Posted: February 21st, 2009
I just LMAO with this:
Chamomile Tea
Chamomile Tea
ACTUAL COLLEGE THEME PAPER – HEY I COULDN’T MAKE THIS UP
Remember the book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”?
Well, here’s a prime example offered by an English professor
at an American University.
“Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story.
The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person
sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write
the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the
first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The
first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and
forth. Remember to reread what has been written each time in order
to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking
and anything you wish to say must be written on the paper. The
story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.”
The following was actually turned in by two of my English students:
Rebecca -last name deleted, and Jim – last name deleted.
————————————————————
STORY:
(First paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The
chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home,
now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times,
that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs,
keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if
she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again.
So chamomile was out of the question.
—————————————————–
(Second paragraph by Jim)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack
squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to
think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named
Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. “A.S.
Harris to Geostation 17, he said into his trans- galactic communicator.
“Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so
far…” But before he could sign off, a bluish particle beam flashed
out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay. The
jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across
the cockpit.
———————————————————-
(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately but not before he
felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one
woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth
stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers
of Skylon 4. Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and
Space Travel,” Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news
simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window,
dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed hurriedly and
carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract
her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things
around her. “Why must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?”
she pondered wistfully.
——————————————————–
(Jim)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live.
Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu’udrian mothership
launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted
wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament
Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target
for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the
human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty
the Anu’udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough
firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop
them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium
fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President,
in his top-secret Mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor
off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion,
which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie and 85 million other Americans.
The President slammed his fist on the conference table. “We can’t
allow this! I’m going to veto that treaty! Let’s blow ‘em out of
the sky!”
———————————————————
(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature.
My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate
adolescent.
———————————————————-
(Jim)
Yeah? Well, you’re a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts
at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. “Oh shall I have
chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F*CKING TEA??? Oh
no, I’m such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele
novels.”
———————————————————-
(Rebecca)
Asshole.
———————————————————-
(Jim)
Bitch.
———————————————————-
(Rebecca)
Wanker.
———————————————————-
(Jim)
slut.
———————————————————
(Rebecca)
Get f*cked.
———————————————————-
(Jim)
Eat shit.
——————————————————–
(Rebecca)
F*CK YOU – YOU NEANDERTHAL!!!
———————————————————-
(Jim)
Go drink some tea – whore.
——————————————————–
(Teacher)
A+ I really liked this one.
Posted: February 21st, 2009
Asustek May Use Google’s Android in Netbooks, in Challenge for Microsoft (Tim Culpan/Bloomberg): “
Tim Culpan / Bloomberg:
Asustek May Use Google’s Android in Netbooks, in Challenge for Microsoft‘ —’ Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) — Asustek Computer Inc., which pioneered the market for sub-$500 laptops, may install Google Inc.’s free Android operating system on its low-cost notebooks, challenging the dominance of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software.
“
(Via Techmeme.)
Posted: November 18th, 2008
After the awesomeness that was codebits 07 I actually expeect 08 to be a lot better. It wasn’t imo. It still ranks as Legendary on the my personal scale. Food was a major let down tough 
The talks I went too were a disappointment. Even Jack Motif’s XMPP talk was way too introductory for the audience (at least for me). More code less talk? Seriously looking at XML I could read in the damn specification was not fun. But I did get to ask a few questions and talk to Jack Motif and Pedro Melo a bit after the talk which made it worth it. Jack Motif told me to look at Wokkel and said he had written a lot of example code for it. I’ll definitivelly look at it sometime in the near future. And this was the best talk I went. Sadly on the second day I chose to sleep late so I missed Pedro Melo’s and Celso Pinto’s presentations. Both of which I’m told were “teh awesome 4tw” or something like that.
What was suprising is that this year, even though the talks @MAIN looked great on paper, most people went to the talks on the other stages. And judging from my experience they did the right thing – however I have no interest whatsoever in server-side js or web cartooning which seem to have been among the most popular).
Another fail was the super loud Rock Band playing while some of us were trying to code but people seem to have enjoyed it.
