Alcides Fonseca

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.

When I started to watch anime again and asked for something at the level of Death Note, Fernando recommended me Monster.

The first 4 or 5 episodes made no sense to me, but I kept on going and it turned out to be an awesome story, with a lot of side-stories that merge into the main one, and in the end, those first four episodes make total sense and are required to understand the late ones. The 74 episodes make just one storyline, not like most animes out there, and it includes a lot of characters. Most of these characters happen to die a lot, specially when they are close to finding the truth about all the murders that happened in the last 10 years.

This is not an anime suitable for children, since it includes graphic violence, prostitution, child abuse, etc… but it makes it more real and creates an awesome sense of immersion in the story. So much I watched 10 or more episodes per day.

Woke up, the sun was shining and the streets were all white with the snow. Just like Xmas in the movies. Time to do some shopping. Not really Christmas gifts¹, just some books (because they are cheaper here) and a game (same reason). Also took the time to see the Christmas market and eat a hot nutella crepe.

Then I went iceskating for the first time in my life. It was easy and I didn’t fall. Just couldn’t go as fast as I can in rollerblades, but I would like to try ice hokey sometime soon.

Finally had dinner at a friends place and since the party was not that good, I spent the time there in the pub.

Really nice day.

¹ Actually I bought two gifts, but I won’t spoil the surprise.

O alterado artigo 1124 estabelece que “é inválido o matrimónio entre duas pessoas, uma das quais baptizada pela Igreja Católica ou nela integrada e outra que não seja baptizada”. Ou seja, católicos e não católicos deixam de poder casar-se pela Igreja.

Fonte: i online

A primeira coisa que fiz ao olhar para esta notícia foi verificar que dia era hoje. Não, não é 1 de Abril. Ou seja, este Papa anda mesmo a passar-se da cabeça. Vamos analisar as consequências desta alteração:

• Casamento entre dois católicos: continua na mesma.
• Casamento entre dois de outra(s) religião(ões): igualzinho.
• Casamento entre uma católica e um gajo que foi convencido a baptizar-se para casar pela igreja: a Igreja ganha mais um tipo para as estatísticas, mas que não é católico. A Igreja perde por perder consistência na sua massa de crentes.
• Casamento entre um católico e outro que insiste em não se casar pela Igreja: casam-se pelo civil, fazem uma festa bonita, e é menos dinheiro que a Igreja ganha com o casamento. E baixa a moral dos padres terem menos matrimónios por celebrar.

Ou seja, não vejo em como esta decisão pode beneficiar a igreja, mas sempre são mais puristas! Mais valia simplesmente falsificarem os números de católicos no mundo. Aposto que há uns padres que andam de aldeia em aldeia de Portugal que não se importavam de dar uma mãozinha.

Technically, you’re already a cyborg. If you keep your cell phone with you most of the time, especially if the earpiece is in place, I think we can call that arrangement an exobrain. Don’t protest that your cellphone isn’t part of your body just because you can leave it in your other pants. If a cyborg can remove its digital eye and leave it on a shelf as a surveillance device, and I think we all agree that it can, then your cellphone qualifies as part of your body. In fact, one of the benefits of being a cyborg is that you can remove and upgrade parts easily. So don’t give me that “It’s not attached to me” argument. You’re already a cyborg. Deal with it.

So damn true. I keep my cellphone with me all the time, and (at least the previous one) it is my exobrain. Read the rest of Scott Adams’ post.

Retirado directa das Escolhas do MV, recomendo a leitura de Don’t Save Social Security e Minimum Wage Should Be Repealed, com os quais concordo fortemente.

Ah, e leiam usando o Readability, conhecido graças ao Sérgio.

One problem of the academia (at least where I’ve been studying) is that the general public (including its own students!!!) is not aware of the research being made there.

Some students started a weblog where they add new videos of researchers explaining their projects, something I believe each university and research institute should promote.

What about your local university? Do you know what interesting projects are going on there? And how?

Pedro Alves, sobre a mudança de paradigma dos currículos de uma visão baseada nos cargos ocupados, para uma alternativa deliverable-oriented.

I’ve used Google Docs in the past for some school assignments, and I must say it really sucks for collaboration in real-time. If more than two people are editing the same document at the same time, it turns into a living hell to keep the formatting in the document, and one editor from overlapping the other.

I then moved to Etherpad. While it lacks features, it works really great for plain text, which is what I use to share basic ideas, and a bit of bold for titles. And it would be a kick-ass online editor if merged with IDEone to run the code on the browser.

