Alcides Fonseca

40.197958, -8.408312

Every time you use -f, a kitten dies

I’ve been only using git for little more than two years now, but having using it daily for every project (even those in subversion servers, via git-svn) I’ve learnt a few tricks and developed my own workflow.

During this semester, I have been working on a 13 people project and we are using git (and github) to manage the code. This means a large code-base with two different teams working on different parts of the software, that depend on each other. And I’m the lucky poor bastard who has to keep updated with the whole system and perform the merges of feature and bug branches.

Working on such environment makes weird stuff happen to the repository and when one gets to merge a branch, discovers everything is now broken and some stuff disappeared. Here are some things to avoid, learned from this and many other projects:

  • Developer A commits some stuff. He then pushes to master.
  • Developer B (almost at the same time) commits and pushes to master.
  • Developer A finds out he forgot to include one file, and commit amends the file. He then pushes with -f (because an amended commit requires it) and B changes are lost for ever (not quite, but B may delete that code once pushed).

Another interesting story is about a feature X that was accepted to be merged into master, but since it was based on a really old version and a total refactor of half of the code. Smart as I were, I decided to do a rebase instead of a regular merge, to resolve merges commit by commit. Turned out I needed to undo the rebase and turn it again on a branch without my conflict solving.

As a rule of thumb, avoid at all costs to use -f, because as easy and attractive as it might seem, in the end it might corrupt your repository. Also, merges are a nice way of keeping your history clean and prevent from losing individual codes.

LaTeX

LaTeX is a typesetting tool, the de facto standard for scientific publications.

MacOS Setup

I used to only install BasicTeX and install additional packages using sudo tlmgr install <module_name>. I no longer use, or recommend, that solution.

Instead I install the whole MacTeX system. It takes ~4GB of disk space, but it saves time in the long run.

For editing TeX, I now use Texpad, which is the best editor by far. Even better than emacs or my esteemed Textmate. I just wish it had more user-friendly templates and customizable shortcuts. In other machines (or when working with non-tech people), I use the wonderful web-based Overleaf.

For managing my references, I am now using miscellaneous bib files in my different project and paper folders. I gave up on Papers.app and Mendeley a while ago. To find Bibtex, I prefer DBLP to Google Scholar, as it consistently provides me with better details.

Tools:

  • Texpad The best TeX editor out there, paid and Mac-only.
  • Overleaf A web based editor with Dropbox and git synchronization. My suggestion for non tech-savy people
  • Quiver, a WYSIWYG tool to edit tikz diagrams

Prt.sc, os blogs e os vídeos

Desde pelo menos Agosto de 2008, que mantenho um feed público da minha pasta de feeds de malta portuguesa que escreve sobre tecnologia. Feeds que leio diariamente e me dão uma boa ideia do que a malta por aí faz. Um desses feeds era o antigo planeta asterisco, que entretanto mudou para Prt.sc.

O projecto foi evoluindo, entretanto agregando alguns dos blogs que eu também seguia, até se estagnar à coisa de um ano. Ora o organizador-mor da coisa, falou ontem no twitter que a coisa estava mal e eu já a temer o pior, saquei um arquivo da página de membros1.

Hoje tornou-se oficial, o prt.sc vai acabar como agregador de blogs, e vai-se focar na sua vertente de vídeo. Pessoalmente até gosto, mas é uma coisa que não me traz grande novidade, e depende muito de quem nele intervém.

Agora a parte de blogs faz-me imensa falta, pelo que percorri a lista de membros, e adicionei os blogs de quem me interessou um a um2. E lembrado do meu antigo feed por um dos membros do prtsc, criei uma página dedicada para o efeito, mas estou à espera de uma sugestão para um branding melhor se existir procura.

Espero que sirva de serviço público para alguém, porque isto dos blogs ainda tem algo para dar. Ou assim acredito eu.

1 Se alguém estiver interessado que me peça, mas o VD disse que iria disponibilizar o OPML.

2 Os posts recentes devem estar por uma ordem estranha, devido a estas alterações todas manuais.

Simplicity is the essence of happiness.

…is my new wallpaper. It also describes my approach of minimalism towards my software environment.

My main machine is running Mac OS (although I have a windows box and random-linux-flavored VMs around) and one thing I really enjoy is having most of my computer needs satisfied by the default apps. My mantra is “The less I install, the easier it gets to reset my system”, something that I might have to do in case of emergency (breaking the system, disk failing, etc..) or simply because I like to have my system clean every semester.

