Doing this and that

So here I am again to write something, so that people don't think I completely abandoned the idea of blogging. I haven't really, but I'm never sure what to write. Lately life has been a little unfocused, to say the least. And when you don't focus much on one thing you end up not really having much to say.

What I have been reading? Well, I finally finished reading Steven Erikson's Midnight Tides. Good book, but quite long. Not a very easy read, mostly because there are a lot of characters spread around the world and with somehow similar names. There is a section on the characters, but it doesn't really help much (it contains useless info like:

Arahathan, a mage

)

I've also finished reviewing yet another version of the major paper of my Ph.D. research and now it's back to the reviewers for another round. Everything just takes so much time, and with my terrible lack of free time, it makes cycles even longer. Writing papers takes a lot of effort - a lot of continuous time invested on it. Every interruption is very expensive. And I've received a confirmation that another paper that I've co-written with a lab-mate in Oklahoma is getting published sometime in October, I think, on JASIST. It's exciting.

In the middle of all this excitement, I have stopped pretty much all my ontology projects. I was building three large-ish ones at home, but they have stalled and now it's hard to get back to them. They are a great exercise for anybody trying to do any modeling of anything. It's hard. You have just to learn that you will be wrong and you will be changing your mind many, many times until you are finished. So be ready to almost fully rewrite everything you do every couple of weeks for some time. Especially when you are still learning how to use Protégé and for some reason it decides to mangle all your work.

Mastie is doing alright. She seems to have odd cycles: some days she is very active and hungry. Some other days she is very scared and doesn't eat very much. But, well, I can't say I see her many times anyway. But now it's the weekend, so I have a little bit greater chance.

I guess that's all for now. I finally I'm getting a little tired after my dinner that ended with a nice shot of espresso (with some star anise ground with the coffee beans).