my own thesis, somewhere in the methodology chapter, I mentioned her in a footnote when I was writing about how the identity of the researcher should not make any difference in the exact sciences.

Yesterday was also my first grand-daughter's 4^th birthday party. The rate of new Covid-19 infections in Israel (outside of the ultra-religious strongholds in Jerusalem and Bnei Barak) has dropped to zero in the past few days, so people are returning slowly to their previous habits. I had my mask on for most of the time and kept a distance from everyone else (no hugging), but I'm pleased that I was able to take part in the party.