tag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:/feedAxiom of Infinity2015-02-03T08:09:22-08:00Pedro Lopeshttps://pedrolopes.svbtle.comhello@pedrolopes.netSvbtle.comtag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:Post/fear2015-02-03T08:09:22-08:002015-02-03T08:09:22-08:00Fear<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/mbrgiglhf8gyvw.jpeg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/mbrgiglhf8gyvw_small.jpeg" alt="photo-1416854905195-f4c96ea8f949.jpeg"></a><br>
In parenthood, everything is fear. I live in constant fear. Maybe this is also true for life in general, but I’ve never been as fearful as I am now. And what does this cause? Ongoing stress.</p>
<p>As I write this, I’m sitting in a small hospital room. Unfortunately, my son is here (again) because of some pulmonary issues. Winter sucks. It’s not his fault but he’s definitely the one suffering more with all these problems. Nevertheless, being here is just a terrible reminder of how we let fear control our lives. Maybe not completely, but in some way or the other, fear is always there.</p>
<h2 id="ignorance-is-bliss_2">Ignorance is bliss <a class="head_anchor" href="#ignorance-is-bliss_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>I envy my 8 months son. I do. For multiple reasons. But at the moment, the most important one is that he’s innocent and completely fearless. He can stand on top of a ledge in the tallest skyscraper without thinking about any consequences. Living (growing!) brings knowledge about everything that surrounds us. Knowledge brings fear. Knowing what can go wrong in any given scenario causes a small frightening sense that maybe, just maybe, in some occasion, our fears may come true.</p>
<p>Imagine a roller coaster. The bigger the better. If you never heard about roller coasters before and someone tells you it’s just a great ride, you’ll probably just go with it. However, if you read the news regarding roller coaster accidents, or worry about the poor conditions of its structure, or event just think for a fraction of a second about what you just ate and it will be quickly expelled from your stomach… the fear will be there. And you will think twice before hitching a ride.</p>
<h2 id="the-daily-fears-of-parenting_2">The daily fears of parenting <a class="head_anchor" href="#the-daily-fears-of-parenting_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>Ever since my son was born I think I’ve never been as fearless as before. There’s always something on my mind. Some kind of <u>generic parent concern</u> is always worrying me. Even when I’m asleep.<br>
Although I’m the luckiest parent, I haven’t slept for an entire night in ages… Not even when I’m away. My son’s first 8 months were plagued with terrible nights. It’s the feeding. It’s the crying. It’s some kind of whim. Or the feeding again. It’s the coughing. So now, every single day, when I go to bed… there it is, there’s the fear. Fear that when I go to bed he’ll have another terrible night, constantly waking up throughout the night. I can’t relax in the living room, looking every other second to the audio feed from the bedroom. Is he awake? I don’t even lie down in bed as I used to before. I just stay in the most practical way to get up as fast as possible when something is wrong in the middle of the night.<br>
And then there’s the fear that when I wake up he’ll be ill again, starting over another recovery process. It’s terrible to live like this (and I’m the relaxed parent!).</p>
<h2 id="worrying-in-advance_2">Worrying in advance <a class="head_anchor" href="#worrying-in-advance_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>I’m not really anxious about my son’s future. I honestly believe that he must have lots of experiences and I just hope I can provide him with enough opportunities to be a happy kid. Yet, I can’t stop worrying about how any risk I take personally may affect his future. From big things, such as changing to a new job or moving to another city, to smaller stuff, like planning this year’s vacation, what are the consequences on my son’s future happiness?<br>
What if we move to a new city and he hates it there? What if we go to a big city and he’ll be in the middle of constant chaos? And if we move to a smaller city, won’t he have less access to experiences? And now that he’s always sick, is it that good to keep him home? Maybe taking him to the pool a few times will make him more comfortable in the water and it may save his life when he’s a teenager diving in the river with his friends… And I can go on and on and on…</p>
<p>Maybe this is parenting: Learning, the hard way, that there are a million harmful things in the world that we cannot control, but that we have to accept and cope with. And trust me, I’m a relaxed guy. </p>
tag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:Post/on-fatherhood2014-05-30T06:47:01-07:002014-05-30T06:47:01-07:00On fatherhood<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/tts4d7zewkutew.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/tts4d7zewkutew_small.jpg" alt="dl-2031.jpg"></a></p>
