ervin’s piece of web

Once again I didn’t blog in a while… In particular I didn’t blog about this year project students even if they got covered once in the commit digest. Now we’re two weeks away from the official end of those projects, so I thought it might be a good idea to show some of their accomplishment.

Kapman

This year we experimented with a project starting from scratch, and apparently we had some demand for a copy of an old famous game… hence why now we have Kapman! It’s kicking and alive, it’s in a pretty good shape already so maybe it’ll be able to enter kdegames in 4.1. Of course it’s all SVG based so you can freely resize it (artists wanted!).

Kscd

We also poked the good old Kscd… Our team made quite a lot of improvements in there. In particular it’s now fully themable using SVG (artists wanted!), and uses MusicBrainz to identify discs. Of course it also got the expected KDE4 refactoring: it got ported to Phonon and Solid.

Ksirk

Ksirk is one of those games we have in playground for quite some time. One of our team has been working on it to improve its quality and make it releasable… It’s definitely getting there. They mainly worked on improving its usability and that shows in my opinion. At least now I feel like I could play with it for hours.

Kopete

Last but not least, this year we got a team working on Kopete. They did an awesome job, it’s harder to demo or to make a screenshot for it, but they mainly focused on integrating support for UPnP and for the new live messenger protocol. On the UI front it looks less impressive, but I’m very proud of this team, they definitely had the hardest project to work on and learned a lot. Since I had no screenshot to offer, here is a picture of today’s “Kopete Gang of Four” who attended the hacking session:

From left to right: Maximilien Verdier, Michel Saliba, Romain Castan, Kevin Kin-Foo.

A few words on the hacking sessions…

Of course, after last year projects we kept the good habit of having KDE Hacking Sessions in Toulouse, we even have now a few people who are coming regularly… the community is definitely growing here. And during the student projects we have an unusual amount of my students showing up.

From left to right: Sylvere Lestang, Kevin Kin-Foo, Romain Castan, Michel Saliba, Maximilien Verdier, Stanislas Krzywda, Anne-Marie Mahfouf.

Missing on the picture: Thibault Normand who arrived later, and Alexis Menard who is unfortunately sick today.

From the 9th to the 14th I’ve been near Mumbai to attend
Pradeepto’s wedding. I didn’t spend time to visit Mumbai itself
and shared all my time between Panvel and New Panvel.

I of course, once again, enjoyed the food… Maybe even a bit
too much, I expect to come back home with some extra weight!
I think it was hard to avoid some of it anyway, during the week of
the wedding you end up with more meals than usual here.

I attended as many rituals as possible for Pradeepto’s wedding.
Indian weddings are much more refined and complex than what we can
find in western countries. You have to get through several rituals
before the wedding, the ritual for the wedding itself is several
hours long, and the day after there’s a few more rituals… At least
that shows an true dedication.

One thing I found interesting is that during the rituals the
atmosphere is less solemn that what we have in western countries.
So that’s an interesting contrast between this particular atmosphere
and the very complex and meaningful ceremonies. The best picture
to show this is our own Pradeepto acting like a geek during the
wedding ceremony:

My only frustration while attending, is that I couldn’t get the
meaning of all the rituals, but I learnt a few interesting things
nonetheless. Also, you have to keep in mind that this was a Bengali
wedding, and depending on the region, weddings can be different in
India (different rituals, more or less people coming, etc.).

So congrats to the new husband and wife:

My defence was today… at last! I got very good feedback about my researches work for the last three years. That’s why I now have a Ph.D. in Computer Science with honors.

I guess my official title now would be “Doctor” in some countries, but it’s definitely unused in France. In any case it’s just nice to see this “complete”. I undertook to work on my research topic for three whole years, hoping to add a small piece to the human knowledge, and I apparently succeeded. It’s a very nice feeling despite all the difficulties along the path. It was definitely worth it.

On another note, that means that I’m now officially unemployed… Well, at least it gives me time to do the stupid amount of paperwork generated by my change of status. We all love bureaucracy, don’t we?

Yesterday was an important day for me. I sent the last draft of my PhD thesis to the official reviewers. That means that the purely scientific work is now done, and most of the editing work is behind me. Now I have to wait a few weeks to get their reports and know if I’ll be allowed to defend (and hopefully get my diploma) or not.

To be honest, I was really looking forward this particular day. Most of the pressure I had because of the PhD is gone, what I need is patience now, which also means I suddenly have more time to spend on KDE. But now, I’m feeling dry. This morning, I managed to get nothing done on KDE. I knew what I should do, I have a few important post-aKademy tasks to do, but I can’t seem to find the energy for them.

Then, today, my morning was a big nothing… Great way to start… How disappointing. So I decided to go for a walk downtown. Took the bus, and had lunch in a small shop. A bottle of water, a veggie sandwich and a chocolate muffin and I was feeling better already. I don’t know why I chose this place, I got there only once I think. The food is not outstanding, but pretty ok… there’s something retro in the place which makes me like the atmosphere.

