I’m Fernando Mayer, an oceanographer, currently an assistant professor of statistics at Federal University of Rio Grande (FURG), and doing a PhD in statistics at Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ) from University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. I have learned programming in FORTRAN, but now I use R and shell scripts extensively. My research interests are in statistical models applied to environmental problems, and programming is an essential part of this.