Spamming you: project updates

So, I will start using this blog to report the advances on my research. It will as general as possible so anybody interested would be able to follow. I am doing this because I need to push myself to write everyday, and do closures after every milestone created. Giving that I am doing this only 5 months before my hand-in date, it can be a bit too late to inform you, but we will see how does it go.

Today I am going to ramble a bit on one of the open threads in my research

Open Specifications of Concurrent Processes. The most common way of specifying concurrent systems is to take a set of communicating processes, and establish the interactions between them by input-output primitives. Think for a second on a model in which you have a patient Alice, a doctor Bob, and a Social Worker Charlie (switch the gender of roles if you think I am being chauvinist here). Now, you will like to express a case in which the patient feels and comes to the doctor in order to receive a prescription.

The following set of activities will be included in our specification S:

1. Alice comes to Bob for a medical appointment.
2. Bob checks out on Alice and formulates a medicine treatment.
3. Bob sends the medicine formulation to Charlie, so he can deliver it to Alice.
4. Alice gets the medicine from Charlie and starts taking her treatment regularly as specified by Bob.
5. After some days, Alice comes back to Bob for a control, and the symptoms have dissapeared.

Now, many details have been hindered from this example. First of all, the current example only details the interaction between three of the main actors involved. This is, however, not a complete model. For instance, considering a private health care institution that has to fulfill auditing processes, we will have that, between phases 2 and 3. other actors will come into play.

Our specification S will be extended accordingly. We call the new model S´:

1. Alice comes to Bob for a medical appointment.
2. Bob checks out on Alice and formulates a medicine treatment.
3. 1. David, the accountant, has to certify that the treatment is covered by the insurance hired by Alice.
   2. Emma, has to Audit that the process is fulfilling the standards given by the healthcare institution with respect to prompt medicine delivery, quality of service and so on.
4. 1. Bob sends the medicine formulation to Charlie, so he can deliver it to Alice.
5. 1. Alice gets the medicine from Charlie and starts taking her treatment regularly as specified by Bob.
6. 1. After some days, Alice comes back to Bob for a control, and the symptoms have dissapeared.

So, here the question is: Is it S a valid specification? and How is S related to S'? Is it clear that the notion that we are looking for has a lot to do with refinement. Basically, refinement will tell us that a specification S and an implementation Q are related if the set of behaviors in S is a subset of the set of behaviors exhibited by Q. Up to here, there's nothing new to the concept, and you can simply google "refinement concurrency" and will find a lot of examples, most of them based in similarities and testing theories.

Now, most of the times we will start specifying systems constructively, adding up more and more roles (and their respective behaviors) over the time. This, will lead us to start with a specification like S, knowing that each of the actions can be further refined with more and more behavior. To do so, transitions in S can be either the classical, fixed ones where a process exhibits an immediate a before evolving into P', or can be "open" transitions , where the process P can exhibit a series of actions in A before evolving into P'. This "open transitions" allow us to describe explicit stages in a process in which a process can be refined with any of the actions considered. Here, transitions become weaker, as they might need more than one step for moving from P to P', they also become broader, as the set A can involve more than one action a.

Obviously, these changes lead us to a different notion of refinement, in which you consider sets of transitions instead of a single, hardcoded interaction. Without bothering you with the details, we will say that an open refinement relation P R Q considers 1) That the transitions in P are covered by the transitions in Q, and 2) That if P allows for a open transition of the form , then there exists a sequence of transitions in from Q to Q' such that all actions in A are covered.

The new definition of open specifications lead us to very interesting paths on the verification of processes. First, open specifications are partial specifications by nature, and then one can explore the connection between these and logical reasoning. Returning to the example, one might be interested in saying things like "I know that I have to visit the doctor, and irrespective of all the other agents possibly involved, once I am in front of the social worker, he should deliver my medicine".

Currently, we already have the definitions of open specifications and refinement, plus a small logic to relate the transitions on a process and a set of formulae in the logic. Our next step is to map different specification models (for instance, the Pi calculus, or a Calculus for Choreographies) into this model, to prove its usability. My plan is to be able to talk a bit more on this subject from here until the beginning of October.

wrapping up

Now I'm in my fourth month in Portugal, which means that it is time to finish everything, summarize and think about the next step. Before coming here, the idea was pretty simple: take as much time as I can for myself. Learn new things, both at a work level and at the personal one, and generally, retake the order of my life lost in this 2010.

