Weekly Status Update #16: Six Feet Under

It’s that time of the week again, Weekly Status Update-time! This week featuring: Colorful Code editors , camera readies, video recording, a concert I went to that was awesome and a concert I didn’t go to, but that was awesome anyway:

• So, previously I described how I tried out Emacs and failed miserably. One of the reasons I was so eager to try it, is that it just looks pretty. Apparently, you can get other editors to look pretty too quite easily. For Notepad++, you can just go to Settings and then Style Configurator to pick an existing theme (like Zenburn), adjust it or make your own. In PyCharm, my Python IDE weapon of choice, they recently added a really pretty dark theme, Darcula (loving that name). Set it up by going to the settings (ctrl+alt+s), IDE settings, Appearance and pick your favorite theme. In short, everything is pretty and I can sleep soundly again.
• One of the consequences of having work accepted for presentation at a conference is that you get to prepare a camera-ready. This unfortunately has little to do with getting yourself all styled up and ready for your close-up, but more to do with preparing the final versions of your submitted work that will appear in the conference proceedings updated with improvements suggested by the reviewers. This week was the camera-ready deadline for the VIS poster and yesterday I submitted the final poster, two-page summary, images, long video and 30 second fast forward video.
• We had to make new recordings for the 30 second video, but thanks to Cees-Willem Hofstede‘s brilliant acting and editing, I think we have a really awesome one. I can’t show you yet, but here’s a sneak-peek-preview!

  

• On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of going to a concert after work in Tilburg. They managed to put Six Feet Under (a legendary groove death metal band) on their smallest stage. The consequences of this were that the venue was completely packed and hotter than a sauna on a warm summer’s day. Despite these sweaty conditions, it was really cool to see them again and sing along to classics like ‘Feasting on the blood of the insane’, ‘Victim of the paranoid’ and ‘Revenge of the zombie’. Good times were had by all.
• And speaking of concerts… Devin Townsend (of Strapping Young Lad-fame) played Wacken last week and completely rocked it as per usual. I wasn’t at this festival, because I don’t like the bigger, multi-day ones, but man, Devin Townsend definitely demonstrated again that he is the best live performer around. He’s funny, energetic, nerdy, basically everything you could wish for. And wow, that voice! And I quote: ‘My Canadian nipples are hard with your metal fervour!’, ‘There’s so many fucking women, and in metal terms, that means six!’, ‘Are you guys looking forward to the next big band playing? I’m saying that because I lost my place’. He also managed to get a group hug going at some point.  Check out the full show here, if it is relevant to your interests: .

That about sums up my week, I hope you had a good one and your next week will be most excellent as well!