Sérgio Agostinho blog

Last Christmas

2010-12-24T19:41:00.000Z

The tradition continues! This year I bring you "Last Christmas" from David Fonseca. Although I love the original, David's covers are really good, and this is not an exception.

Fotografia Pinhole

2010-11-04T23:49:00.000Z

Participei num workshop no passado dia 23, dado pela Imagerie - Casa das Imagens.

Até à próxima, que apreciem fotografia na sua forma mais pura.

Silverlight 3 – What is New?

2010-09-26T16:29:00.000+01:00

Boas Práticas em Aplicações Silverlight 2.0

2010-09-26T16:27:00.000+01:00

Log4net - Conceitos Básicos e Extensões

2010-09-26T16:24:00.002+01:00

An Aspect-Oriented Infrastructure for Design by Contract in Java - Ou mais uma Tese de Mestrado

2010-09-26T16:20:00.002+01:00

I Live... Again!

2010-09-26T16:05:00.000+01:00

Pois é, o meu blog esteve oficialmente morto (off e não indexado) durante algumas semanas (tal como o meu blog no XAML-PT.. bom, o próprio XAML também está morto). Neste momento a ideia será partilhar algumas apresentações de sessões em que fui orador. Provavelmente vou gradualmente remover algum conteúdo de índole pessoal que para aqui anda.

Rota da Indústria do Barreiro - Levantamento Fotográfico

2010-05-08T18:06:00.000+01:00

A imagem diz quase tudo. Trata-se da minha segunda (humilde) participação num projecto fotográfico. Este projecto é um pouco diferente do anterior, visto ser menos "artístico" e mais objectivo. Além disso, este projecto tem ambições maiores que esta exposição (nomeadamente um livro), e já decorre há mais tempo. Existem vários fotógrafos e de facto muito material.

Apareçam por lá, a inauguração é já no próximo fim de semana.

Limpar Portugal

2010-03-15T20:25:00.000Z

É já este fim de semana. Participa!

VALE

2010-02-22T23:44:00.000Z

Ontem tive de a oportunidade de assistir ao VALE, um espectáculo de Dança / Música / Teatro (e cinema, porque não?). Trata-se de um espectáculo experimental de dança e música com uma componente teatral e de imagens projectadas. O tema é a zona do Vale do Tejo, as suas populações, tradições e cultura. A parte mais interessante do projecto é o envolvimento que cria no espectador, pois além da proximidade física dos artistas com o público, que parte do figurinos e dançarinos são amadores recrutados na própria região onde o espectáculo é exibido, o que torna cada fim de semana de espectáculo único. Se tiverem oportunidade de assistir ao espectáculo não a percam, mesmo que não sejam muito adeptos da dança (como é o meu caso), vale a pena!

Até à próxima, apreciem um bom espectáculo.

Olhar o Barreiro... Através das Artes

2010-01-30T16:16:00.003Z

... é o nome da exposição resultante do workshop de fotografia em que participei. Vai ser inaugurada às 17h do próximo dia 6 de Fevereiro no Auditório Municipal Augusto Cabrita (AMAC). O grupo do workshop foi muito interessante, pela sua heterogeneidade, tendo algumas pessoas já com trabalho feito, como por exemplo a Vera Marmelo e Clara Porfírio, e outras mais... tímidas, digamos :) Enfim, foi uma experiência diferente, pelas pessoas que conheci e conversei, e o empurrão que precisava para reformar a minha velha compacta e "investir" numa Sony Alpha. Agora só preciso é de prática e ver mais exposições, de forma a desenvolver um maior espírito crítico. Ainda assim, vou dar uma modesta contribuição com algumas fotografias na exposição, na secção de cinema.

P.S.: Se olharem com atenção ainda me podem encontrar como "emplastro" numa das fotografias ;)

Até à próxima, que apreciem fotografar.

Mr. Sandman / Gothic Christmas

2009-12-25T15:16:00.002Z

Following last year's tradition, I'm caught in the Christmas spirit and I bring you two classics: Blind Guardian's Mr. Sandman and Within Temptation's Gothic Christmas. Enjoy the season :)

Carmina Burana

2009-11-24T23:30:00.000Z

No passado dia 7 fui ao Coliseu dos Recreios ver algo que há muito aguardava: a ópera Carmina Burana, de Carl Orff.

Até à próxima, que apreciem uma noite na ópera.

Olhar o Barreiro... de outro modo!

2009-11-22T23:27:00.000Z

Neste mês e no passado tenho estado a participar numa workshop intitulada "Olhar o Barreiro... de outro modo!" (2, porque já houve outra edição do curso no início do ano). Trata-se um pequeno curso de fotografia organizado pela Câmara Municipal do Barreiro e pela Associação Portuguesa de Arte Fotográfica (APAF). O curso é composto por quatro aulas de dia inteiro (já dadas) e um projecto fotográfico colectivo sobre uma temática do Barreiro que resultará numa exposição. Entretanto, temos um blog.

Relativamente à parte teórica estou muito satisfeito com o que vi e aprendi, embora ainda tenha muitas exposições e galerias para ver. Na parte prática, está mais fraco, não tenho praticado o suficiente. O facto de ter uma máquina compacta também não ajuda (Pai Natal, quero uma reflex!)

Até à próxima, que apreciem olhar as coisas... de outro modo!

Caleb is dead, long live Caleb

2009-10-18T23:40:00.000+01:00

The blog formerly known as caleBlog (= Caleb blog).

Also farewell to caleb dot pt dot vu, my former static Web site.

Until next time, may you enjoy re-inventing yourself (and your blog).

casA+

2009-09-23T14:34:00.001+01:00

cross-posted from http://xamlpt.com/blogs/sergioagostinho/archive/2009/09/23/casa.aspx

Epica @ Vagos Open Air 2009

2009-09-01T23:42:00.003+01:00

Epica @ Vagos Open Air 2009

Até Novembro ;)

ViaTecla na Exame Informática

2009-07-31T20:01:00.004+01:00

Na edição Nº 158 (Agosto) da Exame Informática vem um artigo sobre a ViaTecla, em concreto sobre a plataforma FutureBox.TV: "A TV Reinventada".

Eis o artigo, na sua integridade:

Até à próxima, que apreciem ver o vosso trabalho numa revista.

Simulador Energético ADENE em Produção

2009-07-08T20:15:00.004+01:00

A ADENE (Agência para Energia) mostrou ao público no passado dia 4 de Junho na Exponor, no Porto, o seu Simulador Energético. O simulador foi desenvolvido na ViaTecla e custou algumas horas de sono à equipa do Labs ;)

Algumas notícias:

Tecnológicamente, o destaque vai para o facto desta aplicação ser a primeira da ViaTecla baseada em Silverlight 3 (beta).

Actualmente, o site só está dísponível nas exposições onde tem sido mostrado. Em breve estará disponível para público em geral numa versão online.

Se tens de ir...

2009-07-08T18:46:00.002+01:00

... vai com um sorriso!

Até à próxima, apreciem ver o lado positivo da vida... ou da morte!

Inside ViaTecla

2009-04-14T14:29:00.001+01:00

Faltam dois dias para o OpenDay 2009!

Jardim da Paz/Buddha Eden

2009-03-22T22:05:00.005Z

Na Quinta dos Loridos, propriedade de Joe Berardo. Um local muito bom para visitar, perto de Bombarral. Trata-se de um jardim oriental, ainda em construção e portanto de entrada gratuíta. Pessoalmente, uma experiência ao nível da Quinta da Regaleira, em Sintra.

Ver mapa maior

Até à próxima vez, que apreciem um sítio com um pouco de paz.

Labs no XAML PT

2009-03-22T21:44:00.002Z

Aqui.

Tese de Mestrado e log4net

2009-03-22T20:32:00.002Z

Nos primeiros dois meses deste ano fiz duas apresentações internas na ViaTecla.

An Aspect-Oriented Infrastructure for Design by Contract in Java

Ou mais uma Tese de Mestrado

PDF

A minha tese de Mestrado mais uma vez, com algumas considerações sobre tecnologias equivalentes para .NET, nomeadamente Spec# (uma extensão de C# com Desenho por Contrato) e PostSharp (uma extensão de C# para Programação Orientada a Aspectos). Curiosamente, como vim a descobrir no DevDays 09, o suporte a Desenho por Contrato foi anunciado entretanto para a versão 4.0 da framework .NET, sob o nome de Code Contracts.

Log4Net

Conceitos Básicos e Extensões

PDF

Uma das grandes descobertas da minha parte no passado foi o log4net, uma framework de logging para .NET. Como desde então fui evangelizado para a mesma, decidi partilhar este meu entusiasmo com os meus colegas. Curiosamente, entretanto descobri uma alternativa ao mesmo, a Live Labs Simple Logging Library. Embora não vá largar o log4net, é bom saber que existe uma alternativa.

Até à próxima vez, que apreciem apresentar.

Samsung Mobile Movies UK launched

2009-03-21T15:04:00.005Z

This week the Samsung Mobile Movies UK Web site was launched.

Under the Hood

Powering this Web site is the SuperMAM platform, a project which results from a partnership between Acetrax (from Switzerland) and ViaTecla. There are a lot of hard-working hours investment from both ends in order to make this project possible.

Press Releases

Although this site hasn't been publicly advertised, there are couple of press release out there:

"Samsung launches dedicated movie store", Mobile Entertainement
"Samsung mobile lauches movie store", What Mobile
"mocoNews - Samsung To Offer Full Movie Downloads In UK, But Will Consumers Bite?", The Washinton Post

Until next time, may you enjoy watching movies, wherever you are.

List of Vampire Movies/TV Series in English

2009-02-08T19:29:00.002Z

List of Vampire Movies in English (origins-2008)
List of Vampire TV Series in English (origins-2008)

by J. Gordon Melton

Until next time, may you enjoy the blood, because the blood is life...

DevDays09 site hosted by ViaTecla

2009-01-14T23:29:00.002Z

A edição deste ano do DevDays irá ser realizada nos dias 18 de 19 de Fevereiro no campus do Taguspark do Instituto Superior Técnico. Para quem não sabe, o DevDays é um evento de evangelização de tecnologias Microsoft com palestras e laboratórios. É semelhante ao TechDays, mas mais focado para o público alvo de developers.

Particularmente interessante é o facto do site do está a ser desenvolvido e alojado pela ViaTecla. Este ano a VT irá ter uma participação significativa no evento ;)

Até à próxima, apreciem dias de desenvolvimento.

Surrendered to Picasa

2009-01-01T21:26:00.002Z

Yes, I finally did it :) No more old-school photography management. My first impressions are good, it looks like a solid tool. Oh, and the red-eye tool works really well.

Until next time, may you enjoy looking at things through a different angle.

Garbage-collecting 2008

2008-12-25T19:26:00.014Z

Once again (hopefully for the last time!), I try to put in a single mega post all the drafts I have wrote through out the past year, but I hadn't the time to actually finish them. Without further delay, my lost 2008 blog posts.

Writing a thesis in OpenOffice: lessons learnt

Being a sometimes stubborn person, I decided the write both my BSc and MSc documents using OpenOffice.org. After using the OpenOffice.org Text application for two years on the same document (my master thesis dissertation) I had an interesting insight on the matter. First of all, I didn't regret using OpenOffice.org instead of the Microsoft Office suite, some built-in features (e.g. PDF generation, bibliography support) missing in the latter came in handy. Also, I was able to do all that I needed: paging, bibliography, indexes, etc. Another lesson is quite popular: if it works, don't fix it! In other words don't change your application version or operating system if you don't need to so. I spent two years using OpenOffice.org 1.0.0 in the Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux distribution. I did try to upgrade to a recent version or using Windows, but the truth is that I rather workaround the issues I known instead of venturing into new ones. On the other hand, a lesson I learnt is that OOo is not perfect. There were some issues (bugs and usability) that I was able to overcome, but in the end the hardest thing is that there is simply few people that known OOo advanced features. My salvation were a couple of blogs on the few stubborn people that - like me - refused to follow the herd. Also, I did a little hacking in the source XML files within an Oasis document.

100 (50?) Metal Albums

One day I decided to make a list of my top 100 metal albums. Shortly I found out that I actually had heard little more than that, so it didn't make sense make it a top. Later on, I realized that 100 albums are a lot, so I shortened it to 50. I still haven't found the patience to actually finish it...

