Return

My last post was on the 23rd of September, which makes this one of the longest periods of literary drought since the very beginning of this blog, back in early 2009. Oddly enough, it was also probably one of the periods of my life in which I wrote more. Unfortunately, I did not find my master thesis to be interesting enough to publish in here.

Last Tuesday I went back to IST (my University) in order to fill some paper and wrap-up some formalities. I must say it was somewhat odd to return there after about three months of abstinence; after all I hadn't ever been away for much more than one month for the last five years. The construction work which were taking place at the secondary entrance for as long as I can remember were obviously over, in a classic mockery.

 Passing through ISR( Institute for Systems and Robotics ), my previous (research) workplace, was particularly odd. On my way up on the elevator I kept thinking whether or not to return my access card. I would get my deposit (5€) back, but it would mean losing something which already starts to feel like a pleasant souvenir.

"My" chair had someone else's coat over it. Still, my desk remained as clean and empty as the moment I left it, and as it never while I worked over there. I guess it probably doesn't miss me much.

Soon, I'll be returning to IST for my very last time as a student. In the meantime, hopefully I'll find the time to write from time to time.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

PS: in the end I forgot all about the key card, so I ended up not returning it without reaching any kind of conclusion. Guess it must mean something.

Passion, Fire My Heart

When I was younger I used to love playing this collectible card game called Magic, The Gathering. I could spend entire days going through my cards thinking about good combos to employ in my decks (never really felt like looking for them online) and I still have hundreds (thousands?) of those cards wandering around. The most amazing thing about that passion, besides the large sums of money I was willing to spend on it, was the ammount of mental energy I had available for it. I could name hundreds of those cards, as well as their effects and even picture their illustrations in my mind (I would draw them if I could survive the embarassment). Some of the cards also had somewhat random quotes taken from the series of books (which I have never read) and I also knew most of them by heart.

One of my favourite cards, which was in fact as common as they get, had this quote: Passion, fire my heart. Though seemingly taken from a cheesy romantic book, the phrase was actually a war cry. The card was called Crown Of Fury (really nasty thing in a Goblins deck by the way) and had absolutely nothing to do with love or women. The lesson, already stated repeatedly in this blog, goes as follows: whatever your goal is, be it chasing a woman or slaughtering a bunch of wood elves, you will do it best if you do it with passion.

It is also interesting to notice the association with fire. Fire is a reckless force of nature, blind and unrelenting in its path of destruction. Blind, but blinding as well in all its bright glowing might. So too can untamed passions blind and burn us. And if left to spread and burn strong at their will, they too have a tendency to die out fast. However, look at anyone who has ever really succeeded at anything and you will find the common denominator is the passion for what they do.

Unfortunately, passion is not really something we can create; there is no switch for turning that driving force on. As in Springsteen's song, you can't start a fire without a spark. We can, however, fuel or smother, just like an actual fire. Similarly to when lighting a fireplace, one can use that first tiny spark to light something much larger and more beautiful. This need to be available is also present in Bruce's song, for instance when he sings you can't start a fire worried about your little world falling apart.

The war cry thus seems most appropriate for times when our strength falters and our spirits grow weary. Instead of praying for luck or divine intervention, remember that willpower is mankind's most powerful motor, and that is all you need or should desire to attain your goals. Passion, fire my heart.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

Go After It

I would like to start this short post by linking this TED Talk, on the possible benefits of stress. While the studies backing the first claims do seem to lack some robustness, statistically speaking, the lecture itself is extremely interesting. Personally I've always felt like stress makes me grumpier and less social rather than more empathetic as suggested. Still, we're often wrong when trying to perceive our own behaviour, and I guess it is undeniable that stressful moments do indeeed push ourselves into opening ourselves and sharing our feeling with others as a ways to easen our burden. Physically speaking everyone knows it can work both ways: it can make us capable of the most astonishing physically prowesses as well as cripple us in the most ridiculous ways.

For me the best part of the speech, apart from the good looking speaker, is her final advise: "chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort, (...) go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows." Stress comes and goes, and so do regrets, while meaningful things will linger within us much longer. Even if it were not better for your health, in the end it would still be definately better for your life. If you have found what it is that creates meaning in your life, go after it.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

Distracções

Há algum tempo deparei-me com esta notícia, sob o título "Os cérebros mais eficazes são os das pessoas mais distraídas". Como (quase) sempre, a minha primeira reacção foi um misto de curiosidade com incompreensão; o que é a eficácia de um cérebro? E como se mede?

Infelizmente a notícia não se alongava muito sobre e isso e, eventualmente por distracção, também não fui procurar mais informações. Aparentemente é algo que está ligado à memória operacional. Isto são excelentes notícias dado que de facto sou uma pessoa extremamente distraída. No entanto confesso que, do pouco que li, não consegui entender a relação. De facto sempre achei, talvez por experiência própria, que as pessoas distraídas nos detalhes do quotidiano o são por provavelmente estarem a pensar em algo mais importante (no seu entendimento, claro).  Isto por sua vez levaria a que, ao debruçarem-se novamente sobre um problema, partissem mais à frente visto que teriam feito grande parte do trabalho algo inconscientemente, correndo assim o risco de serem consideradas mais inteligentes ou eficazes (ambos termos para os quais nunca vi uma definição convincente neste contexto). De facto muitos dos grandes cérebros da história da Humanidade têm fama de serem particularmente distraídos ou desligados. É certo que não se pode descontextualizar as coisas, e em épocas onde a participação masculina nas lides domésticas se reduzia a comentar o jantar suponho que fosse fácil uma pessoa alhear-se dos problemas do quotidiano. Ainda assim, é um padrão que parece aparecer demasiadas vezes para ser ignorado.