Now Google has acquired AppJet, Inc and they are supposed to work on Google Wave now, which is not what I really had in mind for them…

When I’m watching movies or tv shows, one thing that always fascinates me is the way computer screens don’t match what we are used to. Some of them use Windows or Mac, but most of them use really weird scifiesque interfaces, even if they are supposed to be realist shows, like 24.

Via Simon Willison, I got to know one of the artists behind those designs, and it’s an interesting resource when you’re thinking about graphical user interfaces, like I am right now.

Há no entanto uma pequena aldeia gaulesa……não, há, no entanto, um conjunto de pessoas que não se actualizam. Ok, faz parte, é natural que as pessoas se cansem de aprender coisas novas todos os dias, e que não tenham pedal (ou paciência) para se manterem actuais. Nem toda a gente pode ser como a minha mãe, que há 6 meses não sabia o que era uma rede social, e que hoje apascenta vacas e distribui sementes como se não houvesse amanhã. Mas, lá está, a minha mãe sempre foi muito à frente.

Para essas pessoas, que pararam no tempo, tenho uma sugestão: vão para casa. Reformem-se. Encostem à faixa da direita.

Façam o que quiserem, mas saiam da frente de quem cá anda e quer andar mais depressa. Saiam da faixa da esquerda, que estão a atrapalhar o trânsito.

Aplausos para a Jonasnuts e respectiva mãe.

By now everyone should know about my fetish with shoes. And adidas got the opportunity to bring another universe I love to footwear and the result is this fantastic Star Wars collection.

We need the rest. It’s important in ways we don’t often think about. We need to de-stress, and we need to recharge our mental batteries.

Quiet and solitude and reflection lead to greater happiness when they’re a part of our daily lives, at least in some degree. What you do during this time — read, write, run, nap, sit, watch, listen, even have a quiet conversation, play, study, build — isn’t as important as the simple fact of having that time of disconnection.

— Leo Babauta, The Importance of Finding Focus (via Minimal)

My favorite happy song by The Blue Man Group, and was the one they didn’t play live in Lisbon.

The challenge of the next decade? Design for trillions. (via Pedro Custódio)

After the meme has started with a version of unix in 14 lines of Ruby, and an improvement for 13 lines by writing it in Python, I present you the same version of unix, ported to scala.

Note that this is not serious code. Just wanted to reduce one line in another language, and felt Scala would offer me the pattern matching I was looking for. I will also give haskell a try, but I don’t think I can reduce the number of lines due to the IO monadic thing.

And I’m sure I can reduce the number of lines in either python or ruby without making it look ugly, but I’ll leave that for those you want to learn those languages.

Beast Machines is the sequel to Beast Wars, part of the Transformers franchiser. A small group of Maximals finds themselves in an empty Cybertron controlled by an evil Megatron and some new army robots. It’s their task to bring the technorganic balance to their planet.

This was a show I watched when I was a kid in saturday mornings, so I really feel nostalgic re-watching the show. And I really enjoy the humor in the show. Not as geek as Reboot’s, but just fine.

Your nerd has control issues. Your nerd lives in a monospaced typeface world. Whereas everyone else is traipsing around picking dazzling fonts to describe their world, your nerd has carefully selected a monospace typeface, which he avidly uses to manipulate the world deftly via a command line interface while the rest fumble around with a mouse.

A nice guide to understanding nerds (should be replaced by “geeks”, but I don’t want to be one of those annoying nerds that requires all the words to be exactly used). (via @relva)

Nerds are fucking funny. Your nerd spent a lot of his younger life being an outcast because of his strange affinity with the computer. This created a basic bitterness in his psyche that is the foundation for his humor. Now, combine this basic distrust of everything with your nerd’s other natural talents and you’ll realize that he sees humor is another game.

Cyrano de Bérgerac is the 1990 movie about the homonymous play and features Gérard Depardieu.

I really like the movie, specially the rhymes by Cyrano. Even if it’s french and old, I really recommend it!

In this week’s Interaction Designer Methodologies I was presented to STATIC!, a project that investigates design as a way of increasing people’s awareness of their energy consumption. This has a special interest for me, since I’ve already worked on a project in this field with ISA.

In Sweden, a law was passed that makes the use of Automatic meter reading mandatory. The STATIC! project used that data to produce some provocative objects. From “patterns on bathroom tiles”:“http://www.tii.se/static/disappearing.htm that disappear with too much water to” curtains that save the solar power and emit light in night”:http://www.tii.se/static/curtain.htm, they produced an interesting series of prototypes.

The Time magazine nominated this Flower Lamp for the Best Inventions of 2006.