Everything in life serves a purpose and this blog is no exception. It has however completely fulfilled its purpose and I have nothing more to add, except wishing a very happy life to everyone who visited it and hopefully found something interesting inside. Thank you all for sharing bits and pieces of my life and myself. It was helpful for me to express things I couldn't otherwise but I truly feel the time has come to end it.
Whatever you do, always be hopeful. Hope can set you free. Don't ever let fear hold you prisoner.
As for me, I will find my S. and be happy. Some day.
I hope.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
A lazy and shameful day. I don't know what got into me all day but I just wandered around the house feeling completely knackered and moody. Still managed to finish some database translation tidbits I had lying around and sent them upstream. I currently have one batch of text backlogged due by the end of the month.
Read the first couple of stories from Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction and thoroughly enjoyed them. The first was Greg Bear's "Blood Music" which is stunning considering nanotechnology wasn't even coined as a term when it was wrote and published and Gene Wolfe's "A Cabin on the Coast". This one actually got me thinking "what the f*ck?!" just after I finished it. Gardner Dozois' preface is very good (even if it's not one of his famous summations) and Robert Silverberg also contributes with a rather interesting foreword. This book looks like a must have, really.
In other news, Opeth have officially released one track of their upcoming album, Ghost Reveries on sale next August 30th. The track is called "The Grand Conjuration", pretty much rocks my boat, and you can check it out for yourself the Opeth Listening Lounge (registration required). Highly recommended.
Read the first couple of stories from Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction and thoroughly enjoyed them. The first was Greg Bear's "Blood Music" which is stunning considering nanotechnology wasn't even coined as a term when it was wrote and published and Gene Wolfe's "A Cabin on the Coast". This one actually got me thinking "what the f*ck?!" just after I finished it. Gardner Dozois' preface is very good (even if it's not one of his famous summations) and Robert Silverberg also contributes with a rather interesting foreword. This book looks like a must have, really.
In other news, Opeth have officially released one track of their upcoming album, Ghost Reveries on sale next August 30th. The track is called "The Grand Conjuration", pretty much rocks my boat, and you can check it out for yourself the Opeth Listening Lounge (registration required). Highly recommended.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Long and somewhat tiring day which got me pretty much knackered by the end of it. Up bright and early to wander off to Lisbon as planned for the FM 2006 presentation and press conference with Miles Jacobson and finally the opportunity to meet the man himself, in flesh and bone. Turned out to be quite a pleasant time in many different ways. He's just way accessible, completely down-to-earth type guy and his presentation was flawless. He showed a few screenshots to the assembled press and then played a beta build for a few minutes to show off some of the new features. The few new stuff he actually unveiled was very very pleasant and according to him there's still 20+ new features to be known in the near future. He asked the press not to disclose anything until the press release is out by the end of the week, so I'm refraining from talking any further about it here aswell.
After a few interviews, we went downstairs - awesome hotel by the way, right in the heart of Lisbon - to have lunch and had to chance to get to know Miles a bit better. Turns out he's an alternative music fan (oh, rings some bells) but we didn't talk much more about that. Some points of view were discussed, we had the chance to point out some things that need to be done concerning our work for the game and generally we spent some good time with him. I hope to meet him again when I travel to London by the end of October to attend a couple of Dream Theater shows and hopefully get together with the folks at the office up there aswell. Interesting times ahead.
Picked up my Amazon order from the post office and it turns out that the postman *really* messed up the package origin in the note he left. Amazon packages contain some publicity of their services nowadays and one of those is something like "NEW Home & Garden, Top brands low price". So he just went on and wrote down that the package originated from "New Home". Right...
Found an interesting - and somewhat depressing, when it comes to Nirvana - interview with Dave Grohl via Blabbermouth.
After a few interviews, we went downstairs - awesome hotel by the way, right in the heart of Lisbon - to have lunch and had to chance to get to know Miles a bit better. Turns out he's an alternative music fan (oh, rings some bells) but we didn't talk much more about that. Some points of view were discussed, we had the chance to point out some things that need to be done concerning our work for the game and generally we spent some good time with him. I hope to meet him again when I travel to London by the end of October to attend a couple of Dream Theater shows and hopefully get together with the folks at the office up there aswell. Interesting times ahead.
Picked up my Amazon order from the post office and it turns out that the postman *really* messed up the package origin in the note he left. Amazon packages contain some publicity of their services nowadays and one of those is something like "NEW Home & Garden, Top brands low price". So he just went on and wrote down that the package originated from "New Home". Right...
Found an interesting - and somewhat depressing, when it comes to Nirvana - interview with Dave Grohl via Blabbermouth.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Apparently I'm on a translation spree and in consequence I've wrapped up the bits and pieces due next Sunday. So I'm a whole week ahead of schedule which is nice and comforting.
Found a really neat article about Dream Theater at Mike Portnoy's Forum. I've mirrored the article scan kindly provided by mabrown over at the forum so if you're a hard core DT fan like me, I strongly suggest you take a look at it.
