How to spend five years

So I just handed in this tiny thing, called a dissertation.

I must admit - it's a nice sensation. It goes a long way towards bringing closure to the ... hmmm ... last ... five years of my life. Five years and bit, in fact. Dammit, that's a long time. I'm getting old.

What did I do(?!), you eagerly shout... without having read the bloody thing? Well, ok - right now my passing-on-the-stairway-version is the following:

I worked with a framework (bigraphs) for domain-specific programming languages (DSLs). I developed some fundamental theory and algorithms that enabled us to implement a prototype tool to play around with such languages. Oh yeah, and then I developed a DSL, the snappily named C calculus (C for cell), that biochemists can use to describe and experiment with cells and proteins in silico. Check out this poster, for some nice pictures:

Quirky?

Sometimes, I worry that my stint in academia has left me quirky and absent-minded. As usual, my beloved brother comes to my aid, by reminding me that these tendencies have nothing to do with my time in academia.

I recently received an email from him, saying (translated):

Subject: 3 things.

(1) I know what to get dad for Christmas.
(2) What do you know about OCR-scanning?
(3) I forgot the third thing.

Stephan