And every year, it happens

Just on my doorstep, in La Jolla Shores, this bio-luminescence phenomenon happens every year.
Pretty amazing effects! No underwater artificial lighting is used. Read more about it here.


Just outside Scripps' pier, some students go for a swim to stir-up the luminescent organisms.

The waves breaking in La Jolla shores.

Amêijoas à Bulhão Pato

Com saudades de casa, deu-me para isto :)
Estavam bem boas, ainda que a matéria-prima não seja a mesma...

Uma pequena homenagem a Raimundo António!

Pelos caminhos de Portugal...

... eu vi tanta coisa linda, tanta coisa sem igual!

Aljezur

Moledo

Aveiro :)

Resetting the compass

This blog as long turned into a day-to-day logbook. Small things that happen either to me or in my "neighborhood" are posted here. I've noticed however, that at the academic level there has been very few posts. The reason is simple: I've been trying to avoid scaring my readers away. I would like to keep this a light-reading blog. By posting University-related stuff I run the risk of loosing a few of my faithful readers. Any event, here are a couple of academia-related stuff.

As I mentioned a couple of months back, I've completed my departmental phd exam in January. This means that the curricular part of my program is done. However, I'm still free to take other courses in order to broad my horizon. This was exactly what I've done in the Spring quarter. I enrolled in the "Stochastic Processes" class from the Math department (MATH 285). Challenging stuff I must say, but fortunately, everything turned out good for me. This covers Markov Chains, passing thru Martingales (fair-game betting strategy) and Brownian Motion, and culminating in Stochastic Calculus. All these topics are interesting in their own right, but this new branch of Calculus (Stochastic) is particularly interesting as well as complicated. I'll not go into detail for several reasons. One, and most important, I don't have the knowledge to do so :) ... but in some generic way this is "just" another branch of Calculus.

In introductory classes for any engineering degree, students usually have their first encounter with Calculus thru the Riemannian integral. The fundamental theorem of calculus is usually enough to understand the practical implications/applicability of such tool. A more rigorous definition of integration is given by the Lebesgue integral, usually covered on more deep theoretical material involving measure theory. Those of us that studied this subject, recall to be taught, at some point, that integration applies only to functions that are "smooth" or differentiable. It turns out this is not the case. Stochastic Calculus has two key distinctions from vanilla-flavored Calculus: it deals with the integration of random variables, and does so over non-"smooth" random functions. Rather than integrating over time or space like we used to, we integrate over random processes that are known to be nowhere differentiable. In the discrete case this is like summing a random variable over a Random walk. In the continuous case this can be seen as integrating over a Brownian motion.

We have only briefly touched this subject, has there was a lot of material to cover to fully understand it. It is a somewhat recent subject, and some of the most important results are due to a Japanse Mathematician named Kiyoshi Itô. Of paramount importance in mathematical finance Itô's integral allows us, under certain conditions, to obtain a closed form solution for integrals over a Brownian motion. I'll post parts of my last homework as a hands-on exercise for the interested reader :)

A Festa

San Diego's Portuguese community holds an annual festival denominated "Festa do Espírito Santo". It's the oldest ethnic festival in the surroundings, having celebrated it's 1st century just last year. This is a mobile fest that coincides with Catholic's Pentecost. "A Festa" as it is commonly known around here is sponsored by one family from the União Portuguesa Sociedade do Espírito Santo (U.P.S.E.S.).
For one week UPSES hosts several events, with it's highlight in last Sunday's parade.
Food, drinks, traditional dancing are all part of the menu.

An example worth spreading

Even though you might not understand the spanish subtitles in the beginning, I think the video speaks for itself... what an amazing strength and character. I think we can all use a "little" inspiration!

Just so that you have an idea of this endeavor: to run 42km, if I prepare well enough, will take me around 4 hours (no guarantee to finish though!). Swimming 1km used to take me around 1 hour. Now imagine: 4km of swimming plus 180km of bicycling followed by 42km of running... all of this carrying someone!

Deus quis...