There are only three non-default apps in my dock: Adium (only if I could get rid of MSN and just use iChat), Transmission (I don’t see Apple releasing a bittorrent client anytime soon) and Textmate. I do have more apps around for special purposed, but those are wiped in every clean install and installed on a need-basis.

And I get really annoyed when I read twitts about getting “Rucksack for Mac OS X completely free” and about those popular bundles that people buy just because its cheap and not because they really need that software. I won’t install software just because it’s free and cute. I have a nanoBundle2 just because it was free, but I’ve never installed any of the apps, because I don’t feed the need for any of its features.

And regarding Rucksack, OS X unarchives zips, tar, gz and unix stuff out of the box, and I’ve installed unrar via HomeBrew for all the rars that get piled up in my Downloads folder. I even made a simple context-menu service that makes it really easy to use.

And I am really happy with my software real estate. The less I have, the less I will lose, the less will annoy me, and the more I will get from the few really good and useful tools I work with.

Meta Next Step

The last iteration of my online log lasted for around one and half years. Now that time has passed for this version itself and as I write less frequently, I do feel an urge to change it into something different.

I’ve moved out the politics section and I’ve been trying a new thing: TechThatMatters is a collection of the most important news around the web that one must really read, in my opinion of course. It tries to be a public service for those of you without the time to go through all the 613 feeds I subscribe to.

This gives me more freedom to do what I want with this space (my main personal hub, I mean) but I am not really sure in which way I want to take it. This might reflect my position in life right now as I will soon face the choice of an internship that will be the first step to decide how will I get on with my career. Small company, Big enterprise devil, maybe going for a PhD, or even two of them. And with that choice there is another one: deciding if I should stay in my little merry boring town of Coimbra, move to Lisbon or even UK/US or somewhere with a good lifestyle.

Just as I return from the 7 months of holidays that were erasmus, I am still trying to adapt to the old rhythm of working everyday (and night) in my department. So don’t expect much activity until this changes.

Oslo

This was Yet Another Trip we made while in Sweden. We took the train to Oslo (50€ round-trip). We were told that one day would be enough, so we got there at 10 and the train back home would be at 6pm. We walked around, following the river and we found a big touch screen with Google Maps loaded with Points of Interest to visit.

But nothing was better than our analog map, that took us to the University, to the Royal Palace, a couple of Churches and the Parliament, but this time we didn’t enter. And we also visited the National Art History Museum that looked like a miniature of Copenhagen’s. The price was the same: free.

Finally we had time to walk around the downtown of Oslo and also around the city (even went to a cemetery! [1] ) since we had time to kill. I have to say the city is very poor compared to the other I visited, and the most interesting thing I’ve saw were several buildings in irregular shapes, made all of glass. But then again, you also have them around the other cities I visited.

1 In the Nordic countries, graveyards are beautiful gardens open for everyone to visit.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

I first met the Dorian Gray character in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and I was intrigued specially by this character. A couple of months ago I saw the book in Sweden, but I already had too much to bring home in my suitcase, so I left it for some other time.

Then I knew about the movie and this week I finally managed to watch it and the result was quite good. Like the cast pretty much and some of the decay scenes turned out quite shocking. Highly recommend it.

Spoiler: What most surprised me was the fact that he lived pretty much what he would have lived if he had not that special ability.

Kiruna

During my Erasmus, I crossed the Arctic Circle and settled for a week in the town of Kiruna, in Northern Sweden. From Göteborg we took the train (with sleep cabins) that took 20 hours to get there.

The first day we went dog sleighing across Kiruna woods and on top of the river, and on the way back we rode snow mobiles. It’s way more exciting to ride one of those at 60km/h than my lousy old car at 140! And in the middle of nothing, we saw a glimpse of the Northern Lights.

The next days we went to the Kirunavaara mines, where we learned a lot about how it works, to the Ice Hotel, yep an hotel that is only made of ice and snow (and “snice”) and has to be rebuilt every year. Finally we got the chance of meeting some natives, the Sami People and learnt a lot about them.

On our free time we did snowboard, sleighing down a really high slope and walked across the town. We learnt that because of the mining, the ground is becoming unstable and the city will have to be moved, little by little. Plans have been in place for 20 years, but only now they are starting to run out of time and speeding up the process.