82 projects? Holly….! Sadly things run late (fail!) and I had to leave before people finished showing their projects – I’ll have to look at the videos later. A lot of people were doing some pretty cool stuff but sadly didn’t finish in time. As for my stuff, I’ll put it online sometime in the near future when I don’t have better things to do (like study for tomorrow’s exam – pratical code thingy whatever you want to call it… crap by any other name would smell just as bad)
I got to talk a bit with the usual suspects from Lisboa (ended up with an handivi sticker on my macbook) and Porto and also met a bunch of new people from all around (Lisboa, Porto, Aveiro, Coimbra, Faro, …) – some from FEUP! And ofc I learned a few things. I regret not having ended up joining some team and working on some project with more people but I did get to play (literally) with pygame and with django. Both of which I’ve been meaning to actually play with (more than just doing tutorial examples) for like 1yr.
Btw think putting the RFID stuff@codebits for everyone to hack was a brilliant idea. Congrats @ whoever had it. And congrats to the sapo.pt team behind this event. It’s the only one of its kind (and level of quality) here in Portugal. Granted that may not mean a lot but it is a great-omg-you-really-cant-miss-it event imho.
Oh! Got to play around with an EeePC 1000H (or something) and I liked it (thanks dude, whoever you were, I forgot cuz my memory is bad and it works worse without sleep). On coming back, word from relax is that everything (or close enough) on his 901 is now supported by Ubuntu. I dunno if I want one because I really need it or just because it’s a cool gadget and I’m rationalizing my lust. Whatever. I can’t afford it anyway. Not with the ginormous ammounts of money I’m wasting travelling around… this semester I’ll actually spend more time outside Porto than @ the uni… hell yeah! Which brings me to my need to work on my cibermouse stuff both for the Robotics course and for the competition at RTSS08 in Barcelona (yay).
I’m sure I left out a lot of stuff but I’m short on time and patience and this is better than nothing imo.
Posted: October 24th, 2008
If I ever buy a netbook it needs to have a proper OS. Windows is even more of a joke on a netbook than it is on a normal laptop and since I don’t foresee apple coming up with a netbook in the near future, linux is all that’s left. And no, that crap Asus ships and calls linux is not an option. Windows wannabe Xandros with a lame interface – no thank you. Ubuntu is currently the (only) way to go. And I mean normal Ubuntu not Ubuntu with weird interface (DJ Silly Remix). Sure you can install something like Ubuntu EEE if you have an eee pc or similar but that still might not get all your hardware runing properly plus why did you have to do it yourself? That should’ve been done by the manufacturer imo.
I also find some of the hadware on the current generation of netbooks lacking. There’s nothing that can be done about the SSDs at the moment. They are all slow, low-capacity energy-vampires. One could go with the traditional mechanic drives but that’s soooo last century. The memory is a different story. 512MB is definitively not enough. 1GB is usable but 2GB would be nice. But the biggest let down in my opinion is the battery life. Assuming you don’t stick with windows or the windows wannabe that comes pre-installed, you won’t get past 5h of battery life. And knowing the reviewers and my own careless use of computer resources, that probably translates into 3h in my hands
Granted some may say I’ve missed the point of netbooks. That all netbooks are for is browsing the web, reading email and instant messaging. Nope. That’s just all you can do with the current hardware. Ok the truth is you can do a lot more but you’ll soon run into limitations. Say I want to fire up eclipse and work on my JADE powered project for the Distributed Intelligent Agents course. It’s painfull enough on my macbook I can’t imagine it being bearable on the current crop (read crap) of netbooks.
But that’s not what netbooks are for right? And if it’s just browsing and reading email, an iPhone will do. But work still needs to get done and while my macbook is great for that, I’d still like a more portable option. One I wouldn’t be too afraid to drop/lose. A more task-oriented option (e.g. work on proj A for 2h at a random place with wireless) without the hundreds of applications I keep conveniently open on my macbook would also be nice.
Obviously there are already many options in the market and more to come. But I’m not paying more than 350 eur for one. That’s the price of an eee pc 901. So all I have to do now is wait for another 12 months for it (or rather its sucessor(s)) to reach the kind of hw specs I want and for them to either drop the pseudo-linux or for ubuntu’s netbook support to improve a bit.
