It took nearly four years from enrolment to graduation, and I'm glad it's finally finished. Doing my PhD was a great experience, and I learned a great deal. It gave me the freedom to conduct research in an area of my choice, without having to be concerned with commercial viability or budget pressures, and gave me the flexibility to work from home, which gave me plenty of time to spend with little Ewan.

I began my postgraduate studies in March, 2001, with very limited knowledge of digital video. I had a basic understanding of image retrieval technologies, and a good knowldege of text retrieval, but there was much to learn. After ferreting around for the first 6 or 9 months, getting up to speed with video coding, video content analysis, and image processing, I finally settled on the topic "Video representations for effective retrieval from large collections" (more detail on my "about" page).

There were a few bumps in the road during that time. In October, 2001, Angie and I were married (finally), which took much preparation, and much of my time. The next October, Ewan was born. Ewan had a hard time (straight to intensive care after birth), and somehow my study didn't seem too important for a while. Then we renovated our house - this took me away from study for a month or so. I was also working 2 days per week the whole time. With all these distractions, I didn't quite scrape in to the magic three years. I submitted my thesis for examination in May, 2004 - a hair under 3 years and 2 months after enrolment.

I received a "Pass subject to specific amendments" in September. After making the required changes, I submitted the final bound copy of my thesis on 10th December. I am now working on publishing the research. One journal article is almost complete, and a second is well on the way.

The graduation ceremony this year was again held at Telstra Dome, where 5600 RMIT students graduated in front of around 25,000 guests in a single event. This included 110 doctoral students in black gowns and silly hats. Though it still left something to be desired, the event was an improvement on the first graduation held at this venue, where I graduated from my undergraduate degree in 2000. The stadium venue is somewhat impersonal, and does not allow much recognition for the graduands (names of undergraduates are not read out, but shown on a screen; doctoral graduates do not have their citations read), but clearly the organisers are attracted by the "big event" feel.

So now it's all over. No more juggling work, family, and study. I'm a free man. It's a strange feeling.