Graduation

I graduated yesterday! Hats were flung (by other people) and I even made it across the stage in good order. Actually cocky walks across stages are becoming a speciality of mine. For the people curious to see what a nerdy mathematician looks like, see Twitpic. Yes, that person managed to finish a doctorate in Mathematics! Really!

It was a good trip. Squeezing two five hour legs of car travel into two days is a pretty hard thing and my parents and I are all pretty exhausted but I have the certificate and it's never being taken away. It's mine!

Now, one of the most interesting thing about the Graduation trip was the reading I did. I read 'The Thin Man' over the car trip and even a portion of 'Timeline' and the contrast between the two is amazing. The quality of the writing of Hammett is so far above the pulpiness of Crichton that they shouldn't even be in the same medium. I'll write more about them both in coming days but it is surely time to champion Dashiell Hammett again. For every garland Raymond Chandler received, Hammett should have gotten ten but it never happened. He had Communist sympathies allegedly and it was not a good time to believe in anything.

Everyone should go read the complete novels of Dashiell Hammett. Come back when you're done. Trust me, you won't regret it, especially 'The Glass Key'. Despite a previous bad start I've picked up Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' and started another go at that too. Lots of reading.

It's nice to graduate. This is probably the first time that I've truly felt the PhD was over and that it is time to move on to the next thing. There are so many false endings to a doctorate: First submission, viva, and final submission. There is nothing after graduation. It must be over.

<Oliver departs, smiling>

O.