(Old picture, and I look a bit weird — but Justyna likes this picture)

Because Justyna is Polish we will probably do two weddings. The civil wedding end of November (hopefully) in Schiedam (the Netherlands, where we live) and the church wedding maybe in June next year in Koszalin, Poland (where Justyna is from).

We’re very happy

She got an iPod nano 4GB with a “cute” pink leather “jacket”. Great. When we got home we set it up. It’s always fun to see how people who are not that much involved in IT that much see things and what they notice. Of course the setup went smooth, you can leave that to Apple. What disturbed her, however, was Apple’s pushing of (1) registering her iPod which included giving her name, address, phone number and work industry and after that (2) pushing her to get a iTunes Music Store account, which means more information plus yet another user name and password. Even though she will most probably never buy any song there. Or, as she put it, “I don’t want a stupid Apple ID!”

We decided to break off the registration procedure. But now, every time you plugin the device, it will ask to register and then, every time you plug in the device, you have to click “Later”. We’ll see how long she will be able to resist.

For the past week now I see this every so often. Kind of annoying, especially when there’s an email you want to read. The “basic HTML view” usually works though, but it’s not the same.

Anyway, I’m back in OS X now. Parallels works again with networking and I’m compiling my stuff inside a virtual machine. It’s not perfect, but it works. The reason for the switch back to Mac OS X was that it was easier to get my new 24″ Dell screen and new Mighty Mouse to work there. I have an extended desktop now. One laptop screen (13″ 1280×800) and a 24″ TFT monitor (24″ 1900×1200). It’s amazing. So much more room for my Emacs

(Click for larger version)

The wireless mighty mouse I got is ok. I have to get used to it a bit. The scrolling works nicely, I can left- and right-click now. The buttons on the side (the squeezing) is something I don’t use. You really have to squeeze for it to respond. But all in all, it’s not as bad as I heard people say.

Then I started to read in my Google Reader and I found this. I guess it was my sixth sense at work.

You can give it a try for free here: Armagetron Advanced website. Recommended!

There’s quite a few interesting people walking around here. Yesterday I had a chat with Scott Blum of Google, who works on GWT (Google Web Toolkit) and gave an implementation on their Java to Javascript compiler and all the optimizations they are doing there. We talked, among other things, about why Google develops a framework to basically make it easier to compete with them. The reason for that is that Google wants to convince more companies and people to build web applications, when companies do that (hopefully using GWT and a slew of Google tools, like the Google APIs) the playing field is leveled. Which application is used no longer depends on who gets the best software distribution deals, like which software is pre-installed on Dell desktops, but instead everybody gets a fair shot at getting using them — on the web. That also means that it is easier for Google, or anybody else, to compete.

GWT is not something that was developed in-house, originally. It was developed by a company that already worked on Java to Javascript compilation and AJAX before Google Maps and the AJAX term was coined. Quickly thereafter the company was bought into Google and now they’re working with about 14 people (if I remember correctly) on it in Atlanta. GWT is not currently used for any of the big products that they run, but it is considered for some new projects and some projects are actually being developed with it now. The focus, however, for the GWT team has been mostly at advocating it to the outside world rather than to Google internally.

I find the GWT project very interesting. They do a lot of the annoying, difficult work that you would otherwise have to do yourself. The Java to Javascript compiler is quite amazing, they do a lot of clever optimizations that can make your Javascript code a lot smaller than it would otherwise be (for example by removing all classes and methods and other pieces of code from libraries that are not used).

Throughout this time I’ve also spent quite some time looking at places for rent in the west of the country. It’s amazing how much time you can spend on that.

However, my phone — a Motorola PEBL U6 — has been branded by T-Mobile, my current mobile provider. That means the logo is everywhere, including a nice “T-Zones” option in the middle of my main menu. That’s kinda annoying, especially if, for example, I would switch to Vodafone or some other company. So this morning I decided to look into flashing my phone. I heard the term before, I roughly had an idea what it was, but had never done it.

Now flashing (or reflashing), it turns out, is like reformatting your harddrive and reinstalling your OS. Except it’s faster, it only takes a few minutes. I’m on a Mac so all the Windows flashing software does not really work. But I found out there’s a nice Motorola on Mac flashing tutorial available. I found a recent flash file for my phone and flashed it, except nothing appeared to have happened when it was done. All the logos were still there. It turned I had just updated the software. If I wanted to replace the rest too (menus, sounds and all that stuff) I had to use something called an MP — a Monster Pack. I downloaded one and installed it and every looked, well, let’s say different. The background was moving like some kind of 3D shooter. The fonts looked crazy, the menu was completely different and I had a different set of applications available now. Not what I wanted, but we were getting somewhere.

