Yeah, That's . . . Really Not OK, Computer
Posted 2 August 2008 in Writing by Catriona
Basically, I’d written an extremely ranty—but eloquent and amusing—post about the fact that Microsoft Word all but destroyed my sanity this afternoon, causing me to waste five hours on what turned out to be thoroughly wasted time.
And then things just became worse, since the computer insisted, when I tried to save the draft, that I wasn’t connected to the Internet, and the entire thing disappeared into the ether.
(Still, I suppose it gave me a chance to make a bad pun. It’s also an ignorant pun, since I’ve never actually listened to OK Computer. I mentioned this recently to a friend to whom the album is essentially a religious experience and, even though we were talking via instant messaging he still managed to infuse a distinct sigh into his “Oh, how I envy you!”)
So now I’m even more disappointed by electronic communication.
(It doesn’t help that I’m stuck on Lego Indiana Jones: I managed to leap from a rope to a moving column and across a lake of lava to collect an artifact, but I’ve died over twenty times trying to leap back onto the rope. I may never be able to leap on to the rope, but then I’ll be stuck on this level for ever. A dilemma, but I can’t see my way out of it.)
I don’t have the heart to repeat my rant about the ways in which Microsoft Word attempted to drive me either into Bedlam or into an early grave, but it comes down to this: once I had finally compiled my three appendices (which alone took well over a year to put together) into a single Word document—with a view to converting them to the university-specific PDF format, sending them to the Graduate School, and having the degree conferred—Word suddenly had a conniption.
Apparently, the file was too large for Word to handle.
It seemed to feel that this could best be dealt with by taking the third appendix—my pride and joy, in its way—deleting fully half of the words on each page, and filling the resultant gaps by randomly spacing out the remaining words.
This was after a serious of events including randomly removing my columns and refusing to allow me to insert a page break at the end of a section.
I would wash my hands of the thing altogether, but I really do need to get this PDF sorted out. It’s the only way the Graduate School will accept the thesis.
And so there’s nothing for it but Microsoft Word.
Share your thoughts [7]
1
Tim wrote at Aug 3, 11:37 am
Why can’t you submit the appendices as three separate pdfs?
2
Catriona wrote at Aug 3, 11:40 am
I think I’m going to have to, but my understanding was that they want the thesis as a single PDF. I felt they might stretch a point and allow me two, since it’s a big document and in two volumes anyway, but I wasn’t sure they’d allow four separate files.
It’s a new system, and I’m throughly bewildered by it. I’d rather pay the money at this point and submit three hardback copies, as in the good old days.
3
Tim wrote at Aug 3, 11:44 am
It sounds like a silly requirement, given that most graduands will be using Word or similar software that isn’t well equipped to manage single files that large, or to convert them cleanly into pdf.
4
Catriona wrote at Aug 3, 11:52 am
It probably is rather a silly requirement. I think the conversion to electronic submission is a good one, since it should allow postgraduate research to reach a much greater audience, since it will be readily transferable, rather than being stuck in stacks somewhere. But the file creation is frustrating, and not just for me.
But, then, many Ph.D.s, especially in the Humanities, don’t have the fiddly formatting, large number of images, and large appendices that mine has. (Lots do, and I imagine they’re having the same problems. But lots are simply straightforward manuscripts of 80,000 words, nice and convertible.)
I shudder to think what students in the sciences, with complicated data sets, or in Art History, with necessary images, are having to do to meet these requirements.
5
Tim wrote at Aug 3, 11:58 am
Oh, yes, I agree that electronic submission is a good idea, I just don’t like what I’ve heard about the mechanics of it. Of course, it shouldn’t surprise me that UQ has implemented a poorly thought out process that doesn’t work properly for most of its users.
6
Catriona wrote at Aug 3, 12:06 pm
And we’re the test group, really. If we all have nervous breakdowns trying to get the system to work, maybe then they’ll rethink it.
7
Matthew Smith wrote at Aug 4, 12:32 am
Don’t let those librarians push you around. Hmm let me just trigger the internet alarm they have set up by typing “UQ Library”. There. The library should be doing the heavy lifting when it comes to getting the documents into shape. It is silly to expect academics to also be document conversion experts. The UQ Library (there I said it again) needs to get real if they are indeed expecting you to convert these documents yourself. Also I thought the idea was that the data could be accessed in a number of formats including the original formats so that it can be more easily reused (with respect to copyrights of course). If the appendices are useful as standalone documents then I think they should be retained that way.