User:Siko1056

A: An introduction

I'm Kai Torben Ohlhus, a computer science and engineering student in the final master semester from Hamburg, Germany. During my studies I specialized on software systems and communication networks and discovered a passion for computer arithmetic and algorithms, which will now be topic of my master thesis. I speak German (native), English (fluent) and Spanish (basic).
My intention to participate in the GSoC 2013 is to work on a software project that can be part of my master thesis, which I start now in April. Till now I haven't participated in any GSoC and this year will be my last chance to do so.
The choice for Octave came during the planning of my thesis schedule. My master thesis will deal with accurate fast scalar products and matrix-vector products for big sparse linear systems, usually coined to be called with MATLAB's MEX-Interface. But I prefer to use software where I can read the source code of how something is done, rather than a sparse documentation. So don't be afraid to disapprove my application, I'll stick to Octave.

I know how to use IRC and I will be online as often as possible under the nick siko1056 on #octave.
GMT+02:00 (CEST)
I use to work from 10.00 to 18.00 +/- 2 hours.

Since the beginning of my studies (so more than four years) I work with C, C++, and m-scripts. I attended many courses and laboratories dealing with these three languages. From my 3rd semester on I'm a student tutor for these courses: Software part of a laboratory course (MATLAB), Computer Programming (C) and Introduction to Programming (C). I have little laboratory experience with Qt4 and with OpenGL I have no experience so far, but I worked with SDL.
Other languages of my studies were Java and web applications (JSP and Servlets). Because I use GNU/Linux as my day-to-day OS, I know BASH-scripting and for FPGA-Programming I worked with VHDL a lot.
Nearly all programming laboratories at university were solved in a team, making use of version control systems and organization techniques like scrum.
My biggest project so far was searchbooster a desktop document search tool based upon Apache Lucene and Apache Tika. It was developed by me and three other students in a team using scrum, Subversion (at Google Code now GIT) in a time of three months. I learned like in other projects, that an interface is something you shouldn't break every day and a proper code and comment style saves a lot of time!
I haven't contributed to Octave so far.

Please describe (in short) your experience with the following tools: We only use this question to determine where you need guidance, not for rating! We by no means expect you to be familiar with all of these and you'll won't necessarily need them while working with us.
- IRC and mailing lists
I worked a lot with GIT, Subversion and Mercurial
- Mercurial or other source code management systems
- Mediawiki or other wiki software
- make, gcc, gdb or other development tools
What will make you actively stay in our community after this GSoC is over? You can also tell us after applications close and we'll happily try to fulfill :-)

Did you ever hear about Octave before?
- If so, when and where? How far have you been involved already?
- If not, where would you expect or advise us to do advertising?
What was the first question concerning Octave you could not find an answer to rather quickly? Of course more than one question can be stated. We try to improve based on this each year! Includes learning how to use it, code, website, GSoC application, …

Please state the operating system you work with.
- If you have access to more than one, please state them and the conditions under which you are granted this access.
Please estimate an average time per day you will be able to (if separated) access
- an internet connection
- a computer
- a computer with your progressing work on
Please describe the degree up to which you can install new software on computers you have access to.

Please describe how useful criticism looks from your point of view as committing student.
How autonomous are you when developing? If you answer both subquestions with "Yes, definitely", we are a tad confused. ;-)
- Do you like to discuss changes intensively and not start coding until you know what you want to do?
- Do you like to code a proof of concept to 'see how it turns out', modifying that and taking the risk of having work thrown away if it doesn't match what the project or original proponent had in mind?

Did you select a task from our list of proposals and ideas?
- If yes, what task did you choose? Please describe what part of it you especially want to focus on if you can already provide this information. Please also wiki-link the page for your elaborated proposal here.
- If you apply for a task you have added yourself instead, please describe this task, its scope and people you already talked to concerning it. What field of tasks did you miss on the list?
Please provide a rough estimated timeline for your work on the task. This should include the GSoC midterms and personal commitments like exams or vacation ("non-coding time"). Optionally include two or three milestones you expect.