Posted: October 17th, 2008
The MB13″ lost it’s firewire and didn’t even get a new USB. Apple hates perfipherals… or more likely Jobs hates cables and mac users pay tthe price for this irrationality. FFS Asus crams 3 USBs into its eeepcs but apple can’t put 3 on a damn 13″ laptop?
Oh and the MBP now has 2 graphics cards but users currently need to logoff to switch between them. Logging off? That’s almost as bad as rebooting… you don’t reboot a mac… the uptime on my MB is usually around 30d, closing applications and opening them again is boring. This is seriously un-appleish.
I’m not a fan of glossy displays but wth I’ll see how these new ones deal with direct sunlight.
Now for the good part: thank god (well, probably just Steve Jobs) they got rid of the extremely bad intel graphics. The new keyboard is a huge improvement for the MBPs and overall the new body looks cooler.
Posted: May 11th, 2008
friendsnippets.com is for code what del.icio.us is for bookmarks. Just found it and fell in love with it.
link to my account.
Posted: March 27th, 2008
I finally decided to take the Numerical Methods (MNUM) course. It turns out it’s a lot more fun than I thought. There is programming involved but you can chose to use whatever language you want. This is yet another nice excuse for me to use Python instead of C++ or Java. Last semester I was able to use Python to implement the game logic for Software Application Laboratory (LAS), which is mostly an OpenGL course with IPC via sockets thrown into the mix, and to write an article on dynamic languages (focusing mostly on Python) for Software Engineering (ESOF).
But back to this semester, 3 classes into the semester and the teacher is already said something like “I’m going to learn python now. I didn’t believe when I heard someone saying it was the best language in the world, but now I see there might be some truth to that claim”. That and I suspect his next laptop might be a macbook but that’s another story.
There are a few things that make Python great for Numerical Methods. In my opinion, Python’s clear, easy to understand, syntax is the most important one.It makes algorithms easier to implement. The syntax ends up being very close to language neutral pseudocode available in numerical methods books. Also Python’s datatypes as well as those provided by other libraries can be very useful.
The following code implements the stuff in chapter 2 (determining zeros) of the course. The methods implemented are Bisection, Rope and Newton. The function returns both the solution and the number of iterations necessary to get to that solution.
UPDATE: forgot the book - Numerical Methods in Engineering with Python
Appendix A – mnum2.py
from math import log
def bisect(f, a, b, e):
""" Determines zero between a and b using Bisection. """
n = 0
fa = f(a)
if fa == 0.0: return (a, n)
fb = f(b)
if fb == 0.0: return (b, n)
while (abs(a-b) > e):
c = 0.5*(a+b)
fc = f(c)
if fc == 0.0: return (c, n)
n = n + 1
if fb*fc < 0.0:
a = c
fa = fc
else:
b = c
fb = fc
if fa < fb:
return (a, n)
else:
return (b, n)
def rope(f, a, b, e):
""" Determines zero between a and b using the Rope methode. """
n = 0
fa = f(a)
if fa == 0.0: return (a, n)
fb = f(b)
if fb == 0.0: return (b, n)
while (abs(a-b) > e):
c = (a*fb - b*fa) / (fb - fa)
fc = f(c)
if fc == 0.0: return (c, n)
n = n + 1
if fb*fc < 0:
a = c
fa = fc
else:
b = c
fb = fc
if fa < fb:
return (a, n)
else:
return (b, n)
# Note: must verify that for the function f and guess c
# the method will _converge_.
def newton(f, df, c, t):
""" Determines zero between a and b using Newton """
n = 0
fc = f(c)
if fc == 0.0: return (c, n)
while (True):
fc = f(c)
dfc = df(c)
if dfc == 0:
print "dfc is 0"
return (0, -1)
dc = -fc/dfc
c = c + dc
n = n + 1
if abs(dc) < t: return (c, n)
##Tests
#def f(x): return -log(x)+4.0
#def df(x): return -1.0/x
#x= bisect(f, 1, 70, 0.00000001)
#print x
#x = rope(f, 1, 70, 0.00000001)
#print x
#x = newton(f, df, 0.1, 0.0001)
#print x
Posted: March 24th, 2008
I mentioned in a previous post that I was using a private WordPress blog to keep my notes. Not anymore. I migrated to Evernote.
