Goodbye Bergen!

And so my 4 year's experience with Norway finished yesterday... At least for some time :) Great time, very nice people and a beautiful country! Definitely a very positive time, full of challenges and new things to learn :)

I hope that the challenge level will be equally high in the new job....

We start packing on Monday already! Moving to Belgium in 13 days!

 

P.S. 5.5 months after the defense I received my official PhD diploma :D right on time!

 

 

 

.

Posted with Blogsy

Defended!

I must admit, because I did not know what to expect, I was expecting the worst: a sequence of questions pointing into weaknesses of my PhD work. And instead I got a very constructive discussion about both, the strong and the weak parts. Plus a very positive atmosphere and a couple of jokes! And the after defence discussion was even better!

Summa summarum - a very enjoyable day !!!

And the feeling of having the 3.5 years process completed - priceless... :D

.

Done!

It feels goooooooood!

.

Posted with Blogsy

Getting ready for the "after PhD life"

+ about 20 books in my Kindle :D

I cannot wait to start reading....

 

 

.

Posted with Blogsy

time to finish...

Even Microsoft Office reminds me that my PhD project lasts for too long...

Time to finish... ;-)


.

Long time no blogging

Hours are short these days. 4 weeks left to the end of my PhD project and I haven't started writing the thesis yet. Other writing is good though... may the force and motivation stay with me!!!

 

 

.

 

Posted with Blogsy

11 weeks left

Ok, 11 weeks of work left to deliver my PhD dissertation. It seems very short considering the amount of work left, but I am glad that it is that short. I want to work from 8.00 to 16.00 again and have time for planning our holidays and weekend trips, for reading fantasy books, watching movies... Ehhh, the last months were too full of work and even if I like what I do... I am veeeeery tired...

The good news is: in two weeks me and drTBBE take off to Melbourne for a conference and stay there for two weeks holidays afterwards :D

But I have still 2 weeks to go, I better go back to work now...


.



.

Paper publishing madness

I already got frustrated several times since I am trying to get things written and published. It is always somewhat better to know that I am not the only one who get weird comments from the reviewers.

Check this out: "Bastard Reviewer from Hell" some are really good! :D

And generally I really like the idea of making reviews public: read more here


Ehhh, I better go back to my papers...



.

Denmark, WE are coming!!

Ufff, It looks like there should be no major problems for me to move to Denmark and to do teleworking !!!

Of course I will come to Bergen regularly for a couple of days but overall me and drTBBE will not have to live separately at all :-] Well, ok, maybe a bit in the 'transition period' but by the end of the year latest our removal procedure should be completed...


Lucky us!!! I am very happy to have such understanding and flexible supervisors!

Happy PhD student is a efficient PhD student :-]

There are some darker sides of the story as well: I will miss my colleagues and probably struggle against feeling of isolation:

but let's give it a try!!!

Project "Denmark" has been officially kicked-off!!!






.

"Lite" version

Well, my paper, as it is now, is more like "Lite beta version" - veeeery short :-/
Deadline: the 8th of July
No inspiration or creative vein whatsoever... That makes me feel lazy and guilty!

But I really enjoyed a BBQ with friends yesterday :-)


.

size matters :-)

drTBBE picked up his official PhD diploma from the University a couple of day ago.
Honestly, I have never imagined how a PhD diploma looks like. But even if I did, I would never think of something that large!!!
A3 format!!! - obviously size matters :-D

My little MSc. diploma (brownish) and drTBBE's PhD diploma (black, A3 format).




.

Friday full of surprises

Last Friday was full of surprises. Fortunately most of them were positive:

• after 3.5hours of sleep Friday morning was even more chaotic and stressful then we expected, 
• regardless of the stress level TBBE was more fluent in his presentation than during all the practice speeches,
• playing a role of the interpreter for S. I was allowed to attend the debate and voting of the university  scientific board (normally only for the board members) after the TBBE presentation,
• the board's enthusiasm about his work was even larger than in the public part of the defence so TBBE received his PhD degree with a distinction :-)
• the lunch with the board members was less stiff and official than expected,
• only little hangover on Saturday morning :-)

Without surprises:

• good time with S.,
• S. paid 50PLN instead of 25PLN for a taxi to the airport only because he doesn't speak polish,
• good party on Friday evening,
• drTBBE charged his batteries :-D and is very similar again to the good old relaxed TBBE!

.

TBBE, PhD !

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

Dobra robota, Panie Doktorze!

You owe me a beer!!! :-)

Warszawa is greeting the new doctor :-)

P.S. For those who do not recognize this building (an example of an architectural style called: cold brutalism :-), that is Palac Kultury i Nauki in Warszawa.

.

one day to go!

Oh yes, I can already see it:

original image

:-]



.

2nd snow

It started to snow (second snow this winter) just when I was coming back from the airport.

TBBE is already in Poland, getting ready for the final defence :-) and I am flying there in 2 days.

This is how I feel about that:

The big plan is to spend a lot of time with my family and celebrate the 3 new symbols (Dr.) in front of the 'TBBE'. I guess it has been a long time since I was last so happy about flying home...

Coming back to the snow: I hope it will stay like that! Since there is only a couple of centimetres of the white powder it is still possible to walk (forget about people de-snowing side walks next to their houses!)  and the city looks pretty nice :-)
I guess I start to feel the Christmas spirit already...

.

uufffffff :-)

On the 10th of December, around 10:30 TBBE should become PhDTBBE :-)

All needed plane tickets bought, all the plans rearranged... uffff...


a very good end of the week :-)


.

even closer now ...

The most promising PhD candidate that I know have just passed the last exam!!!!

On Friday we will know the exact date of the defence !

Happy! Very happy :-)

.

from Venus and Mars part 1.

Finally a veeeery lazy weekend :-)
Yesterday I finished reading "The girl who played with fire" by Stieg Larsson :-) Something to recommend!
and have just started to listen to (audiobook) the last part of the trilogy about Millenium.
This made my one hour walk in rain much more pleasuring :-)

Anyway, TBBE sent me this interesting and quite funny (if you take it as funny) advertisement (from Mars) when he was pretending that he was studying for the exams :-)


and I found this very strong, maybe too strong, riposte (from Venus):



BTW: TBBE has two out of the three final exams tomorrow - cross your fingers!



.



.

Volume raycaster

Writing (C++ with QT) this volume raycaster took about 1,5-2 months of my life. Not only in the working hours... 

It was a part of the course assignment on the Visualisation course that I take now. Very interesting stuff I must say :-)

Below you will find a couple of visualisations of the computer tomography (CT) data:

Direct volume rendering (DVR) with a 1D transfer function.

DVR with another 1D transfer function.

DVR with diffuse and specular shading (Phong).

DVR with diffuse and specular shading (Phong).

and my favourite - terminator look :-)

Considering the fact that this is the first application with a GUI (graphical user interface) in my short 'career' of  a beginner C++ programmer - I really like the results :-)

.

Programming...

The picture below describes perfectly my last days: 

Pretty sad, isn't it? Things like: "rotations using quaternions" and "gradient dependent opacity attenuation" consumed most of my time and energy in the last weeks.
Sometimes I ask myself: why on Earth I am doing that? Who cares? I guess these are the most frequently asked questions among the PhD students... but has anyone found the answer yet?

TBBE has gone to our favourite 'southern' country for the next 3 weeks to pass the final exams before the defence of his PhD. Our flat is incredibly empty now and even the weather forecast looks more horrible than usually...
Ehhh, it might be the right time to dig out my Energy Lamp and see if it works at all  :-)



.