• Twittering from the mobile phone is something that I do a lot. I can honestly say that for me the killer feature of Twitter is the SMS interface. When I am on-line I already have a number of virtual worlds (text-based) that I’m usually connected to and I also still hang around a couple-three IRC channels, not to mention having accounts in almost every single IM(-like) system I can remember, so on-line my instant communication needs are pretty much met, thankyouverymuch! But Twitter (or Jaiku, which is better than Twitter in principle, but is still just not all there yet) bridges the gap from on-line and IRL in a very nice way (especially if you remember that off is your friend!);

• Of course not everything is perfect with twittering on-the-go. The predictive technology mobile phones use is a God-sent to be sure, but sometimes you get some truly amusing mistakes. Just this week I sent out something along the lines of “it takes all lines”, when I meant “it takes all kinds”. It obviously gave rise to a crack about peace, love and fat joints. Oh the humanity! ;-)

• Another aspect of Twitter-by-SMS is that it only works if you keep a judiciously chosen list of people from whom you wish to receive updates on your “devices”. This list, I find, is in constant flux, with a given person entering, leaving and re-entering it as I feel more inclined to chat about this or that type of topics. In fact I find I have a few small groups of contacts which are usually “on” together. I wish there was an easy way to materialize these groups and change the mobile “subscription” based on those. Hum… now that I think about it, there may be an opportunity for a nice web-app here…

• And while I’m on the mobile phone subject, I think it is Melo who says that he constantly has his best ideas on the shower. Well, it regularly happens to me too so I’ve taken to dictating said ideas to my mobile phone (much as I do when I’m driving or otherwise occupied) and hopping I’ll later remember to write them down and maybe even act on them. It turns out I usually remember them pretty good after having dictated them, but the interesting fact is that I now find myself having almost 50 voice notes hanging around, waiting to be listened to, processed and deleted. Ouch!

• On a totally unrelated note, if you’re into music, do be sure to check out the latest episode of the Contrast Podcast to which I contributed with a rather nice (IMHO) song!

In the office I work at there’s a procedure (as in most places, I assume) that whenever the cleaning crew finishes with a WC they sign off on a control sheet plastered somewhere inside.

As is also usual, people started complaining that the cleaning crews weren’t coming over often enough and they started reporting that the supposed three visits per day weren’t happening at all.

So the cleaning crew stepped up to the plate and gave people what they wanted. We now have 2 or 3 visits per day per WC. On the gent’s WC in my floor, for example we can now read on the control sheet that they come over at around 06h30 (that’s AM) and then at around 09h30 (again AM). Sometimes we get an extra visit at around 08h00 (also AM).

Isn’t it nice to have one’s wish granted?

Note: This is just an idea at this stage, I don’t know if/when I’ll ever get around to implementing it. Knowing me, it will probably never happen, so don’t hold your breath if you find this to be interesting.

What is it?

Wazup is an idea of mine for a service that boils down to a site which lets me know, at a glance, what is happening now, near me. For a given definition of now. And of near.

Introduction and motivation

This project was born for a number of reasons, of which I highlight a few to help me keep on track if I ever get to developing it:

1. I wanted to learn Python and there is no better way to learn a new language than to have a real, useful project to build using it;
2. I wanted to try out the Google App Engine;
3. I wanted to build a new application and code it from the ground up (feeling nostalgic from the days when I did good old honest-to-God coding);
4. I also wanted it to be a web application, since I’ve never really written one of these;
5. I actually find myself sometimes in the late afternoon or early evening feeling like going out to do something and having to trawl through a number of sites and feeds that I keep with “interesting stuff” that is happening.

From the above list it should be apparent that even if I do know that there are probably a dozen such sites out there, I really want to indulge in thinking about (and maybe even prototyping) one.
As such, comments along the lines of “Yeah, but site X.com does it this way” or “Well, site Y.org does it better” are totally irrelevant so don’t bother.
On the other hand, comments which point me to nifty feature ideas or implementation details or something along these lines are most welcome (even if they may well end up not being considered for the exercise).

Intended features

First of all a warning: this is not a road-map for the app’s development. I’m not actually sure I’ll even ever get to build the thing. This is just a list of stuff I’d like to eventually have working, if I do go ahead and do it.