Tomorrow morning I'll be in Lisbon at some hotel for the Football Manager 2006 Portuguese presentation. Sports Interactive's managing director, Miles Jacobson, will be here talking about the game and answering questions from the press. I'll finally get to meet the guy - we only spoke through IRC a few years back - and it would be nice to have lunch with him, if the opportunity presents itself - something I strongly doubt, anyway. Don't tell anyone, but working for SI as a programmer within a couple of years is one of my dream jobs ;)
Apparently the latest order from Amazon is already in the post-office waiting for me. The warning in my inbox says something about the package coming from Germany but I'm used to the weird tendency the postmen around here have to mess up things like that. I'm not waiting for anything from Germany, so it must really be the Amazon order. Which, if you're wondering, includes Arthur C. Clarke's and Stephen Baxter's Sunstorm (Book 2 of a A Time Odyssey, of which I thoroughly enjoyed volume one), No Way Out DVD and Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction, a compilation of compilations, namely of the Year's Best SF edited by Gardner Dozois.
Oh and I completely lost my head and just had to order this. It's just too cool.
Found a really neat article about Dream Theater at Mike Portnoy's Forum. I've mirrored the article scan kindly provided by mabrown over at the forum so if you're a hard core DT fan like me, I strongly suggest you take a look at it.
Tomorrow morning I'll be in Lisbon at some hotel for the Football Manager 2006 Portuguese presentation. Sports Interactive's managing director, Miles Jacobson, will be here talking about the game and answering questions from the press. I'll finally get to meet the guy - we only spoke through IRC a few years back - and it would be nice to have lunch with him, if the opportunity presents itself - something I strongly doubt, anyway. Don't tell anyone, but working for SI as a programmer within a couple of years is one of my dream jobs ;)
Apparently the latest order from Amazon is already in the post-office waiting for me. The warning in my inbox says something about the package coming from Germany but I'm used to the weird tendency the postmen around here have to mess up things like that. I'm not waiting for anything from Germany, so it must really be the Amazon order. Which, if you're wondering, includes Arthur C. Clarke's and Stephen Baxter's Sunstorm (Book 2 of a A Time Odyssey, of which I thoroughly enjoyed volume one), No Way Out DVD and Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction, a compilation of compilations, namely of the Year's Best SF edited by Gardner Dozois.
Oh and I completely lost my head and just had to order this. It's just too cool.
Saturday, July 16, 2005
An atypically productive Saturday in contrast with the usual lazyness that invariably attacks me on these occasions.
Met tomorrow's deadline for the fourth batch of FM 2006's translation work. Granted it was not too much as SI is keeping it sensible and partitioned but it was a good advance nonetheless which let me breathe a little more and do other stuff while I'm at it. There are two more internal deadlines set for next Sunday and the Sunday after that which I expect to meet easily, if nothing goes terribly wrong in the mean time.
Other than that, I finally took the time to learn some more about the wonders of Ajax, Ruby on Rails, XMLHttpRequest and other assorted web goodies. Apparently I've been pretty much missing the ongoing web application revolution that got full steam in the beginning of this year, largely thanks to - you guessed it - Google with stuff like GMail, Google Maps or Google Suggest. Here's a quick glance at some of the info I gathered on these subjects today:
Well, that's pretty much it for now.
Met tomorrow's deadline for the fourth batch of FM 2006's translation work. Granted it was not too much as SI is keeping it sensible and partitioned but it was a good advance nonetheless which let me breathe a little more and do other stuff while I'm at it. There are two more internal deadlines set for next Sunday and the Sunday after that which I expect to meet easily, if nothing goes terribly wrong in the mean time.
Other than that, I finally took the time to learn some more about the wonders of Ajax, Ruby on Rails, XMLHttpRequest and other assorted web goodies. Apparently I've been pretty much missing the ongoing web application revolution that got full steam in the beginning of this year, largely thanks to - you guessed it - Google with stuff like GMail, Google Maps or Google Suggest. Here's a quick glance at some of the info I gathered on these subjects today:
- Apparently it was Jesse James Garrett from Adaptive Path, who coined the term Ajax, back in February, as a shorthand (according to him) for "Asynchronous JavaScript+CSS+DOM+XMLHttpRequest" or else the rather accepted moniker of "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML". The main idea behind the Ajax group of technologies seems to be adding another layer to the usual client-server exchange during a web session - the Ajax engine. This speeds up communication because it transforms synchronous into asynchronous communication allowing for a page to be treated not as a single monolithic entity spat out by the server but rather a patchwork of different elements which can be asynchronously sent back and forth between server and client - by means of XmlHttpRequest. This reduces the amount of information on the wire, allowing for near instant feedback to the user and so ultimately allowing for a much snappier user interface. The communication between the server and the client (the Ajax layer in particular) is done using XML. Funky!
- Ruby on Rails is a framework for building web based applications lightning fast. Found a nice couple of introductions to the subject which are pretty much jaw-dropping (at least for me that have been building web apps the hard way for a few years now) here, here and here. Wikipedia also provides valuable info on this, Ajax and more related stuff. Better yet, Seeing is Believing!.
- Other items of interest I found today are Mapping Google, Ten Essential Development Practices (via Tao of Mac), The Nine Pillars of Successful Web Teams and Six Design Lessons From the Apple Store, these last two being also by Jesse James Garrett, whom I mentioned earlier on, but which I haven't read yet.