<p>I’ve been planning to write this text for so long. I really want it to be perfect, which probably reflects my atittude towards parenting. Maybe this is due to my own personal history or to my paradigmatic ideas about life or maybe something else. It doesn’t matter, the feeling is the same: I was born to do this, I was born to be a father.</p>
<p>Alas, the perfect writing opportunity and the perfect text will never come, and I’ll never mangle all the ideas I have in any coherent form. In a sense, this is a great metaphor for the latest year: trying to cope with everything in a sane daily life within the insanity of being a first-time parent. So, I decided to forget about copy and structure: I’ll just dump everything as it comes along.</p>
<p><strong>The always upbeat soundtrack of your life.</strong></p>
<p>In the first few months it’s like there’s an upbeat soundtrack playing constantly every day all days. Like in a montage from a comedy movie. Everything is just… happiness. This was particularly true in the first month. Especially until the first major problem with my son (7 days in the hospital). You know that feeling that everything is as it should be? “<u>Everything in its right place</u>”. You wake up with a gigantic smile on your face, even after sleeping only a few hours. You see everyone under a new light, you face every challenge with renewed energy… it’s awesome. I admit it. This “upbeat” haze is clearer now. But it’s still there when I’m careful enough to look for it, ready to put a smile on my face.</p>
<p><strong>Fatherhood vs. Motherhood</strong></p>
<p>We took some preparing courses in the months before our due date. It’s great to know beforehand what’s about to come, specially what can happen in the delivery room. As always, my <u>plan ahead</u> and <u>be prepared</u> motto come to mind. It was in these short courses (practical with exercices, theoretical, with nurses, with psychologists…) and in the actual birth date, that I gain a whole new level of respect for my wife. And for all women in general. Giving birth to a human being is incredible. The months have gone by but I’m still amazed on how wonderful we are and how incredible it is to carry a child and bringing him/her to this world. It is stunning. And women play <strong>the</strong> key role in everything.</p>
<p>No matter how hard men try, women will always have a bigger responsibility. And this responsibility results in a dreadful load of challenges. The only thing men can do is, literally, to try and make the mums-to-be as confortable as possible. During pregnancy and especially during labour. And it’s not that men aren’t capable of taking care of newborns by themselves, it’s just the simple fact that women are designed that way. They will suffer more and, consequently, have to endure much more than men (and don’t get me started on returning to their jobs, or finding new ones…). Whether we’re talking about all those hours in labour or the actual housework when at home, women have to deal with greater challenges. And they have my utmost respect.</p>
<p><strong>Do it. No, seriously, do it!</strong></p>
<p>Don’t think someday you’ll be more prepared, that you cannot financially cope with a child, that the timing is not right because of some family restriction, that you still have plenty stuff to experience by yourself… Once you hold your newborn child in your arms, I’m pretty sure you will rise to the challenges ahead and just wonder why you haven’t done it sooner.</p>
<p>Of course there are difficult times ahead. Raising a child in this day and age is not trivial. A newborn’s financial weight is huge. There are lots of initial expenses, from the baby’s room to the trolley. Then there are the fixed expenses: day care, diapers, paeditrician appointments, etc. And at last all the variable costs… that cute outfit, a toy for when he’s 3 months, another toy for when’s 6 months, more toys when he’s 9 months… It’s a neverending nightmare of expenses. Yet, and I must reinforce this, it is totally worth it. You may fall asleep thinking about how you’ll manage to pay everything this month, but when you wake up and see the most innocent and real smile one your baby’s face when he sees you… it all goes away…</p>
<p>Then there’s all the logistics changes. I didn’t imagine I had to pack so much stuff just for a weekend away. Nor did I ever thought that I would be late for almost everything for the past 6 months: there’s always another diaper change or something we forgot. And in spit of being just a small baby, there’s so much stuff to take care of. We can’t simply wake up, eat breakfast and leave to work. There are days where we leave home almost 2 hours after waking up. Fortunately, we’re now, finally, finding our own pace.</p>
<p>And at last, the daily life changes. In our particular case, the grandparents are far away. I think there are some situations where it would be so much easier if they were right around the corner. Having to cook dinner after a tiring day at work. Being in meetings outside the daily work hours. Going out for drinks or dinner with friends. Going for a run or to the gymn. These (small) events, meaningless before having our son, now need careful planning.</p>
<p><strong>It is worth it!</strong></p>
