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The difference between a good alpinist and an extraordinary one is willpower. To be a great climber you must exercise the necessary discipline to know yourself. You train to be stronger than what it is necessary. In a route you eat an energy bar, even if it retches you, and you drink every certain time to keep hydrated…

As a disciplined climber you recognize when you are having a bad day and you admit it, letting your partner know it…

From where comes all this willpower, this hardness? From recognizing the desires and goals, and then endure whatever to reach them. A great willpower is forged from suffering and being rewarded for it. A strong will comes from years of training for many hours, or are those long trainings the result of a dominant will? There is no certain answer to this, because will and action are mutually nourished…

- Mark Twight
Extreme Alpinism: Climbing Light, Fast, and High

This wasn’t “the day”. 2 laps remaining… No more words. Must get stronger!

Suffering gives you the opportunity to exercise your will and to tan yourself. Climb at your local crag with a meteorology worse than what you would like for climbing a route in a high mountain. Austrian alpinist Hermann Buhl took snow balls in his hands to develop his psychological endurance and to increase his physical capacity. He climbed the routes near his home throughout the winter, even with storms, and he transported to the mountains using a bicycle through hundreds of kilometers. He was rewarded of all this when he solo-climbed Nanga Parbat, the only first solo ascent of an 8,000 meters summit…

- Mark Twight
Extreme Alpinism: Climbing Light, Fast, and High

Tonight, we got trapped in a hell of a storm at the university wall. We were chased by lightnings and got a full body wash. Big handholds got slippery while small ones were perfect for crimping. With laughter, fear and confusion, we endured this perfect torture till the end. Just getting stronger…

This morning, I registered for this course which is going to take place from September to mid-October at the IIMAS building in Ciudad Universitaria, UNAM. The program will include very interesting topics:

From biological systems to computer sciences and back
Course and Lab

Dr. Pablo Gonzalez
DEIS, Università di Bologna, Italia
e-mail: pgonzalez_at_ingce_dot_unibo_dot_it

Course description

The objective of this course will be introduce and develop concepts and abilities necessary for comprehension and engineering of biologically inspired systems, and its application to modern research problems. In this course, students will:

1. Learn why neural artificial networks, cell automata and genetics algorithms are biologically inspired systems
2. Learn how the information processing takes place in self-organizing and evolving systems
3. Learn strategies for engineering of biologically inspired systems
4. Know how biologically inspired systems are applied to modern research problems

Topics

1. Biologically inspired systems
   • Artificial Neural Networks
   • Genetic Algorithms
   • Cell Automata
   • Self-organizing systems
   • Models, architectures, technologies and infrastructures
   • Biologically Inspired System Lab: Information Technology and Applications
2. Computational Systems Biology
   • Introduction to Computational Systems Biology
   • Gene Expression Analysis
     • Basic Clustering Algorithms
     • Self-Organizing Maps Networks approach
     • Machine learning approach
   • Protein-Protein Interaction Networks
     • Rule-Based System approach
     • Cell Automata approach
     • Neural Networks approach
     • Multi-Agent Systems approach
   • Bioinformatics Lab

Prerequisites

Students are expected to have basic familiarity with distributed and parallel processing systems. A basic level knowledge of object-oriented system concepts and Java programming are also helpful.

Reference text

• Lucidi del corso “Laboratorio di Applicazioni e Servizi ICT: Dai sistemi biologici ai sistemi computazionali: andata e ritorno”. Pablo Gonzalez (2004) Università di Bologna, Italia.
• Dynamics of Complex Systems (Studies in Nonlinearity). Bar-Yam, Yaneer (1997) Westview Press.
• Elements of Artificial Neural Networks (Complex Adaptive Systems). Kishan Mehrotra, Chilukuri K. Mohan, Sanjay Ranka (1996) MIT Press.
• Self-Organization and Associative Memory (Springer Series in Information Sciences, Vol 8). Teuvo Kohonen. (1989) Springer Verlag; 3rd edition.
• Self-Organizing Maps. Teuvo Kohonen (2000) Springer Verlag; 3rd edition.
• Cellular Automata and Complexity. Stephen Wolfram (2002) Perseus Publishing.
• Society of Mind. Marvin Minsky (1988) Simon & Schuster.
• Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and Machine Learning. David E. Goldberg (1989) Addison-Wesley Pub Co.
• Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection (Complex Adaptive Systems). John R. Koza (1992) MIT Press.
• Introduction to Bioinformatics. Arthur M. Lesk (2002) Oxford University Press.
• Bioinformatics Computing. Bryan Bergeron (2002) Prentice Hall PTR.