The numbers in front of each item are a crude idea of the importance of each idea. A ‘1’ means that it is important to have ASAP, a ‘3’ means that it can wait (and possibly will never get done at all).

And now, for the list:

• Handle multiple users and their respective data feeds and preferences (3);
• Handle multiple data sources, with fetchers and parsers built specifically for each one of them (1);
• Have an easy plug-in system to build such fetchers and parsers (1);
• Be able to fetch the data in real-time (unless I can figure out if the Google App Engine environment allows me to call a function regularly with some kind of scheduled job or something);
• Allow me to define what time-frame I’m interested in seeing (2);
• Allow me to pick and choose events to look at more closely (3);
• Allow me to choose how I want the results to be ordered (by location, by time, …) (2);
• Be aware of where I am (or allow me to tell it) and automatically adjust to show me the relevant events only (over-rideable, and using some of the many geo-location services available out there —so web2.0!) (3).

Lots and lots of little trivial things happening. Here are but a few…

• I’ve been playing around with an idea for a simple web-app that will allow me to test out the Google App Engine. It also forces me to learn a little bit about Python. All I need now is an account on the App Engine. But then I haven’t finished the app yet, so no rush;

• This past three-day weekend I went off the grid and took to the hills for a very different (and special) kind of hike. My feet have blisters on their soles, but I did walk ~90Km and did a lot of philosophizing and soul-searching and it felt really good. Walking like Donald Duck for the next few days, well, that I could do without;

• There are two “new” albums out there that could have been great. They are the Bauhaus’ “Go Away White” and The Breeders’ “Mountain Battles”. Both of them could have been great, but then both of them are “meh…”, at best. A shame really, I don’t know what artists of this caliber can be thinking of releasing this stuff. Might as well release another “Best Of”;

• Finally caught the “Blade Runner” on the big screen last night. There’s a reason that film is still a cult film after all these years. Watching it on a big screen with very decent quality and great sound was a great experience. Fun times!

Just uploaded a couple of old videos (formerly shown as videoblog entries here) to Flickr.

First impressions about Flickr’s new video capabilities:

• The 90 second limit is something I can understand for now, but which prevented me from posting some of my old videos (including my favourite one). If I do end up using Flickr to host my videos, though, I think I could make the 90 second limit work for me;

• Not being able to choose the thumbnail for the video (something which is coming soon, I think) is really annoying, especially if you make a small white-text-on-black-background intro as I usually do. I do hope this changes soon;

• From the two issues above I gather that Flickr isn’t really trying too hard to get into the full-fledged video hosting scene (as opposed to say YouTube), but rather they may be experimenting with making it easy for people to jot their mobile-phone videos down on the web. The thing is that here are already a couple (more?) good products out there that already do that, so let’s see how that pans out for them;

• The privacy and permission settings and controls already in place for photos also work on videos and that is a most welcome feature indeed!

Adding a new search engine plugin for CPAN to Firefox is actually pretty easy, so I’ll write it down here in order not to forget it.

You just have to edit a file by the name of CPAN.xml (or something similar that strikes your fancy) and stick it in firefoxe’s searchplugins directory. You might find it somewhere around /usr/lib/firefox-XX/searchplugins or, better yet, in you own homedir at .mozilla/firefox/XXXXXX.default/searchplugins).

Enter the following content into the file:

<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>CPAN</ShortName>
<Description>Comprehensive Perl Archive Network</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon,%00%00%01%00%01%00%10%10%00%00%00%00%00%00(%01%00%00%16%00%00%00(%00%00%00%10%00%00%00%20%00%00%00%01%00%04%00%00%00%00%00%C0%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%FF%FF%FF%00%7B%00%00%00%00%7B%00%00%7B%7B%00%00%00%00%7B%00%7B%00%7B%00%00%7B%7B%00%BD%BD%BD%00%7B%7B%7B%00%FF%00%00%00%00%FF%00%00%FF%FF%00%00%00%00%FF%00%FF%00%FF%00%00%FF%FF%00%00%00%00%00%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%F0%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF3l%FC%BF%EF%18%E6%D7%EB%F0%F6%DB%00%00%FA%E9%00%02%F8%C3al%FC%03te%F8%02Co%F0%02r%20%E0%01%5C%D0%E0%03%11%00%E6%0F%BF%E6'%1F%00%02%07%FF%00%06%87%FF2%80%E3%FF1%E0</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=all&amp;query={searchTerms}"/>
<moz:SearchForm>searchFormURL</moz:SearchForm>
</OpenSearchDescription>

The long line there is the funny little camel picture, and it must not be broken up.