What I feared might happen, happened trying the next MP: the phone did no longer boot. The screen just remained black. Luckily I was able to get back to the booter by holding * and # simultaneously while starting the phone and I could install another MP. After a few tries I found the default unbranded Motorola PEBL flash file, which is now running on my phone. Everything seems to work fine, I have no T-Mobile stuff in there anymore.

All this did take me the whole morning and a bit of my afternoon however, but the result is that I have now pimped my phone. I’m a regular sir pimpalot.

I started looking around in the country to see if there were any interesting projects going on. Then I found this. And it reminded me of what I posted almost 2.5 years ago in The Importance of Laziness:

This is what I’m passionate about: being lazy, err, tools that make developers more productive. I like playing with them, promoting them and creating them. It’s what I want to do. Not only tools, but also development paradigms and everything that improves the development experience, getting rid of the boring stuff and reducing it to the essentials.

That’s why I like languages like Python and C#. That’s why I like IDEs like Eclipse and Visual Studio. That’s why I like paradigms like object oriented programming and code generation. That’s why I like application frameworks like ASP.NET and Ruby On Rails (which I’ll be looking into soon).

When I get my master(s), we’ll see where I can work on stuff like that. Having programmers only working one hour per day, yet doing the same amount of work they did in a day before, that’s my goal.

When I read the research project’s full project plan I found this:

The aim in development is to produce a high-quality system with the least possible effort. The aim in maintenance is to apply improvements and extensions with the least possible effort.

When you set your goals so much in line with what I wrote about 2.5 years ago, how could I not apply for this position? So I did. And they were interested and invited me for a day of interviews American style.

Yesterday morning I got up at 5.30 in the morning, took two trains and two busses and arrived at the TU Delft around 11. First I did an (almost) hour long presentation for their group (slides in PDF, 14 MB) about my M.Sc. dissertation project, I think it went well. They had some valid remarks.

After lunch I had interviews with four of their group members. First the project leader Eelco Visser, then the professor, Arie van Deursen, then two of the current Ph.D. students: Martin Bravenboer and Ali Mesbah. They all turned out to be really great people working on interesting projects. At the end of the day I was offered the job. This morning I accepted.

So, starting September 1st I will be a Ph.D. student at the TU Delft! I’m very excited and looking forward to it. I will have to move of course, so I have to find a place to live somewhere around there for me and Justyna, but I’m sure it will be fine.

If you think: hey, that is really interesting, I would want to do something like that, maybe you can. If you have a M.Sc. in computer science and interested in this have a look at this page. They are still looking for one or two PhDs and a PostDoc. So if you have your Ph.D. already you can also apply. You will be working closely with a great group of people, among who will be… me. And honestly, who wouldn’t want to work with me

I am not quitting my English studies yet though. I intend to more-or-less finish this year. I probably won’t take all classes (I also teach myself this semester which takes time), but I’m still studying.

I have exams coming up, three of them during the second half of January, so that’s next week already. Don’t like exams. Never did. Never will. The computer science exams were always about understanding thing, applying things, insight into the materials. Now that I study English I find it’s different. You don’t have to understand much, you have to know much. I’m studying literature now and basically I should roughly know what the texts we read are about, who the characters are, the turning points and such things. Then there’s a bunch of terminology that we’re supposed to be able to use. Using terminology correctly is actually a goal of the course, in computer science that was only a side-effect. We never had “what would you call it if …” questions.

This month my new job also starts. I’m teaching! Well, in a way. I’m teaching the International Software Engineering Project as given to computer science students in their third year of studies here in Groningen. I helped with this course two years ago as a student-assistant, this time I actually “teach”/supervise the course, together with somebody else (who has been teaching this course for the past years). And I get paid as a computer science graduate for once, not a student. Not that the student-assistant pay was bad, but this is better.

For the past weeks I’ve been secretly working on a little project. Believe it or not, a programming project. Yes, for the past weeks, that’s the longest I’ve spent on any hobby programming project since years. A good sign! I won’t be telling you what it is yet, but I’m pretty excited about it. It’s simple, yet with almost infinite possibility it seems. The more I think about it, the more applications of it I see. I’ll tell more when I have something to show.

What are your plans for the new year?