This morning’s nice weather allowed us to train 1,200 meters of non-stop climbing. If we had more spare time (as some food & water), I think we could have easily done it for another 1,200 meters. The sensation of constant movement while being disconnected from the outside world simply gets you high… It’s like drugs: your mind & body always asks for more!

At some sections of the uphill route I had to walk the trail, I didn’t wanted to get more injuries in my left foot.

As the night got close, we started the downhill race. It started to rain a bit. The forest and the graveyard seemed like some scottish inspired landscape. Then, a big yellow almost-full moon started to rise over the horizon… simply beautiful!

It got us so psyched that we cutted down our record for the 12 km route…

This morning, I began a Naproxen treatment in order to heal my recent sufferings. So far, it seems like my body is absorbing it well…

This evening, Beto and I went bouldering to Chiluca. We haven’t been there since 2 weeks ago. The cave is full of water filtrations, so the majority of the holds are plastered with mud and are very slippery. I taped very well my left hand’s middle finger and gave a try to some of our favorite problems. Not bad at all! The finger is getting stronger again and almost doesn’t hurt.

Drug effect or real healing?

Since some weeks ago, the middle finger’s tendon of my left hand is about to break due to hard bouldering. Even if I use some tape while climbing, it really hurts. Last week, I’ve got a torn left foot because of trail running by night. Tonight, I could barely run 6 km in the rain because of that. Now I’ve got this pain in the left side of my lower abdomen…

Training consequences or just getting old? I need a real rest and some vitamins!

Yesterday was a strenuous day. Working from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Then a party at Ginna’s place to celebrate her niece and Octavio‘s birthday. Then a dinner at Xochitl & Alfredo’s apartment with Caro, Gil, Marijo and Wally. Then getting back home until 4 a.m., totally wasted…

Supposedly, this morning I was to going to sow some trees with Mariana, Ginna, Octavio, Toche, Caro and Gil at a Hill near Chiluca. It was a reforestation effort due to the government’s incompetent role in stopping México City’s growth. But I was so tired that I couldn’t get up from bed. In fact, I’ve been here all day resting. I really needed it.

I hope to be more disciplined for the next week…

NerdTests.com: Are you a Computer Geek?

Tonight, while synchronizing the entirely new Biology Career’s website of the Faculty, I ran into a problem… I forgot that I’ve changed some document suffixes for the new design, so the synchronization method simply erased the ones whose suffixes didn’t existed in the development server. One of such deleted files was a file for which I didn’t had a copy. The only thing I had was a test version of it… In the production server, it was a file that was frequently accessed and modified by Faculty users, so I completely lost all the real data in it. I accept it: my mistake!

Just before going nuts and ripping off my hair , I decided to give a try to the big search engines (which sometimes save a cached copy of the pages they index). The obvious first option was Google. To my surprise, the search engine found the document but didn’t had a cached copy of it, so my last chance was Yahoo! Search. And it was! The engine had not only the page indexed, but also a freshly cached copy of the document! (just before my stupid commit). I immediately saved the cached document and applied the necessary changes to have it online with the rest of the site in a matter of minutes.

Thanks to all the engineers at Yahoo! Search, you saved me from having to give my boss a shameful technical explanation of my mistake . Next time I delete something from the Web, I will surely go to check the Web’s Recycle bin…