Categories
Personal

New Habits: Nine Tactics That Worked For Me

Studies have shown that about 30% to 50% of what we do in a day can be called habitual. However, adopting new habits is hard: at least I have always struggled with making things stick. But now I think I’ve found something that works for me.

Categories
Personal

From Playing The Piano to Algorithms You Can Trust

A few days ago, my piano teacher recommended a book to me: Play It Again: An Amateur Against The Impossible by Alan Rusbridger, formerly editor-in-chief of The Guardian. I devoured it within three days.

Categories
Personal

ICSE 2013: Four Days of San Francisco

From May 22 till May 25, I attended ICSE 2013 — the 35th International Conference on Software Engineering — in San Francisco. Apart from learning about new research and connecting with colleagues, I interviewed local practitioners, hugged the Octocat, and was ON A BOAT. This blog post provides some (non-comprehensive) details for these four days I spent in San Francisco.

Categories
Personal

Dissertation Published

On February 11 2013, I defended my PhD thesis with the title “Improving the Adoption of Software Engineering Practices Through Persuasive Interventions”. Thanks a lot to Felienne who live-blogged my defense talk and the questioning by the committee.

Due to German regulations, having defended my thesis merely meant that I was no longer obligated to correct someone else calling me a doctor. However, I was not allowed to call myself that until I had published it — again, adhering to some regulations. Due to the power of self-publishing / print-on-demand (I used lulu.com), I obtained several copies of the book and my certificate only 8 days after the defense.

Categories
Personal

Backbone.js and AngularJS at HannoverJS

HannoverJS is a local JavaScript user group that I’ve been attending. We meet once a month in rooms provided by a local school. Founded in August 2011 by Christoph Burgdorf, we now usually have around 10 to 15 attendees and two presentations each month.