Diary 2008-06-27

• easy_install rocks. Yes, I’m still at that stage in my python dwellings. In fact I still have some trouble deciding when to use list comprehensions or plain-old loops when doing something more complex than scanning or filtering elements on a list. Baby steps…

• When it rains it pours. I just found myself wanting to attend two concerts on the same day, and I’m not talking about the overlap between Super Bock Super Rock and Optimus Alive! (which did not take a great deal of thinking to decide go the Alive! way), but rather I’m going to the Fire & Ice concert in Sintra with some friends and just today (late, very late), I found out that António Pinho Vargas is doing a concert at CCB, related to the release of his new CD. The concert will be a solo piano recital of new versions of his songs from his jazz days, long ago —my favorite period. Oh well… Fire & Ice came first.

Diary 2008-06-22

• Last friday (June 20th) I went and got my braces installed (I am so sure this is not the right word!) on my upper teeth. The lower teeth will follow in a few months. This is something I’ve been putting off for some 18 years or so (that’s when I started the treatment and took out some teeth in preparation for the braces). So now I have two years to look forward to eating at snail’s pace and spending an inordinate amount of time cleaning my teeth every day. Should have done it already but I obviously let it slide until the “it’s now or never” time. Typical.
  The worst part, so far, is that I had to leave the sax lessons. I still had some hope I’d be able to cope (and some people actually do it), but it only took me the upper brace to realise that I don’t want to go through that kind of pain, especially when I have multiple other means of enjoying and making music. I’m just not a sufferer.
  So next week I’ll start with the music theory classes and I hope to be able to get into composition (my main goal) in a few months. As for playing music, I just had the piano tuned last week so (again) neighbors beware!

• Luckily the braces don’t affect me much in my everyday life (i.e. so far they don’t actually hurt —much), so this has been one really good weekend, with beach, running and swimming pool all combined to optimize chill-out and relaxing. Summer started yesterday and the days are going to get smaller and smaller, so now is the time to make the most of it;

• And running has really been very good; not only do I feel better running for greater distances (even with increased heat), but I am also getting much more flexible when I do the post-run stretches. For someone who was always as stiff as a board (even when I practised yoga), this is a very welcome novelty. The feel-good endorphins that running stimulate are not all bad either.
  Now that the weather is finally good, I also started swimming a bit after running (at weekends), mostly arms, as the legs are already being well exercised. If I could actually turn this into a weekend-routine it would be really great and I’m sure I’d be in tip-top shape by the end of the summer. Then again I know me pretty well and the lazy-ass in me is going to come out sooner or later, so I’m not pinning my hopes on that happening…
  I have been keeping my run-logs at runner+, but I’ve never been very parcial to having my content (especially written) kept outside my domain and my server, so I’ll start copying them to my weblog. Must do a service to diffuse them to both sites.

Diary 2008-06-16

Lots of things, none of it important… Let’s see:

• Traded in my trusty old Ford Focus CMAX.
  Every 4-years (or so) I switch cars (company car) and this time I must say that even though I love my new wheels, the CMAX was one great ride!
  I loved that car (even if I had to choose the gas version over the diesel at the time). It was reliable, sturdy and saw me through some very nice times and adventures. Good bye old friend, I’ll miss you! (insert suitable mellow music here);

• The drobo I’ve been raving about is really a nice piece of hardware.
  Alas, with my physical setup —which does not allow for decent ventilation for something as heat-generating as this—, the disk fans are always stuck in full throttle, giving my living-room the ambient noise of an airport (even using the cooler —pun intended— Western Digital disks).
  I definitely have to get my act together and do the renovations I need to do in the kitchen in order to stuff the disks, home server and modem in there;

• Just spent a really nice weekend up north, playing baby sitter to Melo’s kids.
  I can totally see why he gave up living in “the big city” and moved to the country. I actually got to sleep a whole night through until late in the morning (around nine-ish!)
  Also, I think I’ve gained a new fan, who wanted “uncle Nuno” to stick around for longer. Good times! :-)

• I am not getting in line to buy an iPhone. Sorry, I just can’t get excited enough, not without MMS, a decent camera and a few other tidbits.
  I’ll just wait for someone else to get one, let them use it for a few weeks and then I’ll try it out and talk to the users. That’s when I’ll make my decision about the new phone which I am now entitled to get, even though my Sony Ericsson K750i still rocks and I would really like to keep it for a bit more (although, of course, being 2-years old, it has decided to start acting up this very weekend! sigh…).
  Oh and I do know that the camera on the K750i is a 2mpx one, just like the one on the iPhone. And of course I also know that not all mpx where created the same and the K750i has one fantastic camera which blows away all others in it’s range. Sorry, that’s just the way it is;

• I’ve been running more and more lately and I’m starting to really get into it.
  This is something both new and unexpected. I’ve never liked collective sports, but even on the solo ones I’ve always preferred swimming or mountain-biking to running. Still, after I’ve lost some serious weight a while back, running became possible (without the almost certain prospect of some serious back injury) and now I find myself actually doing it with real pleasure.
  Up to now, though, I run with the bare minimum of stuff with me, the only gadget I take with me is a tiny (and ultra-light) iPod shuffle. But now I am starting to be lured into the realms of the social running sites (stuff like runnerplus.com) and so I have a decision to make: either I give in to the gadget- and stats-geek in me and get me something to monitor and report on my runs (I run with Nike+ shoes, so an iPod nano would do, but I could also go with myriad other solutions); or I just stick to the basics and track my runs by hand, with approximate values for length and duration.
  Knowing me, if I start to feed the geek, I’ll end up not feeling good about running “light” and I’ll have to take all the gadgets with me every single time I run (“gah! I missed one run, the stats will all be skewed from now on!”), but I just love feeling totally light and gadget-free while running (especially in the rain) so… I don’t know, I hope I can resist the temptation of geeking-up my exercise because there’s nothing that compares to the sense of freedom I get while doing it “light” (at least for now, that getting back to sailing is kind of out of the question;)

• I’ll also be trying to be a more social-geek (now there’s an oxymoron, if I ever heard one!) and start to be around other “people like me”. To that effect I’m planning on going to the second edition of Twittlis —the informal gathering of twitters in Lisbon. Anyone else planing to go? I hope this time I’ll be able to, honest!

So there you go, that’s my last few weeks in a nutshell. OK, a tiny, tiny nutshell. I’ll try to blog more often (and also about some more geeky-meety-stuff). But I’ll obviously fail. :-)