About Life

It has been some time since my last post. Lately I couldn’t keep up with the post routine, as I was with LOTS of things to do, but today I reserved some time to write what I have been doing, thinking, studying, writing… So, let’s divide this in some sections:

Google Summer of Code 2020

It was a success! Although I still did not merge my student’s code, I will try to do this until the end of next week. He passed trought all evaluations with flying colours, finishing all his listed tasks and writing his progress in his personal blog. His tasks involved the implementation graph drawing algorithms from scratch by researching some related papers. In total, he submitted three graph drawing algorithms for general graphs, trees and DAGs, respectively, together with a suite for testing the quality of the configurations. More information about the final state of his project in the final status report. The only thing that makes me sad this year is the virtual mentor summit, as I was really looking forward to personally knowing more mentors. ):

Master’s Dissertation

Writing my master’s dissertation is proving to be a difficult task. Although I already have most of the results written in personal notebook, the proccess of formalization, creating examples and literature searching is arduous and does not help my sanity (neither my sleep schedule) in the middle of this pandemic. But little by little I am winning over this monumental challenge. Today I talked to my advisor and we decided to plan some papers because I work better with defined deadlines. Recently I got an accepted paper at the SBPO 2020 and sent a poster to the LAWCG 2020. My next challenge is to write a paper for the LAGOS 2021 with the most important results of my master’s (that will become a chapter of my dissertation) and eventually group everything for a journal (that has yet to be decided). So, this month is the month for my dissertation, as I have to finish this paper. So good luck me!

Study

As a way of keeping my sanity and run from my dissertation, I began learning things that have nothing to do with my dissertation. I choose the specialization Mathematics for Machine Learning of the Imperial College of London on Coursera. It is a pricey (for a brazilian) course, but the first two courses of the specialization are worth every penny I spent:

Right now I am at the beginning of the third couse, called PCA for Machine Learning and I have high expectations. I recommend heavily this course for anyone that want to learn more about machine learning. After this specialization I want to try the Stanford Machine Learning course, and I hope that both courses complement each other.

And, alhought I said about running from my dissertation, I dusted off my book on Machine Learning on Complex Networks that I won with my best tool award in CBSOFT 2018 and began reading him all over again. So, yeah, I am still trying to connect everything after all. Also, I really recommend this book for an incredible introduction of the intersection between complex networks and machine learning. You can think complex network as similar to graph theory, but the interest lies not in the static properties of the network but on it’s dynamical properties over random walks, tourist walk, epidemic spreading (!), etc.

Personal Projects

I am trying to stop all side projects for now to focus on my dissertation. So, my plants on my automated greenhouse test died (RIP) and I will sow more seeds when my life is more calm. My research project with Mateus over at University of Bergen (the graph isomorphism one) is also stopped, so I will have to check on him later. My hackerspace projects are the same.

Sad Caio is sad. ):

Personal life

I began exercising over 4 months ago by using the app Freeletics. This helped me clear my mind and find more energy to do my everyday tasks. Don’t ever forget how important exercises are. Right now I have some equipments here at home that help my training, but no more than a place to lie on is needed to begin. Also, I now have a girlfriend. Who the fuck begin dating in a pandemic? But, well… It happens (and I love her).

To wrap this post up, I am after some job. It is not easy to be a student without a scholarship, so money and curriculum for the industry is currently needed while I don’t decide my future. The future is uncertain, so I need to be prepared. After I defend my masters I will begin thinking about a PHD, but no sooner.

Thank you for reading!