A bad smell in .NET

While working with XML DOM processing in the .NET 2 platform I found a code smell. Well, it happens that the classes that extend the XmlNode abstract class don't quite implement that class' interface. For example, trying to set the Value property in a XmlElement object will always result in an InvalidOperationException. In my opinion, this is a clear violation of the Liskov Substituition Principle: if XmlElement doesn't implement all the XmlNode interface then it is not a sub-class of XmlNode. That means that in this respect the .NET class library doesn't respect the principles of Object-Oriented Design. Having that said, I understand the engineering trade-off - I just think it's a bad design principle.

SAFT-PT

SAFT-PT (Standard Audit File for Tax purposes - Portugal) is an XML Schema format for company accounting which has become mandatory since January 2008, based on an European recommendation. Early this year (at ISIS) I developed a small .NET library to enable an application that we were developing to export SAFT-PT documents. While the idea of standardizing this kind of documents in a good idea, there were a couple of problems I faced. First of all, the existing documentation at the time was a very poor one, and the two existing examples were not that helpful. Second, the XML Schema design had some faults. For example, the overuse of choice elements is not a good practise if you have to efficiently process large XML documents (actually I think any use of choice is bad, but it is part of the language...).

SGF Anti-patterns

While working at ISIS I found a interesting number of anti-patterns while examining existing source code. And of course, I did a large number of them by my own :) I mostly forgot them, but someday I would like to write (professionally) about design patterns, anti-patterns and best practices.

A little bit of defensive programming

Being a "evangelist" of Design by Contract I'm expected to disregard defensive programming. Nevertheless, a good software engineer should never be a fundamentalist about anything. In my expirience some defensive programming can be used as a good practise for reliable software. Namely, I believe that some assumptions through the source code should be explicit: case blocks should always enumerate every value and set a default clause that throws an exception; if statements should avoid using else clauses.

h-index = 0

The h-index is a metric for evaluating researchers. Basically, if there are at least n of your published works are refered in at least n published works then you have an h-index of n. At the time, I had an h-index of 0 (zero), since there were no references to my published papers. According to Google Scholar three of my four published papers exist, and only of them has one citation. This means I have an h-index of 1 :)

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

During the course of my Master Thesis I had the opportunity of reading this book. The elegance of the Design Patterns is the elegance that it contains, because if you look at it, most of the patterns are simple, yet until this book no one had written them down. The book itself has a brief chapter explaining the underlying concepts and motivations, and the remaining chapters are basically a catalogue of patterns. I think every software developer should read this book, because the Design Patterns provide you with a cookbook of solutions to recurrent design problems and is relatively language/technology independent (although you'll always have to take advantage of your current environment. You'll get at least an interesting vocabulary by reading this book.

Having this said, the book should have an updated edition. It was written in 1995 and there have been changes in software development which require some attention. The biggest of all is the dominant programming languages in the industry are no longer C++ and Smalltalk, but rather C# and Java. Notice that the difference is not in the language syntaxes themselves, but rather on the language mechanisms that have been developed which solve some of the patterns (e.g. Iterator), and the supporting frameworks (i.e. Java and .NET) which use these patterns through out the base libraries (e.g. Factory). This means that most times, you don't need to implement the actual patterns, but known the best way to use them. Other topics that would be interesting to explore are the Generative Programming techniques and emerging paradigms such as Aspect-Oriented Programming (this one had some attention in terms of research papers, but it still missing a dedicated book).

Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 for Designers

This is the name of a training course I went to in February. In spite of it's name, the course focused both on a designer as well as a developer perspective. The reason I didn't post about this earlier is that since there Silverlight 2.0 has been released, and it basically surpasses the 1.0 version. I think the SL 2 technology is quite interesting, it's not just "Microsoft's Flash". On one hand, there is a good separation between presentation (XAML) and logic (.NET). Second, the approach taken by Microsoft aims at getting developers (using Visual Studio) closer to designers (using Expression Studio), which I think it is a good ideia in terms of software engineering. As a curiosity, I think it is interesting how XAML resembles VRML/X3D technologies.

FOSS image editors

This one I'll keep it short: you have GIMP and Paint.NET. GIMP is a tool focused at professional/semi-professional users that need a strong tool. It has a lot of features, plug-ins, good documentation, and runs in Windows, Linux distros and MacOS X. Paint.NET on the other hand, its a faster tool with a more intuitive interface. The downside is that it doesn't have as many features, and only runs on Windows. Still, if you are not a power user of image processing, it might be a better alternative.

FOSS XML/text editors

Well, on this I'll be honest - if you really want a professional tool for XML you need a proprietary tool, something like oXygen XML editor or Altova XML Spy (although I have to admit that Visual Studio 2008 is getting closer). Nevertheless, there are some cool free tools available. My favourite one is XML Copy Editor, although I use sometimes the "good old" XML Marker.

By the way, if you a need a cool advanced programmer-like text editor, try Notepad++. It reminds me of applications such as Edit+ and UltraEdit, but it is completely FOSS.

Comodo Firewall and Anti Virus

Comodo is yet another security suite for Windows systems. Until recently it was two seperate applications (firewall and anti vírus), but it has recently become an application suite. Why am I mentioning it? Because its new and it has a cool name ;)

SWFUpload

Need an advanced file uploader? SWFUpload is a JavaScript/Flash library that helps you do that.

ClickOnce and Firefox

If you have worked with the ClickOnce technology for deploying .NET applications, you might have noticed that it doesn't work in Firefox. You have two solutions for that: you either install this add-on or install .NET framework version 3.0 or upper (which in reality comes bundled with a similiar add-on developed by Microsoft).

Screengrab

Need to frequently take screenshots at websites, but hate to clip the browser toolbars? Have you ever wondered how nice it was to take a screenshot at website, but it doesn't fit in your screen? Well, try Screengrab, yet another nice add-on for Firefox. It's simple and it works nicely... well, unless you have a Flash or Silverlight component in the Web site :(

Until next time, may you enjoy not leaving pending things to do.

Don't shoot me Santa

2008-12-24T09:52:00.001Z

Natal Zoom

2008-12-23T23:29:00.004Z

Ou o postal de Natal 2008 da ViaTecla. Desenvolvido com tecnologia Deep Zoom/Silverlight, trazido até vós pela Innovation Labs da ViaTecla Software ;)

Gayatri

2008-12-23T23:21:00.001Z

ॐ भूर्भुवस्व: |

तत्सवितुर्वरेण्यम् |

भर्गो देवस्य धीमहि |

धियो यो न: प्रचोदयात्

Aum Bhūr Bhuva Svaha

(Aum) Tat Savitur Varenyam

Bhargo Devasya Dhīmahi

Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayāt, (Aum)

Until next time, may you enjoy a good mantra.

Patterns & Practices: Application Architecture Guide 2.0

2008-12-21T14:40:00.003Z

This week the book Application Architecture Guide 2.0 - Designing Applications on the .NET platform was released.

This book is from the Patterns & Practices (P&P) team and is edited by Microsoft Press. It is available for free download. I have known that the P&P team has developed some interesting work on software engineering, by I haven't found the time to actually read something from them. This book might be my chance to do so. I opened it up a little bit and found a foreword from non other than Scott Guthrie, a very active engineer in the .NET community.

By the way, some previous reading material from P&P include two interesting topics: Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications and Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.

Until next time, may you enjoy some free reading.

A fresh look

2008-12-21T00:38:00.003Z

Goodbye Minima template, welcome Rounders template. Also added a nice picture on the title background.

Until next time, may you enjoy changing your look once in a while.

Música no blog

2008-12-14T20:26:00.001Z

Cortesia Rádio M80 :)

Até à próxima vez, apreciem uma boa música.

Gargage-collecting my Linux distro screenshots

2008-11-30T21:36:00.001Z

As I'm wrapping my Linux user experience in this PC, I've decided to share some old screenshots that I've kept.

K3B

K3B is a nice FOSS CD/DVD recorder for Linux. It does everything I need and as a bonus it has a nice finish sound of a hornet playing :)

LFTP

LFTP is a very complete FTP command-line client. In comparison to basic ftp clients, it allows you to use more commands, has coloured highlighting, and SSL support.

Autopackage
Autopackage is a nice package software installer for Linux. Unlike most engines, autopackage installers are executable files which solve their dependencies. Unfortunately, they're not self-sufficient as Windows installers, but it is as good as it gets. The most popular application distributed in autopackage is AMSN.

ELinks
Elinks is a text-based browser. Yes, it is very geek, but it shows how you can do a couple of cool stuff in text mode. This web browser supports frames, IPv6, CSS, SSL, bookmarks, cookies, gzip compression...

Until next time, may you enjoy geek stuff.

A couple of Web development tools

2008-11-24T22:35:00.000Z

I have been recently in contact with a couple of nice tools for Web Development:

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar: Internet Explorer's equivalent to Firebug.
Fiddler: A stand alone tool/IE plug-in. Basically, it allows you to intercept HTTP requests and replies made through Internet Explorer, either directly or implicitly through tools that use IE facilities.
Firecookie: Yet another Firebug extension. This one adds a new tab for watching cookies. Very cool!

Until next time, may you enjoy extending your Web browser.

Two interesting add-ins for MS Office

2008-11-22T09:16:00.000Z

If you use Microsoft Office, there are a couple of interesting add-ins which I find interesting.

"2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS". This provides one of the features which find very annoying not to be in the main product (and one of the cool features on OpenOffice): PDF export support. No need for third party tools such as PrimoPDF. By the way, XPS is a format introduced by Microsoft for XML-based vectorial documents.
"Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats". Need to view and edit an MS Office document which is in the Open Document format (AKA: "Office 2007 format"), but you have an older version of MS Office. Install this add-in and there you go.

Until next, may you enjoy adding things.

MSVVEIS 2008 photos

2008-10-18T19:35:00.001+01:00

The MSVVEIS workshop photos were released today here (check this post if you want to know more about this). This workshop was where I presented one of my research papers, "An Aspect for Design by Contract in Java". There aren't many photos and the two I'm in are not that good, but it's a moment to remember.

My paper presentation

The best paper winner

Until next time, may you enjoy some old photos.

Blog or not to blog...

2008-10-13T22:47:00.000+01:00

...that is the question. In the last months, it has been somewhat difficult to keep up with the blog. My draft list is getting bigger, even after last December's purge. And when it comes to having to choose between (b)logging things and actually live them, I rather do the later :) Since I don't like to quit, I'm keeping the blog, but on rather sporadic basis... it's life!

Until next time, carpe diem.

Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site

2008-09-27T19:40:00.000+01:00

Yahoo!'s developer network has a very good article on Web site performance: "Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Site". It's a must read if you are doing professional web development. Best of all, if you want to really check this rules in practice, you can use Yahoo! Firefox add-on: YSlow. YSlow is actually an extension to another Firefox add-on: Firebug (read this post if you want to read a little more on Firebug).

Until next time, may you enjoy the desire to excel in your work.

Back to Windows XP

2008-09-14T23:24:00.000+01:00

It is official, I'm migrating to Windows XP as my main operating system in my laptop (Simone). If you have been watching the blog, you might have read this. The only reason I was still using Linux was because it had been my only way to connect to my Windows 2000 desktop (Tarja) shared folder, using Samba. Anyway, it turned out that Zone Alarm firewall was blocking the necessary port(s). Well, I never liked it anyway, so back to Windows Firewall. Stay tuned for more on this migration in the upcoming weeks.

I've found you... at last!

Until next time, may you enjoy going back.

MOTELx 08

2008-09-07T21:49:00.001+01:00

Today I was at the last day of MOTELx 08 - the second Lisbon International Horror Film Festival. The festival run through the 3rd to the 7th of September, in Lisbon.

I just dropped there to see the "Awakening of the Beast" (1970), a Brazilian cult horror movie, that was banished in the country through censorship for about 20 years. The film was preceed by a short movie, "Aparências" (2007), directed by Liz Marins, daughter of the legendary José Mojica Marins. José (best know by his character "Zé do Caixão"/"Coffin Joe2) was a breakthrough horror movie director/producer/actor in Brazil, including "Awakening of the Beast". Liz was there to present the movie, and I still managed to spot José, as well as Fernando Ribeiro, vocalist of the metal band Moonspell. Regarding the actual movie, it was an interesting experience, although it featured more sex orgies and drug abuse that actual horror. It was a petty that the sound wasn't that good, it really needs to be digitally restored. Anyway, it left me with the desire to take a better look at Brazilian horror cinema.

Until next time, may you enjoy a strange world... Because it's made up, my friend, of strange people, though none are stranger than you!

