Generic PhD stuff¶

Well, I figured I didn't put much of my day-to-day workings online here in my weblog. Conference notes, web-related things I found, some fun stuff: it's all there. But not what I'm regularly doing. As an experiment I'll start writing about it right this instance.

Ok, first a bit of a status update. I'm in my final (=4th) year, my official contract ends the end of september (that's 1.5 week from now). An extension of half a year (asked for it) or 3 months (there's at least money left for that) should keep me and my family fed till I'm finished. Most of the work that still needs to be done is writing (of course) and programming a convincing collection of prototypes.

I've got one job (doing my PhD), but I'm working in two locations: the university and STABU foundation, the first one in Delft, the second in Ede. But that's all going to change next week, as STABU stops their funding at the official end of the contract, so it's back to an all-university operation. Not having to split things between two work locations is going to take some getting used to, but it's probably not a bad idea in this last phase. As my former roommate Hans Schevers got his PhD last june and immediately fled to the far side of the world where he's working with Robin Drogemuller, I'm moving in with Marco this week or the next. That'll be two hours of non-productive furniture moving, but it'll give me a clean, ordered fresh start. Not that my desk was untidy, but still.

Pfff. Had a conference two weeks ago, had to move vanrees.org over to another machine, was sick for a day and probably lazied away for another day. That means two weeks of not doing anything directly visible regarding software or dissertation chapters. Which - rightfully so - landed me an email from my professor (Frits Tolman) who was a tad anxious for my complete and utter silence. With me, such a silence is normally a sign that nothing happens, so a periodic email reminder is greatly appreciated at such a time :-)

Time for some pre-move territory scouting at the university tomorrow. Is the whiteboard any good? What furniture to (re-)use? I want that big filing cabinet for hanging file folders that's standing unused over in my room. Etc.