- If you prefer Python over Ruby but want to retain the easiness on creating web apps which I've mentioned before using Rails, then there seems to be a worthy alternative in the form of Django. Apparently the major drawback when compared to Rails is that it doesn't include its own tiny webserver and instead relies on Apache's Mod_Python. I'll be giving this a shot over the next few days.
Well, that's pretty much it for now.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Call me Nat Friedman's groupie if you will, but I just can't help myself from linking to his blog entry today yet again. I've been reading blogs for quite a while and I've come across a lot of good ones but this single post is probably the most funny, well written and Fight Club-esque one I've ever laid my eyes on. Truly priceless. Here's an excerpt:
After three hours of drilling, before he could affix the temporary plastic cap, I took a break to stretch my legs and use the bathroom. Three hours in the dentist chair is a long time. The bathroom had a mirror. Should I look? Can I look? I did.
And oh, the horror.
What did Nat see in the mirror of the dentist's bathroom? Check it out for yourself.
After three hours of drilling, before he could affix the temporary plastic cap, I took a break to stretch my legs and use the bathroom. Three hours in the dentist chair is a long time. The bathroom had a mirror. Should I look? Can I look? I did.
And oh, the horror.
What did Nat see in the mirror of the dentist's bathroom? Check it out for yourself.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
As of lately, I've been increasingly finding myself doing air drums to Iron Maiden songs. The obvious conclusion I've reached in less than a couple of minutes and I guess you will agree, is that in a previous incarnation I was a drummer playing in a Maiden cover band. This also means that I've been having so much fun listening to these mammoths of heavy metal, even if I'm twenty years or so too late. As it is, I've decided to have a stab at compiling my current Iron Maiden Best Of compilation tape. I had lots of fun with this earlier today and, for what it's worth, here's the playlist I've arrived at:
1. The Ides of March
2. Wrathchild
3. Where Eagles Dare
4. Revelations
5. The Trooper
6. Remember Tomorrow
7. Children of the Damned
8. Aces High
9. The Wicker Man
10. Ghost of the Navigator
11. Phantom of the Opera
12. The Number of the Beast
13. Hallowed Be Thy Name
14. Fear of the Dark
15. Iron Maiden
It's designed to fit in a CD so it clocks in at roughly 77 minutes and obviously leaves out a huge list of amazing tracks.
By doing this I've reached a few conclusions and learnt a bit more about myself, music wise. First, it's obvious that this compilation reflects my current taste and degree of knowledge concerning Maiden's catalogue. The fact that I got hooked into them during the current tour where they're only playing songs from the first four albums (the Eddie Rips Up Europe tour) has played a very important role in this compilation and that's probably why you see songs like "Where Eagles Dare", "Revelations", "Remember Tomorrow" or "Wrathchild". On the other hand, there are a few which are absolutely mandatory: "Phantom of the Opera", "Hallowed Be Thy Name", "The Trooper" or even "Fear of the Dark". Finally, it became obvious that the really hard thing is to pick up any 15 songs from the band's catalogue and arriving with a weak best of. It's all just so good. Up the irons!
On another front, one thing that's always disgusted me are employers who judge potential employees primarily by their grades at University. For me this is just plain stupid and wrong. What should really matter, if we are to build a great future for our species and actually think about evolving strongly and confidently, is the motivation and sheer brilliance of everyone involved. That said, it's good and refreshing to see companies like the renewed Novell, who's taking a huge interest in the open source movement - coincidence? - looking out for people who've done "cool" things and are motivated to hack on interest projects, of which the Hula project is definitely an instance. From Nat's journal entry today:
"If you think you're a hot-shot Ajax/DHTML developer, and you also think of yourself as a hacker, then we're interested in talking to you.
New hires into the Hula team will pitch in on the calendar interface, and help us write a web mail interface to rival GMail. If you're interested, drop me a line. Include something cool you've done to get the conversation started."
This is the spirit I identify myself with. Hopefully one of these days I'll be in a position where I can apply for these nifty jobs.
1. The Ides of March
2. Wrathchild
3. Where Eagles Dare
4. Revelations
5. The Trooper
6. Remember Tomorrow
7. Children of the Damned
8. Aces High
9. The Wicker Man
10. Ghost of the Navigator
11. Phantom of the Opera
12. The Number of the Beast
13. Hallowed Be Thy Name
14. Fear of the Dark
15. Iron Maiden
It's designed to fit in a CD so it clocks in at roughly 77 minutes and obviously leaves out a huge list of amazing tracks.
By doing this I've reached a few conclusions and learnt a bit more about myself, music wise. First, it's obvious that this compilation reflects my current taste and degree of knowledge concerning Maiden's catalogue. The fact that I got hooked into them during the current tour where they're only playing songs from the first four albums (the Eddie Rips Up Europe tour) has played a very important role in this compilation and that's probably why you see songs like "Where Eagles Dare", "Revelations", "Remember Tomorrow" or "Wrathchild". On the other hand, there are a few which are absolutely mandatory: "Phantom of the Opera", "Hallowed Be Thy Name", "The Trooper" or even "Fear of the Dark". Finally, it became obvious that the really hard thing is to pick up any 15 songs from the band's catalogue and arriving with a weak best of. It's all just so good. Up the irons!
