JPCosta

Nem vou dizer mais nada… vou meter aqui só uma imagem que retirei do site European Central Bank …

http://www.ecb.int/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/eurofxref-graph-pln.en.html

Recently I came across a great addon for firefox: Ubiquity.

Although I must say that it looks impressive, I’m not sure if it will turn out to be really useful in daily tasks.
Ubiquity works like a special command window (bring it up with Ctrl+Space) enabling the use of user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs.

From Ubiquity‘s page:

The overall goals of Ubiquity are to explore how best to:

1. Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)
2. Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone–not just Web developers–to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)
3. Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.
4. Extend the browser functionality easily.

I’m claiming my blog on Technorati.
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Polska policja

Há uns tempos quase que apanhava uma multa por atravessar a rua fora da passadeira.

Estava a voltar a casa após o trabalho. Lá fora estavam uns -10 C e eu tiritava de frio por todos os lados. O autocarro que apanho para voltar a casa deixa-me a uns 10 minutos a pé, logo após uma rotunda que eu tenho que atravessar, só que para o fazer tenho que andar para trás, o que não é nada eficiente. Como qualquer bom português faria, eu atravesso 4 faxas a correr para poupar uns valentes 2 minutos de andar para trás e perder tempo.

Acontece que no dia em questão estava um carro da polícia estrategicamente colocado atrás de uns arbustos, e assim que eu atravessei eles saíram do carro ao meu encontro. Apercebi-me logo do que estava a acontecer já tinha ouvido dizer que atravessar fora da passadeira dava direito a multa (100zl. oouch!!!), mas decidi jogar a carta do desentendido.

Os polícias tentaram falar comigo em Polaco mas eu nao entendi – Nierozumiem po polsku – pensei que me iam deixar ir, mas aí o segundo polícia começou a falar um inglês quase perfeito! Merda… quando preciso de alguém que fale inglês para me ajudar nao encontro e agora que me querem dar uma multa já falam inglês.
O que me valeu foi que os polícias estavam bem dispostos. Perguntaram-me se eu era estudante e acho que ficaram bem impressionados quando lhes disse que trabalhava na Polónia há uns 3 meses, no entanto não deixaram desviar muito a conversa e pediram-me a minha identificação. Dei-lhes a minha carta de condução portuguesa (morada portuguesa, registo de Portugal, assim não levo multa na Polónia).
O agente tirou todos os dados que queria sem esboçar um único sorrizo ou mostrar o minímo de empatia, até que virou a carta ao contrário e viu que eu tinha licensa de mota.

Polícia: Hey, tu tens licensa de mota, porque é que não andas de mota aqui?
Eu:  Ah a neve e tal, não estou habituado e é perigoso.
Polícia: (risos e umas frases em polaco entre eles) Daqui a dois meses pára a neve, devias trazer a tua mota de Portugal para cá.
Eu:  Estou a pensar nisso! Já tenho saudades de andar de mota!
Polícia:  Daqui a uns meses vou comprar uma Ducati Monster!

(conversa sobre motas)

Polícia: Bom, desta então é só um aviso, mas para a próxima vou ter que te dar uma multa!

Uffff… O que vale é há polícias que gostam de motas

Krakow – London, Stansted

I woke up quite early to make sure I’d be on time for my flight at 10h AM. I arrived in the airport around 8h and there was not many people there. At 8h30 I was already at the gate, one hour in advance. I was quite sleepy so I sat down and eventually I fell asleep. I woke up suddenly 20 minutes after, at 8h50, and relaxed when I saw the giant digital clock just in front of me; I still had at least 45 minutes to wait. I fell again asleep and I woke up at 9h15 but relaxed when I saw I had time. The next time I woke up was with the loudspeakers saying “Last Warning for Mr. Costa”.
I still got into the flight, but they had to call the bus driver to come back to get me (he was not far yet).

London, Stansted – Porto

I arrived in Stansted at 11h30 (local time) and my next flight to Porto was only at 18h30. I had plenty of time to do absolutely nothing. I noticed a lot of blue and yellow machines in front of the Ryanair check-in desks. I went there so see closer and I found out that I would have to do my check in using those machines, using the confirmation code I got when I bought the tickets, and only after I’d deliver my luggage. I tried my code but the machine said it was still too early to check-in for my flight. So I waited. Really long waiting. God I hate waiting, if only I had something to do. Time goes by and 16h00 comes. Two and half hours before my flight I went again to the machines and entered my code. Panic: there’s a red warning under my name saying that I must speak to the Ryanair guys. I was going around asking and finally one of them tells me
- “Ohh yes sir, do you see this special character in your name?”
- “You mean the tilde in João?”
- “Yeap, that’s it. These characters are not supported. You will have to go to that desk over there and get that changed before you can check-in”.

It was really hard to see the desk he was pointing to because there was a freaking huge queue in front of it. Now, I am not sure who was responsible for those automatic check-in machines but I could see that the hardware is from IBM. Anyway, how can you plan a software to deal with hundreds of thousands of users, many of which are foreigner, and forget about the detail of international characters? It really bothers me…

Porto – London, Stansted

There were no problems with check-in or with the flight but when I got to London I was waiting 1hour for my luggage.

London, Stansted – Krakow

This time I knew I had to change my name in that stupid desk. I put my alarm to 3h30 AM (flight was at 6AM) and went straight there when it rang. I did my check-in without further problems.
After boarding I was waiting really long time for departure, because some passenger did check-in and didn’t board the plane so they had to take is luggage out.