Firefox 3, Firebug, and Chrome

2008-09-07T12:00:00.003+01:00

Today I'm going post about three cool things in web browsers that I have encountered in the past weeks.

Firefox 3.0

Firefox 3.0.1 running on Windows XP

Well, this is not exactly new, Firefox 3.0 was released in June, but I haven't the time to post it! I have updated to 3.0.1 last week and it's pretty cool. Most of the improvement is under the hood (in Gecko, the browser engine), so performance is improved. Personally, I've noticed that Firefox is "eating" less memory that used to. Regarding new features, here are some small ones that I've found useful:

The add-on window has now an integrated search engine, making it faster founding and installing a new add-on; also, there is a new tab for plug-ins.
The history shows more information besides the actual URL, namely the name and icon of the website in question.
Download resumes (finally!). Anyway, I use DownThemAll!, so I pretty much haven't tried this feature.

Firebug

Firebug 1.2.0 on Firefox 3.0.1

Firebug is a Firefox add-on for web development. It allows you to do some pretty useful stuff if you are a web developer (such as I):

A JavaScript error console (equivalent to the Firefox built-in one)
Browse the HTML source code tree with syntax highlight
Browse the CSS code
Browse and debug the JavaScript code
Browse the document DOM tree and evaluate its current state
Take a look at the page's HTTP requests, including return code, size and time.
Other stuff that I haven't tried yet (like profiling an stuff)

Personally, in the project which I'm working on now, the HTTP requests tab has allowed us the detect several bugs and issues, as well as to spot possible improvements.

Chrome

Chrome 0.2 running in Windows XP

When I thought that I had seen pretty much all there is to see in web browsers, Google surprised me (again), by the release of their own (open-source) web browser: Chrome. The motivation behind Chrome is to provide a fast and reliable platform for web browsing and specially for the complexity of today's web applications. (There is an interesting comic book explaining this.) The beta version released for Windows (Linux and MacOS X versions should follow) is making a big fuzz (in my job we started having informal conversations about whether we will need to support this browser in the near future).

I think the motivation is very right, in the last decade, the personal computing paradigm has shifted from desktop applications to web applications, and we are still using the same basic technologies. How to improved the basic infrastructures without breaking today's applications is the main challenge. One can develop new protocols, languages and formats, but they are useless without support for the web browser community and the web site developer community (and ultimately the market!). W3C standards for instance are very useful, but many of them are not fully implemented (e.g. CSS, SVG, PNG...) or simply not used that often (e.g. accessibility).

Regarding the actual beta, it is pretty cool for a beta. It looks stable, fast and has a refreshing look. As a benchmark I wrote most of this post in Chrome and so far I am pretty happy.

Finally, I am curious what will be the role of Chrome in the current web browser landscape. With the death of Netscape and the outcast of Opera to the embedded systems domains, how will Chrome stand up with Internet Explorer and Firefox? I am sure that Google is not doing this as a proof of concept, they are targeting a share in the web browser client market. How long will it take to suceed, how much market will they take, and how will this interact with the Mozilla comunnity, these are my questions for the future. One thing is for sure, the web will never be the same anymore.

Until next time, may you enjoy the web.

Blood and Gold

2008-09-06T18:20:00.000+01:00

Last week, I've finished reading "Blood and Gold", the eighth vampire chronicle from Anne Rice.

Here be spoilers

In this book, Thorne - an old Norse vampire - awakens from a long slumber and finds Marius, to whom he tells his tale. After that, Marius tells his own, with a depth that he never told anyone, not even Lestat. In the end of book wishes to meet the new Queen of the Damned...

My Chronicle

Let's go straight to point: this book is really for the fans. Thorne, the new character is pretty much an excuse so once more we can hear the story of Marius, this time in its full glory. So the book basically fills the gaps left by Marius in "The Vampire Lestat", "Pandora" and "The Vampire Armand". If you like the character (as I do), then you will enjoy it; otherwise is going to be more of the same. I particularly liked how this book mirrors "Pandora", as it tells the other side of the story of this couple. We are left not knowing if they reunited in the end. Still, the end had its own twist (as always in Rice's books). Finally, I really loved this edition's cover from Arrow books, the look on the girl's face is just amazing!

Coming soon

Well, it has been a while since I've read an Anne Rice book (or any book for that matter), since I have been really busy this year. Right now, eight chronicles down, two to go! Or not, since before that I am going to read the Mayfair Witches book trilogy, which I recently acquired. This hiatus will fill me in on the gaps I had regarding the witches mythology which was present in the previous chronicle ("Merrick") and that is going to be the focus of the next chronicle ("Blackwood Farm").

Until next time, may you enjoy blood... and gold.

Software Livre na Festa do Avante!

2008-09-05T21:59:00.000+01:00

Nos dias 5, 6 e 7 de Setembro realiza-se mais uma edição da Festa do Avante!, que inclui um espaço sobre software livre.

Historicamente, os únicos partidos politicos que têm demonstrado interesse sobre o assunto são o Partido Comunista Português (PCP) e Bloco de Esquerda (BE), embora não sempre tenham andado de mão dada no que diz respeito a projectos-lei. Inclusive, de alguns anos para cá têm dado o exemplo e os respectivos sites são feitos em Joomla!, um gestor de conteúdos livre, baseado em PHP/MySQL.

Bom, relativamente a edição deste ano da Festa do Avante!. Vai ser apresentada a versão 5.0 do Komunix, uma distribuição de Linux (agora) baseada em Ubuntu. Além disso, nesse mesmo DVD vai existir a versão 3.o do Alter CD, um pacote de software livre para Windows. Ora bem, pessoalmente acho que qualquer iniciativa com vista a popularização de software livre é de louvar, seja porque razão for. Dito isto, tenho algumas criticas à iniciativa (ou pelo menos ao post no PeopleWare no qual me baseio para julgar a mesma). Em termos técnicos, acho que não faz muito sentido criar mais uma distro de Linux: já existem demasiadas, com todos os problemas que isso acarreta. Além disso, todas as principais distros (como o Ubuntu) são multilingue "out-of-the-box". Por último, achei o tom do comentário sobre o software para "um sistema operativo proprietário" de mau gosto. Goste-se ou não, o sistema Windows é o mais popular e com algum mérito. (Gostava de saber quantas pessoas da organização usam realmente sistemas operativos livres no dia a dia...) Até é um comentário um bocado hipócrita, porque coincidência das coincidências, o site do PCP usa uma animação Flash, tecnologia proprietária da Adobe, que por acaso até crashou o meu web browser livre (Firefox) no meu sistema operativo livre (Fedora Core Linux). É por estas e por outras que não podemos ser fundamentalistas.

Até à próxima, apreciem ir à Festa do Avante! em vez de ficar em casa a "blogar" sobre a mesma :)

Blog not dead (yet) again!

2008-08-31T01:19:00.000+01:00

Yes, I'm still alive. But I really need some real vacations...

Until next time, I'll be back.

Master (photos)

2008-07-02T22:39:00.000+01:00

Here are some photos about my previous post, courtesy of António Falcão.

My last picture as a non-Master at CA3

The Jury: Pedro Guerreiro, Luís Monteiro, João Fernandes and João Araújo

My presentation's first slide

Until next time, may enjoy remembering your master moments.

Master

2008-06-29T22:22:00.002+01:00

Since last Wednesday (June 25, 2008) I am Master Of Science (MSc) in Computer Science also known as Mestrado em Engenharia Informática in Portuguese. An "old school" MSc by the way, since it is a pre-Bologna Master degree.

The story (thus far)

Well, part of story was already told in my previous post, but there's always a couple of things unsaid. The thesis started in October 2006, after a talk with Ana Moreira and Pedro Guerreiro. During the first semester I did a huge work on research and development, and in the second semester I did my last two courses required for the degree (I needed six, but four of them I have done them already in my Bachelor degree as optional courses). Shortly after that (June 2007) my scholarship ended and I started working as a software developer, which meant that my thesis dissertation went into a hiatus. Only in October 2007 did I gathered the courage to return to the dissertation, by claiming Friday as my "academic" day. Finally, in February of this way, I finished the dissertation, and after a couple of unrelated issues (namely, one my supervisors moved to another university and the other one got sick) I have presented it.

Presentation

Well, I was a little nervous with the presentation (as always) but it went pretty well. My jury included Luis Monteiro, Pedro Guerreiro, João Araújo, and João Fernandes from Universidade do Minho. I got a grade of Muito Bom por unanimidade (an unanimous "Very Good"), which is pretty good grade. But more importantly, I got some nice complements about my work.

So, what is your thesis about, anyway?

Well, a lot of people ask me this question, and I usually avoid it. Why? Well, when you work on a subject for a long time, sometimes you get a little sick from grokking your thesis. Worst, in all thesis you examine a subject so closely, that even other researchers and professionals in your area really don't understand you. So, you get a little annoyed with the question. Anyway, I must overcome this, so were is the answer.
In my thesis, I explored how to extend a programming language (namely Java) with full support for the Design by Contract approach, using Aspect-Oriented Programming technologies. My AOP background came from my BSc, but my DbC interest came a long way...

Design by Contract

While reviewing my BSc projects I found a report from a (somewhere between 2005 and 2006) project in an Algorithms and Data Structures course were I used a light Object-Oriented approach for writing C code (!), which DbC in the form of comments. But as I looked a little closer, the idea of DbC was already in my head before that when I learned Object Constraint Language (OCL). Interestingly, I learned UML in a System Analysis course, taught by Ana Moreira, one of my future supervisors. However, a couple of weeks ago I was re-reading the introduction of my first computer science book (an Object-Oriented C++ book), I found out that author had a great interest in DbC, which he through out the book. Well, it happens that the book was Programação com Classes em C++, which was written by none other than Pedro Guerreiro, my first programming teacher at the university, and my other future supervisor! So, in a certain way, the circle is completed.

Is it over?

This was one of the questions posed by some people and the Master thesis jury. (Which means: "Are you going to do a PhD?"). Well, one thing I have learned: never say never. Having said that, my answer is no, I'm not going to do a PhD, at least not in the foreseeable future of the next couple of years. I have been in the academic world for about nine years, and I really need to do some "out of the box" thinking/working. Also, I need to work on my social skills which includes some non-functional requirements :) But, if a good opportunity comes along, an opportunity which is compatible with my industry career and does not involve over-working, I might consider doing another degree and/or teaching (which is something I have been curious about for some time).
Meanwhile, I have to finished the revised version of my master thesis, as well as finishing some paper work. Also, I got an invitation to write extended versions of two of published research papers, which I am considering. Anyway, after that it is very likely that my connection to the academic world will be more sporadic. After all, I have to invest on my software developer career, which happens to be my paying job!

Until next time, may you enjoy reaching a step further.

An Aspect for Design by Contract in Java @ICEIS 2008

2008-06-22T22:15:00.000+01:00

Last week, I attended the 10th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, also known as ICEIS 2008, in Barcelona, Spain. During my stay there I presented three research papers, which I am going to write about it in (at least) three posts.

The first paper I presented was "An Aspect for Design by Contract in Java", co-authored by Dr. Pedro Guerreiro and Hugo Taborda. This paper was presented at satellite event, the 6th International Workshop on Modelling, Simulation, Verification and Validation of Enterprise Information Systems, also known as MSVVEIS 2008. This paper corresponds to the core of my master thesis dissertation, and has a long story, which began even before my Master Thesis.

Pedro Guerreiro is a lecturer and researcher that for many years has been interested in Design by Contract, which he learnt through the Eiffel programming language. Since then, he has work on ad-hoc support for DbC in C++. With the advent of Aspect-Oriented Programming he imaged that it could be used to implement DbC support in more clean way. And so a master thesis began... with Hugo Taborda. For some time Hugo worked on this theme, but due to reasons outside of the scope of this blog, he diverted from this to other projects, and the thesis entered in a hiatus.

Fast forward to October 2006. I had just finished my Bachelor degree, had a research background in Aspect-Oriented Software Development with requirements engineering and had just decided to start a Master degree in a more implementation focused theme. It wasn't long until I "stole" the Master thesis. As the Thesis unfolded, it wasn't long until we started thinking on writing a paper. And thus a struggle began.

When we first started writing the paper, my thesis was still not in its final form, but we wanted to give it go, even if it was only for feedback purposes. Unfortunately, the research community wasn't very fond of the idea, and the paper was submitted and rejected in several conferences over the following months. I can't really remember all of them, but it was rejected in the three communities which may have an interest on it: Java (PPPJ), Object-Oriented (TOOLS), and Aspect-Oriented (AOSD). It was a hard road, but it provided a lot of feedback for the thesis, as well as teaching me endurance.