<p>Despite having almost 9 months to prepare myself for the incoming changes, I couldn’t foresee how much things would really change in a single day. Or better, in a matter of moments, from getting to the hospital to holding your newborn in your arms. The world changes in an instant. And trust me, <strong>it is wonderful</strong>.</p>
tag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:Post/driving-to-the-future2014-05-28T14:12:51-07:002014-05-28T14:12:51-07:00Driving to the Future<p><img src="http://pedrolopes.net/content/road.jpg" alt="Road"></p>
<p>Before reading, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqSDWoAhvLU">checkout Google’s self driving car promo</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fully autonomous driving has always been the goal of our project, because we think this could improve road safety and help lots of people who can’t drive.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I believe that in a couple generations (perhaps my grandkids?) we will have cities where all traffic is autonomous. We can do this today, technically at least. As Google cleverly shown, we can build self-driving cars today. They work, they are safe and they use technologies that have been available for the past decade. Alas, the decision to allow these cars in our cities is still a couple decades away. The underlying problem is not the technology, is how to perform a smooth <strong>transition</strong> to this new reality. This is the real challenge for the wide adoption of self driving cars.</p>
<p>Although we have the technology to build self driving cars today, we cannot let them roam freely. Can you imagine the chaos if we allowed autonomous driving cars in a city like New York? Or London? Or Tokyo?</p>
<p>The transition from the current human-driven model to a future AI-driven one will be complex, cumbersome and… <strong>slow</strong>. The real caveat for mixing autonomous cars with our own is not the former’s artificial intelligence, it’s us. Humans. Whilst autonomous vehicles follow a strict set of heuristics for traffic rule processing (and landscape analysis, and many other variables), humans are prone to circumventing these rules. Accidents <strong>do</strong> happen.</p>
<p>Autonomous cars cannot prevent other drivers from having strokes while driving and crashing in traffic. Autonomous cars cannot avoid drunk drivers from changing lanes. Autonomous cars cannot predict the erratic behaviour of most drivers. Sometimes we drive angry, sometimes we cross red lights, sometimes we are so relaxed that we miss a STOP sign. These incidents occur and, fortunately, only in a minority of situations the outcome is an accident. Can autonomous cars, no matter how “intelligent” they are, handle these slightly anormal scenarios?</p>
<p>With currently available technologies we can build an entire city, brick by brick, that only allows self driving cars. This is possible, but not feasible. Hence, we have to progressively transform our cities to accommodate this new form of transportation. We can start with public transportation systems, or maybe just small neighbourhoods or suburban areas…</p>
<p>There are numerous options and available plans. Whatever the path, it will be great to watch another new technology unfold and completely change our lives.</p>
<p>TL;DR - Self driving cars are here to stay. However, although we have these vehicles, we cannot let them roam freely in our cities. The problem isn’t in the current landscape, or in future metropolis when all cars are autonomous. The real challenge is the transition between these worlds, and how smooth can we make it.</p>
<p><a href="http://pedrolopes.net/blog/driving-to-the-future">Originally posted at Pedrolopes.net</a>.</p>
tag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:Post/hero2014-02-11T16:06:08-08:002014-02-11T16:06:08-08:00Hero/Villain<blockquote class="short">
<p>You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.<br>
Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/rqwpho4ptaincg.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/rqwpho4ptaincg_small.jpg" alt="photo-1415226620463-aedee27159c5.jpg"></a></p>
<p>I know that citation is not an actual literature reference, but it fits so many scenarios that it’s perfect to start this rant. Unfortunately, in several areas of our lives — work, friends, relationships, family, hobbies, etc — it is way too easy to go from hero to villain.</p>
<p>Everyone has friendships that peaked. There’s moments when it’s all great, going out, common vacation, shared dinners… Yet, it’s easy to reach a saturation point. When we start seeing the small personal features that we dislike. At this stage, it’s better to keep the distances. We don’t have to be together all the time, all the days. Or else, we’ll just be villains to each other’s eyes.</p>
<p>With families it’s the same. We all know the stories of brothers that do not speak with each other or entire families torn apart by random explosive events. Christmas is usually the time for these to happen. Spending 2 or 3 full days with the family starts well — everyone is quite happy to see each other. However, as time goes on, the villains start to appear and we just can’t stand another lame joke from that aunt. Again, going from hero to villain is only a matter of time.</p>