It is actually trivial to create plugins to almost any search engine you can think of, this is just a good example that is handy for me.
If you need to add any extra parameters or so to the search, you can find the documentation for the search plugins at the mozilla developer center.

Note: Credit where it is due, I found the original example here and pretty much copied it over to this post with the minor fix of substituting the & Url element for the encoded version (&).

Amazingly enough, in this day and age there are still some people creating moo/mud-like virtual worlds.

This year’s (2008) April’s fools day Guncho was introduced (announcement here).

It is located at guncho.game-host.org 4108 and you can create your own character at http://cp.guncho.com/.

The wiki with all the info about the “game” is at http://wiki.guncho.com/.

The concept is interesting enough: any player can create realms for others to play in and the goal is essentially to implement a virtual reality base for people to create their interactive fiction with others.
Yes, it’s been done a long time ago on many a MU[D|OO|SH]. Still, the fact that nowadays someone actually created something like this with only a text interface intrigues me deeply.

I plan to take a closer look at this virtual world and if it turns out to be as interesting as it sounds, I’ll be taking some notes here.

Um ano. Já passou um ano. Caramba!

It was yesterday, the second date of the 2008 tour of Portishead and I was there.

I had never seen them perform live, so I guess I can say I’ve been waiting… more than 10 years for this!

And despite all the anticipation I had built up regarding this concert it still blew my socks off!

The new album is very different from anything they’d done in the past and somewhat “weird”, but it does work very well when played live; but the best part, by far, was that they chose to play lots and lots of the old stuff intertwined with the new songs. And everybody there knew those songs and was having an extremely good time!

While I can’t say for sure yet (it is still March, after all), I do believe this will be a strong contender for “concert of the year” (on my book, at least). It will undoubtedly make it into the top-5 at the very least.

So I have some (god-awful) pictures I took with my cell phone and they’re up at the usual place.

Also, if you read Portuguese, there was this guy there with us who also wrote about it on his blog.

I’ve seen this happening to many other people and now I come to the conclusion that I’ve fallen for it too.

Microblogging (in it’s many forms) is definitely taking most of the blogging out of me.

Twitter (makes more sense viewed in context with my friends), Jaiku and even Flickr (which won’t be all that interesting to you unless you have an account and are my friend, because only then do you get to see most of my pictures) are getting filled with a steady stream of my thoughts and presence, but the good old blog is dwindling a bit.

The fact that I can jot things down on these services via Instant Messenger, from my phone via SMS and MMS of via their respectives web interfaces makes it just so easy to spill my guts in there that I’ve come to find the act of actually blogging cumbersome and, many times, as too much trouble to be worth the effort.

Then again, the things I microblog about aren’t really that deep or important. Or even interesting sometimes. As an old curmudgeon friend of mine (who is himself on Twitter, but only updates to friends) is fond of saying: “IRC never died, it just became Twitter” and sometimes the level of the conversations there tend to prove just that.

Still, it is fun!

Today was yet another one of those days. There was this one song that felt strangely compelling and which I just couldn’t stop listening to.

This time around the choice… well no, not a choice really, you don’t choose these things, but I digress… The song in question, then, is Amen Omen by Ben Harper.

I really don’t think the song needs any explanation, the lyrics —which I transcribe below— are pretty obvious.
Today, for some reason, it just felt right that I listened to it over and again.

what started as a whisper
slowly turned into a scream
searching for an answer
where the question is unseen
i don’t know where you came from
and i don’t know where you’ve gone
old friends become old strangers
between the darkness and the dawn

amen omen
will i see your face again
amen omen
can i find the place within
to live my life without you

i still hear you saying
all of life is a chance
and is sweetest
when at a glance
but i live a hundred
lifetimes in a day
but i die a little
in every breath that i take

amen omen
will i see your face again
amen omen
can i find the place within
to live my life without you

i listen to a whisper
slowly drift away
silence is the loudest
parting word you never say
i put your world
into my veins
now a voiceless sympathy
is all that remains

amen omen
will i see your face again
amen omen
can i find the place within
to live my life without you

Once upon a time (roughly one year ago) this was the soundtrack to my life. But regardless of ever having experienced anything like this, I think anyone can surely appreciate the beauty of these words.

