sigh

I had a depressing talk with my supervisor yesterday. We were trying to see how much more I needed to do on my PhD by seeing how many papers I could write from it as an estimate of whether an examiner would pass it. The problem is, all of the "lets find something new" aspects of my work have given me lots of information - but nothing new. So I have lots to write up, but nothing to really write a good paper on. My paid research work however has a world first paper I have to write up - shame it doesn't count toward the PhD. I'm going to try two more things now, once again, if nothing else they'll give me more to write up - hopefully they'll work well enough though to be the breakthrough.
On an up note I've filed away the just over a foot of papers I had piled up for chapter 5 - so my office is cleaner looking. I've finished the referencing. Now I have to rewrite so someone other than myself can follow the logic of it all. :) . This chapter will be shorter than the last (at about 7000 words instead of 10000) and I may send a copy to Chris to look at. If I'm really good I'll burn him a copy of both of the research chapters I've written.