<p>This is also common in our jobs. When starting in a new place it’s usually easy to impress and to be impressed. If we put in enough hard work, sooner or later our boss will be happy. By keeping on a coherent effort we can quickly become a “hero”. Likewise, personal views on your team will be great. Again, this will not last forever. The turnaround can be very fast or very slow, but eventually things will fall apart. Our co-workers won’t be so great when they start criticising our dear work. Likewise, spend enough time with someone from our job and we’ll quickly see the cracks beneath their (once immaculate) cover of paint.</p>
<p>Every story has an end. It’s better to finish on a high note than to progress (force?) the narrative so much that it starts to loose quality. Hence, we need to know when to leave. Staying in the same place (not just physical) forever is not a good thing. Lifetime jobs are a thing of the past, everlasting relationships are not everlasting and even family has its moments. Although leaving can be hard, it’s best to leave when things are great than to stay too long and harm ourselves, or worse, harm others. Like in a gambling addiction, it is imperative to realize that we are on a winning streak and leave.</p>
<p>Looking at our relationships, our job, our daily life… we either die a <em>hero</em> or we leave long enough to see ourselves become the <em>villain</em>.</p>
tag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:Post/patterns2014-02-11T16:01:46-08:002014-02-11T16:01:46-08:00Patterns<p>We, as human beings, are animals of habit. We easily fall into routines, and even more easily fall into spirals of motivation, depression, angst or cheer.</p>
<p>Understanding the way our body and our mind process these habits, our patterns, is vital to get the best out of our day, our week or, in the end, our life. </p>
<p>I’m expecting my first son in about 10 weeks. This gets me thinking again and again about how I will organize my time to accommodate everything I want to accomplish. From spending the maximum possible quality time with my kid and my family, to maintaining a good productivity at work, up to keeping up with some ongoing side projects.</p>
<p>Hence, I’m trying to find my current productivity pattern. My goal is to uncover the best places to put everything I want to do during a regular week. Weekends are off-limits as they can be insanely productive or spent binge watching some TV show. Understanding my pattern will allow me (I hope) to have my time better organised, move harder tasks to when I feel productive and change the more interesting activities to when I feel less motivated.</p>
<p>I try to organize my daily schedule in three stages: morning, afternoon and evening. At each “stage” I try to do something that I consider to be useful. This can be writing, programming, reading or planning something. I usually feel energised in the morning and after dinner. Strangely, afternoons are the time of day when I find it harder to focus and work continuously.</p>
<p>With my current weekly schedule, I know that mondays are the more productive days, where I feel like I can do anything (I’m writing this on a monday evening, after a short birthday party, at 1am). Thursdays are the exact opposite, I regularly feel less energised and it’s much harder to “get in the zone” to let things flow… Tuesdays are similar to mondays with a slight motivation reduction, specially after dinner. Wednesdays are just like fridays, with a slow start and an active ending.</p>
<p>After this quick analysis, we can conclude that, in my work pattern, the beginning of the week is far more productive than the end of the week. I reckon it’s an almost linear productivity drop. </p>
<p>Now, two options arise to change this and improve this pattern for improved productivity.</p>
<p>In Option 1, I have to put the most interesting tasks in the thursday morning slot. And move the “boring” stuff to mondays. Herein lies a major challenge. How to accomplish this? In theory, it should be as easy as reorganising a calendar. However, in practice, there are deeper complications and miscellaneous additional variables in our patterns. How can we pick what tasks come our way during the week?…</p>
<p>In Option 2, I have to re-arrange my schedule to introduce a “break day” on wednesdays. Mondays are probably more productive because I can rest properly during the weekend. Perhaps clearing the entire wednesday afternoon will allow me to recover from the monday and tuesday burnout. Obviously, this is a less feasible option. Having a mini-weekend in the middle of the week sounds completely out-of-place in 40 hour/week labour routines.</p>
<p>So… I’ll go for option 1. I plan to start a test run next week and try to keep it running for the upcoming weeks, switching mondays to thursdays and leaving the other days untouched. </p>
<p>Hopefully I will improve my current productivity pattern. If not, at least this quick experience taught me how I roll, what’s my pattern.</p>
