Posts in "Personal"
Ergonomic Office, Part II: Chair
Following up on the previous post about my newly ergonomic office, it's about time I shared all the details of my spiffy new chair. I've had it in heavy use for over a month now so I figure I can give a fair and unbiased opinion.
The short story: it's the Steelcase Leap Chair and it is made from pure awesomeness.
Before any of my colour-loving friends get too excited (you know who you are!) I should point out that this is a stock photo. Mine is of course not that garish orange colour. It's black. With black trim. On a black base.
Now, the obvious choice for a programmer's office chair would have been that eternal symbol of dot-com-era excess, the Herman-Miller Aeron. Based solely on the hype the Aeron has generated online, any self-respecting chair-hunting geek owes it to themselves to track one down and try it out. I managed to find some in-stock at Living Edge in Richmond, and having tried it out, fiddled with all the knobs and rolled it around the showroom floor, I have to say: Meh. I just don't get the hype. Sure, it's nicer than my old $60 chair from Officeworks, but at just shy of fifteen hundred bucks I was expecting a lot more.
Thesis Accepted
I've been sitting on this news for a few weeks now, while I got all the final preparations taken care of. I sent it off to the binders yesterday so I guess I can come clean: my PhD thesis has been accepted, and I'll soon be officially known as "Dr Kelly". Has a nice ring to it, don't you think? :-)
A special thanks to Adrian for being a great supervisor over the past four years, it's been a very challenging and rewarding experience and I enjoyed the process immensely. I've updated the page on my research with a PDF version of Asynchronous Multi-Agent Reasoning in the Situation Calculus. Hopefully I've found and updated all the other sections that said "my thesis is currently under examination" – please let me know if you spot any more.
Ergonomic Office, Part 1: Keyboard
Since I am now spending the vast majority of my time working out of the home office, I decided to invest a little cash in taking care of two of a programmer's most valuable assets – my wrists and back. I've been using my new acquisitions for a few weeks now so it's about time I reported on the experience. First up: the Goldtouch Ergonomic Desktop Solution featuring this keyboard and this mouse.
Let me point out right up front that this was not my first choice. Following a nice lengthy thread on Reddit I started out shopping for a Kinesis Advantage, but couldn't find one in Australia for a price I was willing to pay. The Goldtouch also had some pretty good reviews online, and came at a much more attractive price with some wrist-pads thrown in, so I figured I'd give it a shot. So far, I'm certainly not disappointed. Here's a photo of my new setup:
I'm sure you can see a few oddities here already – the keyboard has a ball-and-socket joint and a big split down the middle, while the mouse is vertical and has all the buttons located on the side. Note also the complete lack of a numeric keypad hogging up the right-hand side of the keyboard; this is actually a design feature that lets you put the mouse within each reach.
Last night we harvested the last of our winter beetroot (yes yes, a few seasons late...) and after a couple of hours in the kitchen, we've got enough sliced and pickled to last us a whole year of hamburgers:
It's immensely satisfying, but I suspect I will have purple fingernails for the rest of the week...
So you might have noticed a few changes around here - a completely new website, for example. They correspond with some exciting changes for me in real life.
First, the thesis has been submitted for examination. I've entered a wonderful new phase of my research known as "waiting to hear back", which should last for at least six months. I'm also working on turning some of the thesis chapters into stand-alone journal papers. But it finally frees me to explore a few of the other things that I have been keeping on the back-burner for over a year now.
Second, I have left my job at VPAC and am now devoting all of my energies to (1) developing my own software projects, and (2) freelancing to pay the bills. I'm sure I'll have more to say on that front as things develop over the next few weeks...