My Own World...

Desde que leí un artículo, note que mi poder mutante era el de dormir poco ... cosa que vengo haciendo desde que estaba en la Enseñanza Media, estudiando hasta tarde y durmiendo al rededor de 6-7 horas. Ya estando en la Universidad las cosas se fueron a la cresta y no dormía mas de 5-6 horas. Lo mínimo que logre dormir y andar en un estado de mediana producción fueron 2 horas. Entre algún carrete loco y tantas cosas pendientes por hacer, siempre dormía poco. Con el doctorado las cosas no han sido mejores. Sin embargo, dado que ya tengo mas de 10 años con respecto a los que tenia en la universidad, mi cuerpo no me responde de la misma forma. Entre las tareas, los exámenes, la investigación y el ser papá, no estaba durmiendo mas de 4 horas. Y ya después de 4 años en la misma movida, me esta pasando la cuenta. Anoche mi hijo se durmió a las 19:30 horas y desperto a las 6:30! Durmio casi 11 horas! Eso es algo que solamente él hacia cuando era un bebe y ayer, dado que ya no duerme si...

As I pointed before when I tried to explain by backup plan , I have a paid 100Gb Dropbox subscription.  It is the key part of my multi-computer work flow, allowing me to have access to my codes, documents and pictures from, literally, any device I am working on. Since I work on Linux Mint and/or Debian at work, my personal is a Mac and I also have a netbook for simple coding running Windows 7, I needed muti-platform support... And there Dropbox is unbeatable! So, today I received a great new. For the same $99 a year, Dropbox increased my space! Sooo... 1Tb for the same money? That is a great deal for a multi-platform tool that have helped me. Before was expensive, but still worthy. Now is just fine :)  My actual space was actually increased right away. And yes... This made my week!

Today, I have resumed the writing of my dissertation. It is a long way to walk, but I am quite happy about the achievements. Espero todo salga super!

On my Mac I use LaTeXIt a lot. It takes a LaTeX code and produces instant image of your equation. It is super handy for presentations in PPT or documents in MS Word (which are known to present serious compatibility problems between versions when you use equations) The problem is that klatexformula (the recommended LaTeXIt alternative for Ubuntu) never worked for me in Ubuntu nor Mint 16/17 The solution?  LibreOffice extension TeXMaths It works perfect! You can eve edit the equations you already inserted... and they look beautiful as they do normally in LaTeX or beamer. Just download the extension (.oxt) and double click to install. Open your file and you will notice the addon in the top left :) A charm!

Estoy realmente contento! Luego de trabajar por dos anios en el uso de IR imaging para skin cancer, hemos enviado el primero (de muchos mas, espero) documento al journal Infrared Physics & Technology . Se que no es una revista excelente (tiene un impact factor de 1.46), pero es un gran comienzo para dar a conocer la metodologia que implementamos a la comunidad cientifica (ingenieros, especificamente). El plan ahora es obtener mas resultados (intra usuario e inter usuario) para estudiar la validez del metodo empleado a mayor escala. Nuestro plan para eso es enviar un paper al JAMA Dermatology or al Journal of Investigative Dermatology, con la idea de que la comunidad medica tambien sepa de nuestra idea. Esperemos que las cosas sigan asi de bien :) Seb

Why should people use GNU/Linux? It is question that one can read everywhere. For me the answer is quite simple: It gives you the power of choice You choose your applications, your desktop environment and almost everything. Nobody forces you to have ugly windows as in MS Windows 8 or fancy interfaces as in OS X. But you can still have them if you want that. And that is quite amazing. In case someone wants to read a nice article about the most popular desktop environments, please check this out . In my personal computer, I have Mac OS X (yes, I have a MacBook Pro), but to work, I always use a GNU/Linux powered machine. It is unbeatable! Seb.

Como estamos ahorrando por el asunto del retorno a Chile, ya no voy a casa a comer (ahorro combustible) y tampoco como en las "picadas" cercas de la U (ahorro $, obvio). Por lo mismo traigo almuerzo de casa en uno de los famosos contenedores Ziploc. (He logrado asi, reducir harto la porcion de comida a la hora de almuerzo, pero hace que siempre llegue con mas hambre que T-Rex a la hora de la cena.) Anoche mi hermosa E. preparo una de sus especialidades y, quizas, su plato favorito despues de la ensalada de lechuga: Pastel de choclo! Asi que hoy, mientras trabajo escribiendo uno de los papers que va en la to-do list de cosas que necesito para graduarme y volver a Chile, almuerzo mi rico pastel de choclo. Realmente es un gustazo comer asi :) Si, mi escritorio es un desastre... pero funcional!

Why more backup?... is the question that my wife/friends always ask me when I mention the keyword " backup "...  Since I lost several of my pictures after the sudden death of my "warehouse" disk back in 2001, I decided to always keep a second copy of my files. About two years ago my DELL computer died and I was able to recover about 99% of my files thanks to the double copy I had... but all the pictures got corrupted metadata and I had to manually update their info on a picture-by-picture basis. I haven't finished yet. Since then, I decided to change my backup strategy. If you look around, you will find cases of people who lost  +8000 of their pictures , or, as one friend, who reinstalled his /home partition in top of is *only copy of tons of pictures*. If you value your data, you should have backup. And a second copy on an external hardrive is never enough says Scott in this blog post . Anyways... I wanted to share here my backup plan. It may inspi...

Despues de pelear por un buen rato para establecer el numero de workers locales para parallel processing en Matlab R2011a me entero de que el maximo es 8 para mi version : When introduced, the limit was 4; this changed to 8 in R2009a; and to 12 in R2011b. Tendre que comprar el R2011b si es que quiero usar los 12 cores de mi procesador en paralelo utilizando Matlab. No me gusto mucho eso :( Pero bueno. 8 workers lo haran mas rapido que los 2 que usaba originalmente, verdad?

I am really, really happy. I worked more than 2 years on a paper that got finally accepted. The manuscript reads great and got minor revisions. Next goal: finish the JAMA paper and start writing my proposal!