Alcides Fonseca

If you are an academic, I am sure you have come across with at least one strip of PhD Comics.

What you probably don’t know is that there is a movie. But you can only watch it at official screenings.

PHD Movie Trailer from PHD Comics on Vimeo.

Screening at University of Coimbra (Portugal)

I am currently trying to organize a screening at the University of Coimbra, and will take care of logistics, amphitheater, projector and even popcorns.

Update: Moved to January with a reduced price tag. News later in December.

Here are some random facts about Pittsburgh, PA, USA:

• Filipa had given me the heads up about Pittsburgh Left. But the fact is that they do it at every intersection! By the way, I haven’t seen a sing roundabout since I arrived in the States.
• Elaborating more on the traffic lights, they use the same model for every intersection regardless of one-way streets or other limitations. When we rented a car, we got to drive on a wrong way (well, actually it was a one-way avenue, but there was a lane for buses coming the other way. Pretty weird) because of that.
• The transit signs are very verbose. Since I’m used to the iconic signs in Europe, I find signs that say “Turn left at the next intersection” very amusing. That’s probably why are allowed to drive at 16, reading is the only requirement (and drinking is only permitted at 21).

• People in Pittsburgh are real fans of their sports teams, even the pirates. In fact, one out of five people in the streets is wearing something from the Steelers.
• It is tradition when the Steelers win the Superbowl, to bring your couch outside and set in on fire. In fact this was so common, they passed a law to forbid it.
• Sports for Americans are much more violent than in Europe. They promote physical contact, and I have played basketball where fouls are only when you pull someone to the ground. We have also tried to play indoor soccer, a mixture of hockey and jorkyball with this goal, where to play well, you had to use your body to throw other players against the walls.
• Students also practice a lot of sports and you can see a lot of people jogging in the streets. In fact Universities (Both CMU and Pittsburgh) have a lot of available fields for people to play whenever they want.
• In fact, the typical Pittsburgh University student is always on their sports pants, with their university jersey, and wearing flip flops, even when it’s snowing.
• There is even a University of Pitt Quiddich team
• This is more rare on the CMU, which is mostly filled with geeks. I found out that it’s one of the few top universities that does not provide sports scholarships (You can imagine a football team full of nerds :P). Despite that there are several sports and cultural activities on campus, and on Saturday everyone goes to their clubs to do whatever they like.
• The other day I found a Richard Stallman lookalike here at CMU. I really though it was him and was really impressed just when he turned around and was holding a macbook under his arm.

Dependendo da idade, poderão ter Pais ou Avós (ou irmãos) digitalmente menos literados, e que necessitam de uma mãozinha para certas tarefas. Tirando o Skype (e a funcionalidade Share Screen) que me ajuda a ajudá-los remotamente, recomendo vivamente que tirem 2 minutos para fazer o seguinte:

• Criar conta no Dropbox (affiliate link)
• Instalar no Computador da pessoa em questão
• Definir Dropbox como pasta de Documentos:
  1. Ir à pasta do Utilizador, botão direito do rato em “Meus Documentos”
  2. Separador Localização
  3. Mover
  4. Escolher Pasta da Dropbox
  5. OK.

E pronto, a pasta “Meus documentos” passa a ter um backup automático que o vosso familiar/amigo nem sabe que existe, mas se (e acreditem em mim nisto!) acontecer um imprevisto, vai dar bastante jeito.

Caso a pasta ocupe mais que 2Gb, recomendo que usem um disco externo para backups de ficheiros grandes (para quem guarda vídeos e afins).

I’m writing this post during the halftime of the SuperBowl, in which the team of my future city (Pittsburgh) plays. It’s also my second day in the US and I’ve registered some stuff that I find it different here:

If you want go form one place to another, you have to measure the distance using the Manhattan Distance, except if you go South-east and then you can use the Euclidean Distance by using the Broadway.

Other interesting bit that amused me was to see that smoke comes out of sewage covers just like in Ninja Turtles.

Streets are mostly one way, which makes it super easy to guess when to cross the road, but if I would ever driven here, the transit lights would drive me insane. I’d guess around Time Square, 50% of the cars are cabs, 20% are limos or “long cars” and the other 30% regular expensive cars (BMWs, Porsches, some Prius,..). Poor people use the metro, middle-class uses taxis, rich people have their own cars and really rich people have their own drivers.

Fast food is cheaper than proper food (even bought at the super market and not cooked). For instance, bottle water is more expensive than soda. Maybe this is the reason of the NY’ers overweight.

Some free/public domain ebook sources:

• ManyBooks
• FeedBooks Public Domain
• SciFi free ebooks
• More Sources

I just wanna say that Google is lucky to have someone who takes so much pleasure from working on this issue, and that follows their vision of Android as a platform. I’ll be sure to keep an eye on Honeycomb for smartphones to see the differences he caused on the UI.

