Pedro Assunção

Archive for the ‘exploration’ Category

Self physiotherapy

This is what my evenings look like now: moving my arm slowly, trying to recover wrist movement. It’s unbelievable what one month of no mobility will do to your tendons and muscles. Hopefully next week I can start proper (professional) physiotherapy and do it faster.

Trekking goodness

Trekking, what a great way to spend time with friends, enjoy the wilderness, and exercise, all at the same time. I just came back from the hardest one so far. It was 2 days of very real mountain climbing (we managed to move about 1.1km vertically, for a grand total of 30km on the entire [...]

Observations on vehicle traffic in India

I’ll keep this one short. I am currently visiting Bangalore – in the context of a business trip – and these are my observations/thoughts about the traffic in the streets here Most trucks don’t have tail lights. I mean, who needs to see trucks in the highway anyways? There are trucks parked in the highway. [...]

Going on a road trip

For the past few years i’ve been playing around with the idea of going on a road trip but was never able to get anyone else on board. After people start working it becomes very hard to organize common vacations amongst friends, so it just never happened. Last month i decided that i *have* to [...]

Isn’t music very similar?

One thing that both annoys and amazes me is the limited number of chord combinations in most songs. It’s extremely frequent to hear a musical composition and get that feeling that you heard it before. And we are probably right most of the times. In the last AC/DC album there is a song entitled “Big [...]

5000 km road trip to Holland

I have to say i felt completely exhausted. Humans were just not meant to spend 22 straight hours inside a car, much less sleep in one. In any case, i really needed to get my stuff out of the Netherlands and the alternatives were more expensive so it had to be done. Here’s roughly how [...]

Almost time to return

With less than 20 days until my return to the country where the sun does shine (Portugal), i can’t help but thinking more and more about these 3 years in Holland. With that in mind, i decided to write a really long post on my experiences here in the Netherlands during this time. For the [...]

Remote software developers

I recently found myself wondering about what would be the reasons why most IT companies don’t like the idea of having its employees working remotely. From the top of my head, and playing a devil’s advocate role, I can come up with: Working remotely gives you an excuse not to work; You are more easily [...]

Mars produces Methane, and so do I

Turns out that the methane that was found on Mars is not a product of meteor strikes, scientists have found, which means Mars actually produces methane. My question is: Where are the green aliens that fart all day to produce it? NOTE: After careful investigation, I found the following: “According to Dr. James L. A. [...]

Space elevator tryouts

It turns out the space elevator technology is really progressing. This week three teams will be in the Mojave desert to try out their designs. The objective is to make a robotic machine climb up a cable, that is attached to an helicopter 1km above the ground, using laser beams. The concept of the space [...]