So, I finally got the paper accepted, and presented it last Friday, the 13th (not a good premise!). Anyway, the presentation went really well, at least for my standards, since I get really nervous doing presentations. Unfortunately, the attendance was not that big, and most of the researchers at the workshop where not really interested in this research stream.

Until next time, may you enjoy finishing an old objective.

Anne Rice: a message to fans (May 2008)

2008-06-17T23:45:00.001+01:00

Following my previous post on Anne Rice, comes this interesting video. Click here if you are interested in seeing more videos from her.

"O Meu Record" em produção

2008-06-07T14:57:00.000+01:00

A aplicação O Meu Record encontra-se em produção desde a madrugada da última quarta para quinta-feira, graças ao suor e noites mal dormidas da equipa de inovação da ViaTecla :)
Mais informação:

"Record aposta online para o futuro" in Meios e Publicidade (2008-06-06)
"Edição online do Record prepara o Euro 2008" in Tek Sapo (2008-06-06)
"Record lança novos serviços online para o Euro 2008" in Jornal de Negócios online (2008-06-06)
"Record online mais perto dos leitores" in Record online (2008-06-07)

Este projecto levantou alguns desafios de engenharia interessantes. Talvez faça um post sobre o assunto. Bom, pelo menos depois de resolvidos os restantes issues da versão 1.0.0.44 :)

Até à próxima vez, que apreciem lançar algo ao público (e que corra bem).

The Avengers?

2008-05-17T19:25:00.000+01:00

If you recently went to cinema to watch the Iron Man (2008) movie, and stayed until the end, there was a nice easter egg where Nick Fury proposed Tony Stark to join the Avengers. (If not, you can see it here.) If you are a former comic book geek (such as I), then you must wondering... that would be cool, but is it feasible? You would need to have a lot of movies just to introduce the characters...
Well, I did a little search by IMDB, and guess what did I found out:

The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Thor (2010)
Sub-Mariner (2010)
The First Avenger: Captain America (2011)

And last, but not least:

The Avengers (2011)

Not so crazy after all! Well, the movies listed make up the original line-up of the team (well, except Wasp and Ant-man, but who knows...). Anyway, there are other Avenger characters in existing movies of the Marvel franchise, such as Spider-man, X-Men and the Fantastic Four.

Until next time, may you enjoy the return of your former heroes.

ViaTecla @ Job-Shop FCT/UNL 2008

2008-05-10T13:19:00.000+01:00

A ViaTecla esteve presente na edição deste ano da Job-Shop da FCT/UNL.

Ricardo Raminhos e Carla Duarte na aberta do segundo dia da feira

João Vieira e restantes ouvintes do discurso de vendedor do R. Raminhos

Até à próxima, que apreciem poder voltar a um sítio familiar, mas noutro papel.

Silverlight Showcase

2008-05-03T19:42:00.000+01:00

Go to the Silverlight showcase web site, click "Geography" and select the Portuguese flag. In it you'll find two Portuguese Silverlight applications: "My Travel Management" and "Omnicom's Media Preview TV". Both of them were developed by ViaTecla (one of them internally and the other one for Omnicom). I can say that I am proud to be part of the development team of MTM, although it is still a show-off prototype. Anyway, all are past and ongoing projects are shown in our team's showcase.

Until next time, may you enjoy showing off.

RCA @ In Live Caffé

2008-04-27T19:27:00.000+01:00

Ontem assisti a um concerto da banda RCA (Real Companhia dos Animais), um banda de covers metal, no In Live Caffé, um bar na Moita. Foi uma actuação bastante animada, com uma presença em palco cheia de humor. Destacam-se as faixas "Pitas" e "Zé Pastor" (Sad but true), tal como um medley de faixas de Metallica. Ah, e dois dois membros - Rui Duarte e Ricardo Mendonça - fazem parte dos Ramp.

Até à próxima vez, apreciem covers.

Indie Lisboa '08

2008-04-26T15:08:00.000+01:00

Na passada quinta-feira começou Indie Lisboa '08 - 5º Festival Internacional de Cinema Independente. Experimentem, não vai doer nada :)

Momentos a não esquecer

2008-04-26T14:42:00.001+01:00

Ontem à tarde passei por uma exposição de fotografia bastante agradável numa galeria do Barreiro. A autora é Clara Porfirio e a exposição "Momentos a não esquecer". As fotos em causa também estão disponíveis no site dela.

Até à próxima vez, apreciem ter ideias claras.

VT OpenDay 2008+

2008-04-20T11:08:00.000+01:00

No passado dia 10 de Abril foi o primeiro Open Day da ViaTecla.

O que é o OpenDay?

Bom, tal como o nome indica, o Open Day foi um dia aberto. Um dia aberto a clientes (actuais e potenciais), profissionais da área, amigos e familiares dos colaboradores, tal como à comunidade em geral. Neste dia, cada equipa da VT apresentava o seu trabalho.

As nossas instalações no Feijó, com o novo logótipo

O mapa das equipas

Preparação

A maior parte das equipas apresentou o seu trabalho através das clássicas apresentações PowerPoint, visto que a maior parte do seu trabalho não é propriamente fácil de demonstrar (geralmente muito técnico). Coube então à nossa equipa ("Inovação") fazer algumas demonstrações, visto que trabalhamos essencialmente em multimédia. Assim, montámos um PC para demonstrações das nossas aplicações Web ("FutureBox", "MediaPreview") e Windows ("Nice Reader"). Por outro lado, tínhamos um outro PC e Xbox 360 com o Media Center e Media Center Extender, respectivamente, para demonstrar o nosso plug-in "Video Subscription". Visto que experiência da equipa actual com o Media Center e especialmente com a Xbox era bastante baixa, passámos grande parte do dia anterior só para pôr tudo a funcionar. Além do local de demonstrações, tínhamos ainda um local de PowerPoint e outro com o "Carrossel". Todos os projectos de aqui falo podem ser visto no nosso Showcase.

O nosso espaço de demonstrações: Windows Media Center (esquerda) e IE/Silverlight (direita)

Ricardo Raminhos no seu melhor como vendedor

Não, não estava a jogar o "PES"

Uma pausa merecida: Cláudio, eu e o Nuno Miranda (polo de Évora)

"My Travel Management" no "Carrossel"

Resultados

Bom, em geral não houve uma enchente de pessoas tão grande como isso. Mesmo assim, tivemos muita gente, tendo em conta a dificuldade e inexperiência nestes eventos, tal como o mau tempo que se fazia sentir nesse dia. Foi interessante também por nos ter dado a nós os colaboradores, uma oportunidade de nos conhecermos melhor tal como o trabalho que realizamos. Nem sempre é fácil, numa empresa com mais de 40 colaboradores.

A nível pessoal, tive a responsabilidade de vestir um papel sobre o qual não estou muito confortável, o de "vendedor". Mesmo assim, fiz o melhor que pude e conseguimos projectar a nossa equipa (que se tenta impor, visto ser uma área recente na VT) e a empresa em geral. Ah, e ganhámos uma camisa azul com o logo da VT. Já tinha ouvido falar em "amor à camisola", mas parece que também se aplica à camisa :)

Os colaboradores da ViaTecla (parte 1)

Os colaboradores da ViaTecla (parte 2)

Os colaboradores da ViaTecla (parte 3)

Os colaboradores da ViaTecla (parte 4)

Até à próxima vez, que apreciem poder abrir as portas.

Hyper/Net: MDSoC support for .NET

2008-04-16T18:42:00.000+01:00

Earlier this year, I attended the MSc discussion of Tiago Dias, entitled "Hyper/Net: MDSoC support for .NET". The thesis explored Multi-Dimensional Separation of Concerns (MDSoc) for the .NET platform, namely using the C# programming language. The idea is based Hyper/J, a research project abandoned by IBM a couple of years ago. While this may same like a bad start, Tiago's presentation was very good and convincing. Essentially, the MDSoC support is based on .NET's partial classes and some generative programming techniques. This work originated a research paper, with the same name of the dissertation, published in 2006. Also, some of the dissertation's chapters were stripped, as they belong on a possible future PhD thesis. These chapters dealt with the cognitive aspects of the multidimensional separation of concerns.

Until next time, may you enjoy separating concerns, one way or the other.

Esperteza Saloia

2008-04-13T19:40:00.001+01:00

Hoje vou escrever um pouco sobre um assunto que já há muito gostava de escrever, mas que devido à sua complexidade, o tenho evitado fazer: a chamada "pirataria". Neste post, vou falar um pouco sobre um tipo de pirataria em particular, a de software.

Motivação

Há alguns anos atrás, numa aula do Prof. Pedro Guerreiro, ele falava sobre o facto de muitos alunos copiarem ilegalmente software, sem terem uma real necessidade. Na altura chamou-lhe "esperteza saloia". Hoje, um amigo com que falava no MSN, perguntava-me que versão do Visual Studio precisaria para um projecto escolar. Para as necessidades que ele me perguntou, eu recomendei-lhe o Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition. No entanto, ele preferiu "sacar" uma das versões avançadas do VS 2008. Ou seja, em vez de fazer o download de uma versão gratuita e legal de poucas centenas de MiB, preferiu fazer o download de vários CDs de uma versão pirata. A justificação: "preferia ter uma versão *completa*".

O Problema

Longe vai o tempo em que as pessoas usavam software ilegal por necessidade. Hoje em dia quase todas as grandes linhas de software comercial têm uma versão gratuita, seja ela uma edição express, light, ou home. Na pior das hipóteses têm um trial de N dias. Isto já para não falar no software freeware e FOSS (no caso do meu amigo, ele ainda tinha a possibilidade de usar o SharpDevelop, uma IDE open-source para .NET). Porque é que então se generalizou de tal maneira o uso de software ilegal? Porque é fácil. Por ganância. Sim, a maior parte das vezes é mesmo por ganância. Não me venham com histórias de que a empresa X e Y (tipicamente a Microsoft, um alvo fácil) são gananciosas e que o software é muito caro. Não me venham com histórias de que são vitimas do capitalismo (tipicamente americano, outro alvo fácil), ou de que são "Robins do Bosques". Se existem alternativas e as pessoas não as usam, isso para mim é ganância, pura e simplesmente.

Advogado do Diabo

Sou contra a "pirataria"? Sim, sou. Mas também não sou a favor de campanhas de caça às bruxas, propaganda na comunicação social, ou medidas de protecção idiotas. (Na realidade, eu até acho que é uma questão de tempo [décadas, talvez] até todo o software se tornar FOSS e o próprio fenómeno de pirataria deixar de existir como o conhecemos hoje, mas isso é uma história para outra altura.) O próprio termo "pirataria" é em si uma termo enviesado e errado (ver próximo parágrafo).
As campanhas que se têm feito em Portugal sobre pirataria (em geral, não só sobre software) comparam a cópia legal de software ao roubo de carros e carteira. Isso para mim é propaganda pura. A cópia ilegal de software é, passe a expressão, ilegal, não "um crime". (A venda desse mesmo software, apesar de na minha opinião abominável, continua a ser ilegal, não propriamente um crime).
Não sou a favor das licenças abusivas e validações draconianas. Também não sou a favor das protecções contra cópia que existe em muito software, especialmente jogos, nomeadamente porque prejudicam mais as pessoas que compram de facto o software, que os restantes. Como exemplo, um amigo meu emprestou-me um jogo que ele tinha comprado. Como era aborrecido ter constantemente o CD na drive sempre que queria jogar, acabei por ter de pesquisar um "crack" para remover essa protecção. Quem é que ficou prejudicado com este mecanismo?

Piratas

Se formos a um dicionário, podemos encontrar algo como o seguinte em pirata:

do Lat. pirata peiratés
s. 2 gén.,: aquele que cruza os mares para assaltar e roubar navios;
: corsário;
: aquele que sequestra e desvia aviões (frequentemente com pretextos políticos);
: ladrão;
fig.,: pessoa que enriquece à custa de outrem por meio de exacções violentas;
: malandro;
: velhaco;
prov.,: tratante;
Brasil,: sedutor;
: conquistador;
adj. 2 gén.,: fraudulento;
Inform.,: pessoa que se introduz nos sistemas informáticos de outros, passando para além de protecções e passwords, podendo ou não danificá-los ou utilizá-los ilicitamente.

