We have thesis!

:-)

Using JabRef to keep track of references

Hi,

I've just finished the references section on my thesis. It was tiresome!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had my references sorted in directories, in alphabetical order. However, to build the references section in the thesis, I had to check which references were actually used. Not easy to do when you're using Microsoft Word. I developed a couple of macros for Ultra-Edit http://www.ultraedit.com to extract the references list - values within squared brackets - from the text. Then I sorted and removed duplicates from the result.

To produce the listing I used JabRef http://jabref.sourceforge.net/ an excellent free tool that uses the BibTex format, from LaTeX. Even though I was using Microsoft Word it still proved very useful. I did the references section using the custom export option, for results just like I wanted them.

I absolutely recommend using JabRef, it is excellent! Especially if you're starting your thesis now or still have a long way to go. Believe me, it will spare you a full working week (and a boring one, I can add).

Evaluation and Conclusions

I've finished writing the Evaluation and Conclusion chapters of my thesis. I wrote them in parallel because they were very interrelated. I started outlining the chapters from the ideia register document, collected over the course of the work. It made it much easier not to forget anything at this late stage.

For the Evaluation, I identified the most relevant results. In my thesis, almost all results were qualitative and not quantitative. Still, it was very useful to include summary tables to capture the overall results in a quick, visual way.

For the Conclusion, I wrote three subsections: Contributions, Future Work and Final Comment.

In Contributions, I identified the contributions from each chapter of the thesis in bullet points, adding some comments. I summarized using short sentences like "A is better than B at something because of this and that". I ended with a main contributions list with just three items, that I considered the "juice" of the work, i.e., what people would most likely find useful.

In Future Work I wrote down the new work ideas and opportunities. It was a fun subsection to write, because you realize how your work opened up new improvement paths to explore.

To finalize, in the Final Comment subsection, I gave my personal opinion about the subject. It was the time and place to "make the strike on goal" (in soccer terms) or to "take the ball to the basket" (if you prefer basketball).

The hardest work of thesis is finished. Now I'll wait for additional comments from my advisor and I'll finish the references section.

More about the 'refs' on my next post. Bye!

Writing wrap-up

This last month i've finalized the thesis prototype and started writing the dissertation. It's a challenge condensing years of work in a 100 page document. You have to do a sort of 'movie directing', writing not everything you learned, but the most relevant things you learned, in a build-up, meaningful, sequence.

So far i've written 4 complete chapters, including Introduction, Context, Service Platform, and Security. The remaining chapters are Case Study, Evaluation and Conclusion. They are the most challenging, let's hope I can write them well (and fast - my deadline is now overstretched...).

Wish me luck and work.

Yours truly,

Full time Engineer ;-)