A verificar-se esta história da memória operacional, contudo, representaria todo uma nova perspectiva sobre a dualidade distracção-eficácia cerebral. Talvez um dia já aprofundar os pressupostos, métodos e conclusões desse estudo e volte a escrever sobre o assunto. Se não me distrair.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

The Black Swan

Some time ago I decided to read The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb, after spotting several references in other books I enjoyed. Yesterday, when reading A Arte de Pensar com Clareza by Rolf Dobelli, I came across another respectful mention to Taleb and decided to finally put on paper my thoughts on the book.

The Black Swan describes and analyses the phenomena (named Black Swan* by the author) whereby single isolated and unpredictable events (so-called outliers) are sometimes more relevant and important than the remaining vast majority which obey some rule or appear to follow some logic. I will not try to summarise Taleb's marvellous book in a couple of pages, but rather try to describe the general picture and through it hopefully make the reader curious enough to go and read it for him(her)self.

The main idea of the book is that it is wiser to recognise our knowledge's limitations and act accordingly, then trying to use the best tools available to try and predict the unpredictable. Quoting one of the book's examples, you would not want to use a map of the Pyrenees when climbing to the Himalaias, even if that is the most similar to a map of the Himalaias available. This apparently small step, of recognising that we are using the wrong map and to throw it away, may be surprisingly hard. Near the end comes my favourite quote from the book: It is much more sound to take risks you can measure than to measure the risks you are taking.

For the ones more familiar with statistics and/or background in engineering or mathematics the book also offers some insight on normal and fractal distributions, highlighting the differences between both and the conditions under which one may expect to come across one or the other.

Finally, do not lose heart if, at the beginning of your reading, Taleb's writing seems arrogant and condescendent towards the reader. You will find his ideas are definitely worth the hassle.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

* The Black Swan (capital letters) is not the same as the black swan, which is often mentioned in philosofical debates and is basically a fallacy of inductive reasoning.

Safe Bet

A few weeks ago I came across this article complaining about the lack of originality in nowadays movies, particularly those from Hollywood and/or famous studios. It stated that, in this current era where a Blockbuster typically costs millions of dollars to shoot, studios would rather play it safe with sequels and/or already visited themes, characters, etc...

Examples of sequels are too easy to find: the hangover, fast & furious, etc etc... Re-visited characters are now blooming now with lots of new movies around Marvel characters which had already been to the big screen. I won't even get into repeated themes.

What really annoys me is when we see a supposably different movie copying some distancing trait from another already successful series of movies. The Tourist immediately comes to mind; while watching it it was impossible not to see the resemblance of the main character's way of moving/speaking with another of Johnny Depp's roles, the famous Captain Jack Sparrow. Now this is, in my opining, both maddening and unnaceptable. From the commercials I've seen, it seems like The Lone Ranger will follow the same path. This is particularly sad because Johnny Depp is a remarkable actor totally capable of accomplishing different and solid roles.

Of course there are exceptions, and hopefully there will always be some really innovative and original movies for us to watch. Let us just hope they get a fair share of the total budgets.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

A Cubic Interaction

As you all know, the Interactable project used to have a website with updated (*cough cough*) news and plans regarding the project, hosted at interactable.tk. Most unfortunately, the website seems to have been put down, and now redirects the visitors to some "interesting" ads. Although our technical staff is investigating the issue, it is still unclear why this happened; we suspect Korean hackers though. Either that or the republic of Tokelau (is it a republic?) went bankrupt and decided to make some budget cuts, namely on free hosting of websites.

For this reason this blog will now feature some of the posts that would be on that website, until our technical staff fixes the issue, which might obviously take a while since we will first need to hire them. That being said, not that much is expected to happen around Interactable in the next months anyway.

In a previous post it was announced that the project would participate in the E3 forum meeting and so it did, under the title "Interactable: a Cubic Interaction" Yep, we went with the cheesy style. It is a great pleasure to announce that Interactable's passing by the E3 Forum was a huge success: the crowd cheered with the live demos and the jury was impressed by the project's potential and innovative concept. The programme was filled with panels of respected speakers who gave their perspectives on the issues of employment and entrepreneurship, and how education is linked to both.
All in all it was an extremely full day where the team was also able to promote some networwking. Last but not least, Interactable was awarded the Most Innovative Product/Technology award by the international jury, leading to yet another boost in confidence and motivation.


Just the week after, Interactable was presented at the LarSyS (Laboratory for Robotics and Systems in Engineering) annual meeting. Despite being somewhat of an intruder (even though two of the team members are/were part of LarSys the project itself is totally out of its scope) the team had the opportunity to do some live demos and explanations, yet again generating interest, positive feedback and suggestions for new applications.

The team is now considering whether or not to let go of the project due to lack of time and added responsibilities. Still, there are already some people of the team's confidence interested in picking it up and taking over the next few miles. The project might then suffer massive changes in its team's composition, but will most likely endure. There should be an update on the project's situation before the end of 2013.


Filipe Baptista de Morais