JPCosta

Cheguei ao fim do curso, deu-me uma coisa e mudei-me para a Polónia. Devo dizer que contribuiu muito para este acontecimento os 6 meses que passei na Eslováquia (em Erasmus) e o facto de nesse tempo ter conhecido uma Polaca que me deu a volta à cabeça

Andei uns tempos à procura de trabalho, e devo dizer que não foi tão fácil como pensei à partida. Tive a sorte de ter sabido de uma oportunidade mesmo na altura em que estava prestes a desistir!

Procurar casa em Cracóvia pode ser um pouco complicado. As rendas são relativamente elevadas para o custo média de vida deste país, e há muitos estudantes que tomam logo conta de todos os apartamentos mais baratos. Calhou bem ter vindo a Cracóvia a meio de Agosto, porque a cidade está mais vazia, e assim foi mais fácil alugar um T1 que serve bem para as minha necessidades (e que fica a meio caminho entre o meu emprego e o centro da cidade, com bons transportes para todo o lado!).

Vou tentar manter aqui um pequeno registo das minhas aventuras, mas como não sou muito dado a blogs, não prometo actualizações frequentes :p

I found this brain teaser on the portuguese mensa forum and I think it is really interesting:

There are 3000 closed door’s and 3000 doorman’s. The first doorman opens all doors. The second doorman closes every second door. The third doorman goes to every third door and opens it if it was previously closed and closes it if it was previously opened etc..

How many doors remain closed after the 3000th doorman ?

Latelly I’ve been reading a lot about offline web applications, since this is the topic of my final project. I decided to focus on Google Gears for a couple of reasons, the most important being that this API is specifically designed for offline browsing, its new BSD, and it was mine and my boss’s favorite after I presented him all the options I could find (Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight (I couldn’t find good information on taking webapps offline with Silverlight), Mozilla Prism, WhatWG HTML 5 specs.

One thing that I don’t fully understand in Google’s implementation of offline support is the need to press a button to go offline. Why did they use a button?? Imagine that you’re using your laptop, you forget to take Reader offline and next day you find yourself without a connection… Or imagine you are working with intermittent connection but this time you remembered to take Google Reader offline, but now you cannot take advantage of the limited connection you have to get updates; really annoying and frustrating, and Google Docs is also using the same approach.

I know it’s not easy to get rid of the evil “switch-between-online-and-offline” button, but I also know that it is possible, and I would be really nice to see it happen with Google Reader and Google Docs.

I don’t use Google Talk much, but I use my Gmail account everyday, and I usually keep a tab with it open.
Via the Google Operating System blog, I found an extremely easy way to add a simple chat system in my blog, allowing users to talk with me (but not among them selfs, my blog is not a IRC chatroom).

Just create a new Text widget space and copy paste the HTML you get from the badge generation page.

I have no idea how useful this will be for me, but it is sure a nice thing to have!
Go ahead, if you find me online, drop me a line or two. I promise I will answer

Foritensum is an incredibly difficult logical/IQ test. What makes it interesting is that you don’t need any previous knowledge, and anyone can give it a try. As the author says in its homepage:

Foritensum is what some people would call an IQ test. It was inspired by Logima Strictica 36 by Robert Lato. I have tried to come up with a good mix of problems, some of them hard and others extremely difficult. Foritensum is meant to be culture fair; an alien from a different planet should have the same chance to score well as someone raised and living in the western world.

Give it a try! The rules are simple, 1) No time limit and 2) Do not discuss solutions with anyone

After vising again Blender’s homepage I’m thinking about giving another shot to my old 3D modeling hobby. Blender has changed a lot since I last used it in 2004/2005, a really set of nice features has been added and the community is really strong and supporting, judging by the average comment count on every Blender Nation blog post. I still have my old gallery up, but it is now really outdated

I’m sure that soon, the release of Big Buck Bunny, Blender’s amazing open source animation project codename Peach, will revamp the whole community. A lot of people will see this movie and get excited about Blender 3D, so I will be just one more of this guys, but I already know a little about it and hopefully I won’t have to go through the tutorials again!

I’m doing my final project for my Master’s degree and my laptop just died on me. Suddenly it crashed and when I rebooted I didn’t get anything on display. Not even BIOS/POST information… All my stuff is there; I do have backups, but all configs and settings will take for ever to setup again…

I have a an external 2,5” USB socket that I will try to use today to get everything out before I send it to warranty.

Today we celebrate mothers day in Portugal (the first Sunday of May), so me my sister and my brother prepared a surprise meal for my mother. We cooked a meat fondue with Spanish tapas. For the tapas we had octopus with green sauce, mushrooms, padrón peppers, some sea food, green Spanish peppers, a bit small and not every pepper is spicy, in Spain they even say “pimentos de Padrón, unos pican e outros non” which means some are spice some are not.

I must say that most of the cooking was done by my sister, but I helped with the padrón peppers, the mushrooms and the cleaning part. I also have some photos.

London was great. I mean really great! The most important think was that I was with my girlfriend after a long time!!

It wasn’t my first time in London, but last time I was there only one day and it’s not enough to even get the feeling of this amazing city.
This time I saw the Big Ben, Victoria, Piccadilly, Camden Town (where I bought a brand new acrylic contact juggling ball ), Buckingham Palace, among other attractions. The Science Museum was so big that we didn’t have time to go to the Natural History Museum. One funny thing was that the 2nd floor add Mathematics and Computer’s story.

It was also an opportunity to meet Maja, one of Marta’s best friends. Thank you for your hospitality Maja! You are always welcome in Portugal!

There’s much more thing I could write about London (viewed from a 5-day tourist eyes) but I will let it for your imagination. Soon I will post some photos in my Flickr account!

Great trip, wasn’t it laleczka?

I’m going to London tomorrow!! Hooooooray!!!!!!! I’ll be back on Tuesday with news and maybe a couple of photos!

Cya!