Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Sometime during last week, my thesis advisee passed the hardbound copies of his thesis and his CD to the chairman. I got a chance to scan the CD, and there seem to be some minor changes he made with the software since I last saw it, although at least one feature didn’t work properly when repeatedly requested.

And yes, there was a poster file, although I doubt if it will be presented in any national science or computer science assembly anytime soon.

The source code was also there. The top of the windows proclaimed the software to be named “Heaven Screen”, the application file still had the student’s first name. Too bad he didn’t use his last name to name his software, which would have been appropriate because it’s another word for “star”.

But I finally have a copy of his source code for my own to tweak, and which I also gave to my advisees in Computer Science for them to use in their program as they see fit.

These students also asked for a meeting to talk about their documentation last Friday. It seems they failed their first thesis subject last term because their panelists rejected their paper, or at least parts of the first four chapters that they have written.

It was the first time I’ve seen their paper since helping them with the proposal two terms ago. I told them that if they had shown that to me before they passed it to the panel last term, I myself would have told them to change it.

They used something called the Ishikawa diagram (looks like a fish skeleton) that divided their problem into four stages of need: materials, method, manpower and machines, the bones of the fish.

The panel was okay with what they had written down under materials and method, which were “texts that describe objects and phenomena beyond the ability of the students to imagine”, and “static visual aids that do not properly simulate the motions of the celestial bodies”. But under manpower they had written “unimpressive professors” (“That includes you, sir” the student who was my college batch mate’s younger sister joked) and for machines they gave “defective overhead projectors” and “low-end computers”.

These all had arrows leading to the statement of their main concern (the fish head) “lack of motivation and absorption among the students”.

I told them I agreed with their panel that the last two sub-topics were shallow and not enough for a thesis, and not directly related to their main problem, which itself their software was not really addressing properly.

I suggested to them changing their main problem to “proliferation of misconceptions in astronomical phenomena and resistance of students to study in what they believe is a complicated subject”. Stemming from this I gave them additional specific issues that their software was to address, such as “incorrect depictions of science in movies and other media”.

Got to stop at this point. I’ll finish up on this tomorrow.