RC2 done (92/79)

finished reading thru my paper yesterday, changed a few things along the way. i handed out copies to 6 or so proofreaders, so we'll see what they have to say...

more soon!

RC1 finished! (91/78)

well what do you know... so it is possible to write a thesis. who'd have guessed...

i'm all done writing it for the time being. tomorrow i'll read through the whole thing again, probably add a thing or two, maybe modify the odd sentence, but: all in all, i'm done. yay! and ahead of time, too. one of the lessons i learned: figuring out how to set goal so that they are actually achievable.

i'd like to hand out my paper to my team of proofreaders tomorrow, and then give them a week to read through the thing and give me feedback. that would give me a few days to incorporate any changes before handing the paper in on the 9th or the 10th of nov.

germany done! (88/75)

i extended the section on germany a little more today, and - after reading thru it again - concluded that i'll leave it at that for the time being. meaning: i'll finish up summarizing the results of the US-DE comparison and then i'll only have the intro and conclusion left. more soon.

germany done? (88/75)

i'm thru with the first pass of all my material re: germany. later today - or tomorrow at the latest - i'll need to read thru what i've written and decide if everything i want to say is in there. if so, i can move along to the intro and conclusion - like i've been planning to do for days now. more soon...

rounding off germany (86/73)

not quite done with germany yet, but getting there. then i need to rewrite the intro and conclusion, then read the whole thing. next update tomorrow i hope.

progress (84/72)

apologies for not posting since wednesday. simple reason: i needed to get some other work done. but today i focused on my thesis, with the result that i added four more pages. so, i'm now at 84 pages. however, i realized that some people might not include the title page or the "works cited" pages in their calculations. without them i'd be at 72 pages, but i wouldn't see that as a problem. anyway, i still need to get some more material into my paper and rewrite most of the introduction and conclusion. ideally, i'd land under 100 pages for the all-in-all count and over 80 pages for the content-only count. :-)

my current plan sees my paper ready to be proof-read by next sunday. coincidentally, summer time ends on that day, which gives me an extra hour if i'm not mistaken. yay! ;-)

all done (80!)

...or not. but i reached the 80-page mark today, so now i can really concentrate on quality, not quantity - not that i'd ever done anything else. :-) i hope to get done with the first draft by the end of this week or early next week.

p.s.: third post today, that has to be a personal record.

LaTeX + BibTeX + citations MLA-style + website citations (update)

in case anyone's using my mlaurl.bst: i updated the code a little. details follow (copied from the original, updated post)...

update 2005-10-19: updated the mlaurl.bst to allow for a user-defined prefix and suffix. the solution i used earlier didn't work too well with over-long urls. this current version works together with the packages url and hyperref to allow for clickable urls in the resulting pdf document. hyperref also allows you to format the links (color etc.) and to set some pdf options (author etc.). download link

update 2008-11-11: moved download to a different location and updated link

late entry (78)

time flies when you're - hmm - working. i wrote two pages today, but "lost" one due to reformatting. so... two more to go until i reach my minimum. no way i'll finish at 80 though, that much is clear now. today i found some more material i want to use - maybe i should stop doing that. ;-) oh, and speaking of stopping: i shouldn't waste time on playing with latex... but i did, and now the pdf is hyperlinked through and through - meaning that you can click on a footnote to jump there, on a citation to jump to the respective entry in the works cited list, on an entry in the toc to jump to that section, etc. very nice features, but not THAT important when handed in a printed paper, to be honest...

now: time to catch some z's.

turning 3rd base and heading home (75, 77)

forgot to blog yesterday - sorry! i finished page 75 yesterday, and upped the total to 77 pages today. it would be nice to "finish" by this coming thursday - but that might be impossible ("finish" means having a version that i can read over and correct / amend). if not thursday, then at least by sunday. we'll see...

i did decide on a division for the german section (for now):

• State of Blogging in Germany
  
• State of Politics Online
  
• Blogs and Elections
  

i'm finishing up the first two points on that list, so the third one is all that remains really.

i somewhat dislike the fact that the divisions for my two case studies differ, so i'll give that some more thought once i finish this writing phase.

continuing on germany (73)

got three more pages done today. more or less still introductory information to germany. currently i'm not quite clear on how to divide this section up into parts: the division used for the US (blogs as a resource for...: voters, traditional media, campaigns) does not appear to make sense so far. i'll have to give that some more thought. won't keep me from writing though - i can always reshuffle afterwards.

work on germany commenced (70)

i started writing about blogs in germany today, giving a rather brief overview of the general situation of the german blogosphere. tomorrow i'll move on to the topic of blogs & elections in germany.

i reached my 70-page goal today, only 4 days late. it's unlikely i'll write 10 pages within the next three days... but 80 pages by next thursday should be in the cards, i hope.