... os homens sonharam ...







... e mais uma obra nasceu!











Obrigado Porto, por mais esta alegria!

Government shutdown

Some of you might not know what this means. In short, Government shutdown happens when the federal budget is not approved in both chambers of Congress (Senate and House of Representatives). In the last midterm elections president Obama's Democrats have lost majority in the House of Representatives (while maintaining majority in the Senate). This lead to tough negotiations between the two parties to approve the budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
Until last Friday night there was no settlement whatsoever. And just as Government shutdown was about to be announced (I believe the deadline was Friday, 11:59pm PST), suddenly, an agreement was reached. Just half an hour before deadline. Theatrical, some would argue. Worthy of a good Hollywood thriller! However, history tells us that this has happened in the past, lasting as long as 5 months. And federal workers do not get payed during this period! How nice would this be if enforced in Portugal? I can almost bet that politicians would find a way to solve their differences... and rather swiftly, I could add!

Deus quer, o homem sonha, a obra nasce!

Não há palavras para expressar a minha alegria. Adoro a minha terra. Família, amigos, estão todos sempre no meu coração! Mas se há momentos em que sinto a falta de estar em Portugal,
este é seguramente um deles. A festa, a alegria de alguém que trabalha cegamente durante um ano para um objectivo é algo de fabuloso!
A força da competência contra a incompetência da maioria, deve doer. Saber perder, como saber ganhar é uma virtude. Quem sou eu para dar lições de moral, mas aos meus amigos lampiões fica um conselho: menos fanfarronice e mais trabalho.
Costumo dizer, em jeito de brincadeira mas mais ou menos a sério, que têm o treinador que merecem. Um fanfarrão. Nas redes sociais, nos jornais o país vive numa realidade paralela.
Alimentar o ego de um país centrado em Lisboa só faz crescer a vontade de um povo. A fibra de uma gente que não quebra! O Norte do país é conhecido por ser uma região de gente trabalhadora. Gente que não se queixa das amarguras da vida. A cada contrariedade, em vez de se levantar para um movimento de protesto, esta gente levanta-se, e faz-se ao caminho! Nesta fase em que o meu país vive mais um período conturbado da sua vida política, quem dera que todos fôssemos portistas. Feitos da mesma cêpa. Madeira que não quebra. E se partir, então antes quebrar do que torcer! Na minha terra há uma reserva genética do povo que deu novos mundos ao mundo.
Hoje, a minha mensagem para todos os portugeses é só uma: querem voltar a fazer de Portugal um país grande e visionário, ponham os olhos em quem sabe fazer as coisas. Trabalhem mais e falem menos! Para quem não me conhece, só espero que não fiquem com uma visão retrógada da minha pessoa. Considero-me equilibrado, e trabalhador afincado para os meus objectivos. E acreditem que já tive obstáculos difíceis de ultrapassar na minha ainda curta vida...
O Porto é uma nação. Esta é uma expressão popular para os adeptos do FCP. Mas eu iria mais longe: o Porto é um planeta! De uma vez por todas, abram os olhos. Viva o Porto! Viva Portugal!

Time to a deserved retire

After two years and more than 1500km my running shoes are going into a deserved retire.

In a quick math these cost around 150 usd (with customized insoles!), therefore yielding 10 cents per km... give or take :)

I'm back!

Hello everyone! ... it's been a while, hum? I'm so sorry for the absence of posts in the past few months. Everything is fine, I've just been incredibly busy!
Since last September I have: published my first conference paper (you can find it here in case you're interested!), submitted the second one (first author on this one), my first journal paper is on my adviser's desk for review; and last, but certainly not least, I have passed my first phd exam (the departmental exam).
As you may imagine, I'm happy with how things are working out for me, but there is still so much to be done. I'm not even halfway through! Anyhow, I'll try to post more regularly from now on. Even if the posts get less and less interesting :)

For celebration, last weekend I went to Big Bear Mountain & Snow Summit ski resort. My snowboarding was a bit rusty, but it was really fun.

Happy 2011!