Well, I've bitten the bullet and filed a formal complaint against the University and Lyn Batchelor in particular over the fiasco surrounding and during my final presentation on 26 October. Up until last night, I was prepared to let it drop and perhaps just appeal in February if it became necessary. However, my friend has wisely persuaded me that there's really not much to lose now and that at the very least someone somewhere might read the complaint and take the issues within into account. I'm not sure whether it'll make the slightest bit of difference - universities are renowned for clamming up tight whenever the slightest hint of bad sentiment flows their way, but I'd never know if I didn't at least try.

The basic points of contention are:
1. That I received contradictory sets of instructions from two members of staff on the day of the presentation itself.
2. That the second set of instructions given by Lyn Batchelor came just moments before the presentation began.
3. That this gave me unreasonably short notice to change my prepared presentation plans in order to fit with the new guidelines. The revised guidelines cut my speaking time in half, something of which I had not been forewarned.
4. That several requests for the same guidelines made to Lyn Batchelor and other members of staff throughout the duration of my project at Cornerstone were not honoured.
5. That immediately before the presentation, Lyn Batchelor insinuated that the poster created as part of the assessment criteria was extraneous and therefore that its contents were irrelevant to the presentation. This resulted in my having to duplicate information during the aural delivery, diverting focus from more important issues for which I had previously prepared.
6. That immediately following the presentation, Lyn Batchelor focussed unfairly harshly on just one aspect of the project discussed, detracting from the issues, which I was led to believe, were of higher importance and relevance for marking purposes.
7. That, despite promises both written and verbal to the contrary, Lyn Batchelor failed to present me with acceptable marking guidelines for the presentation session, which would have been used to ensure I delivered a pitch of a standard against which I could benchmark. This left me unknowing as to whether I was delivering something of a high enough quality for this level of assessment.

Today I hand delivered a 3-page letter of complaint to the Registry for onward forwarding to the Academic registrar. Lest it be said that I've disregarded proper protocol, I should add that Lyn Batchelor did make me an offer of an informal chat to discuss the issues above; although at the time, she did not know of my specific concerns. However, as it is apparent that I can no longer trust in her integrity or impartiality, and that the so-called 'impartial observer' she came up with to oversee the meeting was anything but, I decided to invoke the provision stated in the University charter which allows for a complaint to be taken directly to the Registrar on occasions where the complainant feels an informal resolution is not possible or appropriate.

I've proposed the following solutions:
1. That all parties involved in the marking and verification of this assessed work be informed in full of the particulars of my complaint.
2. That I am prepared to re-do the presentation provided a completely impartial observer is present. This person must be impartial to both the course-co-ordinators and myself.
3. That the aural delivery be disregarded as it can no longer be independently judged. No recording was made of the presentation to my knowledge, and thus the poster remains the only tangible piece of work that can be marked fairly.
4. That I be given a complete accounting of the ways in which the final mark for this course is derived, and the individual weights for each component comprising it.
Apparently, I'm supposed to hear back from the University within the next week. But now that it's done, I'm not going to hold my breath and will just wait and see what happens. However, be sure that I'm not going to just let this matter die, and am prepared to do anything and everything necessary to ensure this case is heard and that action is taken to my satisfaction.

Watch this space for more news as this develops.

...because if I don't stop working and take a break I'm going to go certifiably insane. And that would be most inconvenient at a time like this.

Tell me why, for the love of all that is sexy on a summer Sunday, shops are incapable of stating things clearly when it comes to delivery times. I ordered some meds from Chemist Direct, and they said, quite clearly, that orders would be delivered next day if ordered before 1pm, Mon-Fri, excluding weekends and bank holidays. Now I, quite logically I thought, expected an order placed yesterday, i.e Friday, to be delivered today, the next day, i.e Saturday. But does it turn up? Nooooo! I wasted half the bloody day waiting for it before establishing that it's still hanging around Birmingham. Great lot of use it's doing there. So, I decided to go buy the stuff from Boots. Now this shouldn't really take much thought, but by the end of it all you would have thought i was undertaking some major military operation. I have determined that Union Street is in fact dangerous on a Saturday afternoon. It's crowded, people are absolutely incapable of trafficing themselves in a manner which ensures continuous and unobstructed flow in a common direction and there are more weirdos hanging around than at 2am in a Torry back alley. Despite all this, nearly being crushed to death, being sworn at by some 90 year old lady for innocently waiting at a bus stop (was I supposed to wait in the middle of the road and get run over instead?) and generally not getting anywhere very fast, I managed to get my stuff for £4.99, a rip-off compared to the £3.49 on the net but oh well, needs must I suppose. Next time I go out I'm just going to wave the white cane around like one of those Mid-West county cops with their nightsticks and see if that makes anything happen any better. You have been warned.

( Shooting and sales )

The Honours Project grinds on. I had a meeting with Kavita where we discussed the experiments we're going to do regarding human trend detection. No progress on the software, it's still alluding me and I can only think of what Yaji's going to say when I tell him about it. This is exactly the problem I wanted to avoid but the fact is the correlation thing just doesn't make sense to me. And now, another issue is that any further progress I could make means that I must disassemble everything that we've done before, because what little I know about Java means it'll only work that way at the most basic level. Grrrr. The report still seems a distant prospect, although I have somewhat of a half-completed chapter 2 and 3. Thing is, this whole issue about experiments never factored in before, so now there's a lot of stuff I have to write up from scratch that's taking time out of what was previously allocated for the original report plan. Oh, and I'm having constant interruptions with sore toes, freezing damned Raynaud's riddled fingers and repeated headaches from spending so much time at the computer. Take this weekend for instance, I should have got all the report worked on up till now completed as well as my presentation but all I can do is futily wave my fingers around and guzzle painkillers like they're going out of fashion. Gah!

( My poor, poor, analog friend )

Right, I've had as much of a break as I can allow myself, so I'll let the rest of the world keep on living a life whilst I go back to my project of doom.