An awesome week with a lot of friends, snow and fun!

Copenhagen

Taking advantage of the being in Sweden for a limited time, we decided to visit København. We went by train, which turned out to be really cheap compared to traveling inside Portugal. Thanks to Dopplr, I got a recommendation for a hotel, which was really good.

We started to visit Christiania, a small self-proclaimed independent state (but currently under Danish law) inside the city. It looked like an hippy camp from the 80s with a lot of graffiti’s and stands selling drugs1. Before living I decided to ask about it to a woman that had been working there for over 20 years and we had a nice chat about it, and learned a lot (way better than wikipedia!).

!http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2797/4313218565_1228680567_o.jpg

We then visited a lot of places, saw a lot of churches, we went up to the Round Tower, which I recommend, since you have an overview of the city, with some posters pointing out the most important buildings. It also had a tiny museum about Tycho Brahe that was explained in the Tycho Brahe Planetarium the following day. Both included the tools Brahe used to make his astronomical observations. And in the planetarium I got to launch a spaceship.

Me, Diogo and the Tallest Man on Earth

During the trip we went to a couple of museums, but skipped the Danish Design Center for lack of time. We visited the combo of Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Museum and the Hans Christian Andersen Museum and while the first one was well made (considering I wan’t interested in the theme[2) the second one was kind of poor, given the importance of the author. After that we went to see the Little Mermaid Statue and it was a disappointment: it was really far away from the centre (and we walked, it was night and really cold!) and it was a small statue of a girl on the rocks with her legs melting. Not worth it.

We still got to visit the National Museum that had a lot of exhibitions, from the awesome Danish pre-history to the contemporary Denmark and still got to see most of the Ethnographical collection. What I loved the most was the early natives’ mythology and the price: it was free!

But the most amusing moment of the trip was when we wanted to visit the Royal Palace and they said there were no guided tours that day, but if we wanted to see we could enter. We went through a side-door and it was like an airport, with metal detectors, bag x-rays and all of that. It was the most secure palace I had seen so far. We climbed 5 levels of stairs to find a small corridor. Naif enough, we started to look at the paintings, thinking it was a very lousy palace when the security guard told us to go through a door. “Oh, the real palace!” I though. But the result was a live session of an audition with a Minister in the official parliament.

Awesome 2-day trip and we can say we saw most of the tourist points, and learned quite a lot about the city.

1 No I didn’t buy or consume any. Straight-edge.

2 The most amusing part was discovering that Brahe had a silver nose and also crossing a bridge full of spinning effects to make you fall.

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Love and Hate for Adobe Flash

Not-that-small disclaimer: I use a black macbook as my main machine, and every time a webpage has some flash video/animation, the fans start to make a really loud noise and most of the times it breaks (some weeks ago it would crash Safari). As developer I’ve used Flash in the past, and it’s an experience far from enjoyable.

John Nack complains of the hate Flash is getting from the open standards people and tries to explain how it works. Despite the above disclaimer, I agree with him, and find Flash even more important.

Regarding the Mac OS problem, as Nack said only around 5% of the market share. Of course it’s not as important to Adobe as to work on Windows, but as this changes as more people buy Macs (check Apple’s numbers on this), Adobe will work on this issue and improve the quality of the plugin on Mac OS (don’t forget quite a few CS owners are Mac-centric designers, developers and artists). As for the iPhone/iPod/iPad, I believe that Apple is trying to prevent Adobe to prevail on the mobile, leaving space for Apple to expand.

Open Standards take time, everyone knows it. And Macromedia/Adobe was right about moving Flash forward in the proprietary road. As Nack said, the success of youtube and video online was only possible *at that time thanks to Flash. Of course now standards are catching up, and it’s possible to do video in HTML5, but Flash is in the exact same position as Gears.

The difference is that Google gave up on Gears but thankfully I don’t see Adobe doing anything similar anytime soon. They will continue to keep technology ahead of browsers (and open standards) making their plugin useful. Thinks like Webcam/Microphone/Streaming are not yet available in browsers, they need external plugin support (being Flash, Silverlight, Google Video Plugin or even some Active X thingy).

Technology will evolve (and browsers will become more important as we move to (More-)Web Oses) and plugins will bring them into the browser, then browsers will incorporate them as new technology raises and is embraced by plugins. This lifecycle will allow plugins to survive. Of course they will have to bet on the right features.