On another front, one thing that's always disgusted me are employers who judge potential employees primarily by their grades at University. For me this is just plain stupid and wrong. What should really matter, if we are to build a great future for our species and actually think about evolving strongly and confidently, is the motivation and sheer brilliance of everyone involved. That said, it's good and refreshing to see companies like the renewed Novell, who's taking a huge interest in the open source movement - coincidence? - looking out for people who've done "cool" things and are motivated to hack on interest projects, of which the Hula project is definitely an instance. From Nat's journal entry today:
"If you think you're a hot-shot Ajax/DHTML developer, and you also think of yourself as a hacker, then we're interested in talking to you.
New hires into the Hula team will pitch in on the calendar interface, and help us write a web mail interface to rival GMail. If you're interested, drop me a line. Include something cool you've done to get the conversation started."
This is the spirit I identify myself with. Hopefully one of these days I'll be in a position where I can apply for these nifty jobs.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
It's a sad state of affairs in the world nowadays. I'm kind of at a loss of words when it comes to these terrorists attacks, it just never ends and we're simply sucked into a void and mindless war where we play no part whatsoever. We're just bystanders with a varying degree of guilt or innocence.
My thoughts go out to those who perished in this stupid way and to the hundreds who got injured. Maybe I'm just naïve but I don't understand why people insist in making this world uglier than it could be.
Fortunately, as far as I know, none of my acquaintances in London were caught in the attacks, but I'm still to hear from one of them.
Despite all this sickness, the world doesn't stop and so I spent the better part of the day working on the translation. Finished my part of the third batch and sent it upstream. Downstream promptly came another batch and some new match events to translate. Work ensues...
My thoughts go out to those who perished in this stupid way and to the hundreds who got injured. Maybe I'm just naïve but I don't understand why people insist in making this world uglier than it could be.
Fortunately, as far as I know, none of my acquaintances in London were caught in the attacks, but I'm still to hear from one of them.
Despite all this sickness, the world doesn't stop and so I spent the better part of the day working on the translation. Finished my part of the third batch and sent it upstream. Downstream promptly came another batch and some new match events to translate. Work ensues...
Update: There's really not much left to say about the London bombings but I just felt like quoting a good friend of mine from his travel log:
"Why do we keep killing people to tell people that killing people is wrong?"
This perfectly sums up my feelings about these issues.
(By the way, if you're reading this, mate, I've been following your log very closely and some minor hiccups aside I'm thrilled to learn you're having the time of your life. My best to you and Tea!)
So tonight I went out with a few of my friends to catch the midnight session of War of the Worlds. In the end, I can't really say I was disappointed. For starters, I never was a Spielberg die-hard fan. I mean, I respect him a lot, I don't actively dislike his films and I even digged a few of them. But somehow, in my book, he's never been in the same league as other directors. On the other hand, I walked in already not expecting much both from the little I saw in magazines and on previews and also by negative feedback from people I know who had already seen it. The cast is quite good, with Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning and Tim Robbins and, well, Morgan Freeman as a narrator (even if for only a couple of minutes during the beginning and the ending) is always a plus. The special effects also looked quite good to me but only in terms of eye-candy, not in terms of making me believe that was really happening.
And that's basically my gripe with the movie: I didn't find it believable and from some point on I just didn't care anymore. To hell with the fate of humanity, I mean, it just became a big yawn for me halfway into it. Not even the sudden appearance of my very favourite Tim Robbins could lighten it up for me. The plot is shallow and it has nothing to do whatsoever with Wells' 1898 novel except that, well, it's also aliens attacking the Earth and they happen to walk around in tripods aswell. But that's about it. For me, the main difference between the original and this screening is that the former is believable and creepy and the latter really isn't. Not the worst movie I've ever seen (far from it) but definitely not one of the best. This however got me curious to see the 1953 version of the film which judging from online reviewing at large seems to be a wee bit better.
On other news, spent some time tinkering with NFS, trying to turn one of the spare machines into an MP3 server for the house only to figure out that it doesn't really work very well over the wireless network. Whereas using plain old ethernet cabling, it works just fine. Which sucks, because everyone here who could possibly make use of the system is pretty much on wireless mode, myself included. And cables, well, they tend to be a thing of the past. I'll give it a try later on with SMB but I guess the problem doesn't lie in the network filesystem anyway.
The translation for FM2006 is going smoothly. Sports Interactive has broken things in different and periodic batches this time around so we've been calmly setting our own deadlines and things have been working out. Tomorrow I'll deliver my part of the third batch and the fourth (plus new match events) should be sitting in my inbox any minute now. Spoke to Woodg today and it seems he's taking my interest in helping to develop the new online translation system by testing it. According to him, testers will be paid for it, so I'm not complaining. The former system sucked so let's see what this new one brings us...