Now, thinking about what happened in Lisbon, things changed radically to the ones expected: I was able again to say "I love you" without having regrets to do so. I learn how not to plan every single step in my life, and enjoy the perfect moments of today without regrets for tomorrow or yesterday. My journey was more personal than I thought, and I found that being a giver in terms of emotions characterizes me. I understood that the best emotion for me is to being able to give with no expectations, with no contracts or everlasting promises that none will keep. Nobody warned me that those lessons will come bundled with nights of insomnia and some tears, but I am learning to appreciate even those moments...like spices, is what keeps all interesting, right?

On what is coming next, I certainly don't know...and I am not worried anymore. I will continue, I will crash and burn, and I will put myself together as one of the many times it has happened...only that this time I feel the nature of things, and I will give everything now to make those moments perfect, and feel the memories full of genuine moments.

Thanks to you, for having taught me that....

Insomnia

Ya se esta volviendo una costumbre esta: tengo mis horarios trocados, mis sentimientos encontrados y ahí dentro: un pozo que por más que intento llenar sólo se hace más grande. Ayer un italiano en su pobre traducción lo definió como una alcantarilla, y pensándolo mejor es un termino que no viene tan mal: Este es el momento en donde necesito sacarme todo el desperdicio de adentro, no un pozo que quiera llenar para acumular cosas, sino una cañería para deshacerme de sentimientos, de ausencias y desencuentros.

Hablemos un poco de los ¨amores bisagra¨. Estos se conocen cómo el tipo de relaciones usadas para conocerse más individualmente, para volver a creer en el amor y prepararse como pareja para una siguiente relación. En su concepción, el amor bisagra es el más puro acto de amor sin compromisos, y ambos participantes saben que dicha relación tiene un tiempo de vida determinado.

Ahora bien, un amor bisagra funciona bien si ambos integrantes de la relación asumen desde un inicio la naturaleza fútil de dicha empresa. En el caso contrario, se pasa de ser una relación de crecimiento mutuo a una relación de transferencia, en donde sólo uno de los participantes terminará con herramientas suficientes para embarcarse en nuevos proyectos. En el ejemplo de la bisagra, es cómo si uno de los dos lados se llevara todo el perno.

Los amores bisagras no son para mí, y aún considero relaciones un ¨todo o nada¨ en donde se apuesta cómo en todo, y se asumen las consecuencias. No puedes esperar que esto pase desapercibido por mi vida, que retorne a mi vida y que cambie de página así nada más. Puedo esconder un duelo con mil actividades que ocupen mi cabeza, pero la verdad es que ahí estás...tan presente cómo siempre.

Y pasa el tiempo

Y yo te busco en ese perfume que no es tuyo, que es de la noche y se irá mañana.

Te busco en esa sonrisa, que es tan mía cómo de aquel con el que cruzaste miradas en la metropolitana.

Te busco en esas cartas, las cuales has escrito pensando en aquel que un día rasgó tus vestidos,

ese aquel que no era yo

Envejezco, y me siento mejor

A mis 28, el mundo se pone a mis pies

Las sorpresas, en cambio, escasean

Y esa idea de cambiar el mundo, ya lejos queda

Me estoy cansando de esto, ya ves

He dejado de sentirte, tu presencia es sólo un recuerdo

El sentimiento se transforma, las cenizas queman

Y el corazón siente, ese insalvable vacio

No te amo, los dos lo sabemos

pero desde aquel momento, ese punto de ruptura

el amor dejó de existir para mí

y comienzo a pensar si no fue un sueño

Quiero revivir el sentimiento

Volver a creer que hay un futuro

Pensar en que uno más uno es más que dos

y que aquello que fué, no evitará un mañana.

Fragility

Today is a sad day, very sad indeed. I've recently received a couple of news from my former university that left me breathless for a while. The dean of postgraduate studies of what once was my university was shot by three individuals while parking his car in front of his mother's house. Still the information available is very unclear when referring to the identities of the perpetrators of such a crime, and I would not run into conclussions about the rationale or the provenance of these people.

