On the one hand I’m quite pleased that my tricky research program is finally working. On the other hand I’m not too pleased with its performance. Even though it outperforms its own predecessor and even though that predecessor outperformed other programs (in some experiments), I was (unrealistically) hoping for much better performance. As I’m writing this, I just realized that I have not yet implement certain heuristics of the predecessor.  Perhaps the program can go a little faster after all.

Research often needs a little time to mature, and I’m wary of pushing this work too soon, but there is a deadline coming up and I’d like to submit a paper. Putting it off will not only waste my time (the sooner the deadline, the sooner I can finish the work and move on to the next job), and also that of my co-author who should also get on with other matters.

Clearly, we are no Darwins, prepared to sit on our work for a couple of years. Having said that, I have been working on this idea since 2005. I haven’t done much with it, but it has been mulling around in my head for almost 5 years now. Last year a student chose the idea for his capstone project, and the results were good enough to write a paper about it. I have rewritten the program for some hand optimization (which worked) but now a whole new set of results have to be generated. There is still about two weeks to finish off the experiments if I can get them going over the weekend.

So, I’m kind of excited but also quite tense. And if I don’t put my nose to the grindstone now, I’ll grow bored and never finish it.