Bom, os termos que se referem aos piratas históricos são abusivos: uma pessoa que usa software ilegal não está a roubar, sequestrar ou violentar outro. A ideia de roubar continua a ser o ponto que me incomoda. Dá a ideia que se está a tirar algo a alguém sem lhe pagar. Ora, isto dá a entender que todas as pessoas que pirateam software o pagariam se não tivessem acesso a uma versão ilegal. Isto está muito longe da verdade. Muito do software pirateado não seria adquirido noutras circunstâncias, porque a maior parte das pessoas arranjariam alternativas gratuitas. Ou simplesmente as pessoas não usariam de todo o software em causa, porque na minha opinião muitas das vezes não existe uma necessidade real do software.
A definição aplicada à informática confunde o acesso a um sistema com o uso ilegal de software, misturando hacking com piraria. Não vamos por aí! Isso é outra conversa...

Hipocrisia

É óbvio que já pirateei software. Muito até. Especialmente jogos. Em retrospectiva, o tempo que passei a arranjar centenas de jogos, podiam ter sido mais bem aproveitados a comprar e jogar a meia dúzia que realmente joguei. Hoje em dia sou contra o acto de piratear um software, especialmente quando não existe uma real necessidade. Creio que neste momento o único software que tenho ilegal é o Windows 2000 no meu PC Desktop (AKA "Tarja"). A única coisa que posso dizer em minha defesa é que se trata de um PC velho que adquiri em segunda mão (sem sistema operativo), e que não se justifica nesta altura adquirir um SO para um PC com tempo de vida reduzido, ainda mais porque o software em causa já não é comercializado pela Microsoft (bom, o abandonware é ainda outra história para mais um dia...). Continua a ser errado, no entanto.

Até à próxima, que apreciem ter a coragem de questionar comportamentos generalizados.

My Trip to Brussels

2008-04-12T20:58:00.000+01:00

As I told in a previous post, last week I was at Brussels. I am going to write a little bit about my trip and stay there.

The Plane

One of the cool stuff of this trip was that I got to do my first plane trip. Also, I got to go in the window seat! The plane is much smaller than I imagined (then again, the Lisbon-Brussels flight isn't exactly the most used flight), as well as noisier. Although I didn't have any fear of flying, I confess that I was little apprehensive during the take-off. Something to mark in my check-list of things I wanted to do in my life time.
I think the airports are very confusing for a first-time user, especially the Brussels airport which is quite huge. Anyway, it all went well, despite the departure's flight was an hour late, at least they didn't lose my luggage.

My plane

No, no gremlin on the wing

Belgium: a new country

Although I have done some trips outside of Portugal, I have only been to Spain and Andorra (well, technically I was in France, but only on an Andorra trip). In general, I liked the country, at least what I have seen - the centre of Brussels. In spite of being the "capital" of the European Union, I didn't feel like a cosmopolitan city: the traffic looked organized, lots of parking places, and lots of green spaces. Most people I interacted with in the city knew how to speak English, in spite of their annoying French accent. Overall, the city was very English-speaking friendly: most of the shops and signs were in English. Oh, and a lot of chocolate :)

Now I know: chocolate comes from fountains!

Tintin, Captain Haddock and Milou in another adventure!

Sightseeing

Let me tell you a secret: I skipped the second day at the conference to do some sightseeing. You live once! And I sure didn't want to skip this change. Since I am not a very cult person (at least in terms of history and geography), I didn't where to go, other than the Belgium Comic Strip Museum. Fortunately, sightseeing maps from the Hotel to the rescue! I got into the subway and went to visit some spots in the map, with a little of walking (which I enjoy to do).
I enjoyed the most were parks and the buildings in general. The Atomium is very impressive, but Manneken Pis is really overrated. Grand Place and in general most of the historical part of the city were very nice.

Europa riding Zeus

Les Arcades du Cinquantenaire

Atomium

Place Des Martirs

Tintin's Moon rocket @ Brussels Comic Strip Museum

Until next time, may you enjoy travelling whenever you have the opportunity.

ViaTecla @ Diário de Notícias

2008-04-06T14:08:00.004+01:00

Na edição de hoje do Diário de Notícias, nomeadamente na secção "media", coluna inovações vem uma referência à ViaTecla. Em concreto, fala sobre o 1º Open Day, no próximo dia 10, onde a empresa vai estar aberta a visitantes da área de negócio, clientes e comunidade local. É de salientar que o texto menciona os projectos "FutureBox" e o "Head-Up Business Display", ambos desenvolvidos pela equipa de inovação, da qual faço parte.

Até à próxima, que apreciem ter trabalho referenciado no jornal, independentemente da sua importância e de quem o fez.

Contracts for Aspect-Oriented Design @ AOSD.08

2008-04-06T14:07:00.000+01:00

This week I was at the AOSD.08 conference, in Brussels, Belgium. There I presented a research paper, "Contracts for Aspect-Oriented Design".

AOSD.08

The path into AOSD.08

The international conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AKA: AOSD) in the most important conference for Aspect-Oriented Software Development. This year's edition, the seventh, was hosted in the "heart" of Europe, Brussels. The activities were from March 31st to April 4th, and included: the research track, where the latest and most important research papers are presented; the industry track, where the papers on the latest developments in the industry are presented; the workshops, where specific subjects are treated through paper presentation and group discussion; the tutorials, where a person or a group of persons will be presenting and lecturing about a specific theme; and student extravaganza, where MSc or PhD students present posters on their theses' development. There is also space for some tool demonstrations and some social events.
During my short stay at the conference (only the first two days of the week), I stumbled upon some fellow researchers which I have met in GTTSE and SWERC 2007, as well as several Portuguese people. I also got to talk with Dean Wampler, an interesting industry consultant and researcher, whose work has influenced my paper, and in general my master thesis.

SLAT Workshop

Group discussion @ SPLAT

I participated in the Software-engineering Properties of Languages and Aspect Technologies (SPLAT) workshop. In this 6th edition, the theme was discussing how does Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) cope with good software engineering properties (e.g. reliability, testability, etc.). This was very interesting, because although my current research is on programming and design, the 'illities' are essentially non-functional requirements, which links with my previous research work on requirements engineering. My paper was generally well accepted, although my actual presentation was less than impressive (I still get nervous when making presentations). In summary, it was actually constructive, as I got some positive comments and some new ideas on issues that I should have addressed or at least considered.

Contracts for Aspect-Oriented Design

The paper presentation's cover slide

The story of this paper started about a year ago. At the time, I was still about half-way through my master thesis, as well as doing my final two courses needed for the master degree. One of such courses was Tópicos Avançados em Engenharia de Software (Advanced Topics on Software Engineering), lectured by one my supervisors, Ana Moreira. There, I was suppose to make a paper assignment, which could be a first draft of a chapter of my upcoming dissertation. While helpful, I was getting a little bored of just my thesis, and wanted to think a little "outside of the box". The paper was born, with the exact same title as today.
Since both my supervisors liked it, we later decided to expand and improve it a little, in order to make a extra chapter on my dissertation. Chapter 7 was born :) It wasn't much later than we concluded that with a little work, we could make conference worthy. And so, when working in a paper which represented the core of my thesis, we decided to also make a paper out it, and submitted both to the AOSD conference. Interestingly, my master thesis "core" paper was rejected (once again, but that is a story for another post...), while my master thesis "spin-off" paper was accepted.

Until next time, may you enjoy doing a little of out of the box thinking.

Dois artigos interessantes

2008-03-21T21:47:00.001Z

Ao arrumar papelada antiga de investigação, reencontrei dois artigos interessantes:

Um dos pontos fortes do meu antigo gabinete no CITI

Até à próxima vez, que apreciem encontrar humor nos sítios mais bizarros. (e conseguirem mais hits no Google com duas keywords)

SPLAT @ AOSD.08: paper available

2008-03-21T12:16:00.000Z

The paper "Contracts for Aspect-Oriented Design", co-authored by me, Pedro Guerreiro, and Ana Moreira is available. I will present this paper March 31 of this year, in the SPLAT workshop at AOSD.08, located in Brussels, Belgium. The document is available for download, as well as the schedule.

Splash... or should I say splat?

This paper was developed in the context of my Master Thesis, and the co-authors are my supervisors. It is going to be an interesting experience, as I've never been to a research conference before. Anyway, I can already see some interesting names in this workshop, such as Miguel Monteiro, a fellow researcher at CITI; and Krzysztof Czarnecki, the "father" of generative programming, whom I've met last summer. Hopefully, I'll meet some more people from the main conference or other workshops.

Until next time, may you enjoy presenting your work.

Master Thesis: In print

2008-03-21T12:10:00.001Z

Last Tuesday, my Master Thesis dissertation was printed and delivered. In the coming weeks, the discussion will be scheduled.

The first print

Until next time, may you enjoy printing a document started almost two years ago.

ViaTecla @ TechDays 2008

2008-03-17T22:31:00.001Z

Dia 11 a 14 de Março, realizou-se o Techdays 2008, onde a ViaTecla teve uma participação activa.

Techdays 2008

Techdays é uma conferência anual, realizada pela Microsoft, dedicada a tecnologias da mesma. Este ano o foco estava nos mais recentes lançamentos da MS: Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 e SQL Server 2008.

ViaTecla Software

A ViaTecla, sendo um Gold Partner da Microsoft, teve uma participação activa. Nomeadamente:

Partners [vídeo]
Partners + Products [vídeo]
Keynote [vídeo 1] [vídeo 2]

(Nota: para ver estes vídeos, é necessário a instalação do plug-in do Silverlight, o que pode ser um problema para certos browsers e sistemas operativos...)

Nestes vídeos é possível ver imagens de dois projectos da VT no qual estou envolvido: My Travel Management e Future Box.TV.

Até à próxima, que apreciem mostrar fogo de vista.

... still an academic...

2008-03-09T12:17:00.000Z

In spite of my new job, I am still connected to FCT.

Current papers and conferences

Recently, two of my research papers where accepted at two conferences, where I will be presenting them. My work at CITI in the context of SOFTAS project and my master thesis, was accepted at a workshop in the AOSD 2008. My work at CA3 in the context of the ASSD project and my bachelor degree was accepted at ICEIS 2008. AOSD is coming up at the end of this month in Bruxels, Belgium; while ICEIS comes later, by the middle of June, in Barcelona, Spain. When I have more time to blog, I will write a post on both of these papers, as they all have interesting stories.

Upcoming papers

Still, my work is not done, I am involved in three other papers. A paper on the ASSD project is submitted to a Journal, and is under a revision process. Two more papers related to my master thesis are under development, and may or may not be submitted in a near future. Yeah, one of them also has an interesting story.

My master thesis

Yes, somewhere in between the writing/revising process of research papers, I have a master thesis dissertation a couple of months late. This will definitively be worth a couple of blog posts. Hopefully, it will be discussed in a month or two.

When will the madness end?

I don't know, but somewhere this year I must end my connection to the university. Having a double life of developer by day, and researcher by night, is somewhat stressful and exhausting. I am going to need some more space for my personal and social life.

Until next time, may you enjoy doing a lot of stuff... even tough sometimes you are not sure for what purpose...

... Hello ViaTecla

2008-03-09T12:15:00.001Z

Since February 2, 2008, I am working at ViaTecla Software as a Software Developer.

ViaTecla

ViaTecla is medium sized company in the software industry, located near Almada. It is composed into three divisions: Software (internal development), Operations (technical maintenance), and Projects (out sourcing).Its core business areas are in the tourism (KEYforTravel product) and web site content management (ScriptorServer product). VT is a Microsoft Gold Partner, and as such I believe it is my duty to always carry my Java PT 07 satchel, as well as my Java/Sun umbrella ;)

My Job

As said, I am software developer in the software division, the largest. While I am not working in any of the main products' teams, most of the projects where I work are based on them. Although I cannot disclose much detail about my work (damn NDAs :)), I can say that I'm working in the development of new projects and products, in multimedia technologies. These involve Microsoft's state of the art: .NET 3.5, Silverlight, Windows Media Services, etc. While I don't have a strong background in the multimedia area, I consider myself a good software engineer, and good engineering is always useful, whatever the software development area is.

Until next time, may enjoy having the courage of taking new challenges and risks.

Farewell ISIS...

2008-03-09T11:32:00.001Z

January 31, 2008 was my last day working at ISIS.

