Ville Karavirta

January 28, 2015

Goodbye 2014, Welcome 2015

2015 started a while ago, but I only now managed to polish my draft for 2014 review and goals for 2015. Since we’re late already, let’s get right into it.

In 2014, I published only one post on this site. And, that was the post announcing the move from self-hosted WordPress into SquareSpace. On the Mobile Icecube blog (my mobile app sideproject, in case you didn’t know), I was more active with 11 posts last year. Of the posts, the most popular post was, by a clear margin, Effect Of Jquery And Jquery Mobile On Phonegap/cordova Startup Speed. The main reason for the “high” (for me) number of posts on the Icecube site was the launch of Quiz&Learn Python for iOS, Android, and FirefoxOS. Between the launch and the end of the year, the app had a total of 912 downloads on iOS (earning me $140), 2,011 downloads on Android ($2), and 115 downloads ($0). So some pocket change, but nothing significant.

On the work side of things, the major change in 2014 was the move to University of Turku to be part of the ViLLE-team. My achievements there include integrating both JSAV (animations and exercises on data structures and algorithms) and js-parsons (code construction puzzles) into ViLLE. js-parsons also saw some major development as I added turtle graphics exercise support. Furthermore, I implemented and launched lechef (exercises for logic circuits), which was also integrated into ViLLE. And, I implemented and launched iOS and Android versions of the ViLLE mobile app. I taught the Introduction to Computer Science course, which was a lot of fun. Research was pretty lame, as I only got 1 paper published and a few rejects/major revisions.

Partly due to the lack of publications, 2014 was light on travelling. Still, I managed to visit London, Tallin, Wroclaw, Vilnius, Oslo, and Tartu. While the trips were all only for a few days, they were all for pleasure instead of business.

For this year, the main goal is to relocate to some major city outside of Finland. Besides that, it’s hard to set goals at this point, since I’ll surely change jobs in order to relocate. But before I leave Turku, I do want to finish several publications, and the goal is to publish 5 papers this year (3 journals and 2 conference papers). The conference papers are already accepted, so part of the goal is achieved. I probably won’t have much time to work on the side projects, but I do aim to submit an update for Quiz&Learn Python, which is almost done as well. Furthermore, I hope to finish one of the other app projects I’m currently working on.