Thanks to Maria Joao Valente for sending me the invite to evernote.
Evernote is a note organizers, similar to Journler which I used a while back.
Check out the About Evernote and their screencast. My highlights:
* Web client
* Desktop client
* Works with Mobile Devices
* Painless, automatic synchronization (think gmail + IMAP but better)
* Notes can be found by searching and filtering for text within images
* Clip (via bookmarklet) or email entire webpages into your account
* Can import html files (you’ll see why this was important for me)
See also: Wired Review and TUAW Review.
Migrating between applications has never been an easy task. In this case I need to migrate from a WordPress blog to evernote. I could manually click “Clip to Evernote” for each post on that blog or I could’ve written a simple AppleScript to do it or I could probably have found a way to do it in Javascript or I could’ve taken advantage of the “clip” thing in another way. But off course I choose the hardest way possible – I wrote a python script to convert the WordPress XML Export File to multiple HTML notes and then dragged those files to evernote. At least it was fun if a colossal waste of time…
Anyway here’s the python script in case you ever want to convert a wordpress blog (or more accurately a WordPress XML Export File) to html files.
wpdepress.py
# Copyright (c) 2008 Luis Rei
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
# of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
# in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
# to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
# furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
# all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
# IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
# AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
# LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
# OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
# THE SOFTWARE.
# Notes:
# - currently does not handle images, attachments or comments
# - was only tested on MacOS X (10.5)
# - not "carefully" developed e.g. poor exception handling, little testing, ...
# - see also http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/06/12/xml-import-export/
import string, os, sys, getopt
from xml.dom import minidom
__author__ = 'Luis Rei (luis.rei@gmail.com)'
__homepage__ = 'http://luisrei.com'
__version__ = '1.0'
__date__ = '2008/03/23'
def convert(infile, outdir, authorDirs, categoryDirs):
"""Convert WordPress Export File to multiple html files.
Keyword arguments:
infile -- the location of the WordPress Export File
outdir -- the directory where the files will be created
authorDirs -- if true, create different directories for each author
categoryDirs -- if true, create directories for each category
"""
# First we parse the XML file into a list of posts.
# Each post is a dictionary
dom = minidom.parse(infile)
blog = [] # list that will contain all posts
for node in dom.getElementsByTagName('item'):
post = dict()
post["title"] = node.getElementsByTagName('title')[0].firstChild.data
post["date"] = node.getElementsByTagName('pubDate')[0].firstChild.data
post["author"] = node.getElementsByTagName(
'dc:creator')[0].firstChild.data
post["id"] = node.getElementsByTagName('wp:post_id')[0].firstChild.data
if node.getElementsByTagName('content:encoded')[0].firstChild != None:
post["text"] = node.getElementsByTagName(
'content:encoded')[0].firstChild.data
else:
post["text"] = ""
# wp:attachment_url could be use to download attachments
# Get the categories
tempCategories = []
for subnode in node.getElementsByTagName('category'):
tempCategories.append(subnode.getAttribute('nicename'))
categories = [x for x in tempCategories if x != '']
post["categories"] = categories
# Add post to the list of all posts
blog.append(post)
# Then we create the directories and HTML files from the list of posts.
# The "base" directory
outdir += "/wordpress/"
if os.path.exists(outdir) == False:
os.makedirs(outdir)
os.chdir(outdir)
for post in blog:
# The "category" directories
path = ""
if authorDirs == True:
path += post["author"].encode('utf-8') + "/"
