boring update

* handed in an essay, hopefully finished with that course now
* no idea when i will know if it passed/ not, wondering if i care.
* i got some new plates/ bowls etc this weekend, they are cool
* as above, but with cutlary. v pretty and lifetime guaranteed!
* made curries yesterday, were good, nom nom nom best nice
* had a cold this weekend, maybe manflu, am kinda tired today, perhaps unrelated
* am now upset about irregular line length, in this post, alas.
* bet this cool effect doesn't even show up when i post this, meh

Stuff

Sooooooooooooooooo

The essay returned, and it was neither as rubbish or as good as expected. It was... mediocre... boring... I deserved it i think, for submitting such a middley essay. I was quite glad they noticed how much i'd made damn sure to stick to what they asked of me... which is why it could have done better - but it was dull and uninspired which is why it could have done worse.

I'm glad for the feedback though, i have a huge feedback gap in my life right now, i think it's cuz i'm used to it, and now it doesn't really happen, so i assume the worst!

Happy news:
Have had a lovely few days of chilling but i think i chilled too much as am cooooooooooold right now :-/ - went to wiv, frinton, clacton, jaywick, ippers, colch - basically a nice explore of ye olde local area.

Jaywick is fascinating, i'd love to work there - I don't think I could live there, I felt terrible looking around like some kind of poverty tourist, but the place in itself is fascinating. Many of the homes there are self-built by the residents and their predecessors. There is a gorgeous section of beach, and limited job opportunities, and just... it's not like the south east of england! Still upon returning home i stumbled upon the blog of a local resident who describes life there in a happy and upbeat way, suggesting it is no different to anywhere else. There are 4000 residents - and many of the houses are said to be uninhabited.

The residents seem to give really shining reviews of the place, despite the lack of amenities, drainage or plumbing. Sun is in the sky, oh why oh why would i wanna be anywhere else? It's sunny and beautiful and close, but *suffers* - I'm not sure it's even classified as deprived, its not even on the map!

It made me think a lot about what i value (the internet! running water!!!) and wonder exactly how we live in a country that can have legitimate debate about restaurants being able to charge for bottled water when they should *have* to give you tapwater by default, when people are basically ignored and left to live in houses they made themselves (but again, would i be as short sighted as to think their lifestyle bad/in need of change when they seem to be perfectly content??)

Too many thoughts, here are some links so you can get some idea of wot i'm chattin bout:

http://lifeinjaywick.blogspot.com/

ignore the idiot comments at the end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxowB9RVYN4http://lifeinjaywick.blogspot.com/

TurnItIn - Part 3

Turnitin Part three.. a beginners guide

DMU have their own guidelines on how to use TurnItIn - Here's the link:
https://vle.dmu.ac.uk/dmu_common/notices/turnitin.html

Time for a users guide/what to expect from it!

I submitted my essay at about 1pm on Friday, I checked it right up until midnight and then went to bed (i'm not that dedicated to the cause!) but in the morning, about 8.30, there was my essay, and next to it was a green box (this is good) and '10%' - I instantly thought both 'phew' and 'well where the hell did it get 10% from!' I wasn't sure about the sensitivity of TurnItIn, i was worried it would be VERY sensitive, and basically accuse me of copying the whole thing, or not at all.

Turns out it's an odd mixture of the two. There were quotes in the essay (it includes quotes :-/) that it picked up, and others that it didn't, the ones that it did, it identified the text or the website they were from, which i was quite impressed with, tho saying that, over 10+ hours, most people could probably do the same thing manually with google... but whatever, this is easier, and i'd much rather go to bed and let a programme do stuff for me.

It might be worth mentioning the typo... someone has put the letter b in 'assignment' but since i can't spell for toffee i quite like this b, and think it adds character to an otherwise boring page.

So enough vague summary and some proper explaining i think:

Here's what it looks like when you get your essay back, my essay doesn't look like black fuzz, i just don't want it plagiarised innit.


Down the left and side is the essay, and it highlights the bits it has found match other documents. On the right hand side, it lists the places it found bits of essay. For example, it picked up on a quote from an online article, and called me up on it. Luckily, it's a properly referenced quote so it can stfu. It also finds some really random things to tell you off about, like the following sentence: (or part of a sentence)

"have a positive effect on the relationships between members of the youth cafe and"

the words in bold were 'similar' to words in another essay, handed in at another university 3 months ago.

this gives me the feeling that as the database of essays submitted grows, the chances of this sort of thing popping up are going to get higher and higher. There are only so many ways to write a sentence. take a sentence from this blog entry and put it into google, it will come up with this blog, but that wont be the only thing it drags up, unless i write something truley fantastic and original. which i probably wont.

Ergh, written loads already, i think i'll have to cover this in 4 posts.

TurnItIn -Part 1

Am currently experimenting with the new 'turnitin' feature of bb. Hopefully this will make no sense whatsoever to most people, cuz this blog entry is for my course peoples only.

TurnItIn is the exciting new plagiarism checking device that universities up and down the country are either using, or thinking of using.

It has the capacity (IRRC) to compare YOUR essay to all sort of other writings, such as
*blackboard posts
*online journal articles
*the content of news websites
*pretty much the whole damned internets
*the books we might have used
*other peoples essays (at any university i think)

It searches for direct matches (outright nasty plagiarism) and similarities, like where you take a sentence straight out of a book and change a couple of words around.

This worries me greatly, as even if you *know* you haven't done this, there are only so many ways you can explain one thing (or not, if the word 'community' is considered...) and you are bound to at some point write something that's been written before. Again, that's something i'll be able to update you on once my essay has come back.

The check takes ages. I've heard it's based on how busy it currently is, but earlier I submitted my TPCD essay on it and I still don't know what it's doing. Hopefully I will know before work!! But anyway there's warning to anyone who thinks they will 'just quickly whack it through TurnItIn' before they post it off... i'd consider leaving it overnight.

Later on i'll post a bit more about my general worries, and what happens if you forget one of these: "

Exciting stuff!