One final note for the quick face lift on this blog. I was kinda tired of the old one (ain't that the usual reason for changing things around?) so I just threw in another Blogger stock template. While I'm not hoping you actually like it, at least I hope it's easy on your eyes ;)
And that's basically my gripe with the movie: I didn't find it believable and from some point on I just didn't care anymore. To hell with the fate of humanity, I mean, it just became a big yawn for me halfway into it. Not even the sudden appearance of my very favourite Tim Robbins could lighten it up for me. The plot is shallow and it has nothing to do whatsoever with Wells' 1898 novel except that, well, it's also aliens attacking the Earth and they happen to walk around in tripods aswell. But that's about it. For me, the main difference between the original and this screening is that the former is believable and creepy and the latter really isn't. Not the worst movie I've ever seen (far from it) but definitely not one of the best. This however got me curious to see the 1953 version of the film which judging from online reviewing at large seems to be a wee bit better.
On other news, spent some time tinkering with NFS, trying to turn one of the spare machines into an MP3 server for the house only to figure out that it doesn't really work very well over the wireless network. Whereas using plain old ethernet cabling, it works just fine. Which sucks, because everyone here who could possibly make use of the system is pretty much on wireless mode, myself included. And cables, well, they tend to be a thing of the past. I'll give it a try later on with SMB but I guess the problem doesn't lie in the network filesystem anyway.
The translation for FM2006 is going smoothly. Sports Interactive has broken things in different and periodic batches this time around so we've been calmly setting our own deadlines and things have been working out. Tomorrow I'll deliver my part of the third batch and the fourth (plus new match events) should be sitting in my inbox any minute now. Spoke to Woodg today and it seems he's taking my interest in helping to develop the new online translation system by testing it. According to him, testers will be paid for it, so I'm not complaining. The former system sucked so let's see what this new one brings us...
One final note for the quick face lift on this blog. I was kinda tired of the old one (ain't that the usual reason for changing things around?) so I just threw in another Blogger stock template. While I'm not hoping you actually like it, at least I hope it's easy on your eyes ;)
Monday, July 04, 2005
Monday, June 13, 2005
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Friday, May 06, 2005
Thursday, April 07, 2005
In a time characterized by my complete lack of ability to figure out what I want do with my life, I've been trying hard to stay sane with limited practical results. Through the storm and raging winds going on within my head, I've come to a conclusion though: I like to think of myself as a programmer but to be completely honest about it I haven't done much to warrant such a tag. I'm often trapped on reading theorical text over theoretical text when I know by heart that the only way to learn programming and actually be good (not to say great) on it is to actually program. Which, you know, means writing code.
Millions of times before I've taken strong resolutions about my conduct on technical matters and how resilient I want to be, and all crap like that. Millions of times I tried and millions of times I failed. Not that I haven't been picking up stuff at all. I have and I realize I am now better than I was a couple of years ago but I also do realize that I should have made much more from the opportunites I've had all these years. It's not everyone who's fortunate enough to have gotten a microcomputer aged 6 or 7 and those who do usually are bright enough to take that chance and build upon it. I wasn't. Somewhere down the line through my youth there's a technical black hole, full of game playing, football playing and other assorted social life stuff which kept me from doing what I find myself thriving for: programming. Creating beautiful stuff using beautiful languages. The net effect of all this was that I didn't choose a CS related course during elementary school, opting instead for what here in Portugal is probably known as General Science area. In retrospect, it shouldn't be (and in all likelihood it isn't) a show stopper for what I want to become really good at. But it definitely means something.
By the way, let me be honest about this. I don't want to be really good for the others to see. Most of all, and call it whatever you like, I want to feel accomplished within myself and it's precisely the opposite that's happening right now. I have a bit of recognition from the others (which I truly do not deserve, at least the way I see it) but I'm deeply unhappy with what I have achieved so far. And knowing that I had the opportunity to make much more, having put most of it to waste, saddens me no end.
So now, I'm trying to do something about it. Tonight I had what people with alcohol problems call "a moment of clarity" (to quote Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction) and I've come to realize deep inside what it means (and feels) to write beautiful code and most of all to be able to see others' code due to open source. I realize this is all very silly and obvious, but in what I hope is not just a passing feeling, something clicked and I feel like I'm now, somehow, able to follow a slightly different and more focused path. I'm sick and tired of feeling like a blank matrix dying to be filled. I want to do something about it and I need to be focused in order to do so.
That focus has been very slippery and I'm desperately trying to catch it. And by the way, if you are actually reading this I hope I haven't brought you down with my self-deprecating whining. I really do.
Millions of times before I've taken strong resolutions about my conduct on technical matters and how resilient I want to be, and all crap like that. Millions of times I tried and millions of times I failed. Not that I haven't been picking up stuff at all. I have and I realize I am now better than I was a couple of years ago but I also do realize that I should have made much more from the opportunites I've had all these years. It's not everyone who's fortunate enough to have gotten a microcomputer aged 6 or 7 and those who do usually are bright enough to take that chance and build upon it. I wasn't. Somewhere down the line through my youth there's a technical black hole, full of game playing, football playing and other assorted social life stuff which kept me from doing what I find myself thriving for: programming. Creating beautiful stuff using beautiful languages. The net effect of all this was that I didn't choose a CS related course during elementary school, opting instead for what here in Portugal is probably known as General Science area. In retrospect, it shouldn't be (and in all likelihood it isn't) a show stopper for what I want to become really good at. But it definitely means something.