Now with HTML5 goodness

When I first designed this website one and half year ago, I had already implemented HTML5 navigation tags, but left them commented out because of some IE issues not parsing the unknown elements. Soon after, I found a solution, but I was too busy to bring it to work. Finally I did it today, with some extra changes, like removing all the JS from this page.

While reading the HTML5 spec, I found out about new elements that are really specific1 and it’s taking html5 in a new direction, I believe. Someday HTML5 will be as specific (or even more) than LaTeX, and we all know what it means. It could be used for more serious stuff, as long as you are able to use a couple of tags to do the essential.

If there is some kind of content that could be inside a tag (say a cite or a kbd), is it wrong if I just forget about it, and use more basic elements (div or span) to do the same? I ask this because current fast-markup languages like textile or markdown don’t support a lot of html5 features (nor you want them to). Of course you can write the tags yourself, but that would break the purpose of using such languages to ease the editing by non-tech people. The same question goes for using CKeditor and TinyMCE.

1 And still, I couldn’t find a location tag for representing geo coordinates. Disappointing, since I was expecting it to be somehow included with the geo location API.

No Take Off this year

Por diversas razões, este ano não irei organizar o Take Off, sendo que as principais é eu não andar por Portugal e achar que este tipo de conferência sobre Inovação e Empreendedorismo já não vende. E por vender, não quero dizer que eu não faça dinheiro com isso, até porque só me dá prejuízo organizar o evento (mas uma satisfação bastante grande). O objectivo sempre foi reunir empreendedores nas diversas fases e partilhar ideias e experiências. E quando comecei a organizar em 2007 não existia o panorama nacional que existe agora, logo vejo menos necessidade para uma conferência nestes moldes. E tendo em conta o ano passado, acho que o público concorda.

Este ano só no meu departamento já existiram duas mini-conferências semelhantes e outras iniciativas no mesmo tema, e certamente estão a existir mais por Portugal, afinal o empreendedorismo está na moda.

Gostaria então de deixar algumas sugestões para quem gosta desta área: O blog Ineo, uma iniciativa da jeKnowledge especificamente sobre este assunto por diferentes pontos de vista. Em termos de eventos, vai realizar-se já dia 13 Portugal Empreendedor, um dos tais eventos da moda (e para ir de fato e gravata), mas tem nomes interessantes. Se são mais informais deverão ter o já usual Barcamp, que só perderia por motivos de força maior. Já para Maio vão ter a SWiTCH que poderá vir a revelar-se interessante. Finalmente outro blog a seguir é o StartU, uma iniciativa para promover a comunicação e a comunidade de startups, empreendedores, malta com iniciativa, etc…

E eu gosto de pensar que o Take Off teve algum impacto. Juntou algumas das pessoas por trás do StartU, divulgou o coworking ( e já existem três espaços em Portugal), e apoiou a ideia do Mário Valente de lançar uma empresa de Seed Capital. E foram empreendedores de longa data como ele, o Celso Martinho ou o Gonçalo Quadros que vieram partilhar a sua experiência conosco. Tivemos também o Jorge Figueira, Francisco Banha, o Vitor Santos, o Pedro Custódio e o Armando Alves a mostrar-nos outras perspectivas sobre inovação. E tivemos inúmeros startupers a partilhar a sua experiência, aos quais agradeço a todos.

Como nota final, apesar de não organizar o Take Off, não quer dizer que fique parado e estou já a pensar noutras coisas ;)

When there is no deadline

When you’re working on side-projects, you don’t really have deadlines. You may fake them, but you don’t have clients expecting them by a certain date, and your reputation won’t be damaged if you miss it. What makes me finish my personal projects is the fun I get by doing them. As long as I’m learning new things, I spend my free time on them. But if for some reason, it gets boring, I usually abandon it even if I like the idea. That’s what happened with movio, i wasn’t learning anything new and gave up.

Back in my computer engineering degree, I was used to work on the projects until the last couple of hours when I would start the report (and that was what would give us most of the grade, but the project had to work). Now I have two weeks to write a 4 page report that will give me half of the grade of this course. This is the kind of task that might fit designers, but really messes with my engineering preparation.

I am used to complain about not having time enough for my projects, but now I have too much time and that is a problem. If we are given two weeks, means they are expecting a really good essay. On the other hand, four pages is something you write quickly (if you think of what to fit in four pages, not writing everything and then resuming it).

