ervin’s piece of web

Tomorrow is the official opening of the aKademy conference in Glasgow. Once again I’ll be there, and I’m really looking forward to meet the community as usual. I know a few people I appreciate won’t be there this year, I’ll miss them of course.

But this year is a bit special: for the first time I won’t travel alone from Toulouse. Of course, Cyrille left yesterday, but this time I’m travelling with our favorite annma and three of my former students who worked on the KDE projects I organized in my University. It’s a great opportunity for them to meet the community for the first time, and maybe get more involved in the project for a longer period. Some of them already worked on a couple of things apart for the official University projects, and the other ones have already a few ideas they probably want to share.

If you add to that, the great programme, the Edu & School day, the Tutorial day and social events, it’ll be once again a very content rich and friendly conference.

I’m packed, hopefully I forgot nothing. I’ve already a few items on my TODO… And now I’m waiting to get my plane. Looking forward to see you there!

So two weeks ago was my last day in Calgary. Aaron basically explained a lot of stuff already and he’s a much better blogger than I am. That’s why I won’t add much… That said, I’ll keep a particular thought from the day trip in Banff which was truely amazing. The Canadian Rockies are a very specific landscape, the shape of the mountains looked exotic to me. Such a perfect day.

Also, to be fair, Aaron told about a particular chipmunk we met there. No, I don’t have fifty pictures or it, and yes I have twenty pictures of it… So, for the first time, let me introduce in all his glory, and in FullHD(tm), Bob Chipmunk!

My recent life is so unusual to the pattern it had in the last few years: work, hack, sleep, work, hack, sleep, hack, work, sleep… ad nauseam. 2007 has obviously something special, I didn’t envision my life changing so much when I turn 27, but it happened. I’m traveling much more than usual, and it shows on the way I’m looking at the world. It seems smaller than I thought. I guess the trip to Hawaii had something to do with it, it was really different than the places I got before, it’s such a mix of cultures. Really, I think I enjoyed it more for the interesting cultures and the wild nature, than for the stereotyped beaches most people have in mind when you talk about Hawaii.

So after being back at home, I had no time for working on KDE and no time for procrastination either. You probably wonder why I focus that much on procrastination… That’s simply because it’s an important part of the PhD student life (well, at least that’s what most people say). And, I got a nice gift from my friends here, some of them being also PhD students. I got probably the best resource about procrastination and the academic world. For those who don’t know Piled Higher & Deeper it’s the best webcomic about grad students life. When you’re preparing a PhD you have to read it, it makes you laugh a lot… and cry a lot because it pictures really well your current life.

So, what was the reason for not procrastinating, and not working on the changes I planned for yesterday? Basically, because I had only two weeks to prepare the second draft of my PhD thesis, and that consumed most of my time. Why two weeks? why so much time pressure? Well, you probably got it already, I’m travelling again. Tomorrow, I’m leaving for Calgary and visit Aaron… Furious hacking, hiking and working on the final draft of my PhD thesis are on the schedule for this trip.

2007 has obviously something special, I didn’t envision my life changing so much when I turn 27, but I learned something earthshaking (which will justify the title of this post): Travelling has a direct influence on procrastination. If you travel more, procrastination is inhibited.

Unfortunately, it seems it also has a direct impact on your Free Software contributions… But I’m looking forward to the coming trip to confirm or not this point. I hope to prove it wrong.