By the way, let me be honest about this. I don't want to be really good for the others to see. Most of all, and call it whatever you like, I want to feel accomplished within myself and it's precisely the opposite that's happening right now. I have a bit of recognition from the others (which I truly do not deserve, at least the way I see it) but I'm deeply unhappy with what I have achieved so far. And knowing that I had the opportunity to make much more, having put most of it to waste, saddens me no end.
So now, I'm trying to do something about it. Tonight I had what people with alcohol problems call "a moment of clarity" (to quote Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction) and I've come to realize deep inside what it means (and feels) to write beautiful code and most of all to be able to see others' code due to open source. I realize this is all very silly and obvious, but in what I hope is not just a passing feeling, something clicked and I feel like I'm now, somehow, able to follow a slightly different and more focused path. I'm sick and tired of feeling like a blank matrix dying to be filled. I want to do something about it and I need to be focused in order to do so.
That focus has been very slippery and I'm desperately trying to catch it. And by the way, if you are actually reading this I hope I haven't brought you down with my self-deprecating whining. I really do.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Interesting stuff coming from the Dream Theater camp as of lately! Not only have they finished recording the new album, set for release around May/June but the long-awaited debut solo album from guitarist extraordinaire John Petrucci, aptly titled Suspended Animation has also finally seen the light of day. And what a debut this is! Words can't really describe it and I'm simply in awe. This is top-notch guitar-driven instrumental stuff and you better hear it for yourself then make your own judgement. For me, this is already one of this year's strongest releases, hands down.
Vocalist James LaBrie also has a new solo project album out, titled Elements of Persuasion. I haven't yet listened to it but that's something bound to change within the next couple of hours. I'm particularly keen on listening to it as I have some kind of love-hate relationship with LaBrie. To be honest about it, these days I can't stand his shrieks and over-the-top pitch with DT but I absolutely love his style in Ayreon's The Human Equation, for instance. So let's see how this one turns out.
Last but definitely not least, and this comes with a bittersweet taste, Jordan Rudess is doing a few shows with one of my favourite 2004 acts, Blackfield. This is great because, as far as I'm concerned, both Jordan and Steven Wilson rock my world but it sucks at the same time because it's US-only and travelling overseas is probably the last thing on my book right now. Perhaps some bootlegs will surface, here's hope!
On a more personal note, if there's anyone out there regularly following this blog, I'm not sick or anything. The absence of posts lately is concerned with physical matters like different wave lengths which this post is unfortunately too small to contain. Stay tuned though! History is (probably) in the making! ;)
Vocalist James LaBrie also has a new solo project album out, titled Elements of Persuasion. I haven't yet listened to it but that's something bound to change within the next couple of hours. I'm particularly keen on listening to it as I have some kind of love-hate relationship with LaBrie. To be honest about it, these days I can't stand his shrieks and over-the-top pitch with DT but I absolutely love his style in Ayreon's The Human Equation, for instance. So let's see how this one turns out.
Last but definitely not least, and this comes with a bittersweet taste, Jordan Rudess is doing a few shows with one of my favourite 2004 acts, Blackfield. This is great because, as far as I'm concerned, both Jordan and Steven Wilson rock my world but it sucks at the same time because it's US-only and travelling overseas is probably the last thing on my book right now. Perhaps some bootlegs will surface, here's hope!
On a more personal note, if there's anyone out there regularly following this blog, I'm not sick or anything. The absence of posts lately is concerned with physical matters like different wave lengths which this post is unfortunately too small to contain. Stay tuned though! History is (probably) in the making! ;)
Friday, February 11, 2005
During my daily sweep of Planet Gnome I've come across an interesting piece of information from Robert Love's today's entry. Apparently Linus Torvalds uses this stripped down and lightweight version of Emacs called MicroEmacs (aka uemacs, with the 'u' attempting to resemble the micro symbol). This is some really lousy curiosity I'm writing about here, but now things come full circle. To cut to the chase, there's this documentary about Linux I've seen a couple of years back called "The Code". In it, we can see a close up shot of Linus' workstation monitor at his place back in San Jose or wherever, and he's calling this 'em' app to bring up an editor buffer containing some kernel source file. Until today I always thought that could simply be a shell alias for 'emacs' but now I know. It's Micro Emacs.
Shabby stories apart, this interests me because for a good while now I've preferred emacs over vi and derivatives. I don't want to go into the so-called Vi vs. Emacs holy war here so I'll make this brief. I like emacs better but I don't use much of its features. In fact they're completely useless to me and so they only contribute for bloating the whole thing. A lightweight, stripped-down version of it is probably just what I need. I've been increasingly feeling the necessity to get really comfortable with a text/code editor, I mean in a way that can in fact help my productivity and this might just be it.