Well, this is a good surprise!

A while back I subscribed to a newsletter from CNET —Buzz Out Loud’s show notes, to be precise— and even if I do glance at it every time I receive it, I usually don’t click any link on it.

So today I got an automated email stating that they noticed I haven’t clicked on anything for a while now and asking whether I want to keep subscribed to the newsletter. If I don’t take any action I will be unsubscribed.

We know that unwanted e-mail can be a real headache, so if you want to continue to receive your CNET newsletters, please click the link below. No other action or forms are necessary: simply by clicking, you will let us know that you would like to remain a subscriber. Otherwise, we’ll unsubscribe you and help keep the clutter out of your in-box.

CNET has actually built an automated system for unsubscribing people when they don’t give out any signs of life in a while.
Wow! I’m amazed!

Sei que já não escrevo aqui há uns tempos. E ainda não é desta que me vou alongar muito, mas a propósito de algo que me anda a ocupar a mente desde há uns tempos encontrei hoje este artigo absolutamente brilhante que toca no ponto fucral da oferta de “Fundos de Certificado de Reforma” do governo.

O resumo da coisa é o seguinte:

Mas o que mais me preocupa é a sensação de volatilidade de opinião do próprio Estado. Como irei acreditar em alguém que acabou de alterar, unilateralmente, as condições de remuneração dos Certificados de Aforro? Que garantias tenho eu que o Estado não vai fazer a estes Fundos de Certificado de Reforma o mesmo que fez anteriormente aos Fundos de Pensões dos CTT ou da CGD? Agora é que é a valer?

Vejam quem sabe escrever a levantar a lebre como deve ser.

Está no forno neste momento o primeiro bolo que alguma vez fiz na vida.

É um bolo de laranja e fazê-lo não foi nada de especial, a Bimby trata das partes difíceis e/ou mais sujas da coisa.

Só houve um único momento de stress.

Quando me deu vontade de fazer um bolo fui ver o que precisava para o fazer e o que tinha em casa. Depois, como é Domingo e o mini-mercado ao pé de casa está fechado, fui até à Beloura, ao Hypercor, comprar o que me faltava.
Cheguei a casa, lavei a forma (recém-oferecida, estou a usá-la pela primeira vez), sequei-a e preparei-me para cozinhar: ingredientes todos à mão, Bimby ligada, forno a aquecer, martini servido: tudo estava a postos.

E então foi só começar: Colocar o açúcar - feito; Cortar e juntar a laranja - feito; juntar os três ovos… Três ovos… Três!! Bolas, podia jurar que quando li a receita antes de sair eles eram dois… Ah! cá está, um ovo inteiro e duas gemas. E eu só tenho dois ovos. E a Beloura ainda é longe.

Não há de ser nada, tod@s @s cozinheir@s que conheço aldrabam num pormenor ou noutro. Siga com a festa.

E pronto. Não é um artigo muito substancial, mas desde que voltei da viagem à neve ainda não tinha tido realmente tempo para parar um bocado e escrever qualquer coisa aqui (voltei literalmente do paraíso do ski para o inferno do trabalho) e assim fica registado o dia em que cozinhei o meu primeiro bolo.

Ainda hei de juntar aqui uma foto dele (se ficar com um aspecto minimamente apresentável, claro.)

E aqui está ele.

Para primeira experiência não está mau (pelo menos de aspecto). Agora é deixar arrefecer e comer de sobremesa.

I am not a huge fan of reading artist’s biographies and suchlike. Or at least I wasn’t. But this has been changing somewhat, as I’ve been finding out a few very interesting ones to… well, read or listen to or even watch. This is an account of my most recent forays into the realms of biographies and life-story recounting of a few musicians.

Elvis Costello

Yesterday, while searching through the iTunes store for a complete version of Elvis Costello’s “I Want You” (of which I only had an admittedly rough version, which didn’t include the guitar-and-vocals introduction), I found out that he had put out a podcast a while ago (around June-August of last year) in preparation for the release of the (then new) “My Aim Is True” package.