# This creates a path for the file in the format
# category1/category2/category3/file. Note that the category list was
# sorted.
if categoryDirs == True:
if (post["categories"] != None):
path += string.join(post["categories"],"/")
if os.path.exists(path) == False and path != "":
os.makedirs(path)
# And finally the file itself
path = outdir + path
title = post["title"].encode('utf-8')
filename = path + "/" + post["id"] + ' - ' + title \
+ '.html'
# Add a meta tag to specify charset (UTF-8) in the HTML file
meta = """"""
f = open(filename, 'w')
f.write(meta+"\n")
# Add "HTML header"
start = "\n\n\n\n\n"
f.write(start)
# Convert the unicode object to a string that can be written to a file
# with the proper encoding (UTF-8)
text = post["text"].encode('utf-8')
# Replace simple newlines with
+ newline so that the HTML file
# represents the original post more accuratelly
text = text.replace("\n", "
\n")
f.write(text)
# Finalize HTML
end = "\n\n"
f.write(end)
f.close()
def usage(pname):
"""Displays usage information
keyword arguments:
pname -- program name (e.g. obtained as argv[0])
"""
print """python %s [-hac] [-o outdir] infile
Converts a WordPress Export File to multiple html files.
Options:
-h,--help\tDisplays this information.
-a,--authors\tCreate different directories for each author.
-c,--categories\tCreate directory structure from post categories.
-o,--outdir\tSpecify a directory for the output.
Example:
python %s -c -o ~/TEMP ~/wordpress.2008-03-20.xml
""" % (pname, pname)
def main(argv):
outdir = ""
authors = False
categories = False
try:
opts, args = getopt.getopt(
argv[1:], "ha:o:c", ["help", "authors", "outdir", "categories"])
except getopt.GetoptError, err:
print str(err)
usage(argv[0])
sys.exit(2)
for opt, arg in opts:
if opt in ("-h", "--help"):
usage(argv[0])
sys.exit()
elif opt in ("-a", "--authors"):
authors = True
elif opt in ("-c", "--categories"):
categories = True
elif opt in ("-o", "--outdir"):
outdir = arg
infile = "".join(args)
if infile == "":
print "Error: Missing Argument: missing wordpress export file."
usage(argv[0])
sys.exit(3)
if outdir == "":
# Use the current directory
outdir = os.getcwd()
convert(infile, outdir, authors, categories)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main(sys.argv)
Posted: March 11th, 2008
I’ve recently started using my macbook as my only personal computer.
One of the big side effects is that I no longer need to synchronize multiple computers running different Operating Systems. This had been one of my major headaches with computing. My solution was mostly rsync/ssh synchronization of certain directories with my home server and a switch to web applications.
So, now that the need is gone, I’m migrating back to conventional desktop applications.
Gmail
The first web app I started using. I tried to migrate to thunderbird but I simply don’t like thunderbird. So I’m now using Apple’ Mail App.
I still use the gmail service, I just don’t use the web interface regularly.
Google Calendar
The second web app I started using. I like it a lot but it did make 2-way synchronization with my cellphone and palm (up until Palm Desktop stopped working) painful. Yes there is software around to do it. BusySync looks awesome but I don’t think there’s any reason for me to pay money to use a service I don’t really need anymore. GCALDaemon is Free but I was unable to get it properly configured plus I just don’t trust software that’s hard to setup.
I now use just Apple’s iCal to manage my calendars and in case you’re curious I used the BusySync trial to migrate – it was painless.
Remember The Milk
Less known than the google services, Remember The Milk is an online task manager. I started using it less than a year ago – only after Palm Desktop stopped working. Before that, I used just my Palm TX and I had started using iSync to synchronize my Palm and my cellphone. The side effect was I couldn’t use 2-way sync with my cellphone which isn’t that much of a problem as it seems because I don’t really like using my cellphone for that. Still, there’s just no point in using RTM anymore, so I now use iCal/Mail App to handle my tasks. Since I only had a handful of tasks to complete, I migrated by hand.
What’s next?
I’ll consider switching feed readers from google reader to NetNewsWire. Migrating is painless since I can just download my OPML from google reader
I use a private blog as a notepad of sorts. I previously used just regular .txts in a specific directory and then switched to Journler. But Journler wasn’t available on Linux.
Maybe I’ll continue to use the blog for my longer notes but switch to Mail App for smaller ones. Maybe not. I’ll need to think about it and try it.
Plus there’s the issue of wether it’s gonna be easy to get the data into whatever application I choose. I migrated from Journler to a wordpress blog via an Automator script and MarsEdit.