I enjoyed quite much the xmas message from Ricky Gervais, mainly because it’s exactly what I think and feel about the issue.

I don’t care wether you are atheist or have a religion, but you should definitely read it! The most important quotes follow:

As an atheist, I see nothing “wrong” in believing in a god. I don’t think there is a god, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me

“Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. Buts that’s exactly what it is – ‐ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now.

And the best is without a doubt:

When confronted with anyone who holds my lack of religious faith in such contempt, I say, “It’s the way God made me.”

Package Install

Nuno Lourenço created a PIL package for Python 2.6 on OS X.

Compilation

How to install PIL (Python Image Library) in Snow Leopard with freetype2 and libjpg support.

Libjpg

brew install jpeg Or download source and compile.

Freetype2

wget http://mirrors.fe.up.pt/pub/nongnu/freetype/freetype-2.1.10.tar.gz

tar -zxvf freetype-2.1.10.tar.gz && cd freetype-2.1.10

./configure && make && sudo make install

PIL

wget http://effbot.org/downloads/Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz

tar -zxvf Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz && cd Imaging-1.1.6/

Open setup.py and change JPEG_ROOT and FREETYPE_ROOT to:

FREETYPE_ROOT = libinclude("/usr/local")

JPEG_ROOT = libinclude("/Users/alcides/Code/Support/homebrew/Cellar/jpeg/7")

Finally, sudo python setup.py install

Organizing windows around your desktop is something that breaks you down from your main task. For Mac OS, I used to recommend 2up, which allowed people to make windows use half-screens (right, left, top or bottom).

However it has been discontinued, and I have found a better replacement which has the initial advantage of being opensource: Shift It (a fork of the initial project) allows you to also use quarters of screens, fullscreen and center.

I use this daily, mainly with terminal windows or with documents and editors, for having more than one window at the same time, and still maximize the used screen estate, without having to drag and move windows with the mouse.

I highly suggest it, and I am making available a pre-compiled version of the lastest commit, which has multi-monitor support.

Desk – Music and Sound Design from Aaron Trinder Film:Motion:Music on Vimeo, via Nuno Póvoa.

About my desk

The desk itself is light-gray, very plain Fluxograma desk I won on a TV show when I was a kid, together with a top-of-the-line compaq presario and other stuff. The desktop quickly became obsolete, but the desk is the best one I’ve worked on.

I try to have only my computer (+external monitor, keyboard and trackball) on it, but due to this society’s dependence on paper, some documents get some private time with my desk. And once one sheet of paper accommodates, a lot of them start to join. All in one stack.

Outside people may say that stack is a pile of unorganized junk, but it is in fact organized, on a reverse-chronogical structure. I know where things are based on how far away the moment of “archiving” them is on my memory.

But I still hate to have paper. And I don’t have a scanner to process it. Nowadays, I find cameras much more suitable to record printed stuff.

In the future I believe desks will themselves be a multitouch surface, acting as a secondary display for the main screen on the wall, mainly focused on input.

So I never really got a Kindle myself. I figured I’d like it, but not love it, so I’d wait until I maybe got one for a gift, or the price of a future generation dropped so low that it seemed inconsequential. Since the two major players in the digital reader space are Amazon and Barnes and Noble, both of whom are more interested in selling the books than the hardware, I suspect that the prices on them will keep dropping until one day they’re free if you purchase some number of books. Verizon will give you a phone for free so they can sell you the service for it, and I think Amazon will eventually do the same. They’re already rumored to be selling them below cost, and selling large numbers of books to their owners, and the price of e-ink screens will keep dropping from here. — Matt Maroon: Kindle and iPad

Exactly my thoughts. I don’t want to spend $100+ on them, if in one year they will be around $50. And I want a long-lasting one.

Sou cliente Vodafone desde que tenho telemóvel (9 anos, e sim, na altura era Telecel) e nunca tive qualquer tipo de problemas, e considerava-me um cliente satisfeito. Até ontem.

Desde alguns meses para cá, tenho subscrito o aditivo Internet 100 que custa 5 euros por mês, e eu estou longe de chegar ao limite.

Ora como o meu telemóvel actual é um Blackberry Curve, decidi experimentar o aditivo superior Internet 300 visto que suporta o Serviço BB.

Dia 1 de Setembro, tinha 99.X Mb em 100 por gastar e 5 euros descontados na conta, e telefono para a linha dos aditivos para fazer o upgrade. A resposta que tive foi que tinha de cancelar o aditivo actual, perdendo tudo, e voltar a subscrever o plano 300. ou seja, perdia 5 euros, 100 Mb e ainda tinha de pagar de novo 10.

Isto para mim é inadmissível. O que eu aceitaria (e esperava) era pagar 5 euros de upgrade de aditivo (a diferença) e ficaria com 299.X de tráfego para gastar.

E a resposta da senhora que me atendeu foi bastante categórica. Não era mesmo possível creditar os 5 euros. Perdi o gosto que tinha pela Vodafone e fiquei mesmo desiludido. Eu a querer dar-lhes mais 5 euros e eles querem o triplo.