So according to Robert on his weblog (I have to thank Robert for being so kind and answering some of my questions earlier on irc) you can grab the latest version of the uemacs source here. If you're a SuSE user it seems you can just get the 'uemacs' package aswell. I don't know if there's such a thing for Debian, but perhaps there is. In any case, I grabbed the source code and I guess the latest version going back all the way to 1999 doesn't really help the compilation process. It bailed out but the fix turns out to be not so difficult. After a bit of hacking, I've diff'ed a patch which you can apply to the pristine 4.0.15 version available on the aforementioned URL. It compiles cleanly for me using gcc-3.4 so it should be alright. All you then need to do, after applying the patch is running 'make'. There's also a Postscript file contained in the tarball which contains the uemacs reference manual. It seems to be quite useful for me right now. If you're interested you can grab my patch right here.
On another news, I'm really digging Motörhead's latest album, "Inferno". If you're a Steve Vai fan there's an added bonus for you, as he seems to participate in a couple of tracks. Check it out.
Just another quick note for the growing usefulness of DHTML and similar technology on the web these days. I plan to put together a few thoughts on this and related subjects on this blog later on but for now suffice to say that, contrary to what was happening a few years back, this kind of thing seems to be really taking off. Blogger's own composition system is a good example of this, with the on-the-fly 'preview' link. There are even full blown text processors completely web-based!
Shabby stories apart, this interests me because for a good while now I've preferred emacs over vi and derivatives. I don't want to go into the so-called Vi vs. Emacs holy war here so I'll make this brief. I like emacs better but I don't use much of its features. In fact they're completely useless to me and so they only contribute for bloating the whole thing. A lightweight, stripped-down version of it is probably just what I need. I've been increasingly feeling the necessity to get really comfortable with a text/code editor, I mean in a way that can in fact help my productivity and this might just be it.
So according to Robert on his weblog (I have to thank Robert for being so kind and answering some of my questions earlier on irc) you can grab the latest version of the uemacs source here. If you're a SuSE user it seems you can just get the 'uemacs' package aswell. I don't know if there's such a thing for Debian, but perhaps there is. In any case, I grabbed the source code and I guess the latest version going back all the way to 1999 doesn't really help the compilation process. It bailed out but the fix turns out to be not so difficult. After a bit of hacking, I've diff'ed a patch which you can apply to the pristine 4.0.15 version available on the aforementioned URL. It compiles cleanly for me using gcc-3.4 so it should be alright. All you then need to do, after applying the patch is running 'make'. There's also a Postscript file contained in the tarball which contains the uemacs reference manual. It seems to be quite useful for me right now. If you're interested you can grab my patch right here.
On another news, I'm really digging Motörhead's latest album, "Inferno". If you're a Steve Vai fan there's an added bonus for you, as he seems to participate in a couple of tracks. Check it out.
Just another quick note for the growing usefulness of DHTML and similar technology on the web these days. I plan to put together a few thoughts on this and related subjects on this blog later on but for now suffice to say that, contrary to what was happening a few years back, this kind of thing seems to be really taking off. Blogger's own composition system is a good example of this, with the on-the-fly 'preview' link. There are even full blown text processors completely web-based!
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Movie Review: "Cape Fear" (1991)
"You learn about loss."
Loss of innocence, loss of humanity, loss of freedom. "Cape Fear", acclaimed director Martin Scorsese's 1991 feature film, is all about loss and it tells a tale of how buried past mistakes can come back to haunt us. Whereas 1962's original film, of which this is a modern remake, dealt with an innocent man who finds himself stalked for no apparent reason, Scorsese's film adds a subtle twist to things and we find ourselves watching the story of the same man but this time he's far from being innocent. Even if the plot doesn't really bring anything new to the genre, it gains in suspense so thick you can cut it and in the depth of its characters.
Despite running for a little over two hours, "Cape Fear" doesn't really waste any time and it starts picking up speed right from the beginning. We quickly learn Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) is an attorney of the law, leading a stable life with a wife (Jessica Lange) and kid (Juliette Lewis), who happens to have committed a terrible mistake in the past. While defending a rapist, Max Cady (De Niro), in court, Bowden purposefully ommitted evidence which could work in favour of his client. He did that because he believes this kind of people should be locked away and not let in the open air. While this may be understood if not condoned from a purely moral point of view, his client doesn't think the same way and having spent the last fourteen years of his life in prison doesn't really help the cause. Twisted as Cady is, as soon as he gets out of jail, Bowden and his family are sure to be entering a world of pain.
If the plot I've just described is nothing otherworldly and nothing we haven't seen somewhere else, it's the way it's presented to the viewer that makes it stand out and become one of the best suspense films ever made which wouldn't leave Hitchcock the least bit ashamed. Scorsese's use of red and negative colored images adds an eerie edge to the film and violence is, from pretty much the very first minute, hovering above the proceedings. Throughout the movie, there are amazingly beautiful, albeit surreal, shots of the Bowden family home, with the sky shown in different colors, a metaphore for what's happening and being felt inside.
