Good Mixing Degree

I'm tired of writing... and you say "What?! She's not writing in her blog in about one month." Precisely... My current task is to write papers and the PhD thesis (at least it should be). Honestly, I have not begun writing the thesis. Anyway, I'm not concerned. It will be a compilation of 4 international papers, + introduction, + conclusions. I'll be surprised if the thesis will have more than 100 pages. That's what I call to be concise, which is a mathematician skill or something like the kiss principle.

It's quite discouraging just writing:

Paper 1 (P1) goes to the advisor (A). A returns P1 with comments. P1 goes again to A, and the supreme advisor (SA) asks for P1 and P2. The last corrections on P1 are made by suggestions of A and he asks for P2. P1 goes to SA, while a draft of P2 goes to A.

You get P1 back for modifications and also P2 to re-write, at the same time. (are you following the story?)

P1 goes to SA and P2 to A. P1 still needs some major modifications. P1 goes again to A. P2 return to you and A asks for P3. SA asks for P1.

Well, I'm lost. Basically, today I've sent P1 and P2 to SA and replied to A that P3 will be ready soon referring that "this is what I call a good mixing", i.e., to not know how my work is going on, as if my work subject isn't mixing already. I wonder if soon can be applied to after June 20th.

Also, I now have SA requesting some slides for his presentation at PPS-24. Doing all the calculations, it seems that I have no time available to make my presentation for the same conference, <ironic mode> which is always a good point. </ironic mode>

Do I seem stressed?! I just need to submit the thesis until the end of July and SA says I need 3 months to write the thesis. Fantastic!

Some time ago a colleague has asked: "In a scale of 1 to 20 which is the difficulty of getting a PhD?" I've answered: "4, the difficulty is like in any other job, but you have a lot of work. Also, either you have a lot of perseverance or you'll fail."

I'm mentally tired, exhausted.

Science with Love

Ok, this time is better to show part of my screen. Images speak always by themselves.

I thought on hiding the sender name, but... the message above has his name. At least he has noticed that something was... wrong! From now on, many people (perhaps all the department) will call Mr. Mateus as Francisquinho. :p

Murphy's Law

How many of these laws are not applied to you?

1. When you have to unlock a door and you have your hands full with 10 big, heavy bags…the key will be placed in the opposite pocket from the hand you hardly managed to free.
   
2. The only time when the door closes by itself is when you left the keys inside.
   
3. When your hands are full of soil, your nose begins to tickle.
   
4. When you have the impression that everything is going very well…it’s because you missed something important…
   
5. When you manage to stay calm when everyone near you is desperate… it’s because you didn’t get the entire gravity of the problem.
   
6. Problems are not created, neither solved, they just transform!
   
7. You’ll get to the phone running exactly in time to hear that the other one hangs up.
   
8. There are always two good movies on two different channels on TV…but always at the same time.
   
9. The probability to drop food on yourself during lunch is directly proportional with the necessity of keeping your clothes clean!
   
10. Any human body, sink in a foamy, relaxing bath…makes the phone ring!
    
11. Any human body, sit on a toilet, makes the door bell ring!
    
12. Wind’s speed increases directly proportional with the price of the hairdressing recently made.
    
13. If you decide, after many years, to throw away something you haven’t used for a long time…Not more than 3 days will pass until you’ll desperately need exactly that object!
    
14. Always, when you get somewhere in time, no one will be there to notice that, but when you are late with only 5 minutes…everyone will be already there…and everyone will look at their watch and then look at you!
    
15. Don’t take life serious, after all, you won’t survive it!
    
16. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
    
17. If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.
    
18. If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
    
19. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
    
20. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
    
21. Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
    
22. Every solution breeds new problems.
    
23. Enough research will tend to support your theory.
    
24. When there is a very long road upon which there is a one-way bridge placed at random, and there are only two cars on that road, it follows that: (1) the two cars are going in opposite directions, and (2) they will always meet at the bridge.
    
25. Smile... tomorrow will be worse.
    
26. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
    
27. You never run out of things that can go wrong.
    
28. No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
    
29. If your advance is going well, you are walking into an ambush.
    
30. The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.
    
31. Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
    
32. If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
    
33. An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
    
34. All's well that ends.
    
35. A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
    

ZOOMinho

In these last 5 years I’ve been working at the university. In all this time I’ve been in three different offices. When looking back I do not miss those places. They were not bad at all, but in this office the silence is the characteristic which I most appreciate.

From today on, I do not want to go back to those offices. I have a strong and valid reason for that. Well apart some occasional fleas in this office, the other ones at this moment are being inhabited by rats.

Definitively, we are in a new generation: the recycling generation. The rats are helping on destroying plastic and creating some faeces. How nature is wonderful… Like Einstein said “we can just transform mass into energy and energy into mass”. However it is common in these days to have organic and non-organic products/mass. The rats are transforming non-organic on organic mass by a biological process. And as you know all the biological products are expensive.

On an economical point of view, the price of the biological product will suffer a raise, since a new biological method has been applied on transforming the inorganic mass. After a few calculations on your budget, you will say “Damn the rats”.

Obsession

Last month I have attended an international conference at Porto. As usual, at lunch time, all the participants try to socialize. And there I was doing the same. I was talking with a guy coming from Netherlands. I do not remember to much of the conversation, but some minutes before a plenary session he said:

Netherland Guy: 4 days of conference is too much!!

me: Yes it is. About 5 days that I didn't go to my office. I miss so much my office that last night I went there.

NG: No, I can not believe it.

me: Yes, it’s true. I was there since 10 p.m. until midnight. Just checking e-mails, nothing important.

NG: I think you need a doctor.

me: I think so… and you?! Are you enjoying your stay in Portugal?! Everybody complains about the weather, but believe me… the weather is just fine, it’s not cold neither too hot.

NG: I would like to have this weather where I live. In fact I’m in holidays.

me: Oh, you have toke some days off while attending the conference.

NG: No, I’m in holidays. Last week I saw somewhere that a conference about numerical simulations will be held here. And here I am. I do not know what I’m going to answer if my boss asks how good were my holidays. I think I’ll answer that I’ve attended a conference.

me: Hummm, he will think that has an excellent employee. Anyway, you really need a doctor too.

NG: I agree with you.

Videogames Improve Vision by Rewiring Your Brain

You can see the original message here.