Diary 2007-08-21

Posted on August 21, 2007

Last Friday I went to Hot Club to listen to Sara Valente singing the songs of her new CD “Blue in Green”.
It was a pleasant evening, with some nice cool jazz. I think her voice isn’t quite there yet (maybe it is because the tour is just starting, maybe she was just not particularly inspired that evening or maybe I was just expecting too much), but I think it can get better. Also, the band was awesome and I find myself (surprisingly) admiring the work of jazz drummers more and more.
This was also an opportunity to finally see Nelson Cascais playing, after having read so much abot him, and I was really impressed with his talent (even if I don’t get the bass all that well –still have to grow into that I guess).

Then on the weekend I finally got to catch some nice sun in Alentejo. Not yet a solid beach weekend (or even day… or half-day…) but the temperature was high and the pool was refreshing so being a beggar for so long I can’t really be that much of a chooser.

Oh and I found out, to my utter amazement, that my dad (of all people!) reads this blog so “Hi dad!” :-)

Today I’ve become a (paying) subscriber of last.fm. Not that I couldn’t use the services they provide well enough with a free account, but they do give some interesting perks to paying subscribers and it feels good to contribute to something which I use so much and that gives me such a good experience.

In the mean while, the geeks are afoot with a new project which might just turn out to be a lot of fun (if we end up actually going forward with it). More on that later (maybe?)

Speaking of geek stuff, yesterday evening I had the pleasure of attending yet another one of Damian Conway’s talks, this time around it was about quantum physics, as applied to programming… Sort of…
The guys at LOG have (again) done a bang up job bringing Damian to Portugal and they were generous enough to allow access to this talk to anyone interested.
Always a very interesting (and incredibly funny) experience. If you are into programming (or science) and the opportunity ever comes along, I heartily recommend attending a talk (any talk) by Damian. You won’t be sorry!