"Cape Fear", having a few similarities with De Palma's Blow Out, also features a few very interesting and lengthy dialogue passages, something which could easily be left out of a suspense film in favour of thrills and more thrills. Scorsese's knows how to play the game, though, and it's a joy to see the way Cady seduces Danielle, Bowden's daughter, or every single line of dialogue between Cady and Sam Bowden. Despite not being as noir as 1955's The Night of the Hunter, another stalker classic with Robert Mitchum in the leading role as the famous man with "love" and "hate" tatooed in his knuckles, it lends much from it on how it gives a sense of uneasyness to the viewer, the feeling it could happen to you too. The bridge between the two is the original "Cape Fear", which features exactly Robert Mitchum in the role of Max Cady and the late Gregory Peck as Bowden. Interestingly, the remake also features these two ancient masters of Hollywood which gives it another touch of pure class. Unfortunately, as I write this, both actors have already left this world for better things.
All in all, "Cape Fear" plays as a reference in suspense films for times to come. Robert De Niro, in another Oscar worthy performance, shows yet again how versatile he can be and how equally powerful he is in every role, even in the pathetic comedies he has featured in as of late. Here he can be scary, funny, thoughtful, lethal and he embodies the proverbial loss of humanity from the time he spends being sodomized in jail, to use his own words in the movie.
What goes around comes around and no matter how old our mistakes are they can still come back to haunt us in ways we don't even dare to think about. "Cape Fear" takes that premise to the extreme and Scorsese totally pulls it off in his very own magnetic and gripping way.
***1/2 out of 4
Loss of innocence, loss of humanity, loss of freedom. "Cape Fear", acclaimed director Martin Scorsese's 1991 feature film, is all about loss and it tells a tale of how buried past mistakes can come back to haunt us. Whereas 1962's original film, of which this is a modern remake, dealt with an innocent man who finds himself stalked for no apparent reason, Scorsese's film adds a subtle twist to things and we find ourselves watching the story of the same man but this time he's far from being innocent. Even if the plot doesn't really bring anything new to the genre, it gains in suspense so thick you can cut it and in the depth of its characters.
Despite running for a little over two hours, "Cape Fear" doesn't really waste any time and it starts picking up speed right from the beginning. We quickly learn Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) is an attorney of the law, leading a stable life with a wife (Jessica Lange) and kid (Juliette Lewis), who happens to have committed a terrible mistake in the past. While defending a rapist, Max Cady (De Niro), in court, Bowden purposefully ommitted evidence which could work in favour of his client. He did that because he believes this kind of people should be locked away and not let in the open air. While this may be understood if not condoned from a purely moral point of view, his client doesn't think the same way and having spent the last fourteen years of his life in prison doesn't really help the cause. Twisted as Cady is, as soon as he gets out of jail, Bowden and his family are sure to be entering a world of pain.
If the plot I've just described is nothing otherworldly and nothing we haven't seen somewhere else, it's the way it's presented to the viewer that makes it stand out and become one of the best suspense films ever made which wouldn't leave Hitchcock the least bit ashamed. Scorsese's use of red and negative colored images adds an eerie edge to the film and violence is, from pretty much the very first minute, hovering above the proceedings. Throughout the movie, there are amazingly beautiful, albeit surreal, shots of the Bowden family home, with the sky shown in different colors, a metaphore for what's happening and being felt inside.
"Cape Fear", having a few similarities with De Palma's Blow Out, also features a few very interesting and lengthy dialogue passages, something which could easily be left out of a suspense film in favour of thrills and more thrills. Scorsese's knows how to play the game, though, and it's a joy to see the way Cady seduces Danielle, Bowden's daughter, or every single line of dialogue between Cady and Sam Bowden. Despite not being as noir as 1955's The Night of the Hunter, another stalker classic with Robert Mitchum in the leading role as the famous man with "love" and "hate" tatooed in his knuckles, it lends much from it on how it gives a sense of uneasyness to the viewer, the feeling it could happen to you too. The bridge between the two is the original "Cape Fear", which features exactly Robert Mitchum in the role of Max Cady and the late Gregory Peck as Bowden. Interestingly, the remake also features these two ancient masters of Hollywood which gives it another touch of pure class. Unfortunately, as I write this, both actors have already left this world for better things.
All in all, "Cape Fear" plays as a reference in suspense films for times to come. Robert De Niro, in another Oscar worthy performance, shows yet again how versatile he can be and how equally powerful he is in every role, even in the pathetic comedies he has featured in as of late. Here he can be scary, funny, thoughtful, lethal and he embodies the proverbial loss of humanity from the time he spends being sodomized in jail, to use his own words in the movie.
What goes around comes around and no matter how old our mistakes are they can still come back to haunt us in ways we don't even dare to think about. "Cape Fear" takes that premise to the extreme and Scorsese totally pulls it off in his very own magnetic and gripping way.
***1/2 out of 4
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Well, uh, it's done. It could hardly have gone any better, I'm delighted to say. The exile was worth it, the hours I spent revising were worth it, the support from a few people was worth it.
So, in the best "24" crew lingo (something I learnt from Season 2's Making Of documentary), this is a semester wrap for Paulo! Bring on next semester (after a few days rest, please). Time to catch up with more books, more movies, more music.
If that's possible, that is.
So, in the best "24" crew lingo (something I learnt from Season 2's Making Of documentary), this is a semester wrap for Paulo! Bring on next semester (after a few days rest, please). Time to catch up with more books, more movies, more music.
If that's possible, that is.
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