Weekly Status Update #2: Great tits.

It’s time for another Weekly Status Update. This time featuring project meetings, half-way points, Scrum and a webcam feed for a coffee bar featuring great tits 😉

• This week I had a user-committee meeting with the STW (where my project funding comes from). These meetings happen every six months, but this time it was extra special, because at this halfway-point, a decision is made on the continuation of the project. Unfortunately the decision had to be postponed, because several members of our user-committee couldn’t attend the meeting. I’ll have to delay my ‘Champagne for everyone!’-moment just a little while longer.
• Speaking of halfway-points, this month I started the third year of my PhD. Time sure flies when you’re a PhD candidate… I am not too happy about this, because I feel there is still a lot of work to do and precious little time to get it done in. But now is not the time to get overwhelmed of course, if anything it is time to start stepping up my game 😉
• In the interest of games being stepped up, my cool office roomies and I started a Scrum board for our PhD projects. I will write a full blog post on the basics of Scrum and how to apply Scrum in your PhD after I try it out for a little while longer. It is a definite upgrade though, because earlier I went from this:

  

  to this:

  

•  And now for something completely different. If you have a dual (or triple) monitor set-up, I have a suggestion for a nice webcamfeed to display on your second screen. Go forth and check out the Piip-Show. It’s a live show about  life inside a bird feeder decorated as a coffee bar. It features sound too, so it is also great if you enjoy listening to some relaxing nature sounds while you work. It’s really cool to see all the different creatures enjoying some snacks in the bar. I’ve seen magpies, nuthatches, great tits, blue tits, bullfinches, squirrels, woodpeckers and sparrows so far. That’s right, nuthatches, peckers and great tits that are SFW 😉 I hope I can convince you of the awesomeness of the whole thing with these action screencaps I took:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

That about sums up my week, have a great Easter weekend!