Application markets and stores are all the rage these days. Let’s see, there’s the apple store, the android market, Microsoft’s app store, Nokia’s OVI store, and probably a gazillion more. It’s like if you don’t have one, you don’t really exist. Well, now the eclipse IDE has got one as well. You can get plugins [...]
This guy has the most insane balance control i have ever seen on a bike. A true wizard, check it out:
As a part of my Ruby learning process, i decided to write something to retrieve the full list of brands that Coca Cola currently owns from their website. The list is split across multiple pages, but with some Ruby magic and a nice library called Hpricot to traverse the HTML it was 5 minutes of [...]
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. [...]
Let’s start with the question: Who the hell can live happily in negative temperatures? Maybe i’m biased, given my warmer origins but – man – there’s no way i could be happy living in a dark, cold place. It’s no wonder people who work in dark places (miners, underground train drivers, etc) tend to be [...]
Recently i had to fill one of those client/customer satisfaction surveys. Endless pages of “how well do you grade feature X” questions that frustrate you beyond the point of killing yourself and your colleagues. And that got me thinking: how about a simple form that asks “Are you happy? Yes/No”? If you answer “yes”, case [...]
Today i want to tell you about the best thing since canned tuna: a fantastic application that extends Finder’s functionality to provide you with features like tabs, cut-and-paste, dual-mode, and more. You know, the things that all of us have missed in Finder, one time or another. It’s appropriately named TotalFinder (in honor, i’m guessing, [...]
I really need to get a better traveling bag after watching this…
So here’s something you can’t find on the internets. Or at least i couldn’t, when i was trying to find a way to do this. The problem: Traditionally, spring and hibernate have been mostly used in web applications. In this case, you can easily define your domain objects to have lazy collections because spring/hibernate will [...]
I can’t believe this is so hard to find on Google. Someone sent me a documentary video (in Portuguese – unfortunately – but, if you understand German, the creators of this idea speak in their native language) and i can find hardly any references to this online. It’s basically about using a special aluminum powder [...]
Google is on a rampage. After opening up it’s short URL service to the general public, it now introduced a new image format (WebP) which they claim to achieve “an average 39% reduction in file size”. I wonder how long it will take for applications like Adobe Photoshop to include support for it. As a [...]
He seems to be a very respected scientist in his field, with a lot of publications and a job at a very prestigious university. Even Gunter Blobel, a biochemist and Nobel laureate seems to respect him quite a bit. Is it just a couple of years until we are able to remain young and healthy [...]
There i was at gate D83 (or should i say 53?), waiting for my flight back to Portugal when something suddenly starts beeping. I turn to look and see a man washing the floor who had just stepped through an unused set of security gates that is laying around there (see picture). If i’m not [...]
It’s funny how the greatest revelations come to us in thee strangest places. I’m having dinner in a shopping mall and all of a sudden, while thinking about why humans get bored, it strikes me that we are the ones who make everything boring. It’s our brains, all the time! Consider this: how many times [...]
I hurt a knee the last time I was out jumping, on a downwind landing. And it was all because of a combination of stupidity and lack of knowledge. The first because I did something I shouldn’t: I trusted a fellow skydiver’s direction instead of the wind sleeve. Turns out his direction was perfect for [...]
Wanna get your face in space? Just go to NASA’s website, choose a mission, and upload your pic. Time waste? Maybe. Fun to see your face in the rocket? Yep.
I don’t know about you, but i have still to find the perfect RSS reader. I don’t dislike Google Reader, but i always feel that things can be better (yeah, it’s both a curse and a blessing) and, recently, i found a little thing – called Feedsquares – that puts a nice twist on its [...]
At least if you are using Chrome 
If you drag any picture from your desktop to the message body it will get automagically included in the email. Pretty neat, uh?
As far as drummers go i always looked at Mike Portnoy – from the band DreamTheater – as one of my all time favorites. Only recently (and to my sorrow since he died in 1987) i came across the one who is definitely the greatest drummer of all time. I’m talking about Buddy Rich. Don’t [...]