Subluminal

My last internal combustion engine died on me, and I bought a new car. That was the plan all along – I wanted to keep my convertible as long as possible for I really enjoyed driving with the roof down, and get an electric car as a replacement–  but the engine failure came as a surprise.

In a sense, it came at just about the right time.  I don’t have a garage, so  I need to rely on the public charging infrastructure. I decided to buy a Ioniq 5, for its has an intriguing design, a very decent range (300 miles), and it has fast charging capabilities, an interesting feature when fast charger are starting to materialize all over California. The best thing is that I get 2 years of free charging – so I drive essentially for free.

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These days things are getting pretty busy on my end – so many cool projects to engage with and only 24 hours a day.

And you end up doing more things that you can accomplish. The reason often lies in the unrealistic assessment of the time it would take to complete a task, and I came across the “pi” rule, initially posited by my mentor Ken, with a pretty neat explanation from my colleague Val:

If you estimate it will take one unit of time to complete a task, the task will effectively take 3.14 (≈π) times more than you initially anticipated.

The reason for the difference between dream and reality  is that we generally do not factor in:

• (1) the time it takes to ease into the task (e.g. collecting documentation, emails) and
• (2) the time requires to document the work done (reports, emails)

Taken together with the times its take to accomplish a task, you end up with roughly a factor three – and you end up feeling terrible during the week-ends trying to catch up what you were set to do during the week, but got busy doing (1) or (2)

Weekends are a constant battle between “I should do all the work I put off during the week!” and “taking time off is important to recharge!” but it’s okay because I usually find a nice compromise in which I lounge around feeling guilty and accomplishing nothing

— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) August 15, 2021

A corollary of the pi rule is the “next up” rule: if you work on project with a relatively large team, it generally takes the next unit of time to complete it (e.g. one hour become one day; one day becomes a week; a week becomes a months), generally because of the friction at the interfaces. Reducing these frictions at the interfaces should therefore be a priority.

Engineering interfaces in big science collaborations

I recently learned that my colleague Bertrand Nicquevert has worked extensively on a model to describe interactions between various counterparts:

Modelling engineering interfaces in big science collaborations at CERN: an interaction-based model
https://cds.cern.ch/record/2808723?ln=fr

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Finding the best croissants in the San Francisco is an essential quest. Here are a few great options:

• Rotha (East Bay) – 1051 San Pablo Ave, Albany, CA
• Arsicault (San Francisco) – 97 Arguello Blvd, San Francisco, CA
• Marvel Cake (South Bay) – 1614 W Campbell Ave, Campbell, CA

I won’t dare to mention pastry shops that bake monstrosities such as Cronuts, Croffle or Croffin (there must beat cosmic justice, Mr. Holmes went down.)

I’ll take a minute to say a word about Bakesum (3249 Grand Ave,  Oakland, CA), a French pastry / Asian flavor fusion that started in Berkeley during the pandemic, very close to where I lived and brought me a lot of joy when I needed most.

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