tag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:Post/the-thin-line-of-trust2014-01-29T15:31:26-08:002014-01-29T15:31:26-08:00The thin line of Trust<p>Do you trust people? Or do you simply not care about the results of their actions?</p>
<p>Dealing with people, wether in your job or in your social life, always implies managing trust at various levels. However, once in a while, things can go sideways and trust can simply be (seen as), not caring. It is a very blurry line.</p>
<p>When you’re with friends or family, you can confide in them, trusting their advice. You can trust them with your kids, with reminding you of something, with being at a given place at a given time… The question is, how do you measure, as a “truster” (the one who trusts) or as a “trustee” (the one who is trusted), the degree of confidence and caring in the relationship?</p>
<p>For example, to trust some acquaintance with your son, maximizes the caring about the subject being trusted. On the other end of the spectrum, trusting someone to be at a dinner with more than 20 people, reduces the caring to a minimum. You may simply not care at all.</p>
<p>I believe this care-trust balance is even trickier at work. If you are a team leader, how far will your trust go in your team? If you’re an employee, how do you trust your boss? And how much does your boss trusts you? Or maybe he just doesn’t care at all…</p>
<p>From a leadership perspective, at the top of the pyramid, fully trusting someone in the team can easily be misunderstood as lack of care. This is challenging. If you give all the freedom to your team, how far will they go before they start behaving erratically because they misjudge your actions (or lack thereof) as not caring about their work? Where will the motivation flow then?… However, “caring” too much can also be a sign of lack of trust, and can strangle your team…</p>
<p>Being at the bottom of the pyramid and looking up, if someone trusts you, if your boss trusts your job and gives you the creative freedom to pursue (almost) anything, is it because he really trusts your or simply because he does not care whatever you do? How do you weight your boss’s signs? Is he really trusting you to make the right calls and proceed according to a greater plan or, in his mind, he’s not that into what you’re doing.</p>
<p>Even harder, position yourself in the middle of the pyramid, where you have to mangle trust from your boss and “move on” that trust to the people working with you. How far do you stretch the rope? Is having SCRUM meetings every morning a sign of lack of trust? Is having monthly meetings a sign of lack of care? I would say that this is the scenario where my current situation fits better. Where managing trust, expectations and actions is a current daily struggle.</p>
<p>And you, how do you manage your trust levels?</p>
tag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:Post/vroom-with-a-view2014-01-28T14:03:45-08:002014-01-28T14:03:45-08:00Vroom with a View.<p>30 years ago the original Macintosh was unleashed. Despite the ensuing chaos at Apple, we cannot ignore the revolution it brought to the idea of a “personal computer”. Without the original Mac and all its children, we would probably still be dragging black suitcases to work or typing on beige IBM boxes.</p>
<p>I got my first <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/SP13?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US">Mac</a> in March 2007. It was one of the first models after the transition to Intel, and it was an entire revolution for my workflow. Previously, I owned a 15" Compaq, one of the first with integrated Wi-Fi. I was using both Windows and Linux at the time, mostly Kubuntu for university projects. I got some advice from friends and I had tested the previous model for a couple of hours (borrowed from a roommate), but nothing had me prepared for the dramatic changes ahead. </p>
<p>In a heartbeat, I got an OS that was much better looking and much more usable than both Windows and Linux combined. I could run all the Linux-specific stuff and even managed to install Parallels to load a Windows VM, where Visual Studio was always on (my final masters’ project was developed in ASP.NET/C#). The boot time was much faster than what I was used to. I could lift the display lid and start working in an instant. The battery lasted for more than 3 hours. And the apps… I had the Adobe (Dreamweaver mostly) suite running more smoother than on Windows and Microsoft Office was also top notch at the time. I wrote countless papers on it. I wrote thousands of lines of code (most of them in Java). I edited endless flyers, websites, posters and presentations. Getting the hands on it was always a pleasure.</p>
<p>4 years later, I upgraded to an early-2011 Macbook Pro. The SuperDrive was gone, so I bought an external one, loaded Windows 7 on it and give it to my mum. Despite some keyboard layout problems (Bootcamp was still in its early days), it was a reliable machine, running an alien OS, and it performed wonderfully for about 2 years. Then, some battery issues led it to its early retirement. Or so I thought. Indeed there were some issues, but with the charger. Around the beginning of 2013, just to clear my conscience, I tried to boot it again. I connected the Macbook Pro 2011 charger and let it stay plugged for about a day. And then, it booted. 6 years on, and the machine was alive and kicking again. I cleaned it up and installed “its” OS X again. Lucky me, a couple months later, the Macbook Pro I was using had some hardware issues, and this old machine saved my ass for a few weeks.</p>
