Lawyer Pwns “Reporter” – TVI
Posted: May 24th, 2009(in portuguese) TVI – Evening News.
teaser:
Website Number
Posted: February 25th, 2009Biden Forgets Recovery.gov’s “Website Number”
This morning Vice President Biden went on the CBS early show to promote Recovery.gov, the website that will detail where all of the money in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be going. Unfortunately, he forgot the actual address of the site during the interview, explaining that he was embarrassed that he didn’t have the “website number”. And thus, we have a new internet meme in the making, as Biden follows in the footsteps of Senator Ted Stevens’s Series of Tubes and President Bush’s reference to the “internets”.
(Youtube Video)
A Special Valentine’s Day Gift…from Cisco!
Posted: February 14th, 2009El Caminito del Rey
Posted: September 4th, 2008[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaeQykTZRHw]
Need to go there one of these days..
Finally Finished Portal
Posted: August 30th, 2008I borrowed the orange box from a friend to play Episode One, Episode Two and Portal. I actually had Portal for the PC (via Steam) but never got past the first few chambers. The best thing portal had to offer, better even than the innovative gameplay, was the humor.
Now that I’ve finished Ep1&2 and Portal I’m thinking about replaying HL2. The game levels are awesome and even though it’s a 4 year old game (and I’ve played it on the PC) the graphics still impress me.
For HL2, Episodes 1 and 2… well I don’t know… they were fun, the plot was ok, the gameplay was cool and sufficiently varied… yet there’s something missing… maybe it’s feeling or immersion maybe it’s something else. They’re not a Halo 3…
Portal End Song:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI]
Lyrics to the end song (my emphasis)
This was a triumph.
I’m making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Aperture Science
We do what we must
because we can.
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.
But there’s no sense crying over every mistake.
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
And the Science gets done.
And you make a neat gun.
For the people who are still alive.
I’m not even angry.
I’m being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart.
And killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!
Now these points of data make a beautiful line.
And we’re out of beta.
We’re releasing on time.
So I’m GLaD. I got burned.
Think of all the things we learned
for the people who are still alive.
Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa
THAT WAS A JOKE.
HAHA. FAT CHANCE.
Anyway, this cake is great.
It’s so delicious and moist.
Look at me still talking
when there’s Science to do.
When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I’m not you.
I’ve experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.
And believe me I am still alive.
I’m doing Science and I’m still alive.
I feel FANTASTIC and I’m still alive.
While you’re dying I’ll be still alive.
And when you’re dead I will be still alive.
STILL ALIVE
How To Fold a T-shirt
Posted: August 23rd, 2008[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An0mFZ3enhM]
Fate/stay night
Posted: April 14th, 2008
Emiya Shirou is a highschool boy who lives in Fuyuki City. His parents died in a fire when he was young, after that he was adopted by an old man who refer himself as a sorcerer, but he died too.
What Shirou doesn’t know, is that the underground of Fuyuki City is the place of a great war.
When the time is right, sorcerers from near and far gather with their Servants – the summoned spirits of heroes so mighty they exist outside of time – and fight a war for possession of the Holy Grail, a relic said to grant its owner a wish. The true names of the Servants reveal their weaknesses, and so they are usually referred to by a classification of type instead; Saber, Archer, Rider, Berserker, Lancer, Caster, and Assassin.
What Shirou doesn’t know, is that the underground of Fuyuki City is the place of a great war.
When the time is right, sorcerers from near and far gather with their Servants – the summoned spirits of heroes so mighty they exist outside of time – and fight a war for possession of the Holy Grail, a relic said to grant its owner a wish. The true names of the Servants reveal their weaknesses, and so they are usually referred to by a classification of type instead; Saber, Archer, Rider, Berserker, Lancer, Caster, and Assassin.
One day, Shirou saw a fight between two servants, Archer and Lancer.
To preserve the secrecy of the war, Lancer mortally wounds him; but a girl who up until now seemed a normal classmate of his, Tohsaka Rin, saves his life using a magical pendant.