ISIS

ISIS (Intelligent Sensorial Information Systems) is a spin-off of the CA3 (now know as Computational Intelligence Research Group) at UNINOVA. I have been working there since last June, in the "SGF" project. It is a research/industry project, namely a management system, based on .NET 2.0 technology. Due to an informal NDA, if I told you more about this then I would have to kill you :)

The ISIS team

During my stay here, I had the joy of meeting a nice group of people, both professionally as personally. Namely:

José Manuel Fonseca, holds a BSc in Computer Science, a MSc in Computer Science, and a PhD in Electrotechnical Engineering. Currently he is a professor at the Electrotechnical Department at the university. He is definitely the best "boss" I ever had, with a very good sense of humour, and a very good speaker, he always has an interesting talk to do.

André Mora, holds a BSc in Electrotechnical Engineering, and a MSc in Computer Science. Currently he is lecturing at the Electrotechnical Departament, as well as finishing his PhD. André is a natural leader, always available to solve the tough problems and arguments.

Inês Guerra, holds a BSc in Electrotechnical Engineering. After a brief experience in consulting and international lecturing, she decided to return to the university on an entrepreneurship journey. She is the "glue" of the team, always promoting dialogue among the team, as well as finding (as sometimes solving) the various non-functional issues associated with software development.

Fernando Moitinho, holds a BSc in Electrotechnical Engineering. Currently he is assistant at the Electrotechnical Department, as well as finishing his MSc in the "spare" time. Fernando is a hard-working person, the most productive member in terms LOC per hour :)

Catarina Gomes, is taking a BSc in Computer Science. She is no longer a current member of the team, but working as a research engineer at CA3. Catarina was the most "crosscutting" member, always available to perform the scattered tasks that no one else could do.

Sofia Moura, is taking a degree in design and multimedia. Sofia was the official graphical designer, that is, the person that made everything look pretty.

Carlos Figueira, holds a BSc in Electrotechnical Engineering. Carlos is the hardware guy, as well as the "holy" sysadmin. Need I say more?

Ana Fachada, holds a BSc in Electrotechnical Engineering. After working in consulting, she is currently developing her PhD. Since she is the most recent "acquisition" of the group, but an interesting one, since she has a pragmatic view in the "business" perspective of software development.

There would be a lot more to say about these people and this project, a lot more than a blog post would do justice. For a couple of months, all of use gave all they've got into this project, and for that we shared a bond. This was the best team I have worked with, and I wish them the best of luck in the future.

Inês Guerra, Fernando Moitinho, André Mora, José Manuel Fonseca and me
(October 13, an important milestone in the project)

Next

More than a goodbye from ISIS, this is a goodbye from FCT, because since then I start a new job, in the so-called (software) industry. But that is another story...

Until next time, may you enjoy being able to let go the people and places you care about, even when it is not easy.

Yet another saturday (geek) night

2008-03-02T02:20:00.000Z

Can't sleep? Oh, well, let's take a look at my computers.

Tarja

That is, my desktop PC.

Took a look at my eMule downloads (new month, new download quotas).
Corrupted eMule partial files... ah, good old Windows 2000 CHKDSK... bad sectors on my NTFS partition, damn.
Defragmented NTFS partition.
Defragmented FAT32 partition.

Simone

That is, my laptop PC.

Synchronizing email in Windows (XP).
Synchronizing email in Linux (FC4).
Damn, tired of the rowset something bug in Thunderbird 1.5 (guess I can't have folders with a few thousand mails).
Upgrading Thunderbird to 2.0 (cool, gmail support)
Backing up old files (400 MiB RARed...)
Adding my email accounts, configuring my options, installing my extensions, synchronizing my email.
Listening to the latest album of Tarja Turunen, "My Winter Storm".
Checking out the blogosphere.

Until next time, may you enjoy the Saturday night.

Fortune

2008-03-02T00:59:00.001Z

Until next time, may you enjoy being a fortunate person.

caleb.pt.vu - v42.1

2008-02-24T22:37:00.000Z

Yesterday I've updated my personal static web site.

new look

old look

What's new

So, what's new? Actually, nothing. No new content, just a new look. My Web site is now literally a single XHTML page (although some images and CSS are external, an interesting exercise would putting it all into a single file). That's it. The idea is to simply have all my static content into a single page. Simple, fast and maintainable. All the rest is already done by someone else, and typically better.

Join the dark side

Regarding the darker look, I have to admit to have been influenced by the Blackle web site, as well as the dark skins of Microsoft's Office 2007 and Expression Studio (which in itself is a post of its own). I think it looks pretty cool and elegant, although I may have to review some of the text colours, in order to improve some of the contrast.

Coming soon

Once again I have a backlog of blog posts to write, but I'm not sure when am I going to have the time and patience to catch up. So much to do and so little time...

Until next time, may you enjoy making simple things.

My Kafkaesque Wall

2008-02-10T19:53:00.000Z

Well, what is so Kafkaesque about this wall? Well, first of all it is my bedroom wall. Second, the paper on it is uncut book printing paper of... Franz Kafka's "O Processo" (know as "The Trial" in English). A really nice thing to look when you wake up :)
Oh, and there is also an ICEIS 2007 poster on the left, and a Magic: the Gathering 8th edition Fat Pack mini-poster on the right.

Until next time, may you enjoy a different look at your bedroom wall.

A new (e)buddy

2008-02-05T19:45:00.000Z

Need to use a chat service, but you don't enough permissions in the computer, or your network is under a proxy? Try ebuddy. It runs a couple of protocols (namely MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo, AIM, and MySpace), provides a good set of features, and runs relatively smoothly through the use of AJAX. Its like Pidgin, in the sense that you can mix all networks in a single contact tree, but web based.
Of course, its not perfect. You can't log your conversations (if you're paranoid like me, you usually do that), for technical/security reasons. You can't send or receive files. And of course, you can't use the most advance features, such as web cam, window skinning, etc., which, since I'm used to third-party clients such aMSN and GAIM/Pidgin, - heck, I've even used JMSN a couple of years ago, is not a big loss. Anyway, life is made of compromises, and this is one of them :)

Until next time, may you enjoy finding a new (e)buddy.

SQL Server BCP

2008-02-01T18:18:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago I was writing a small application to perform some ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) operations. As I was researching an efficient way to perform a large number of SQL insert statements, I found out about the BCP (Bulk CoPy) utility for MS SQL Server. This tool performs efficient data insertion (something in the order of thousands of row inserts per second), using as source CSV (Comma Separated Values) files. The mapping is performed through configuration files in a semi-structured format, or using an XML file (the latter is strongly recommended). Basically, the trick resides that unlike in regular inserts, database restrictions (primary keys, foreign keys, unique restrictions, null values, etc.) are not enforced for each row, but only at the end of the introduction, or per each block.

This was good solution for my needs at the time, which was to extract a large number of data from CSV files into a small number of tables, on a secondary database to the system in question. Of course, the mapping is limited: you cannot perform data normalization, only insert/remove columns, or switch its order. This means that either the input data is normalized, or you end up with a denormalized database. In sum, BCP does not replace an ETL tool, but provides an interesting complement in the "Loading" part.

By the way, a very nice book on the subject is Professional SQL Server 2005 Programming, by Robert Vieira, published by Wrox.

Until next time, may you enjoy bulk copying.

Teses, Relatórios e Trabalhos Escolares

2008-02-01T17:38:00.000Z

Neste Natal ofereceram-me o livro "Teses, Relatórios e Trabalhos Escolares", de Mário Azevedo.

Trata-se de um livro muito interessante para quem está a escrever uma dissertação, artigo científico, ou simplesmente quer ter algo brio nos trabalhos escolares. Trata-se um livro simples e pequeno, feito de forma a poder ser lido de uma ponta à outra ou simplesmente para consulta pontual. Apesar de não ser nenhuma bíblia do assunto, trata-se de um livro com boas sugestões. Adoptei algumas delas (a maior parte já tinha adoptado, por estar numa fase avançada da escrita da dissertação), embora a parte do Português não me seja particularmente útil, visto a minha dissertação se encontrar em Inglês. De qualquer maneira, o livro não substituí os conselhos e ajudas sobre as especificidades de cada área, tal como o nosso bom senso.
Por fim, um facto curioso é eu ter conhecido o autor, professor Mário Azevedo, num seminário que ele deu na FCT-UNL, em concreto no GAPA, intitulado “Saber Estudar é Meio Caminho Andado”.

The Rough Guide to Horror Movies

2008-01-27T18:17:00.000Z

"The Rough Guide to Horror Movies", is book by Alan Jones, which was offered to me as a gift last Christmas. This is a guide to horror movies (of which I'm a big fan). As such, one of my purposes for this year is to see every movie in the list (50).

The List

An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Black Sunday (1977)
OK Braindead (1992)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Cabinet des Dr. Caligari., Das (1920)
Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
Carrie (1976)
The Cat and the Canary (1927)
Cat People (1942)
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
OK Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Diaboliques, Les (1955)
Dracula (1931)
Dracula (1958)
OK The Evil Dead (1981)
OK The Exorcist (1973)
Yeux sans visage, Les (1960)
Frankenstein (1931)
Freaks (1932)
Halloween (1978)
The Haunting (1963/I)
The Innocents (1961)
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
OK Jaws (1975)
Near Dark (1987)
OK A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Night of the Demon (1957)
OK Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
The Old Dark House (1932)
Onibaba (1964)
Peeping Tom (1960)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
Psycho (1960)
Re-Animator (1985)
Repulsion (1965)
Ringu (1998)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Scream (1996/I)
The Shining (1980)
Shivers (1975)
OK The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Suspiria (1977)
Haute tension (2003)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
The Uninvited (1944)
Witchfinder General (1968)

(Note that I've used the original titles and dates, according to IMDB, and not by the book.)

What I have saw

Since I am big fan of zombie films, especially from George Romero, it is no surprise that I've seen those. Anthony Hopkins role of Hannibal Hecter is a pretty good one, so the Hannibal series are a classic. Sharks and exorcisms are also a classic!

What I would like to see

The Phantom of the Opera, Psycho, The Shining, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are cult movies that I have been waiting for a change to see for a while. Ringu and The Sixth Sense are two modern movies that people have talking about, and I am a little curious.

What I think should be in the list

While I haven't read the book yet, looking at list I think it should be a little broader in scope. Sci-fi movies such as Alien (1979), The Terminator (1984) or Predator (1987) shouldn't be excluded from the list. It also came as a surprise to me that Freddy Kruger is not accompanied by Jason Voorhees or Chucky! Also, some recent movies should have made it to the cut: Se7en (1995), The Blair Witch Project (1999), Saw (2004), Hostel (2005). Finally, vampire movies such as Dracula (1992) and Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) are the best vampire movies I have saw.

My task

Has seen on the list, I only saw 8 of the 50 movies. 42 horror movies to see in a year! I'll be posting some comments on this blog entry as I am going through them, so be sure to check it out from time to time.

Until next time, may you enjoy being afraid... being very afraid... muauahahahahahaha!

Consulting @ Urban Dictionary

2008-01-27T11:11:00.000Z

Check out the Deloitte definition at the Urban Dictionary. (Much complete than Accenture's entry).

Until next time, may you enjoy being a consultant... not!

Chain letters

2008-01-25T10:58:00.000Z

Hoje quero partilhar convosco um clássico email de chain letter, dedicado a todos aqueles que me continuam a encher as minhas contas de email.

Olá,
Eu sofro de uma rara e mortal doenca, insucesso escolar, VIRGINDADE,
medo de ser raptado e executado por electrocussão anal e culpado de
não reenviar 50 milhoes de " chain letters" que me foram enviadas por
pessoas que realmente acreditam que se o fizermos, uma menina timorense de 6
anos, com uma perna de cavalo a crescer-lhe na testa será capaz de reunir
dinheiro suficiente para a operação, de modo a que os pais não a
vendam a um circo de aberrações.

Vocês realmente acreditam que a Nokia vos vai dar um telemóvel topo
de gama a vocês e a toda a gente que reenviar o email "deles"? Vocês
são estúpidos ou fingem muito bem? Ou então se eu fizer "scroll down"
desta página e pedir um desejo vou para a cama com todas as coelhinhas da Playboy?
Que monte de tretas.

Basicamente esta mensagem tem o objectivo de ser um grande "Vai-te
fod..." para todas as pessoas que nao têm nada melhor para fazer do
que mandar estas estúpidas "chain letters".

