Yes, there are pending updates on the defense. But for now, I am quite busy and not getting around to them. Intermediate update: Me and Baptiste (with loads of support from Sjouke and the rest of SaToSS, and various other people at Uni.Lu) are trying to do the impossible in 4 days.
So far, it seems we’re succeeding :)
Just so you know: I will be working in England for a short while. I’ll still be reachable via the usual channels though, so no worries :)
As you may have noticed, there has been an unprecedented lack of updates here. Thing is, I was writing this thesis thingy. Well, it’s submitted now, but the fun is only just beginning, so don’t expect much in the way of updates in the coming month. There will be some holidays, some frantic working, and not much space for blogging.
Will let you know what’s going on though. Short short version is in the previous paragraph. Slightly longer: thesis submitted, weighing in at about 175 pages (some more to be added though, will pass 200 probably). Journal publications 3 weeks before the thesis deadline are not necessarily a great idea. :) Although they do have their positive sides :) Vote-ID 2009 is plodding along steadily, submissions are slowly coming in. Holidays are long overdue. Really long overdue. So I’m taking them. Talk to you after them!
Sidenote: lost my login info for the blog, took me a while to straighten that out :)
Things have been going down lately. They seem to be picking up. That is nice. It also inflicts some unavoidable hard decisions. So, right now I am trying to make my mind up on them. Will keep you posted (and might even use less vague terms in the future!)
Pffft… it seems like I’ve been busy lately. Too many things to write down here (and I am still too busy to get report extensively), but some highlights:
Okay, now you’re up to date a bit. See you, and if not before the holiday season: happy holidays!
I just found out that I am in Luxembourg because…
That is rather disconcerting. Which, incidentally (Saša *PEER*), happens not only to be a word, but exactly the word I want to use here.
Yes, from time to time Saša questions my vocabulary. I think so far it has turned out every time I was right. Ghi ghi.
As I was writing: I cannot read. This has brought me to Luxembourg, has gotten me to Greece, made me have cooperations with various people in Europe, all because I cannot read. You know, I am actually having all these ideas on what to put in my thesis. All originating from the fact that I cannot read.
This was definitely the worst misreading in my life. Ever. Took me only three years to find out. I’m just lucky there are no consequences to this misreading. :)
As I am keeping an eye on Maren’s bread baking machine while she is in Canada, I am sometimes experimenting with it. First trial was hilarious: I figured I’d like some fresh bread in the morning, and as I had to be at a conference in my home, the bread need not be finished until 20 minutes before the first talk. That did not begin too early, so fresh bread seemed a good idea — hence I set the machine to have bread finished at roughly 8am.
Miscalculation. Fresh bread is nice, but the machine takes about 3.5 hours to prepare it… and it is noisy. So now it was time for attempt 2. And the second problem I’ve discovered too: 3.5 hours is long. It’s close to 11 now, and I will not have my fresh bread for another hour… :(
Well, that underlines that really, the only possibility is to move the machine when it is operating. Which sucks, as I don’t have an easily accessible non-public location… (well, could put it in my office, but that would be pushing it, and would mean breakfast at work… hey… that might actually be an idea… ;-)
What I did want to confer, is that I also ran a bit to kill the time (and to exercise a bit, of course). Killing time is actually a powerful motivator. I felt like returning home quite often, but a glance at my watch told me roughly how long I would then have to waste time before fresh bread (which gives rise to the nice acronym and measure of time TTWBFB), and hence I ran on. In the end, I crossed the one hour limit, which was the rough idea I had in mind. I need to do this more often, but for today, I have other plans. To shed some light:
So, for now, this seems like a dead end. [Edit: or does it?? Patch existing, developer has provided some updates too, compilation woes might be addressable??? [Edit2: oops, I might have been trying the version not suited to my kernel…]] Perhaps the zd1211rw driver will eventually support this feature, but I couldn’t find a timeline, or plans, or any indication for doing so. Actually, the development seems more oriented towards supporting “Mesh Mode”, whatever that may be :)
So the next step is to do the obvious (isn’t it always?): I have a laptop with a wired connection to the internet, and a wireless port. So now to find out how to let that act as an access point. Funny thing is, there are some different suggestions out there, some suggesting bridge-controls, and others not. More investigation needed here.
(though it is good to have a log of my attempts so far — even if no one else reads this, I can find this back and re-realise what is a good idea and what is not. Hence the lengthy explanation / side track in this post.)
Lengthier post than anticipated… if this is the general result of me trying a hand at having fresh bread, I might do this more often ;) But now it is off to the shower for me, and then only another … 25 minutes till breakfast / brunch!!
Recently, several people told me they read this blog. *BLUSH*! Anyway, here is a short update to keep all you faithful readers up to date on current affairs. Apologies for the layout, don’t have time to do this in a nice fashion.
House:
Furthermore:
I just spend the weekend in Cologne (with M., it was a very pleasant weekend). Learned one important thing: book train tickets for Germany at least 3 days in advance. Savings can run up to 50% — 62.5% if you have a discount card. And, that sort of savings is needed for reasonably priced train travel in Germany.
Also weird: in Cologne we ran once again into this German juggler, who has pink highlights in his dark hair (Ward: do you know this guy? Will try to get a better description). Last time we had seen him was in Trier (nice city, Baptiste is living there now), where he was doing his show. Once again, his show involved a lot of noise and little juggling.
Okay, enough updates, back to the 2 deadlines this week (Nuovo (done) and DRM reviews (done)) and the three deadlines next week (proposal: work, BFR report: work work, WOTE2008: WORK WORK WORK).
For the love of God: WHY is the world inhabited by so many incompetent people?! You know, it is not that hard to achieve mediocrity. Millions of people do it daily, so why am I confronted with people who can’t?!?!
Finally (although rather late), Dutch universities will require some teaching qualifications of their teachers. The situation used to be such, that to be a teacher in the Netherlands, you needed a special diploma. Different ones for teaching toddlers (4-6 year olds), for primary school (6-12), and a variety for highschool depending on the level and the age group of the children (12-16/18). But then, to teach university students — incidentally, the highest education you can partake in in the Netherlands — no educational qualifications were required. Teaching is / was a duty bestowed on the University research personnel. Now arguments can be made for such a situation, but case in point is that even someone teaching toddlers has/had to have vastly superior educational qualification than those teaching the pinnacle of our society.
Now the rectores magnifici of the Dutch universities have signed an agreement on this. There will be a 200 hour study program which results in a “BKO” certificate. And apparently, they want to create possibilities for excellent teachers to further their careers — unheard of, so far the only way up at a university is research. Interesting times ahead, but all in all I am at least glad that we will have some teaching requirements for those who teach our finest.
Currently playing: Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, New Super Mario Bros (the minigames).