And even if I am one of those people who get started right away, it’s hard to start on this one, since I know I have really plenty of time to do it later, and I can do more interesting stuff like writing this post.

Casual Programming

One of the nice things about new years is that people blog about their favorite music from the previous year. One of those best of’s was Michal Migurski’s. And he made available all the songs as a mp3 download.

I could have just clicked on the playlist link, but I wanted to download each mp3 and I didn’t want to click on every single link. With my background as a programmer, I feel morally obligated to automate that task. I downloaded the m3u playlist (which is just a text file with a mp3 url per line), opened the Python interpreter and wrote the following 3 lines.

I could have done the same in ruby, scala, perl or simply bash, but the elegance of those lines is simple enough for me. (There’s a curl-based alternative by Sofia, if you don’t have wget)

I expect this kind of automation to be available to everyone out there in a couple of years. Mac OS has tried to do this for a long time, either making applications scriptable with AppleScript, or creating workflows like this example with Automator in a more visual way.

Unfortunately the only people I see using this are Programmers and PowerUsers. The latter tend to just copy snippets and follow tutorials. I don’t believe the current environment allows them to be creative and start from scratch. I really hope this to change some time soon.

I put my faith on projects like Microsoft’s Kodu where they try to make kids program not in a geek computer-language way, but rather in a creative and visual approach. And the interaction is so simple, it can all be done using an xbox controller. I believe this kind of experiences (just like the ones I had playing with Legos for full days) will enable you to start from scratch with just some building blocks, and end up with something useful. I’m not saying this will work with everyone (just like there were people who couldn’t program a VCR, and there are people who cannot install software) but the ones that are curious enough, that will get them a step ahead.

Applying Game Mechanics to Software

One of the things I love about studying Computer Engineering (and now Interaction Design) is that you get to learn how people think when they are interacting with machines. I’ve written about how you should design your application workflows to be fun and how social networks behave like games in which you strive to increase your points (being tweets, followers, friends, pictures, videos).

Today I watched a Google Tech Talk by Amy Jo Kim exactly on the relationship between the social media and games, and how they can learn from each other.

Even if you’re into social media, but you care about designing engaging applications and experiences, you should definitely watch it too.

Max

If Handbrake is the best solution to encode videos on the mac, MAX is the solution for audio files.

It supports a lot of formats, including CDs, detects album info, and offers solutions for the album art. The only problems I found are some issues with the GUI and Spaces, both drawers being overlapped, and the workflow being a bit weird.

I wanted to convert some FLAC files to ALAC (Apple Lossless) to add them to iTunes without losing quality. Here are the steps you need to do such kind of conversion:

1. Open Max
2. File > Convert Files and select your files
3. Max > Preferences > Formats, select Apple MPEG-4 Audio (YMMV), the + button, select lossless and, if you want, VBR.
3. Max > Preferences > iTunes > Add output files to iTunes Library
4. Select all files > Tools > Download Album Art
5. Convert (And you will find the results in ~/Music)

As you can see, this is not a linear workflow, but the result works. If I find the time, I might contribute to this project solving that problem.

The Net

On my series of revivals of tv shows from when I was a kid, I watched The Net, a show based on the homonymous movie, with Sandra Bullock being replaced by Brooke Langton (an improvement in my opinion). Oh, and forget about The Net 2.0.

Angela Bennet receives an email she should have, and the praetorians1 change her identity to a criminal and start to pursuit her. Her life turns upside down, and she tries to find her father and take that cyber-terrorist organization down.

The series is pretty good for that time, and makes people more aware of how much of their live is exposed on the internet and does it in a way that is not too geeky, but tries to give that impression (pretty much like in today’s movies). It also features an awesome cast that we can now find in SG, CSI, Life, Heroes, BSG, SuperNatural, SGU and even Mr. The Rock has a special role.

1 Which was my last-longing nickname, back when those things were used on the net.

Backup scenario at 2009-12-25

Macbook

I use my macbook for personal, school and some work stuff, I consider it my most important machine, and it contains a lot of important files to me, including all the archive of projects I’ve done in the past1. I rely on Time Machine to do daily backups of my hard drive (and that can be restored in a couple of hours). I also do weekly/monthly backups to my Desktop and my Network Drive.

VPS

I own a VPS that runs all of my websites. It has a cron script every day that backups to disk the mysql databases, and it backups the important folders every week. Then I rsync it to my macbook and it’s replicated the same way.

