Escaped Thoughts

WOOHOO!!!!!

As you may have noticed, it's been pretty quiet around here in terms of posts. The main reason is that I've been spending a lot of time on my job hunt, and haven't wanted to broadcast possible leads (thus necessitating broadcasting some of the inevitable disappointments). For the past few days, I've had some very exciting news that I've been sitting on until it became official, so as not to jinx it at the last minute. Finally, I can break the silence.

I have been offered a job at a very large fruit company! Needless to say, I'm elated! It about a month's time I'll be living in the beautiful bay area, getting paid to hammer on Tiger and see how it breaks. This is pretty much a dream job, so to get in right out of college is insanely great.

To recap: Woohoo!!!!

Category: Life

Writebacks (1)

Belated Camino Celebration

Camino 0.8 came out somewhere around my layover in Denver last week, so I've been behind on the celebration. I've been catching up on the user reactions, and it's been quite heartening; besides the (surprisingly little) requisite bitching about how it's worthless because of one missing feature or another, the comments are very positive. The consensus seems to be:

  1. It's much better than 0.7
  2. It's quite solid
  3. It's either almost as good as Safari, or better than Safari.

The fact that many people consider it to be on par with something 8 people work on full time, despite the fact that all the Camino-specific stuff is being developed by a handful of of people in their spare time, is very nice.

The best part, though, is simply the feeling of progress. Camino is not dead, and it is improving. We still have a ways to go, but we are going there! Unfortunately my contributions to 0.8 were fairly small, as I joined late in the game, so most of my pride isn't warranted. Here's hoping I can help see Camino through to 0.9 and beyond, in order to really make a difference.

Pink already thanked all the contributors, but being a modest guy he didn't thank the person who deserves the lion's share of the praise and thanks: himself. He's seen the project through lean times, a new Goliath challenger, several names, and continuous abuse by smart-alec contributors like myself. And he keeps it all going. Seeing just how much is involved, especially beyond "just" coding new stuff and bug fixes, I have a whole new level of respect for the job he does. Pink: you rock.

Oh, and I can't forget a big shout out to the donkey. As botbot will tell you, he's a vital member of the Camino team.

Category: Camino

Writebacks (0)

Go Team

The final candidate for Camino 0.8 should be released today, bringing us very close to the 0.8 release that's been eagerly awaited for so long. We've all buckled down recently and cranked out some good stuff—it's nice that we can have a release in a time-frame that we were shooting for without giving up being a bug-fix-driven release.

Category: Camino

Writebacks (0)

International Fame

I found out this morning that the paper (PDF) I co-authored with my advisor, which is essentially the 8-page version of my 100+ page thesis, was accepted to IROS 2004! So now my thesis work will be catapulted from Case's basement to an major international AI conference. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about that—even if I most likely won't be the one going to Japan.

Category: School

Writebacks (0)

Owww

I just took an hour-long pop quiz over the phone on everything I've ever learned about computer science. Now I hurt all over.

Here's hoping I passed.

Category: Life

Writebacks (4)