...and on to germany (68).

i've concluded the chapter on blogs & u.s. elections for now. tomorrow it's full speed ahead with germany then. oh, and it's doubtful that i'll reach the 80 page mark by this coming sunday. ;-)

finishing up US elections (67)

i know i've said this a few days ago, but i'm really almost done with the role of blogs in US elections now. hopefully i'll manage to finish it later today and then move my focus to DE. the current total stands at 67 pages, so a (min) of 13 to go.

it's the final countdown

one month to go!

p.s.: ok, i'll admit it: i cheated and posted this on tuesday for monday. i simply forgot to post yesterday - sorry!

65... only 15 more?

so i'm up to 65 now. kinda missed my goal for this week. ah well. i'm beginning to wonder if i can really write everything i want in 80 pages. more tomorrow.

the perfect storm (64)

slowly rounding up the analysis of blogs in the american elections, it seems. i might stumble across a few more things i'll want to add, but it's feels like it's drawing to a close. then i'll have ample time to elaborate on the state of blogging and elections in germany. quantity-wise i wasn't all that productive today: i'm up to 64 pages now. i honestly don't see me hitting the 70-page deadline tomorrow, so expect that to roll into next week. anyway, enough for the night.

up and down (63)

apart from the fact that i didn't achieve much quantity-wise (63p) today, i feel like it was a successful day. i (finally) managed to rearrange things to my liking in the chapter on weblogs and elections. i hadn't fathomed how difficult it can be to get some sort of order into a 5-page segment... ah well, i managed. though the resulting reduction to 61 pages was annoying. but, i did succeed in raising that up to 63 pages - so all is good. i have a feeling that i'm not really making sense here, so i better head to bed. more tomorrow.

slowly but surely

62 pages now. moved a big chunk from the first into the second part. i should have realized it didn't belong there earlier on. ;-) oh well... overall, sailing's been smoother, but it's going ok at the moment.

just a quick one

i didn't write much today. spent most of the day working (as in: non-uni work) and the evening finishing up yesterday's reshuffling work. more tomorrow...

shuffling paragraphs

not much writing going on today (at least so far - but the night is still young!). instead, i felt the need to restructure the chapter on weblogs and elections yet again. it just didn't feel right, and i had trouble deciding on where to put what.
so... here's my next attempt:

political weblogs and their role in elections

1. resource for the voters


2. resource for the media


3. resource for the campaigns

i'll use this list for the US elections and DE elections, respectively.

to me, this (now) sounds like the straight-forward approach. sure - there will still be overlaps and interactions between the parts. but that's normal...right? :-)

...and now for something completely different: google and sun announced a software collaboration agreement today. rumor has it that we might see a "google office" somewhere in the future. take that, ms! ;-)

3/4 written!

sooo: 60 pages. out of 80. that's 3/4. nice! and i found an interesting twist in the paper i linked to yesterday: apparently online "Influentials [a certain group of people believed to be largely responsible for the decision-making process of the general public] are a great tool for communicating the campaign's message to the media". quite a different stance from joe trippi's vision of the internet enabling bottom-up, grassroots politics. for details, see my paper. ;-)

58, week extended, new material

58 pages now. and the week ends tomorrow, so no problem. why include monday, you ask? tomorrow is a holiday in germany, so this is a long weekend. if the weekend ends on monday, and the weekEND marks the end of the week, then - logically - the week ends on monday! i'll admit, i got lucky this time. but, seeing as there are no more holidays before my due date, i'll only be able to use this excuse once. ah well...

i found an interesting piece which fits into my topic nicely (and potentially a second one):

Putting Online Influentials to Work for Your Campaign

July 2004: Putting Online Influentials to Work for Your Campaign describes the techniques that the Bush campaign and others have adopted to take advantage of the unique characteristics of online political Influentials--their persuasive ability, their political activism and their large social networks.

The Political Consultants' Online Fundraising Primer

June 2004: The success of the 2004 presidential candidates has spurred a revolution in Internet-based fundraising. By introducing an alternative model for raising money that is quick, cheap and easy, the Internet has increased the pool of small donors and holds the promise of lessening candidates' reliance on large contributors. This primer, designed for campaigns, nonprofits and issue advocacy groups, explains how they did it.

56

...and a half, really. :-) time for dinner, then hopefully another page or two.

55

i spent much time the past few days reading up on discussions about science and blogs. interesting stuff... quite heated discussion, at least in germany.

anyway, i managed to hit page 55. that leaves 5 more pages for the weekend... doable? hope so. i *might* let this week end on monday, but i hope it won't come to that.

oh, and sorry about the oh-so-interesting blog post titles lately. the progress reflected in the number of pages is of great importance to me, and seeing it here helps...