The Elephant In The Blog
The iPhone. With the SDK out and App Store, I want one. So I now have to think what will work better with the iPhone. For instance, how good is the Newsgator iPhone web app compared to gReader? What’s the best way to synchronize my notes with the iPhone? Etc. I’ll want to speak with iPhone users about this.
Posted: February 28th, 2008
Fullread is a simple tool that helps you organize your online readings.
The way I use it: “web readings queue”
While I read my feeds I often click on links that open in new tabs and keep reading my feeds. When I’m done with the feeds, I start browsing the tabs that I opened. Often I don’t have time or patience to read them all so instead of having 30 or so tabs open in firefox at any given time, I simply add them to Fullread and when I have the time/patience I open my fullread queue page (fullread/lrei) and read the some pages, marking them for archival (sort of like when you archive mail in gmail). All my bookmarks in fullread are marked private so only I can see them.
In the future I also plan to use it as a full History of my web readings instead of just a Queue.
And yes I know fullread launched a while ago but I only got around to using it a while ago.
Posted: December 22nd, 2007
rant = “”"
Part 1: Algorithms
Part 2: Methodologies
Part 3: Applications
So for the first two parts I’m supposed to learn about something I dont know what it’s for?
“”"
Posted: November 13th, 2007
Sapo Codebits (blog, wiki) starts tomorrow. I wonder how many people will show up and how many teams will enter in the contest… doesn’t really matter as long as I win 
nah seriously, the more the better of course. There are quite a few people going from prt.sc so I won’t be alone 
I’m not going to be doing any live blogging (or at least I don’t plan to) but I do plan to keep my twitter updated – “going to talk X”, “talk Y was cool”, “doing this/that” style updates and at the end of the day, if I’m not too tired I’ll provide a summary. Chances are lots of other bloggers will be blogging live/end of day summaries so if you’re not going because you can’t, at least you’ll get a pretty good idea of what you missed.
I’ll also try to take some photos and keep my flickr updated too.
Security
Just went over the small checklist I blogged about previously. Told the firewall to block all incoming connections and started using OpenDNS again -I first used it in Norway as a way to fix Fon‘s DNS problems at the time (screwy youtube).
As for the VPN, I really haven’t tested my own VPN – I’m counting on FEUP’s VPN to work, which admittedly is far from a sure thing. Not that I expect anything below WPA2-Enterprise (TLS) from the APs available.
My emails/IMs sometimes have one of my ultra secret recipes for CAKE so I’m usually careful with them.
Need to not forget to backup everything on my macbook later tonight (via Time Machine).
Camera
I’m still wondering if I should take my camera’s cables with me. 144 pictures (the capacity of my 512MB Memory Sick – need to buy a new one) should be more than enough for just 3 days. So I guess that’s a no.
Ipod/Portable HD
Borrowing my mother’s Ipod again after taking it to Norway I became a huge fan. I was going to download stuff earlier today but Miro crashed (possibly leopard related). I updated and it’s working now so I’m currently downloading a few talks from Google Tech Talks, TED talks and Channel 9.
I loaded a bunch of movies and episodes into my portable HD but I don’t think I’ll have the dead time to watch any of them except maybe on the trips (via Alfa Pendular Porto->Lisbon in approximately 2h30-3h) but that’s when I plan to watch the talks. Then again I’ll probably sleep on the train tomorrow.
Posted: July 26th, 2007
I’ve switched net providers from tvtel (cable) to clix (adsl). The papers are signed just need to wait for like 3-5 weeks (sux). In the meantime I have no net at home.
I bought a MacBook (black). I’ll think I’ll post something about it later.
Still waiting for most of the results from the exams.
Still tired from this last semester probably because I’m unable to sleep properly (which happens during most of summers anyway).
Posted: May 8th, 2007
How and why “decent men” became Nazis. Written by an American journalist of German\Jewish descent. Mr. Mayer provides a fascinating window into the lives, thoughts and emotions of a people caught up in the rush of the Nazi movement. It is a book that should make people pause and think — not only about the Germans, but also about themselves.
But Then It Was Too Late
(via Daniel Miessler)