EPT
After a lot of work between November 2022 and March 2023, I successfully finished writing my thesis manuscript, and I got to defend it in June 2023.
Picture from after the defense: (cropped SO on my right)
![[image loading]](/staff/Poopi/photo_these.jpg)
The manuscript part was probably the most difficult, not necessarily in terms of how hard the work was intrinsically, but mainly the work conditions. Indeed, while I was still within my CIFRE company for the first big chapter of the thesis (the state of the art part), the rest of the manuscript was written from home, as my contract had expired.
Unemployment benefits obviously paid less than what I had with the company, but the problem was mainly working alone for an extended period of time, on the same subject over and over. There were email updates with my thesis supervisor once or twice a month depending on if I was able to send a chapter to get some suggestions for corrections.
Afterwards, I started applying to companies, and got a job in my field that started exactly one month before the date of my thesis defense. Juggling between this job and the preparation of the defense with my supervisor was tedious at times, as he wanted me to be extremely well prepared, with several rehearsals a week every week.
I could have started my job after the defense, but I think it was actually better to start the job beforehands: that way, I was not too stressed out by the actual PhD defense since I had the job to think about outside of the rehearsals.
The actual defense went pretty well, and I was able to celebrate with friends etc., but I am still not fully "proud" about having successfully completed my PhD, rather still in the "it's finally over, finally free" mode of it. Maybe it will change at the end of this year/beginning of next year?
As for Starcraft 2 and tl.net, I will probably start writing a few articles again
On top of starcraft, I am also in love with Halo esports, and I am considering building an "aligulac" like version for Halo Infinite / HCS. They don't have as many small tournaments, but they got "scrims" between high level teams, so it's probably possible to get something relatively meaningful with such an ELO-like system.
Cheers,
Poopi
