Antena 1 2 3 Podcasts

The Portuguese public broadcast service, RTP (the Portuguese BBC) has podcasts for some of its radio shows.

Thanks, kudos/props/wtv for the people (person?) responsible for this. I hope more of Antena’s 2 (music) shows get added soon.

Sadly, it seems that, at least at the moment, it’s only low quality samples (for SOMDESCAPE which is the only show, among those available, that I’m interested in).

PS: what’s up with using WMA and Real instead of making stuff available in (high quality) mp3? That’s lame.

Gundam 00

Gundam 00 is currently the only TV show that I’m following with (a lot of) interest . On the outside it may look like a lame cross between Gundam Wing and Full Metal Panic! (I seriously dislike FMP) but it is actually pretty good.

The show takes place in an alternate timeline from other Gundams, our time! The world is an hypothetical near future (year 2307 AD) where fossil fuels are mostly exhausted and many of our current political problems, including Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka and obviously the Middle East, remain, well… problematic. The political situation was somewhat simplified by the creation of three world powers – The Union (America, Australia, Japan), The AEU (Europe) and The HRL (Asia including part of Russia) – and making everyone else politically irrelevant.

Themes approached (up until episode 17) include racial hatred, nationalism, imperialism, PMCs/mercenaries (sloppy), terrorism (poorly), religious fanaticism, child soldiers and civil wars.

There’s also a nice side-story that provides a contrast to the world’s situation: the relationship between a spanish girl studying in Japan and a japanese boy. The major events that take place during the episodes are often viewed through their eyes, with their opinions and the effect the events have on them making G00 feel much more “real” than Wing or Seed or most other shows for that matter.

So far, (at least most) characters seem to have a history, depth, understandable motivations and actually act more or less like normal people contrary to other Gundams and many other anime and sci-fi shows. The characters don’t seem at all like an “amalgamation of emos” like in GS.

I wouldn’t say this is as good as Code Geass but worst case it’s something interesting to watch until CG’s second season (R2 or whatever) starts in April and best case, it becomes one of the best anime I’ve seen (the list currently being FSN, CG and GS).

In Summary: So far, BIG THUMBS UP.

UPDATED 27 Feb 2008

Top 10 Reasons Websites Get Haked

Top 10 Reasons Websites Get Hacked (2007) by OWASP via Zone-H/Full Disclosure.

Exam Season, AACS, FEUP Blogs

This one is almost over… it’s been… interesting. Trying hard to keep up with the news. The only thing interesting I read was the AACS stuff. Who would’ve thought after so much work they wouldn’t even bother encrypting the USB traffic?

Another recent development that I’ve been keeping up to date with is NeACM’s FEUP Blogs. It’s been talked about in this room (D007 – Chefax/NeACM) for at least a couple of years, it was in development for 6 months and now it’s finally here. It looks really great! At the time of writing, after only a few days, it already has 100+ blogs. Insta-Success!

More making fun of the mac

The ctrl-alt-del strip was funny but VH1’s Best Week Ever spoof of the ads is even more funny.

Mac – “Nobody”

Look at the pretty Anti-Spyware

How secure are the security products we use? After the witty worm a lot more people began asking that question. That there are poorly designed “security” products out there no one doubts. That some security products make a lot of ‘noise’ to ensure users know they are doing something is a well known fact (lots of IDSs for windows are way too verbose and way too in-your-face). Today I read about Ad-Aware.

Love grep & sed

I just wanted to express my love for this two simple and incredibly useful commands: grep and sed.

sed @ my dokuwiki.

Giga Lan Party Day 1

It’s tough to speak in terms of days when you don’t sleep and don’t see the sun/moonlight but I can safely say the 1st day of the Giga Lan Party is over. Apart from the network taking around 12h more time to set up than anticipated, I think that everything is something… 2 days with virtually no sleep has rendered me pretty much unable to write. 3 days to go…
PS: Counter Strike Source pwns IMO.

Windows Vista

Windows Vista (AKA Longhorn) is the only version of Microsoft Windows I have ever looked forward too. Though I have no intention of being among it’s early adopters for the obvious reason (the usual avalanche of major BUGS) it certainly has an interesting feature set and looks like a major step forward for Microsoft (unlike for example Windows NT to 2K to XP which were, arguably, minor steps forward). WinFS, MSH and the new eye candy are definetely what caught my attention.

Additional Resources:
Hands On with Windows Vista Beta 1
Windows Vista Beta 1 Overview
Wikipedia (very good starting place)
Feedster Search