On his way home, Lancer attacked him again. Just before he’s about to die for good, the servant Saber appears before him, greeting him with the words “Are you my master?”
Fate/stay night is my favorite anime. The summary above doesn’t do it justice. I remember reading it and thinking “this sounds lame”. It came so highly recommended that I decided to watch it anyway. I didn’t use to watch anime until I started watching FSN.
The Story
The game had the game in which the anime is based had three different scenarios that came together to explain the enitre story. The FSN anime storyline is basically the FATE scenario from the game with some extras (mostly from the Unlimited Blade Works scenario). Because of this, to understand the story, one has to pay great attention to otherwise small details. The relationship between characters and other essential bits can only be understood from interpreting short flashbacks or “clue scenes”. It was easy for me to understand almost the whole thing the first time I watched the show but I was still finding small details the third time. Yes, I’ve watched this anime 3 times! That’s how much I enjoyed it. A friend of mine who also watched it completely missed some crucial bits such as the identity of Archer which in spite of being semi-obvious from the first few episodes, is only shown by an object at the end of episode 14 (another clue is given in a later episode by another object or rather two). Without knowing who Archer is, you miss out on one of the main topics of the show – ideals suck (and disillusion which is the name of the first opening btw).
I also found interesting that the current Holy Grail War was shown as largely a consequence of the previous war. Many of those participating in the war had their lives completely changed by the previous war.
Emya Shiro, the show’s main character is the stereotypical dropout loser that you see in many anime with the particularity that he has some lofty ideals of saving the world.
Tosaka Rin, the “friendly” sorcerer that is sort of Shiro’s teacher in the ways of the force… herm… magic, is also sort of stereotypical (even if bisexual) It’s sort of interesting to see that she lives her life to fulfill what she believes were her father’s expectations for her – a top of the class student and a dedicated sorceress,
I don’t want to talk about the other important characters so as not to spoil the anime for anyone. It’s a 24 ep show that was subbed by the excellent Eclipse productions.
The soundtrack is by Kaway Kenji (Gundam 00, Higurashi, …) and even though it’s a bit too “synth” I still like it a lot.
In Summary: WATCH IT! 
Mathemagic featuring Arthur Benjamin
Posted: March 26th, 2008TED: Arthur Benjamin: Lightning calculation and other “Mathemagic”
Also see Youtube Mathemagic.
ACM ICP
Posted: March 25th, 2008I just got an email (via the faculty-wide spam network) about the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICP) or more precisely about SWERC 08. For a few moments I thought “hey, this might be fun”. A second later I read something like
“Languages allowed: C, C++, Java or Pascal”
Yay it’s 1995 again!!!
Pascal? Didn’t Pascal die like more than a decade ago?
C++ and Java are so 90′s… where are the cool languages? Python? Ruby? Heck even Erlang and Haskell?
Considering the “retro” theme, I would’ve was expecting Lisp and Fortran to be in there. (Not (that I have anything against (lisp))).
So basically the point of the contest is seeing how well you do with a handicap? Kinda like the Olympic 100m with a broken leg (or 2 if you’re using C)?
Sounds very interesting but I rather go cut myself with the portuguese tokio hotel fans (via Tiago Farrajota)…
Love In An Elevator
Posted: March 11th, 2008Aerosmith – Love In An Elevator
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ6zQxGJtSM&hl=en]
(youtube video)
Apple – PC PR Ad
Posted: March 2nd, 2008[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf81H4v4ByM]
(Youtube video, via Dave Winer)
Dilbert – The Knack
Posted: February 29th, 2008[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmYDgncMhXw]
(youtube video)
Sympathy For The Devil
Posted: February 22nd, 2008The Rolling Stones – Sympathy For The Devil
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNHkOryXosI&rel=1]
Sapo Codebits AKA Free Food
Posted: November 13th, 2007Sapo 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.