<p>The last time I turned it on was to install Mavericks. The battery took some time to start charging, but the process completed in about 45 minutes, without a glitch. Can you say the same for any other modern OS (Windows 8 or Ubuntu 13.10) in a machine with almost 7 years?</p>
<p>As an end note, I wrote most of this text in my <a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad-2/specs/">iPad</a> and finished it in my work <a href="https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/">Macbook Pro</a>. It’s great to see how things evolved over the last 7 years. I look forward for the next 7, 14, 21…</p>
tag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:Post/on-writing2013-10-21T01:58:46-07:002013-10-21T01:58:46-07:00On Writing<blockquote class="short">
<p>Sharing my writing workflow</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After last week’s blogging hiatus I started planning this week’s post and quickly realized I didn’t really know what to write about… I thought about some ideas I had stashed before but they weren’t that interesting. And as I was thinking about what to write, it became clear: why not write about writing?</p>
<p>Over the last few years I’ve written quite a few things, blog posts (I had a “humour” blog once, it wasn’t funny), scientific articles, interviews, press releases, project grant applications & deliverables and a (big) thesis. During this, I developed my own writing process. I know it doesn’t suit everyone, but sharing is good!</p>
<p>My iterative writing workflow is comprised of three steps:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Plan & outline</p></li>
<li><p>Write freely</p></li>
<li><p>Refine</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I’m big proponent of the “plan ahead” mentality. Always have everything well mapped before starting the actual work is an essential step for successfully achieving your goals. This rule of thumb is also valid for many other scenarios, such as project management or software engineering (I’ll leave this discussion for future articles). I start writing everything from an idea, which I transform into an abstract or summary. Next, I organize the structure of what I want to write. This includes outlining the general article structure and of each (sub)section individually. I also try to organize the actual textual content, paragraph by paragraph. I often resort to just defining some bullet lists regarding what I need to write in each section. Although, when the expected outcome must be excellent, I go deeper and outline the ideas for specific paragraphs, figures, tables or lists, in each section.</p>
<p>Once the initial article structure is finalized, I write. More importantly, I write freely. At the outset, I just write to cover the ideas from the outline. Later on, I try to “get it on” and start writing whatever comes to my mind, literally dumping content. I know that later I will delete some stuff and rewrite other sections, so I try to not worry about the quality of what’s coming out. I worry about the quantity. I think it’s better to write a lot and them trim down some extra words. I just let it flow until the first complete draft is finished.</p>
<p>With the draft complete, it’s time to refine its content. In this step I focus on improving the message I want to convey. This mostly covers checking the text’s size, clarity and consistency. On the “free writing” component I tend to write a lot. This means I digress a lot, and start rambling on inessential things. The solution: cut & rewrite. On most occasions, there’s also a size limit, whether it’s pages or words, so I really have to pick the best sentences and prune the worst ones. Improving the text clarity is probably the most difficult step. I have some difficulties in being objective, especially because I’m not a native English speaker/writer (Portuguese grammar and language are very different and much richer). However, improving the text clarity is an essential, yet daunting, activity. To finish, I review everything to make sure that the content is accurate and consistent. Contradicting yourself or the ideas you’re presenting screams lack of interest and effort, and will disengage the reader. These items, size, clarity and consistency, are even more relevant in the scientific context. In these cases, I also rewrite abstracts, introductions and conclusions, making sure their ideas match.</p>
<p>Lately, with more to write on less time, these steps’ boundaries are blurred. I try not to skip steps, but I start from more generic content descriptions and reduce the amount of rewrites and refinements I make. Nevertheless, this overall process is tailored, i.e., optimized, to my thinking and writing style. I hope that showing this workflow can help anybody in the future…</p>