I met John in 2003 when I was looking for an undergrad thesis. Along with Camilo Rueda and John E., we started looking into the problem of the computation of economic equilibria for multiple products using a constraint programming approach. Due to reasons that are outside the scope of this post I stepped outside of the project, but I got to know the work John had being doing during his MSc and his PhD. I remember him as a very dedicated person, with very practical questions to answer in his research and always available to explore new research ideas. I know that after I finished my career there he undertook duties as head of the Industrial engineering programme and later as the dean of postgraduate studies at Javeriana.

The second sad event, comes from the same university and the same department of engineering. My former professor Hernando Prado was shot by individuals after having withdrawn money from an ATM. Fortunately, he is now recovering from the shots, and I expect him to be sound and safe soon. Hernando was my professor of Economic engineering, and I think that if I would have met him earlier I would have probably chosen a different path in my career. I remember that despite the time where the lectures were held (19:00 till 22:00) he was still able to fill up the classroom with students eager to learn, not only about the topics he was teaching, but about all the life experiences he was including in every single lecture. Sometimes, I remember him as an inspiration when I have to teach, and I try to convey those values in the lectures, finding them hard to transmit when you are such a rookie in teaching matters comparing to people with 20+ years of experience.

My relation with none of them is close nowadays, but still I feel touched by the fragility of life, even in "safe" environments like the university. One of the reasons why I decided to pursue an academic life is because I feel I can make a change on the life of others, just by providing a little bit of motivation and base tools for their own research. It's hard to hear that still such a honorable (and humble, in both cases cited previously) profession can be affected by cruelty like assassination, and I still refuse to believe a student can possibly be included in this matter. It also left you thinking how else can you possibly contribute to a society like mine, when such minimal values are not taken into consideration. Between my ideals are still to contribute to my country by helping others in the lines of research and education, fostering R+D in Colombia and at some point strengthen my relationship with Colombia; however, I won't put in risk the safety of my family or mine in that effort.

Reunion La Salle Prom 99 (Diez Años)

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sono vivo

Oggi scrivo per dire quello che penso di questo blog. Per me non è importante se lo leggete, se non siete d´accordo con quello che scrivo, non m´interessa in assoluto creare polemica ne farvi crescere in nessun senso, non riceverete di me nessun link per scaricare niente che vi sia utile e se vi piace cosi sono contento, se no è comunque per me un piacere che ancora ci sia almeno un lettore di questi post.

Sono qua per esprimermi, che alla fine è stato sempre il mio scopo per scrivere. Non penso scrivere cose serie, ma neanche sono un comico, soltanto voglio lasciare andare il cuore libero con tutta quella libertà che le parole li permettono. Se scambio la lingua dal inglese allo spagnolo ed oggi al´italiano è soltanto perché lui piace cosi, ed io sono soltanto un interprete di quello che vuole. Se non scrivo in mesi (perdendo cosi miei unici lettori) dovreste scusarmi, ma lui non vuole svegliarsi, è li latente ma muto, ed io devo rispettarlo cosi.

Oggi sono tornato in piscina dopo 5 anni di non nuotare come si deve. Qua i prezzi per fare uno sport come il nuoto sono veramente pazzeschi, 235 corone danesi (più di 30 euro) per 10 entrate è proibitivo, ma dopo tanto tempo mi sono sentito vivo! il mio corpo si scorreva per la superficie aquosa come tanto tempo fa, ed era una sensazione che non mi ricordavo più. I danesi non sono grande nuotatori, ed è un vero problema il trafico in palestra; ma quello non è il punto, oggi (e grazie al mio papa in questi ultimi giorni) ho ricordato tante cose che mi piacciono ed ho lasciato per mancanza di compromesso con me stesso. Non ho tornato a capoeira, non faccio più fotografia, non nuoto più. Sempre c´è una scusa: il lavoro, la università, una ragazza qualsiasi, una birretta dopo il lavoro.... il vero punto è che sono io quello che deve godersi se stesso: il ambiente che ti circonda è finalmente una fantasia, e le sensazione che da li provengono soltanto aiutano a complimentarti su quell trasfondo dentro di te.  Ora sento che sto invecchiando; si, ho soltanto 26 anni, ma sento che tante cose ormai non ci sono più: cose di me stesso, gli elementi definitori della mia personalità. Ugualmente mi sento vivo, pieno di nuove cose che mi caratterizzano e che ormai non li ho messo in considerazione. Comincio una nuova ricerca, per riscoprirmi: ora.