FORE! and a half

Today I went to play golf at Bruntsfield Links. I was thinking I'd actually learn how to play, but the friends I met up with didn't really have any technique either. It was a fun time in any case with beautiful sunny weather. AND! I managed in the course of 18 holes to hit both Nick and a passing bicyclist.

The morning was spent at the farmers market on Castle Terrace with my flatmate Ashley. The food there was really high quality and you pay for what you get, so it'll be my source for little treats like fancy farmhouse cheese and homemade chutney. And you can't beat the location- on the west side of the castle, looking way up the cliff to the fortifications.

Yesterday evening was spent at a meet-and-greet at the Library Bar with some of the people from my department. It was kind of weird sharing a pint with both my professor and with a bunch of new grad students who were mostly The Boy's (my younger brother's) age- I felt kind of old. Nice younguns, though- Dave from Yorkshire made me laugh so much my face hurt.

Classes aren't too scary yet, though we'll see how I feel about them next week. The spatial analysis class seems to have a lot of statistics involved so I've gone and bought a crazy- expensive spatial stats book to try to get myself up to speed... in less than 4 weeks. This first block of classes may well be my busiest so I haven't been trying yet to find a job, but I suppose I should get crackin' on that, too. The funniest thing (in the saddest way) is that in the introductions to half my classes I was told that at the end of all this I'd be a GIS analyst and not just a technician, the latter of which 'doesn't really require any skill' .... 'could be done be anyone'....'only requires pushing buttons and not really any thought'.....etc, etc.

As far as my thesis goes, I've started poring over historical GIS and Scottish history books. My latest ideas would be to do something on the impact of the Highland Land Law Reform Association, a project which would have the advantage of having similarities to the historic land use and agrarian radicalism studies that I've done before. The weakness here is that I don't know what the "something" I would do would be. The other idea would be to see if I could get a historic map of some important battle like Prestonpans or Culloden, georeference and rubber sheet it to the modern landscape and then play around with buffers and surface modeling to see what each side was up against. I have this one better thought out in some ways, and it would give me an opportunity to use the skills that I'll be gaining in my classes. But then what am I trying to prove with all this? Aside from that, if I studied anything larger than a skirmish things would get devilishly complicated and I don't know if I'd be smart enough to pull it off... maybe this would be a doctorate instead.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to go on a little guided archaeology walk in Holyrood Park and then will probably end up in the library reading the on reserve books. I think the library will soon become my second home.