Personal Information

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Short Bio

I am currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Computer Science, Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Portland State University. I'm a member of Datalab, and my advisor is Prof. Dave Maier. I also collaborate closely with Prof. Kristin Tufte. I enjoyed a 3-year long collaboration (2006-2009) with Prof. Robert Bertini at the ITS Lab. This inter-disciplinary line of work broadened my perspective of the applicability of my Computer Science work, and allowed me to gain a deeper understanding about challenges and problems in transportation systems.

I interned at Microsoft during the Summer of 2009, where I had the opportunity to work on Microsoft SQL Server StreamInsight, a Data Stream Management System.

I was an Academic Technician at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at IPICyT from 2001 to 2006. I held joint appointments as adjunct faculty of both the School of Engineering and the Science Department-High School at ITESM Campus San Luis in 2006.

I obtained my M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering at the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at OGI. I was part of the Adaptive Systems Laboratory and my Thesis Advisor was Prof. Todd Leen.

I got my B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from ITESM Campus San Luis Potosí in 2001. I also worked as an assistant at the Department of Computer Science (1999-2001) and was part of the tech support staff at the Information Services Division (1997-1998), both at ITESM while pursuing my B.S. degree.

I'm a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and SIGMOD.

About Spanish surnames, initials, and related items

Spanish surnames have proven to be confusing for a lot of people I interact with. Here is an explanation using my name to clarify where surnames come from. My fathers' name is Rafael de Jesús Fernández Cancino and my mother's name is Rosa Imelda Moctezuma Román. When they got married, my mother's name changed to reflect her marriage, and became Rosa Imelda Moctezuma de Fernández. We are the Fernández Moctezuma family. By now, you probably figured out where my surname comes from: take the paternal portion of my father's surname, and after that, put the paternal portion of my mother's surname. Addressing me as Mr. Moctezuma is incorrect; either use Mr. Fernández or Mr. Fernández Moctezuma.

Now to my middle name. The preposition de means of in English. Catholic traditions influenced the creation of some Castillian names, most notably the dedication of a person to Jesus, hence ``Rafael de Jesús''. My middle name is not Jesús. Addresing me as Jesús or Rafael Jesús is incorrect; either use Rafael or Rafael de Jesús.

People have seen my Email signatures or IRC nickname (RJFM). Those are the initials I use. Strict Spanish would force me to use these initials: ``R. d. J. F. M.'' or ``R. de J. F. M.''. Either approach does not scale well in the US, where initials are used without periods. I chose to drop the d for simplicity, besides, people rarely use the de in initials anymore. I realize this is a potential source of confusion as far as my middle name is concerned, but hey, by now you've realized Spanish names and surnames can be complicated.

In order to publish, I tried choosing a professional name that minimizes the possibility of missuse, misspellings, and ambiguity, so I publish as Rafael J. Fernández-Moctezuma.

More than you would want to know about Spanish surnames can be found in the corresponding entry in the Hitchhicker's Guide to the Web.

Curious about pronounciating my name? Here it is in IPA notation and pronounced by me:

[rafa'el de heɪ'sus fεr'nan dεθ mɔk tε'su ma] (MP3)

I'm glad I'm not the only one with naming issues (thanks Dave Maier for bringing this to my attention).

I've started collecting some misspellings of my name I've encountered through the years. Some are quite funny.

LaTeX style for PSU Ph.D. Thesis

Planning to write your dissertation using LaTeX? You may find this style useful.

The style may have been created by ``jinouye'' (at OGI), and was further PSU-iified by Bill Howe, James Terwilliger, and Chuan-kai Lin. It has produced theses approved by the Graduate Studies Office, the latest draft in May, 2010. I plan to maintain (not support) the LaTeX style until I write mine. If you find it useful and make corrections, let me know!

Emerson Murphy-Hill has also produced a thesis using LaTeX, and has made the entire source available.

Things that make sense

I think as you grow older you become selective as to which causes or ideals you embrace. You loose that typical impatience of wanting to scream about everything to everyone, everywhere. I think the most I can do from here is point my visitors to organisations and causes I find myself compatible with. It's not that I've given up on most things, but I think you can be most effective by channeling most of your energy to a handful of causes (maybe just an aspect of one,) instead of putting little energy in most causes.

Bowling

[Bowling]

Some folks from OGI, other friends, and myself used to bowl regularly. Ed Kaiser keeps some videos on his home page.

Interested in Bowling in general? Try visiting the United States Bowling Congress website. Some manufacturers I like include: Brunswick, Storm, and Dexter Shoe. I currently bowl with a Storm Natural and a Brunswick Power Groove Reactive, and wear Dexter shoes. I had very good results with a Brunswick Power Groove Proactive, now discontinued.

If you must know, my average peaked around 190 when I was bowling regularly in Oregon. It's in the 160s these days.

 ABC/WIBC 2003-2004 Mixed League Champion

Photography

I became interested in photography as soon as I bought my first digital camera in 2003: Canon PowerShot A300 (3.2MP). At first I used it as a "point and shoot" camera, mostly to pick up mementos and scenes I tried to reproduce in painting (a somewhat frustrated hobby of mine). I then started intuitively playing with some features and became aware that you can in fact get a lot of good looking pictures (or intentionally bizarre). Further, Apple's Aperture allowed me to gain more insight into post production (although I think you should get it right at shoot and not at patch-up time ;)

I owe Alejandro Silva Castillo hours of patient teaching and discussions. This certainly increased my interest in the subject and encouraged me to pick up the basics of photography. His constant guidance and experience also permeated in my interest and appreciation of this art form. I gained a better understanding of the basics by using a Canonet G-III QL17 Rangefinder 35mm. This little monster (from the late 1960s) came with an amazing 40mm 1:1.7 lens, with shutter speeds ranging from 1/4 to 1/500, plus the ability to manually control exposition time. Lots of fun, from Sunny16 shots to deliberately overexposed exteriors. And lots of wasted 35mm film >:)

After a great learning experience I decided to pursue Digital Photography as a hobby. It's cheaper than 35mm (no film or development costs), reasonable mid-sized prints can be obtained with digital cameras over 6 MP, no photo lab fights (Argh! Whites look Blue!), no bad dated rolls, etc. I doubt my hobby will ever grow to medium-format or full-format film anyway.

These days I shoot with the following equipment:

Art (PDX)

Some stuff I used to keep tabs on while in Portland.

Guitar

I love my Epiphone Riviera Custom P-93. Very forgiving instrument. And of course, now that I'm slowing down, I can use the extra help :)

    
Rafael J. Fernández-Moctezuma
Last modified: CDT

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