Talvez a maldição da " chain letter " da múmia do faraó venha a minha
casa e me sodomize durante o sono por quebrar a corrente que tinha sido
iniciada pelo próprio Jesus Cristo no ano 5 A.C., e foi trazida para o nosso
país por peregrinos anões durante o Renascimento e que se chegar ao
ano 2002 constará no Livro de Recordes do Guinness como o mais longo
ataque contínuo de estupidez.

Se vocês querem reenviar alguma coisa, ao menos mandem-me alguma
coisa medianamente engraçada.
Já vi todas aquelas "Enviem isto aos seus 50 amigos mais chegados,
e este pobre, desculpa esfarrapada de ser humano vai, de alguma forma,
receber um centavo de um ser omnisciente. Reenviem isto 90 vezes." Mostrem
alguma inteligência e pensem para que estão a contribuir com estes
forwards. A resposta mais provável será: para a vossa própria
impopularidade e aumento da probabilidade de serem despedidos por bloquearem o servidor da
vossa empresa.

Por receber uma enorme quantidade de chain letters, considero-me
um perito no assunto. Para quem tenha a felicidade de não saber o
que são, aqui vai uma explicação:

EXISTEM 4 GRANDES TIPOS DE "CHAIN LETTERS:

Tipo 1: (SCROLL DOWN)

(scroll down)

Pede um desejo!!!

A serio, pede um desejo!!!

Oh, pelo amor de Deus, a gaja tirou os implantes e voltou para o
Tommy Lee!!
Pede outra coisa!!!

Isso não, seu pervertido!!

Já tens o dedo cansado?

PÁRA!!!!

Nao teve graca? :)
Espero que tenhas pedido um grande desejo :)
Agora, para vos fazer sentir culpados, isto é o que eu vou faze r.
Primeiro, se nao enviarem isto para 5096 pessoas nos próximos 5
segundos, serão violados por uma cabra enraivecida e atirados de
cima de um prédio para um monte de esterco.
É verdade! Porque ESTA carta nao é como as outras,
ESTA é VERDADEIRA!!

Tipo 2: (A TANGA DO COITADINHO ANORMAL QUE PRECISA DE AJUDA)

Olá e obrigado por lerem esta carta. Pois é, existe um rapazinho
em Baklaliviatatlaglooshen, com apenas cinco anos, sem braços, sem
pernas, sem pais e sem um rebanho de cabras. Este pequeno rapaz
poderá ser salvo porque por cada mail que reenviarem será entregue
500 escudos para o Fundo de Baklaliviatatlaglooshen para os Rapazinhos Com Apenas Cinco Anos,
Sem Bracos, Sem Pernas, Sem Pais e Sem Rebanhos de Cabras (
F.B.R.C.A.C.A.S.B.S.P.S.P.S.R.C.). E lembrem-se, nós não temos
nenhuma forma de contar a merda dos mails que vocês reenviam e isto
é uma grande balela.

Por isso andem lá, reenviem isto para 5 pessoas nos próximos 47
segundos.
E é verdade, se o enviarem para 4 ou 6 pessoas por engano morrerao
instantâneamente. Obrigado.

Tipo 3: (OU REENVIAS OU MORRES)

Ola!!!
Esta "chain letter" teve a sua origem em 1867. Isto é absolutamente
incrivel pois nesse tempo ainda nao existiam emails e provavelmente
também não existiam tantos idiotas para mandarem estas merdas. Isto funciona
assim:

Reenviem isto para 15,067 pessoas nos próximos 7 minutos ou alguma
coisa de horrivel vos irá acontecer como nas seguintes histórias:

História Bizarra #1
Miranda Pinsley estava a caminho de casa no Sábado.
Ela tinha recentemente recebido esta carta e ignorou-a. De repente
tropeçou numa pedra do passeio, caiu no esgoto, foi sugada pelo
esgoto e atirada de uma queda de agua de 15,000 metros. Nao só ficou
a cheirar mal como também morreu.
ISTO PODE ACONTECER-LHE!!!

História Bizarra #2
António Silva, um rapaz de 25 anos, recebeu esta carta no seu mail
e ignorou-a. Mais tarde, no mesmo dia, foi atropelado por um comboio
junto à estação da Trindade. Morreu e foi para o inferno onde foi condenado
a ouvir o "Hit me baby one more time" para toda a eternidade.
ISTO PODE ACONTECER-LHE!!!

Lembre-se, voce pode acabar como o António e a Miranda. Mande este
mail a todos os seus amigos idiotas e tudo correrá bem.

Tipo 4: (A PIOR: O POEMA DO AMIGO)

Como se isso lhe interessasse, aqui vai um poema que eu escrevi.
Mande-o a todos os seus amigos.

Amigos
Um amigo é alguém que estará sempre ao teu lado.
Um amigo é alguém que gosta de ti mesmo que tresandes a bosta, e o
teu hálito cheire a comida para gato.
Um amigo é alguém que gosta de ti mesmo que sejas feio .
Um amigo é alguém que fica ao teu lado toda a noite enquanto choras
porque a tua mulher te anda a pôr os cornos e tu não sabes com quem...
quando na verdade é com esse gajo que está a teu lado.
Um amigo é alguém que te envia merdas como esta porque o seu maior
desejo é enriquecer ás custas destas cartas.

Agora reenvia isto ou então apanharás escorbuto, sífilis, gonorreia e
nunca mais encontrarás um amigo a não ser no hospital.

Qual é a ideia deste mail?
Se receberem alguma carta que vos ameace de ficarem sem sexo ou
sorte o resto das vossas vidas apaguem-nas. Se for engraçada reenviem-na.

Nao chateiem as pessoas fazendo-as sentir-se culpadas por um
leproso no Botswana, sem dentes, que foi amarrado a um elefante
morto há 27 anos atrás, cuja única salvação serão os 5 centavos por
cada vez que reenviarem esta " chain letter".

Até à próxima, que apreciem chatear-se com algo.

AGM MSc thesis web site

2008-01-25T10:35:00.000Z

This week, André Marques published his master thesis support web site (you may notice some resemblances with this site :)). His thesis is entitled "Multi-Dimensional Composition by Objectives in Aspect-Oriented Requirements Analysis" and should be completed in the coming months.

Yoga (101 Essential Tips)

2008-01-12T19:59:00.000Z

Last year, I bought a nice little book called "Yoga (101 Essential Tips)".

Yes, it looks like a "supermarket book" (actually, a lot of books from this publisher are available at supermarkets), but its a good place to start, especially if you are new to Yoga and don't feel like doing a big investment in books, at least right away. The book is very direct and summarizes the basics of a good number of asanas, talks a little bit about pranayma, and provides some ideas on food (from the Yoga point of view), as well as couple of general tips. While not a complete book, its a good reference for the beginner, it's small, and it's cheap (a little more than €5 for the Portuguese print).

Until next time, may you enjoy finding the little things in life that matter.

CITI acknowledgement

2008-01-11T09:57:00.001Z

After the CITI external evaluation, I am finally present in the CITI website as a collaborator, an MSc student of my supervisor, and as a paper author (although the information is incorrect, I've wrote the paper as a UNINOVA researcher). So, what does this mean? Nothing, but I like to see my work acknowledged, even if it is a long time after :)

Until next time, may you enjoy being listed.

We Must Be The Change We Wish To See

2008-01-07T21:00:00.000Z

... is my message for 2008! This quote is commonly attributed to Ghandi, but I'm using it from Within Temptation's See Who I Am.

Until next time, may you enjoy a good message, wherever it came from.

CITI Poster

2008-01-05T10:20:00.000Z

Last Friday, I was working on a poster for the CITI Software Engineering Research Group, for an upcoming centre evaluation. The poster was printed in A0 and A3 formats.

P.S.: The bullets are not equal all over the poster, because the poster was made in MS PowerPoint and imported into OOo Impress. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Until next time, may you enjoy being on a poster.

Europass CV

2008-01-05T09:52:00.000Z

Lately, some people have (willingly or not!) requested my opinion on their CVs. My first recommendation is to use the Europass template.

Euro-who?

The europass is an initiative that aims to promote job "interoperability" among European countries, which includes a set of templates for job related documents, including the CV (Curriculum Vitae). Having a standard CV template is an advantage for those who are looking for a job, and the employer. The CV template, instructions and examples are available for download in MS Word and OpenDocument formats (yeah!) for several languages.
As with any CV, my second advice is to change specific parts of the template whenever you feel like it could be improved. Also, try not to make a CV that is either too small or too big: 2-4 pages is the recommended size.

Until next time, may you enjoy looking for a job.

Garbage-collecting 2007

2007-12-30T11:23:00.000Z

Maintaining a blog gives me the opportunity to write about a lot of subjects. Unfortunately, I don't have as much time and patience as I would like to, and so a lot of draft posts get postponed indefinitely. As we come to the end of 2007, I've choose to "garbage collect" all these lost posts, in a quick review.

Five Years of Magic

2007 was my fifth year playing Magic: the Gathering. However, I have since decided to abandon the game (whether I will return to it or not, is an open question). Anyway, there are a lot of things to be said beyond the game itself, which pretty interesting: the colour philosophy, the art, the storyline, the tournaments, and the human interaction aspect of the game. Magic is not just a game, it is a way of living. Hopefully, I will still the time to write about these topics in the future.

A Metadata-Driven Approach for Aspect-Oriented Requirements Analysis

This is the name of a paper I have been working on since 2006, based on the research work I have done during my BSc project. After two rejections and revisions, last August it was finally accepted in an international conference, but due to the lack of financing from the supporting institutions, it was not possible to send any of the authors to attend the conference (which means that the paper was not published). Since then, the paper has been re-submitted to another conference and it is currently under evaluation.

JavaPT07

This was industry event held in last September at my university, sponsored by Sun Microsystems, as a side event of the PPPJ 2007 - Principles and Practices of Programming in Java conference. My initial plan was to attend the actual conference, since I submitted a paper based on the research developed during my MSc thesis. As the paper was rejected, I attended the free industry event. The lectures included:

"Open Source Java from Sun", an interesting explanation on Sun's position on FOSS.
"What's new on NetBeans 5.5, what's next for NetBeans 6", a quick view on the current and upcoming releases of Sun's IDE. While many of the new features are already present in Eclipse, Sun is making a real effort catching up with them.
"JavaFX", a new Java platform language, for multimedia content. It looks like Sun's attempt to battle Microsoft's Silverlight (which in itself is fighting Adobe's Flash technology). Anyway, it interesting to notice that finally Sun is doing some investment into new languages for the Java platform.
"OpenSolaris", Sun's shameless advertising of its operating system. Seems like a solid Os, but the truth is I never had any real contact with it. Well, once I ported a small benchmark application from Solaris to Linux, but that was it. It is interesting that Sun garantees that version 10 of their operating system is compatible with every application running from version 2 upwards.
"Sun SPOT in Action: 3-D, Virtual Reality and Gaming", an alternative use of Java technology: hardware controller. So, if you are a hardware geek, I should get a perk of this stuff.

SD cards and adhesive tape

Have a problem writing to an SD card on on a specific computer? Well, I did. For several hours I desperately tried to write data into my SD cards with my laptop card reader and nothing. Otherwise the SD cards worked pretty well in digital cameras and GPS systems, but not on my laptop. After installing and re-installing a couple of drivers for Linux and Windows, I broadened my web search and found out that this is an actual recurring problem with computer card readers. The solution: put adhesive tape on your SD card over the write protect switch. It works, believe me.

IronPython and Dynamic Languages Runtime on .NET

This was an (unexpectedly) interesting lecture given by a Microsoft developer. IronPython is Microsoft's implementation of the Python scripting language for the .Net platform. This is achieved through the DLR - Dynamic Language Runtime, a new abstraction layer providing connection to the CLR - Common Language Runtime. So, basically, you can mix IronPython, IronRuby (the MS implementation of Ruby), JScript (the MS implementation of JavaScript), Visual Basic, with Silverlight, ASP.Net and the .Net framework libraries. That's pretty cool. I saw the demo (using .Net 3.0) and it was pretty straightforward. It is interesting to notice that IronPython, as well as the remaining IronSomething language implementations, are open-source (I had to laugh at that point of the lecture), though using a Microsoft license, instead of the usual GPL, BSD, Apache, etc. In summary, the first part of the lecture was about the IronPython, while the second part was on the DLR technology itself.