Não façam backups, não.

E é bom que seja agora. Go, go, go!

How to install the R python bindings library RPy2 on Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard using Homebrew.

Install R

In order to install R in your Mac as a framework, make this change in your homebrew/Library/Formula

brew install r

Install RPy2

wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/r/rpy2/rpy2-2.1.4.tar.gz#md5=cf4e0d80ba498a6d76f107531966478d
tar xfz rpy2-2.1.4.tar.gz
cd rpy2-2.1.4/
sudo python setup.py build --r-home /usr/local/Cellar/r/2.11.1/R.framework/Resources/ install

Troubleshooting

If you are having a problem related to “-framework vecLib” when installing rpy2, insert a new line after #134 of setup.py with the following:

extra_link_args = extra_link_args[:-1]

Worked for me.

A simple exercise: read through the real Chevalier d’Eon’Eon wikipedia page, and try to guess if he was a man or a woman.

Now, there is an anime based on this historic character and it’s history which resolves around the King Louis XV, Le Secret du Roi and Robespierre. Although they had introduced magic into the story, the result was quite interesting and made me like very much the show, specially the thought of the duality between the solitude of kings versus how evil/machiavelli/good they are.

Of course it also features some ideas of le Révolution Francaise opposing the existing honor to the King, which lead to a lot of intrigue and betrayals.

Besides the usual reading spike, I’ve been trying to watch more anime these holidays. After Monster, which I really enjoyed, I’ve watched Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s a adaptation of Dumas’ novel, but set in a distant future with spaceships and The Count being changed by a demon.

This futuristic changes were excused in my opinion (they were only there because of marketing tactics, I guess) but fitted the technique that they used to fill the clothes with static patterns (You really have to check it out!). Luckily they’ve retained the society, fashion and style of the time. There’s even a French spoken intro to every episode. Most of the times you don’t even know it’s set in the future.

Even if the plot is not surprising at all (even though I haven’t read the novel before), the anime is really well done, pursuing a more emotional and dramatic view of things, and I even trembled when one of the characters died (not going to spoil it, but you’ll know when you get there). And just like all the animes I’ve loved, this one also has a lovely soundtrack.

So good, I had to blog about it: How to Access the Internet.

If the unbelievable decisions that are being taken in courts and in businesses regarding the internet and communication continue to be the way they have been the last years, I sense this amusing article will cease to be fiction very soon.

Two lumberjacks, a younger one and an older one, raced to see who could cut down the most trees in a single day. At the end of the day the winner was obvious. The older lumberjack had won. The younger man could not believe it!

“How could you have cut down more trees than I did?” he asked. “Every hour you sat down while I kept right on cutting. I don’t understand. How could you have cut more trees while sitting so much?”

“When I sat down, I was sharpening my axe,” the older lumberjack said. “Why didn’t you stop to sharpen your axe?” “I didn’t have time,” the younger man said. “I was too busy cutting!”

Como developer que sou (ou pelo menos penso que sou), gosto de conhecer as ferramentas com que trabalho aprender mais sobre elas, e escolher as melhores para determinado fim. Seja qual for o tipo de ferramentas, e muitas delas são apenas processos.

Muitas das vezes exercito o meu lado voyeur, navegando na net à procura de Office Porn, sendo que uma paragem frequente é o The Setup, entrevistas bastantes simples a várias personalidades baseadas em 4 perguntas: Quem és? Que hardware usas? E que software? Qual é o teu Setup de Sonho?

Nas várias entrevistas é interessante não só saber o que usam, mas também o contexto, o workflow, as razões, que tornam a entrevista não só num show-off de gadgets, mas também numa partilha de processos.

Nesse espírito decidi organizar o mesmo, orientado a Portugal, onde convido pessoas que considero que fazem algo interessante a explicarem-nos como o fazem e que machados usam para o seu trabalho.

Podem encontrar as entrevistas em UsaIsto.com, seguir o RSS ou seguir no Twitter, visto que as entrevistas vão aparecendo com regularidade.

Been kinda busy with school projects and exams, but took the afternoon to watch The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. I hadn’t seen the prequel series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, but I got the story without a problem and, despite being a bit too long, it was an awesome movie. The slow pace and the time it took for the initial riddle to be solved grabbed me to the screen until everything was clear and explained. (It was so good, I even bared to watch it on CAM quality, and thrust me, I have seen better cams than this one)

When I saw the opening, I recalled the song, but don’t know where from (since i haven’t seen the series). Probably some Best of Anime OSTs or something like that. Cheerful.

I don’t know if it’s for liking animes with girls with “disproportional breasts”, or just because the whole alien + time travel theme is my thing, but I’ll probably give the tv series a go during this holidays.

This post is about as minimal as the app:

If you are looking for a simple way of logging the time you spent doing something, João presents you: Thyme.