Entered on 2001-11-15 at 9:59 a.m..
In search of originality
Coming up with an original idea is hard sometimes. Usually the harder you push it the more it seems to alludes you. I am currently trying to narrow down ideas for an eventual thesis, which involves reading lots and lots of technical papers. Right now I've read about 63 such papers. All right so 10 of them were Aviation Week articles and don't really count.
I find myself going through this cycle of elation / excitement as I read a paper that I think is really good and that I could continue on with where it left off, or apply it in a slightly different way. Then I slip into despair and self doubt when I read a few more papers and find that my ideas have already been done, or when I realize that I have no idea what the author is talking about.
Now when you read a paper and you have no idea what the person is talking about, it is hard not to jump to the conclusion that you are just too stupid to understand it. Yet there are enough things that I have read over the years which lead me to believe that some people could not even write a technical article about making a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich. So it is particularly vexing when you don't understand a paper, to determine if is your fault or the authors.
I find that this happens a lot when people write papers for a conference about a study that took two years and had 10 people working on it full time. What makes them think that they can condense that much work into 10 pages is beyond me. However, it is the only way you'll ever get a proper reference to the real 300+ page report published by some obscure company.
OK enough ranting for today. My father informed me that yesterday I had a particularly horrendous spelling day. I apologize, and I hope everyone was amused.