A day later than usual due to other obligations, but it’s here now: my weekly status update! Slow news week again, so another short one featuring: more D3, summer holidays, good news I cannot talk about yet, family weekends and dealing with rejection.
- Like I mentioned last week, I am playing around with the visualization library D3 (as opposed to the game Diablo III) to make some graph layout prototypes. The learning curve isn’t steep and I am already able to visualize several options to discuss with my supervisors. The existing examples on bl.ocks.org provide an excellent basis to start experimenting from. The 3D part of my work still being in VTK is holding me back from taking this project fully to a web-based solution so far, but I have to admit I am severely tempted.
- It is that time of the year again where many of my co-workers are planning or taking summer holidays. This means quiet times at the office and a closed cafeteria, forcing us to either bring our own lunch, or walk to a different faculty for lunch. This year, even our normal back-up cafeteria, the TU Delft Aula, is closed for renovations and our lunch options are restricted to going either to Industrial Design or Aerospace Engineering. I have taken two weeks off myself starting July 21st , but I’m not going anywhere, just staying at home and taking time off from all the traveling to Delft and being around people 😉
- We got some great news this week, but unfortunately I am sworn to secrecy on it until the 6th of September. It sucks to not be able to share it, but I will tell you when I am allowed 🙂
- I couldn’t write my status update post yesterday, because I was in the Limburg region for a family weekend with my family. It’s really the only region in the Netherlands which doesn’t feature a flat landscape as far as the eye can see, so that is a nice change of pace. There are really two things that annoy me about the Netherlands, the first being the typical completely flat and lifeless landscape and the second being the complete lack of any culinary heritage. A single slice of cheese on dry bread slices with a glass of milk for lunch says it all really. If we have anything tasty or nice here, it is stolen from other cultures.
- Yesterday, after having zero alone time for a while was already exhausting me, I finally got the notification for the VIS Doctoral Colloquium I submitted to. It’s a reject, people! I know I shouldn’t be affected that much, but this still saddens me a bit. I was really looking forward to the opportunity to discuss my project with the expert panel and the timing for this was really perfect. Before you go all, ‘There will be another chance next time’, there probably won’t be one, because next year’s VIS will be too late in my PhD project to go for this. I am giving myself exactly one day to be in a bad mood about this, but after that I am done with the self-pity and complaining ;). ‘Stuck in self-pity’:
What a negative-sounding weekly status update this turned out to be, but I’m still in my 24-hours of crap-mood window while writing this. Sorry, imaginary blog-reading audience, better luck next time 😉 Have a great week!