I kept wandering in the city: store, bookshop, computer shop, another bookshop… This little “waste time” game lasted for a bit more than two hours I think. Then I decided it was enough, and walked to the bus stop. But, I didn’t feel like waiting for the bus, so I kept walking to the next stop. I don’t know if I missed it, but at one point it was feeling easy to skip this one too, and the next one, etc.

Halfway to my home, I suddenly realized I was close to a park and an area I used to spend time when I was much younger. So my feet led me to the park, completely forgetting the bus line… I was back fifteen years ago. Everything was still here, as if it was waiting for me. Of course, it changed too. I felt like someone who was in a coma and was rediscovering the place. And I kept walking in the steps of my younger self, ended up in front of my old school. The front changed a lot, but it’s still here… Too bad it’s closed for the summer, I’d like to see it from inside again. And I kept walking, followed the same path than when I finished my day at school…

This very long and unexpected walk actually led me close to my flat, so I ended up there, finally reaching home. I knew when I moved in this flat that I was moving close to those old memories… But I didn’t realize it until today, walking with no real purpose. It was nice to follow again the steps of my younger self. I’m generally proud of the fact that I kept a child in me, but apparently I lost some of the memories of this child along the path. And now, those memories are back… at last!

The only downside of this walk was that I kept a part of me feeling guilty because I was doing “nothing”. But I think it was worth it, and it’s definitely something I have to do in order to have more energy again for the coming years. I need to enjoy the summer, I want it to be a calm period in my life to prepare a new beginning…

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.

Damn! I didn’t even finish my blogging about the Oslo sprint… so much stuff to do. Well, I’ll probably make another post about it, more focused on the results we obtained regarding Solid and what I learned there (in short: a lot!).

The three weeks which followed were quite exhausting. First just after the Oslo sprint, we still had quite some work to finish the required refactoring in time for the freeze on the 1st May. But we managed to merge the branch, do the work and have it working for the Alpha1. So you’ll get nice Solid and Phonon with kdelibs 4.0 Alpha1. There’s probably a couple of cleanups to do until the 4.0 release, but nothing huge. In my opinion, the APIs matured quite a bit thanks to the trolls expertise. Once again it proves that when you work next to other people next door you can achieve far more in less time. We should really keep in mind that more sprints are good for the project!

After that I spent most of my time on my PhD… My life was the one of a monomaniac: sleep, eat, write, sleep eat write, etc. But now I have issued the first draft of my PhD thesis! Was hard but worth it, there’s only half a chapter missing because I’m waiting for someone else data. That’s just nice to finally see something that looks like a thesis, not a bunch of notes and files scattered on my disks. It’s now in the lab for internal review. When it’ll be done I’ll write the missing bit (hopefully it should be straightforward) and be able to enter the official review process… and maybe get my diploma. That’s still a few months away though, since because of the length of the review process and the summer coming the (potential) diploma won’t be delivered before september or october. Administration takes holidays very seriously here.

And now? Well, I’m going to travel again! Actually I noticed that I’m only spending two or three weeks at home between my trips this year… It’s going to last like this until aKademy. But, the coming trip has something special, I’ll be on the other side of the globe this time, the first time I go that far. I got a paper accepted to AAMAS 2007 and since I’ll attend tomorrow morning I’ll travel to Honolulu by plane.

Since I’m staying longer for obvious reasons, I’ll be back home in two weeks. I don’t know since I’ll probably have trouble having internet access (depends a lot on the conference organisation): see you in two weeks!

I usually don’t write “qotd” posts, but I really had to share this one!

<aseigo> so yes, now you can just mention ovulation and i’ll come a ‘runnin

‘nough said…

Yup, it somehow looks like a famous Green Day song…

Akademy has come and passed
Ten days has gone so fast
Wake me up when october ends

Back in office again
Falling from the stars
Drenched in my work again
Becoming who we are

As my memory rests
But never forgets what I lost
Wake me up when october ends

Akademy has come and passed
Ten days has gone so fast
Wake me up when october ends
Wake me up when october ends
Wake me up when october ends

This lame attempt at borrowing a song lyrics for my own blog comes from the fact that october is exhausting here… I’ve basically been unable to do anything useful in the free software land since the end of aKademy. Too much work both on the research and teaching front. But it seems I survived once again.

Hopefully starting this week-end my schedule will slowly come back to it’s normal state, so I’ll have some spare time to spend. I already sent a bunch of patches for HAL and committed some code into Solid. It feels good to be able to work on this again!

Today I received this:

Thank you Google.

I’m glad this t-shirt arrived safely, since I never received the 2005 edition… That said I prefer the logo of this year t-shirt. That’s always a good thing to get one more geek t-shirt in your collection.