Braaaaaaain

I swear my brain cells are about to crawl out from my ears and abandon me in favour of new pastures. Which would be unfortunate for all involved but at the same time I would completely understand.

In case you haven't guessed (see previous entry for a hint) I am reaching the end of my tether from this dissertation. For those who have written one before, you will understand my pain. That moment when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel...when you know that the end is in sight...when you can look at you calendar and actually see the due date...

And you've still got work to do.

Uhhh Pinkie Pie? I said the party was 'delayed' not 'CANCELLED'!

Yes my friends, I have reached THAT moment. Where I can see the end and it becomes that much harder to actually focus on work because while I am celebrating the fact that I've almost done it, my mind has decided to ignore the 'almost' part and go away on holiday. Why? Just...WHY?

I'm not really worried just yet. I keep thinking about what I've already done and calculating word counts and praying to the Great Muffin in the Sky (too much My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I regret NOTHING!) that I will not only hit the minimum word count (which is looking more and more positive) but that when I eventually send my final draft to my supervisor that I am not told 'Ok, this part is fine but the rest of it make no sense.' This is completely unlikely just now but this is normal for me at this stage.

On an unrelated topic, I thought that some of you might like to see how important and serious we people on my course consider ourselves to be. As the future gatekeepers of Culture and Humanity, we felt it was imperative to share our knowledge and enlightenment with the world.

In keeping with the theme, we are the ponies every pony should know ;)

At this point I hope that some of you will know that I am kidding, but it's still fun to see what we get up to sometimes. Follow the link and while you're there, say 'Hi' to our wonderful video editor who actually made our random video shots look decent!

Hopefully next time, I will actually have intelligent things to say.

Teeter a bit longer

Well, after a few weeks of intense assignments and the stress of getting results back (all students are currently nodding their heads at the screen), I have come to understand and seriously appreciate the sheer volume of work and understanding that goes into printing a book or even getting a company to agree to it. I know I have stated this before, but it is very different between knowing something and understanding it.

Yes, even this comes under copyright.

I give you, for example, one of my latest assignments which involved examining international and domestic copyright legislation. Knowing that copyright exists and is sort of there by no means prepared me for the sheer volume of legislation that has existed since the eighteenth century. Yes, there might be one or two big laws that exist, but the number of Acts or Bills that have been passed to amend (or change) the law because of new developments is staggering.

For example, the Berne Convention is possibly the most widely acceptable piece of international copyright legislation. But not everyone agreed with it at the start and created the Universal Copyright Convention in response. This was amended but ending up more or less being abandoned after the Berne Convention was amended and became linked to the World Trade Organisation. This made it more appealing and therefore more countries became involved. In response, domestic copyright had to be altered in compliance with what this larger law had to say.

Pretty staggering to think of the things that can indirectly affect your life. These laws are the things that allow you to pick up a book and read it in any format, listen and share your music and even watch a film. Yes, not everyone follows these copyright rules but when you take into consideration that you originally had to go and APPLY for copyright rather than it automatically being given to you? That's pretty impressive.

In addition I've been re-teaching myself how to use spreadsheets and 'cost' a fictional book. Once again, I'm amazed by the sheer number of decisions that went into creating it, even with a title I made up! Paper type, jacket design, number of pages, illustrations and whether or not to use colour. The mind boggles.

It does lead me to wonder how people make these decisions every day of their lives.

And even after all that, I still have a marketing report to do. My understanding seems to never stop growing.