<hr>
<h2 id="tools-of-the-trade_2">Tools of the Trade <a class="head_anchor" href="#tools-of-the-trade_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>Just a final note on software. I write everything in <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">Markdown</a>. All texts are synced via <a href="https://www.dropbox.com">Dropbox</a>. For scientific articles or web content, I use Microsoft Word for proofreading and to generate the final formatted .pdf content for submission. On the Mac I use <a href="http://www.sublimetext.com">Sublime Text</a> and <a href="http://www.iawriter.com">iA Writer</a>. <a href="http://www.iawriter.com">iA Writer</a> is also my app of choice on the iPhone, which I combine with <a href="http://omz-software.com/editorial/">Editorial</a> on the iPad to write/edit everything on the go.</p>
tag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:Post/the-motivation-for-doing-science2013-10-08T02:00:06-07:002013-10-08T02:00:06-07:00The Motivation for doing Science<blockquote class="short">
<p>I find your lack of faith disturbing.<cite>Darth Vader, Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>For better and for worse, I consider myself to be some kind of scientist. Not a lab scientist of course, but someone who tries to apply computer innovations to the biomedical field. There’s nothing wrong with this (obviously!). However, sometimes, finding the right motivation for doing science can be quite challenging.</p>
<hr>
<p>It was very easy to find the right motivation for starting a PhD instead of going to a private company. Luckily, I had the opportunity to join a bioinformatics group that was growing steadily every year and where I was able to make my own research path on new interesting subjects (service composition, semantic web, data integration…). More importantly (at least for the control freak in me), I was in charge of the entire development cycle of new products. Requirements analysis, architecture planning, data modelling, implementation, testing, marketing and publishing. Rinse and repeat. Whereas in any company I could’ve joined I would be doing just one of these tasks 5 days a week, in my PhD work I was responsible for everything: from choosing the programming language to aligning the buttons in the UI up to writing the final publications.</p>
<p>A few months before finishing my PhD I started sending my resume to a few companies in my area. I also send a couple ones to international companies and research groups (but I admit I wasn’t very keen in going to another country). I got some replies really fast and did some interviews. From there on, it was pretty clear that there were two types of companies offering something interesting.</p>
<p>First, there were some really big companies where having a PhD meant exactly nothing. If you want a position there, you start from scratch. A few months or a year in a trainee academy and then, if you are really good, you might get a more stable (and better paid) position. These are the type of companies that are completely closed to outsiders, specially in a higher administration level. If you want in, you start at the bottom of the pyramid, whatever your degree.</p>
<p>Second, there are smaller companies, bigger than start ups but not yet large SMEs, that are willing to take the risk and hire you to a position in the middle of the pyramid. You won’t start at the top, but your past research work is valued and your (ability to give great) future contributions recognized. Despite their shorter margins, these companies are more prone to risk in hiring something with a past on research, even if their business experience is nil (or null).</p>
<p>I honestly thought it would be the other way around. Why do large companies add so many roadblocks to hiring more qualified personnel? (This still worries me today…)</p>
<hr>
<p>As I mentioned in previous posts, I did not leave academia. And although I felt like leaving for a long time, I managed to turn it around, fill in the void, and find the right motivation to continue pursuing my research work.</p>
<p>I find my motivation in three simple areas: (1) research and apply state of the art technologies and ideas from one domain to an entirely distinct one, in my case, from computer science to biomedicine; (2) be part of bigger research efforts; (3) translate research work to other fields.</p>
<p>Although this may not be true about some more modern startups, in the majority of classic businesses the freedom (or lack, thereof) employees have to explore new things is very… limited. When you’re doing research, specially in fields that require some kind of computer engineering involvement, you have the freedom to explore the latest technology trends and ideas. And I’m not just talking about programming languages. In most research groups I’ve seen, PhD students and other random researchers can try distinct technologies, distinct lab protocols or anlaysis algorithms. In fact, they are encouraged to do it. And this “out-of-the-box” thinking ultimately results in greater innovation and, in the long run, better scientifc results. For me, the ability to use (and improve) “state-of-the-art” technologies is very enticing.</p>
