A Long Overdue Update
A Long Overdue Update
It’s been a while since my last post — not for lack of interest, but simply due to the demands of finishing my BSc studies at the Open University, and of course work and family. After eight years, I recently completed my final project module. The past six months, in particular, have been intense, but incredibly rewarding.
My final research project is now complete!
I will uploaded the PDF to this site for anyone interested in having a read. My research project focused on gender and diplomacy, with specific attention how the structure of the network of international relations influences the behaviour of the diplomatic network. My research is based on graph analyisis and provides some alternative narratives on explaining the underrepresentation of women in diplomacy. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for results day for my mark: 9 December. Fingers crossed!
Website & Hosting Changes
I’ve made a few technical changes behind the scenes as well: I moved from an external provider to a self-hosted setup — a fun process. I also retired my Django-based website. It was a great learning experience builiding, but as I anticipated it was also a bit of overkill for my usecase. I’ve now switched to a simpler static site built with Hugo. Once it is running it is just adding markdown files and pushing them with Git onto main.
Getting into Elementary OS
After two months of using Elementary OS, I’m really enjoying it. The design is clean and thoughtful, and the pre-installed apps are well chosen. And I particularly like their inclusive policy and attention to accessibility. I’ve never been a fan of docks, but I’m slowly warming up to it. I’m planning to contribute to the project. This also implies learning Vala, an object-oriented language that reminds me a bit of Java. Having studied that, hopefully the transition shouldn’t be too bad. Fortunately, the Elementary team has put together a helpful tutorial, which I’m working through now. As it’s Hacktober, I’ll also be browsing GitHub to start getting familiar with the codebase and how the team communicates. Now find ways to be useful.