The subject of this time-limited podcast was the first ten years of his carrer and although I’m not a huge fan of his earlier work, I decided to download the ten episodes which I then listened to today, as I drove to and from work. They are short, at roughly 10-15 minutes each, and consist of him describing various aspects of his life, song-writing process and career steps in the “early days”.

Setting aside the fact that this is an obvious publicity stunt for the new release I mentioned, and taking into account the fact that I, as I’ve said before, am not that much of a fan of his earlier work, I did find it extremely interesting getting to know more about the man, the road he travelled to get where he is today and all the stories behind his songs and albums.

Just as a small teaser (for something which is getting to be nearly a year-old… nice going, Nuno), hearing people like Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and The Clash mentioned together as influences is always fun and there’s that mostly interesting statement about how we have to blame Bob Dylan and Johnny Mitchell for so many bad songs that came out of that era (if this shocks you, as well it should, please bear in mind that I’ve taken it woefully out of context —the phrase “emotionally incontinent” is uttered! Do check it out).
Finding out that the wonderful trumpet solo on “Ship Building” was played by none other than Chet Baker —and that it was mostly improvised, at that— was another good example of how interesting this series is.

Joy Division

Elvis is just one example of an interesting life-story, though, and another good one is the film “Control”, which I recently saw and liked a lot.

My knowledge of Joy Division’s music is not that far in depth and as far as Ian Curtis’ and the rest of the boys’ lives, well, that’s cursory at best.
In truth the film proved to be my major source of knowledge about them and Matie actually stumped me with the comment she left on my blog post about the film.

So now I have an item on my to-do list about reading up on the Joy Division story a bit more in-depth and, of course, New Order’s too. That should prove to be quite interesting, I expect.

Philip Glass

Then there’s the case of Philip Glass, whose book on composing and producing the three operas —”Einstein on the Beach”, “Satyagraha” and “Akhnaten“— was my faithful breakfast companion for a while.

I obviously didn’t get to see any of these (even if I had wanted to at the time, I don’t think that they would have been particularly suitable for toddlers) :-) but the fact is that I would have loved to have done so and I like the music of all three of the operas through and through (which serves to further my interest in their stories, insomuch as the recordings that are available are faithful to the original renditions which, according to the book, they are… mostly).

The fact that I loved those scores before having read the book made me realise how important it is to know the story behind them, because now, not only do I love the music, but I also understand it a whole lot better and benefit from listening to it all the more due to that fact.

Contemporary Artists - The mp3 Blogs

So I think I found yet another hobby. Which is great except that I am (as most of us are in these day and age) flooded with information and barely know where to turn to when I get a little time to dedicate to it.

This gets particularly acute when we consider contemporary (and mostly new) artists, which also have their stories and about whom I like to read before (actually while) listening to their new music. Call it their as-it-happens biography.
Whenever I get the time to do some exploring I am faced the hard task of deciding which new music I’m going to listen to (and, consequently, which artists I try to get to know at least a little bit about).

It is hard, though, selecting just a few pieces from everything that’s being produced out there and that is why I like to turn to a few trusted mp3/music blogs, most of which I’ve already listed a while ago. The fact that most of them cherry-pick only a few songs from each new album and provide some background on the song and/or artists, along with a terse commentary on each song, is a god-sent for people like me and I do find I’m discovering lots of great new music, that I wouldn’t be otherwise, because of these blogs.

Of course the fact that many record labels don’t get this type of site and don’t allow them to put up the mp3 files is just plain bad business decision-making on their part, but that’s a subject for a different post.

So there you have it from the old school to the brand new, music gets a whole new meaning when I not only enjoy it per-se, but also understand it’s story and the tales behind it.
In some cases I provide this “context” myself as is the case with many a record I listened to to exhaustion on my teens (and that’s all the context I’ll ever need in those cases) ;-) but in other instances it is very interesting and even rewarding to know the “oficial” stories behind the songs/albums/bands.

Update: I just realized that my current favorite mp3 blog is not on the list which is something I just couldn’t let be, now cloud I?
It’s name is the very lyrical “I Guess I’m Floating” and you may find it here. Happy hunting!