<p>This is also directly related with the second point. For better or worse, national and international research projects provide the fuel (i.e., money) that keeps the research engine running. Being able to participate in these kinds of large endeavors is immensely attractive. And not just on the soft skills side. These projects validate the work you are doing. If you keep writing good publications and delivering outstanding products, the probabilities of leading and being invited for new projects grow. What better motivation can we have than working on solving actual problems for a broad science community? These projects also foster new collaborations amongst distinct teams and environments. This may not have esoteric serendipitous meaning, but the outcomes of these collaborations can bring great value.</p>
<p>As for the last point, it is related to the previous two. Just look at Google. They have managed to exploit their (published) research algorithms and turn them into a successful business model. Combine relevant research work with the validation from international peers and you’re one step closer to a successful product. Measuring the metrics of success can be complex though, specially in science. But this also opens the door to go beyond the science scope. This is not applicable to all research areas, but for computer science research, the odds are definitely in our favor.</p>
<p>There are a few ideas missing, the teaching experience, the ability to be continuously learning… However, the line “innovative research - peer validation - publish product” clearly defines what keeps my motivated for doing research. And in spite of being in an excellent position at the moment, I hope that improving on each of the elements in this trifecta can lead me to even better places.</p>
tag:pedrolopes.svbtle.com,2014:Post/filling-the-void2013-10-01T02:01:04-07:002013-10-01T02:01:04-07:00Filling the Void<p>Exactly one year ago I had the public defense for my PhD dissertation. This was the finish line after 4 intense years of hard work. For me, a PhD is more than the combination of a publication record with a heavy dissertation. A PhD is the path, the journey from your first algorithm to the final thesis.</p>
<p>And once you reach the end of this path, there are plenty of options to chose from. One of those, the main one I would say, is to stay in academia and keep on doing research. Obviously tempting. You can continue working on your own projects. You’ll probably get a couple undergrad students to pursuit some particular research domains for you. And you get the chance to finally finish writing that long-gestating paper you’ve been working on for the last months… However, this is seldom a good thing.</p>
<p>The problems arise when you finally land with your feet on the ground, when the work you started on your PhD is branching onwards towards multiple areas, each with its own appeal. While during the PhD you can clearly identify the finish line, in the post-doc stage, these kind of lines are blurred.</p>
<p>You can focus on strict deadline for specific publications or open deadlines for project deliverables or often on grant application deadlines. However, there is no overarching goal, no grand finish line, no main goal to achieve. It’s like… Floating. And floating is dangerous. You can manage to stay afloat for a long time, but, eventually, the draft will pull you down.</p>
<p>And this is what was most challenging during this year. Filling this void, the (let’s call it that way) <em>emptiness</em> of roaming around without a clear goal. On the bright side, I also learned a lot on how to organize your new research goals. From my point of view, there are 2 options:</p>
<ol>
<li>Leave</li>
<li>Focus</li>
</ol>
<p>These are entirely opposite that need to be weighed carefully. The first one, leaving academia, is probably the most risky one, specially if you are really confortable in your position. Right now, I’m not really sure how things go when you finish a PhD and leave for the private business sector. I don’t know anyone (personally) who did it. Nevertheless, I believe that when a company hires someone with a PhD degree, it will greatly benefit from the kind of expertise (event if it’s just writing) that the new employee will bring. The downside of leaving is obvious, and will be the subject of some future post. How will a PhD student fit the enterprise environment?</p>
<p>Focus is what I’ve done (or what I’m still trying to do now). For me, focus meant finding the right thing to do at the right time with the right amount of effort. To first step is to organize all the work you have left from your PhD. Pending publications, pending software releases, pending grants… Then, you can focus on each of them, one by one. I reckon that this sounds a lot like a Getting-Things-Done strategy, but for me this was definitely the only way to fill in the void. And now, after some more complicated months, work is finally starting to flow more regularly. Although I still cannot see the great finish line, I’m learning to organize my work in a way I can stay afloat for a longer time.</p>