Email

I rely on Google to save my email. All my email accounts go to my gmail account, even my alcidesfonseca.com email. So there is always a copy on the original server, and another in Gmail.

Cloud “stuff”

Twitter, Delicious, Flickr, Google Reader OPML, Contacts, etc… I like to have a backup copy in my hard drive every month. I have some scripts for some, for others I just go to the website and download it. If your delicious account is as important for you as it is for me, you should also download it.

1 I’ve lost my archives from the pre-2005 years, and I know the pain it has given me. Your past projects are really important for you as a programmer.

Test your backups

One interesting thing I learnt from Phil Haack and Jeff Atwood ‘s VPS being ruined, is that you should test your backups, not just perform them.

According to my current backup plan, I’ve tested the TimeMachine backup, by formatting my macbook (clean install) a couple of times, and getting all my files back. When ma.gnolia went offline I was also satisfied with the backup I had at the time.

But when it comes to services, it is more complicated. My VPS was having some issues with the RAM reaching the maximum (and I only had a couple of django, sinatra and rails websites). I decided to reformat it in order to clean all the trash and try to identify the problem if not solved.

Starting to download my daily backups, I found there was no space on disk on the machine, and I had to delete my backups in order to backup it up (weird I know). I ended up using rsync to copy the machine and to restore the ~/sites folder back again. In between I managed to delete my ~/admin folder in which all the configurations to apache, nginx and a couple more utilities lived. Thankfully I had a pretty good convention for VirtualHosts and managed to bring all of them back up.

Right now everything seems to be running fine, and I only lost 1 day of uptime, which is not a big deal for the websites I host1. The major headache I came across was to install all the requirements for each of the projects I’m hosting. For python-based projects, I maintain a requirements.txt that pip reads and installs automatically, but I feel like there should be something like that in the rubygems world. Or maybe I’m missing something.

1 Looking back, I regret having done the format&restore in Portugal, since in Sweden I would have transferred the files much, much faster.

Portugal vs Sweden: Education

Hopefully, this will the the first of a series of posts about my experience in Erasmus, living in Göteborg, Sweden and Studying Interaction Design in Chalmers.

When I chose Chalmers for my Erasmus Programme, one of the most important factors was the classes being given in English. When I first went there, I was amazed by how many Chinese, Indian and Iranian people were there. It deserves to be called an International University, not like the one I’m enrolled in. Classes on the Master level are given in English (and I’d say only around 40% of the students are Swedish) and even Swedish students have to present and write their reports/exams in English. And I would say this is quite important in their professional role1.

Another reason why there are a lot of foreign students is the price of the university: It’s free2! (even the materials you need for your projects) And it gets better: Swedish students get a scholarship of around 300 euros (covers the rent) or they can get the double, but the second half is a loan they will have to pay when they’re done with their studies. And swedes, when they’re done with high school, they leave home and start to live on their own (something that only happens in Portugal when you’re done with all your studies). So almost everyone lives on a student residence (like me) or seldom on their own apartments.

Classes are organized in a different way: You have two quarters per semester, in which you have two courses each. I find this much better than having 5 subjects all at once (and weekly assignments for each). And two days per week for each course makes theory and practice much more connected and allows fullday workshops. And of the 14 days of classes we have, there are 2 or 3 that are guest lectures/workshops. These play an important role, since they are mostly given by people connected to the industry and give us another perspective on the subject. I really wish there were more of these in Portugal.

To provide feedback to teachers, there are around 4 class representatives (I was once) that have 4 meetings during the quarter in which they give input to improve the quality of the course. I would say these are not that important since teachers are accessible to any student, but it’s a nice thing to have.

Finally regarding evaluation, the first weeks are to learn how to do things in mandatory labs, but the grade is decided on a final project/exam/essay (or a mix of them) in the last couple of weeks of the quarter. Makes some sense that you first learn, then you are evaluated, but since you only have two courses at a time, they could evaluate more ofter and distribute the grade over the quarter.

In Chalmers I am graded from 1 to 5, but in Göteborg University they are graded Non-Pass, Pass or Pass with Distinction, which makes it less competitive and should make it harder for employers to distinguish students (Do they look at your grades?). I am still worried on how will my grades be in the up to 20 scale.

1 And some of my colleagues mocked me when I chose to present in English on a communication skills course in Portugal.

2 But I’m paying in Portugal to have the same education they have for free.