talk about phpMyAdmin at FOSDEM 2013

A few more days and FOSDEM 2013 starts again. I've been looking forward to this since I left FOSDEM 2012. ;)

A lot of talks and presentations to go to, some people to meet (again), but most importantly : I will do a talk about phpMyAdmin!

If you are at FOSDEM and want to know more about the Present and future of phpMyAdmin, then come to room H.2214 (MySQL & Friends devroom) on Sunday, February 3rd, 2013 at 17:00.

I will talk about the new features in the current version (3.5.x) and what you can expect in the upcoming version 4.0.0.

Hope to see you there!

Ambitions 2013

After having reached some goals and having done some cool things in 2012, I set some ambitions and goals for 2013 (basically an updated version of the ones I set for 2012) :

• pick up Java and/or C++
• improve knowledge of OOP and design patterns
• finish writing a first Android app
• do a presentation/talk at a conference (FOSDEM, ...)
• Improve pace and distance in running, after I recover from a knee injury. Next goal : 10 miles by April.
• Improve swimming (technique, speed, stamina and style) : Build up stamina doing a slow front crawl. Next goal : 250m without a break
• In 2012 I started wall climbing (bouldering), so I hope to improve my technique and muscular strength, as a preparation for some outdoor rock climbing.
• Repeat the Car Free Day action, but this time on faculty level

This was 2012!

2012 was great, here are some cool things I did :

• went to FOSDEM, attended the phpMyAdmin team meeting, and showed two friends around in Ghent, Antwerp and Bruges
• got into the top 3 of most active contributors on ohloh.net
• successfully suggested a commission at my university to make their reports available sooner
• improved my OOP skills, implementing composite and singleton design patterns and further abstracting my Open Source framework
• participated in TransitieUGent, a platform for setting goals and actions for UGent to become more sustainable by 2020/2050.
• had a lot of fun building a piñata-like moose as a present for my sister's wedding
• participated in an assessment test at work and passed
• achieved swimming 2 km in less than an hour
• created a document in LaTeX
• holiday in Greece with some friends
• released a first beta version of my web development framework, which is 100% compliant with PEAR coding style
• started running and did 10 km in about an hour by the end of the summer  
• made a linux server work as a TimeMachine storage device.
• mentored Rouslan Placella for GSoC project : 'Removal of frames in phpMyAdmin'
• subscribed for a weekly organic fruit package of De Wassende Maan
• did a triathlon, doing swimming (2km), cycling (26km) and running (5km) on the same day
• motivated his colleagues to come to work without a car, by pledging to run 100 meters for everyone that did, and eventually ran 4 km.
• organised a trip for some friends to the opera 'La Damnation de Faust' by Berlioz, directed by Terry Gilliam. The opera was great, BTW.
• attended Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit 2012 at Google HQ in Mountain View, California.
• visited Yosemite National park again (organising the trip for some fellow Mentor Summit attendees)
• started climbing (bouldering)
• baked an apple cake for the first time and perfected it after a few tries.
• got an award for 'motivating colleagues to come to work without a car'
• released a first version of a lab instrument reservation tool at work
• took on Android development, first creating a 'Hello World!' app and then starting to work on a small but a bit more complicated app, while exploring the possibilities of the Android framework
• swam in a 50 meter swimming pool

And some other things that happened :

• wedding of my sister
• funeral of Wim
• wedding of my steph brother
• my other sister graduated as a teacher
• mother moving to Hasselt
• Brecht defended his PhD
• wedding of Tho and Tine