C# 3.0

With the coming of version 3.0 of the C# language, Microsoft really raised the bar: lambda functions, lazy evaluation, DSL-like features... I'm impressed. According to the blog entry, Microsft's merged some features from experimental language extensions of C# with the main language. Humm, I wonder if they are planning merging Spec# as well (a C# extension for Design by Contract, check out my thesis dissertation in a couple of months)? Sun Microsystems will really have to work hard if they want to keep up with C# and the .Net platform.

Coming up in 2008

The conclusion of my master thesis, my experience with OpenOffice.org Writer 2.0, a little experiment with OOo Base 2.3, the project I have been working on for the last months, and my upcoming job. That, and hopefully much more.

Until next time, may you enjoy cleaning up the house.

Om Namah Narayana

2007-12-27T22:14:00.000Z

Until next time, may you enjoy choosing your first mantra... with a little inspiration.

Caleb gold

2007-12-25T11:28:00.000Z

Just spent a significant part of Christmas scanning a couple of old pictures. You can check them at my Hi5 account.

Until next time, may enjoy taking a second look at old pictures.

Vittorio The Vampire

2007-12-23T18:19:00.000Z

I have just finished reading "Vittorio The Vampire", the second and last book from the "New Tales Of The Vampires" collection, from Anne Rice.

Here be spoilers

In this book, Vittorio, the main character tells his tale. Vittorio is an Italian noble, born in the Renaissance. After his family being murdered by a group of vampires, he sets on quest for vengeance, which leads him to fall in love with one them, Ursula. After being captured and tortured, he is abandoned as insane and is greeted by some guardian angels, who tell him that he must slay all of those vampires...

My tale

Unlike the previous tale ("Pandora"), this book actually lives to its premise of a new tale, which is not related to the vampire chronicles' characters. In terms of Rice's universe, we are presented with the first appearance of angels (well, except for Memnoch), which are oblivious to God's reasoning, as one might expect from her previous books. We are also presented with a new vampire skill (which is unique in Vittorio), the ability to "see" human souls. The character itself, Vittorio, is an interesting one, since he is divided between faith and love. The "Ruby Grail" coven is also an interesting group, similar to Armand's coven in Paris, but where the cult of Lucifer is taken to a higher level, as well as more organized group.
On an on, while not one of the best of Anne Rice's books, it was certainly a interesting departure from the main storyline.

Until next time, may you enjoy a really new tale, from a vampire.

Tradições...

2007-12-20T09:00:00.000Z

Até à próxima, que saibam apreciar as boas tradições e deitar fora as restantes.

O Absurdo é o excesso de Lógica

2007-12-18T10:16:00.000Z

... já dizia o bom velho Kafka.

Até à próxima vez, apreciem o absurdo Processo que por vezes é a vida.

Free StarOffice @ Google Pack

2007-12-07T23:02:00.000Z

A friend of mine has recently called to my attention that StarOffice is now available free of charge, as part of the Google Pack.

What is StarOffice?

StarOffice is an office suite, similar to MS Office. Its the proprietary version of OpenOffice.org, developed by Sun Microsystems (as a side note, originally OpenOffice.org was a spin-off of StarOffice; times have changed). If you already know OOo, then you'll notice the resemblance. In simple terms, StarOffice is a snapshot of OOo, with some extra proprietary features and fonts (although, as another interesting side note, internalization support is smaller in StarOffice). StarOffice is a commercial alternative to MS Office, for companies that require technical support. It is available for Windows, Linux and Solaris.
Personally, I have only used StarOffice a long time ago (10 years ago, to be exact), when I bought my first new PC (a Pentium MMX@200 Mhz with 32 MB of RAM), that came bundled with an OEM version of it. This was before StarOffice was bought by Sun. At that time, it run of Windows 95 and supported MS Office 95 formats.

What is the Google Pack?

The Google Pack is a free (of charge, not necessarily FOSS) software pack, selected by Google, for the MS Windows XP/Vista operating systems. It currently includes Google Earth, Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer (argh!), Norton Security Scan, Spyware Doctor Starter Edition, Google Desktop, Picasa, Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar, Google Photos Screensaver, Adobe Reader, Google Talk, Skype, RealPlayer, and now StarOffice. It is an interesting software pack, if you new to computers or just want to have a good software base quickly. The interesting part for me is that StarOffice is available free of charge, when normally it is sold.

Until next time, may you enjoy a good software pack.

Pandora

2007-12-02T21:32:00.000Z

Today I have finished reading "Pandora", the first book in the New Tales of the Vampires book series, by Anne Rice.

Here be spoilers

In this book, Pandora confides her tale to David Talbot, which is entwined with the tale of Marius (as told by Lestat in "The Vampire Lestat"). The story takes place from ancient Rome to the city of Antioch. Pandora is roman highborn who is exiled (and thus assume the Greek name) after her family was executed under the accusation of betrayal of the emperor. The story is also connected to Akasha, through the cult of Isis.

My tale

First of all, let me tell that the "New Tales Of The Vampires" is a marketing move, as it is no different than the remaining vampire chronicles. That said, I really enjoyed at, as the Pandora character was finally unveiled, as well as her relationship with Marius. But mostly, I just enjoyed returning to the Egyptian mythology and ancient Roman empire culture.
It is worth noticing some brief criticism on the origin and development of Christianism, showing Anne Rice's intelligence. Regarding sexuality, there is nothing new (there is another male character who enjoys boys), only a rather frustrated vampire sexual penetration.
Regarding Anne Rice's mythology, a hint is given that vampires may grow new powers with each century, at least as to explain why Lestat and David are able to see spirits (something that was stated as not possible in "The Queen Of The Damned"). Finally, the book ends with the mention of a creepy scarecrow character, something which I suspect will never be truly revealed in her books.

Until next time, may you enjoy opening the box, and after all, finding some hope.

The Algebra Of Infinite Justice

2007-11-30T15:07:00.000Z

Another interesting text of my static web site (here is my ASCII mirror). This was written by Arundhati Roy, a popular Indian writer, in the 9/11 terrorist attack aftermath.

Until next time, may you enjoy doing the math on the world.

Is God a Taoist?

2007-11-30T12:36:00.000Z

This is a nice text written by Raymond Smullyan in 1977, which was part of a couple of texts that I used to share in my static web site (my ASCII mirror here).

Until next time, may you enjoy a Taoist god and your 100th post.

Why Linux will never be a successful operating system

2007-11-25T12:11:00.000Z

Today I give you my opinion on why GNU/Linux distributions will fail as mainstream operating systems, and alternatives for proprietary systems like MS Windows and Apple MacOS X. Well, at least a small summary, a complete discussion would take more than this post. Anyway, this analysis reflects my experience and expectations as both a desktop user and software developer role. Oh, and unlike some, I actually use Linux, not just talk about it.

What is not the problem

The problem is not that Linux systems are FOSS (Free or Open-Source Software). Actually, I believe that the future of software will most certainly converge to FOSS, save in some niches.
It is also not a problem with this Unix-like architecture, as MacOS X is a Unix system, and has been quite successful.

The problem: software installation

Lets get to the point: software installation in Linux sucks. Big time. Its hard, complicated, it's a mess. And I am a geek, I am a pretty patient guy. Common users are not.
Sure, there are a lot of good installation engines, front-ends, and repositories (take a look at autopackage for instance), but all of these do not actually solve the problem, they merely mitigate it. And why does all of this happens? Because, while all of these people developing the engines may have optimized and modularized the installation procedure, but they forgot a known issue in software engineering: coupling. All of these installation systems are based on the premise that installing an application is a modular procedure. It is not! Users want to install an application in one package. They do not care if the package is twice as big if it works. They don't care if the redundant library will use an extra 200 KiB or RAM, because it is not dynamically linked. And they certainly don't want to compile an application. An operating system, no matter how advanced and sophisticated as it is, will never be an interesting alternative, unless users can actually use it.

Other issues

Other issues trouble the Linux user. Still on the installation issues, I remember a time when you downloaded an installation package for your distribution. These days you have to download a package for a specific version of your distribution, using a specific installation engine. There are simple too much software variety. I mean its good to have an ecosystem with some variety, but it is not very good when you have a complete anarchy, in which no one wants to collaborate, but only live on their small world. Have you ever noticed the amount of time that Linux supporters spend discussing which distribution is better? Get a life!
As such, we got to a point where the life-expectancy of a Linux installation is very short, when compared to Windows. For instance, the laptop I am using right now has two and a half years of existence. At the time I bought it, I've installed Windows XP Professional SP-2 and Fedora Core 3. Today, I can still install all of my favourite software in Windows but I can't get anything new on Fedora Core 4 (it was updated since) without running into dependency hell, except for statically compiled applications (such as Firefox and Thunderbird), or good old Java applications. I don't know about you, but I have far more interesting things to do than install a new OS every 6 months in every computer I use.
With all of these issues, it is going to be hard to get hardware manufactorers to support Linux drivers. Some big companies, such as HP, have given some effort into that, but still these are "unofficial" drivers (which simply means there is no costumer support for them - use it at your own risk). Back to my laptop example, after all this time I have still no web cam or SD card reader while using Linux - a waste of hardware (there goes the argument that Linux lets you take advantage of your hardware).

Wrapping up

Linux has been my default OS for some time, but sadly, it is no longer going to be. At least, not until I have a clean and simple OS.

Until next time, may you enjoy having a new opinion, even if you don't like it.

Nvu & Komposer

2007-11-25T12:00:00.000Z

Today, I'm just posting some information on two FOSS HTML editors, based on Gecko: Nvu and Komposer.

Nvu ("N-view")

Nvu 1.0.0 running on Fedora Core 4

So, what is Nvu? Nvu is an open-source WYSIWYG HTML Editor, similar to FrontPage or Dreamweaver. Although not having all the features these proprietary tools have, it is an interesting alternative. It is available for the usual platforms (Linux, MacOS X and Windows), and since it is based on Gecko, all the Firefox/Thunderbird users will recognize the interface. Unlike those, however, Nvu is not supported by Mozilla, but by Linspire Inc., authors of the Linspire GNU/Linux distribution.
As posted before, I have been using Nvu for building static web sites for some time (check my personal or master thesis web sites for examples). I confess that I was never a big fan of HTML editors (I preferred to code it myself using an advanced text editor, such as Edit+ or gedit), but I must admit that for simple text editing, these tools really speed up things. The first time I used Nvu was when I had to maintain two static web sites for conference workshops. The thing was that I had to reuse the look, and these sites were made in Frontpage, which meant that the code was not really human-readable. As such, I decided to give it try. Well, it turned out to be a cool tool, at least for XHTML/CSS editing. The problem is that Nvu has a lot of bugs (really, a lot of them). And Linspire only made public releases until 1.0.0 (in 2005). Since then the project is under closed development...

Kompozer

Kompozer 0.7.10 running on Windows XP

... but the open-source community really enjoyed the tool, and so a couple of nice geeks decided to take the 1.0.0 release source code a produce a fixed version of Nvu. And thus, Komposer was born! So, yesterday I decided to download it and give it try. Hopefully, it will not crash so often, and maybe these guys can implement some of the missing features (such as frameset coding, for example).

Until next time, may you enjoy a new view.

SWERC 2007

2007-11-23T12:37:00.000Z

Last weekend, I was a student volunteer for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest's South Western European Regional Contest (SWERC) 2007, which was hosted at the computer science department of my faculty.

The Contest

A couple of yellow shirts

Well, putting it very simple it was an international programming contest in which 64 teams (a base 2 number, of course!) competed for the best time in solving a set of programming/algorithmic problems. The interesting part is that every time a team solved a problem, they were awarded with a balloon. The colour of the balloon indicated which problem was solved.

The staff

Me and my master thesis supervisor, Pedro Guerreiro

Each part of the staff was assigned a different t-shirt colour: yellow for volunteers, blue for technical staff, and black for judges. Contestants wore a white t-shirt, and coaches used a red one. As a volunteer, I did a couple of interesting tasks: door man, room watching, runner, and corridor master (and before the actual contest, I also carried computers and screens from a room to another). The volunteers were all in a good mood, and we did have some fun. As an interesting fact, I've noticed that I was probably one the oldest volunteers (and one of the few that already graduated), and oldest that most contestants and coaches... maybe it's time to leave the university ;)
One of the volunteers, Ana Figueiras, wrote a nice entry on her blog on the event, and also took a lot of pictures (namely the ones I'm using here), which are available at a picasa album.

Wrapping up

Well, I never did participate in this kind of extra-curricular activities, so I took my probable last change to do so, and I do not regret it. It was a fun weekend.

Until next time, may you find a little time that you can give to others.