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

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Done!

It feels goooooooood!

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A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper

Have a look here:

When Publishing Gets Tough

I simply love the second last paragraph... :D

P.S. Read the comments below the letter too :-)

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Getting ready for the "after PhD life"

+ about 20 books in my Kindle :D

I cannot wait to start reading....

 

 

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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!!!

 

 

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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...


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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!!!






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"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 :-)


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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!

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one day to go!

Oh yes, I can already see it:

original image

:-]



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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...

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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 :-)


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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 :-)

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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!



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PhDTTBE closer and closer !!!!

TBBE has finally received the two long awaited reviews of his dissertation!!!
And both are very positive :-]

Tratata :-)

And the upgrade from TBBE to PhDTBBE might even come before Christmas !!!






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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  :-)



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field work... in a quarry

It looks like the real Summer arrived for a couple of days also here (temp. up to 26C!!!)

I spent the hottest days of this year in the car (driving to Nordfjorden) and in .... a quarry ...

The field trip was useful - watching another geologist at work running around with his hammer. It is incredible how much history there is behind different rocks/stones....

Red bits are granats :-)
More than 120kg of equipment with us:
Undisturbed silence at the Nordfjorden:

one step closer to TBB(PhD)E

TBBE is finally back :-)

After veeeery long 4 weeks he came back with a huge luggage full of copies of his PhD dissertation and wine :-)

Still 3 exams to pass and the final defence, but looking back all this looks like a peanut, at least for me :-)
If everything goes well, around beginning of September TBBE will become TBB(PhD)E :-)

A bit of animation

I should study for the next week exam from Computer Graphics but instead I cleaned, washed, ironed and even went jogging!!!

Finally this morning I prepared all the books, opened the lecture notes and...

... returned to my laptop and created this animation:

P.S. 20C today in Bergen! It doesn't help when you have to study...

Course assingment

The final presentation of my work on the assignment from the Computer Graphics course :-)
I've spent loooong hours trying to program the application presented below but now I finally know that void is not a name of a very popular function in C++ :-)
Yes, I really thought so...
Anyway, here it is: