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April took me to Keele University, just outside Manchester, for the Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering conference (EASE 2010). I had two papers accepted for publication at this conference. I presented one, and one of my colleagues presented the other.

The paper I presented has been important in shaping my PhD thesis. It compared the priorities placed on aspects of software product quality by employees versus subcontracted developers. This study was not originally planned, but as we had the data from the employees and all of the instruments designed for data collection, it was relatively little work and seemed like it could be interesting. The results were more interesting than we anticipated, and now my thesis is focused at examining the differences in priorities that different groups place on aspects of software product quality.

The other paper was on configuration management of requirements and related materials. This isn’t my area of research, but part of a course I took with two fellow PhD students.

Keele University is set in the English countryside. I was told, quite aptly, to imagine to imagine the set of a BBC murder mystery telemovie.

I spent half a day in Manchester before making my way to Keele.

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When travelling outside of Sweden I don’t use the data connection on my mobile phone. The cost of doing so is prohibitive, even since the European Union forced operators to bring down their prices.

But traveling around Sweden I have got used using Google Maps to help me find where I am going. Enter MapDroyd, a free offline map application.

Last week took me to Keele University, near Manchester, in the UK. Knowing I wouldn’t have data on my mobile phone I downloaded an application called MapDroyd. Once downloaded, you can cache maps of different regions to your phone as you desire. For this trip I downloaded the map of the UK.

I was very impressed with MapDroyd. The maps were far more detailed that I expected (yet took less than 90 MB on my phone). It used AGPS to find my location, and oriented the maps to match reality using the compass.

MapDroyd sources its maps from OpenStreetMap, another project I have been wanting to support.

The second application I learnt to love last week was TripIt. This is a web-based application to manage your travels, but has phone-based app siblings. After creating an account on TripIt, you can forward it all of your travel confirmations (flights, hotels, etc …) and it will put together detailed itineraries (excellent when your travels consist of a myriad of web-based bookings). The phone apps allow you to cache this information for offline access while on the run.

Unfortunately the ease of publishing photos to Facebook has meant that I have been neglecting my blog. I am going to try to be more attentive, and decided to start with a general update of what’s going on …

Oziel and I went to Mexico for Christmas with Oziel’s family. We spent the time between Christmas and new year in Chiapas, in the south of Mexico. It was completely different to the other parts of Mexico we have been, with some very stunning nature.

After a brief return to work Oziel and I headed to Australia for Hamish and Elis’ wedding. While in Australia we went to Sydney, Newcastle, the Hunter Valley and Byron Bay. On our way back to Sweden we stopped off in Japan, spending three days around Nagano, and three days in Tokyo with Laz.

My PhD is on track to finish in early 2011. I have created a webpage to keep track of the status of the thesis, and publish what is ready.

On the topic of PhD chapters, I am going to a conference in Keele (near Manchester) in a week to present what will probably be Chapter 6 in my thesis. The conference is Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE).

Oziel and I are training for a half marathon from Copenhagen to Malmö across the Öresund Bridge in June 2010.

Sometime this year we are planning to go to Rome to celebrate our birthdays (which have already passed). We are thinking to avoid the summer, which will most probably mean after the European summer.