History

I am a one man woman and I work on profit related pay.  I propose and I pay.  I am also M and have been for the last fifteen years although this is going to come to a surprise to many.

This blog is the story of my Ph.D., which was very unusual involving as it did violence and death threats, espionage and mayhem.  It was conducted at Bath University at the Centre for Biomimetic and Natural Technologies in the Department of Mechanical Engineering between the dates of July 2002 and March 2005 and later on this blog from the city of Bath.  The CBNT no longer exists.

It is also the story of discovery and obsession, mental health and drugs.  It may serve as a  warning to some people, those finding themselves in awkward positions and with important choices to make.

My Academic Background

I attended High School in South Africa and obtained a Matriculation Certificate in Maths, Science, Biology, Geography, English and Afrikaans, four A’s and two B’s.  I then attended the University of the Witwatersrand from 1983 to 1988 before de-registering without graduating with a degree.  My highest level of attainment was third year of Mechanical Engineering but I did some more Maths, Computing and Economics.  But I wasn’t attending lectures and that is another story to do with student politics and having a jol.

So when I arrived at Bath University with the goal of finishing my degree, I was disappointed to learn that my credits dating 1988 were just out of date and I would have to start the degree from scratch.

I bit the bullet and enrolled in the September 1998 class at the University of Bath at their 5* Department, 5* being the highest score attainable in the U.K.  I completed a six month industrial project in my third year and finished my Masters in four years, graduating with a 2(1) in Mechanical Engineering in 2002.

Masters Project – 3-D Imaging

For my final year project I was given a C++ compiler, a turntable and a digital camera with which to take still images.  The goal to program the control system and image stacking to create a 3 dimensional image of an object rotated minutely before the lens of the camera.  I was not very successful but learned a lot.  My C++ Isn’t great I freely admit.

This is what I bring to the table.

The Purpose of this Blog

As I say it is to warn but it is also to educated and formulate my thoughts.  You see I am disabled and unemployed and therefore I have no collaborators on this project of mine.  But it festers and I have come up with this as a way of keeping my interest alive, making a site where I can write up my discoveries and have something tangible to present to students.  I have not had reasonable contact with the University of Bath, sitting there on the Hill above the city where I live, since I de-registered and I am forbidden from going onto the site or its residences which speak like a web throughout the city nor am I allowed to talk to its students nor staff.  I have no access to current web based libraries of academic papers.

Intelligent Design and Green Theory

I have been greeted by a lot of resistance during my Ph.D. as I reveal in this blog.  And all the while I was reading ad formulating my own opinions about what I saw about me, in Nature, and whether it was worth copying.

I came to the conclusion that while there are aspects of natural design which are desirous, they do not come down to a God.  Rather they come down to maths and physics.

Further Reading

I got a stack of books from D’Arcy Thomson to Richard Dawkins to Andrew Parker for you to read and I shall be listing them as we go along.

The Truth About my Ph.D

It wasn’t supposed to happen.  It was supposed to require the specification and collection of some exotic specimen somewhere in the world with the £4000 spending money attached to the grant.

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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NOT TO BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORMAT WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR