Pedro Assunção » revelations

How to beat a nail into a hard wall

Pedro Assuncao — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:09:52 +0000

This is probably the first useful mass email that my mother sent me in a long, long time

In any case, it shows how to put a nail into a really hard wall without ending up bending the nail. I know i had this problem before in more than one occasion.

Can’t touch this (iphone) nah, nah nah nah

Pedro Assuncao — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:10:52 +0000

Ok, this is so freaking hilarious that i cannot help it but sharing. It seems that, when faced with the impossibility of using their iPhones with gloves on, some Koreans have started using miniature sausages (yes, sausages) for that effect. It seems that the composition of the sausage is similar enough to a human finger for the touch screen to work.

I wonder what someone in the 80s would say if you told them that – in the future – people will use sausages as a way to interact with computers…

Can we finally get rid of oil?

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:36:30 +0000

The other day I watched a movie entitled “the age of stupid“. Long story short, it shows the point of view of someone who, around 2055, survived a human species near eradication and built a tower with all the digital records of mankind and a bunch of other stuff too, like frozen animals, art pieces, etc. Just imagine a Noah’s arc on steroids – except for the fact that it’s not an arc, it’s a tower.

Anyways, he basically spends the entire movie preaching about our inability to be smart about the environment and supporting his words with snippets of TV news (actual footage from our times) about the environment, what oil companies are doing in developing countries, what we do with our cars and our planes, and so forth. This made me realize that I’m probably not doing enough for the environment and should start doing something about that fact.

In any case, today I just read about a new breakthrough in solar energy harnessing. Scientists made a discovery that allows a new type of solar panel to be 6x more efficient than traditional zync panels (the ones typically used today in solar power installations). It can even work underground! Can we ditch oil once we figure out how to replace plastics, now?

SWIFT transfers are monitored by US authorities (even European transfers)

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:37:03 +0000

I was really in shock when I went with my mother to the bank the other day: There was a small sheet of paper stating that bank transfers done via the SWIFT network are prone to have its details shared with US authorities. The network currently has two nodes working with the same data in almost real time, one in the Netherlands and one in the US, and the latter is – well – under US jurisdiction.

From the wikipedia:

Operations centers

SWIFT operates two data centers, one in the US and one in the Netherlands. These centers share information in near real-time. In case of a failure in one of the data centers, the other is able to handle the traffic of the complete network. Currently SWIFT is building a third data center in Switzerland, which is scheduled to start operating in the second half of 2009.^[4] Once this is completed, data from European SWIFT members will no longer be mirrored to the US data center. Also called Distributed Architecture will partition messaging into two zones, the European messaging zone and the Trans-Atlantic messaging zone.^[5] European Zone messages will be stored in the Netherlands and in a part of the Switzerland operating center, Trans-Atlantic Zone messages will be stored in the US and in a part of the Switzerland operating center that is segregated from the European Zone messages. Countries outside of Europe were by default allocated to the Trans-Atlantic Zone but could choose to have their messages stored in the European Zone.

Apparently there was a big fuss about this in 2006 and the SWIFT organization agreed to make changes to its server infrastructure so that the European transfer data would remain in Europe and not be accessible to the US government. I don’t know the current status of the subject but, according to that warning from the bank in Portugal, seems that the data is still shared and accessible. There was a vote for this information sharing to go forward in end of the July 2009 and it was supposed to be accepted, though I don’t know for sure the result.

Anyone with a financial background has more insight on this?

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Derren Brown gets money from losing tickets at dog tracks

Pedro Assuncao — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:00:00 +0000

This is absolutely amazing. I can imagine that it will not work with every single person, but even if it works with only half a con artist can make a lot of money with these techniques:

Checkout this and more videos of Derren Brown in action here.

Jesus is a mix of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Zombie

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:03:43 +0000

It does make sense.

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Happiness hat

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:43:58 +0000

Holly crap, just when you think every weird thing has been invented here comes a new one to blow your mind.

Introducing the happiness hat, the clothing accessory that makes sure you always have a smile on your face. Either that or you will experience intense pain until you do. From their website: “Frowning creates intense pain but a full smile leaves you pain free!”.

Wasn’t this you were always looking for to make your life happier?

Friendfeed youtube favorites integration

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:10:11 +0000

Awesome stuff. I had no idea that friendfeed also picked up stuff that you favorited on youtube. I just added this incredible BASE jumping video and saw this on my stream. Pretty cool:

It’s too bad that facebook apparently is not planning to continue developing this awesome service. One can only hope they will at least integrate it well into FB.

“Early riser” experiment conclusions

Pedro Assuncao — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:56:35 +0000

In case you didn’t read my entry on becoming an “early riser” (i.e. someone that gets up every day at the same (early) hour), I started a 30 day experiment to see what would happen to me both physically and mentally if I did. These are the conclusions.

Let me start by giving some background: I’ve always been one of those people that said they require – at least – 9 hours of sleep every night. The reason for this, for me, was that I always felt sleepy during my work days, so another purpose of the experiment was to try to refute this myth of mine.

During the 30 days there was only one when I broke the “always get up at the same time without hitting the snooze button” rule. And it was a Saturday, so don’t hold it against me . Just kidding. The reason why I did it was to demonstrate to myself how hard it is to give up on the infamous snooze button in the morning. I know it happens to everyone: “just 5 more minutes”. And then you just do the same 5 minutes later. Let me tell you: It’s bad!!! It’s evil!!! It will help crush your motivation for pretty much everything else.

But I digress, let’s go back. During the experiment the minimum amount of hours I slept in any given night was 5. It did, however, happen in one of the first nights so I will ignore it and assume the next value as the minimum: 6 hours and 30 minutes. The longest I slept was 9.30 (also in the first days, probably to recover from the previous 5). My average sleep time, all nights considered, was 7:35.

Minimum	Maximum	Average
6:30	9:30	7:35

There are a couple of interesting small conclusions that I can take from a look at the complete sleep data:

As you move along in the experiment, you body starts to regulate itself: Since you basically control your waking up time, your body will start asking to sleep when it’s actually really tired. This makes, in my opinion, a better way of regulating your sleep pattern (1). As a side effect, it seems that you will indeed start to get low sleeping time deviations. I.e., there are no “freak” sleep occurrences, like sleeping 20 hours, or 2 hours (2);
My actual sleep needs are actually less than what I had expected. And physically I don’t feel any more tired than before. If anything, I feel more awake and energized.

Data apart, I am sure that you will:

Feel more energized every morning after waking up instantly;
Usually wake up 1-2 minutes before the alarm clock triggers;
Experience a greater motivation, especially to work on personal stuff (pet projects, for instance);
Have a lot more time on your hands. Your weekends will feel like an entire week, with everything you can accomplish instead of being asleep for 4 more hours like I used to;

I also read in the post that motivated this that, generally, your mind would slowly start to give you a broader picture on your problems, instead of focusing so much on the details. I cannot say I have experienced this shift, but I do agree that a little more motivation goes a long way to make you think harder about the problems and their solutions, and that might have been what Steve referred to when he wrote that.

I hope you found the article interesting and I would definitely like to hear about your experiences on the subject

Peace.

NOTES:

(1) If you think about it the other way around you can understand it better. Imagine that you always go to bed at the same time. The problem with this is that you usually have a schedule of some sort to keep. Which forces you do one of two things: Either you don’t sleep enough or you go to bed when you still are not sleepy enough (and basically stay in bed wasting time). This approach makes it much harder for your body to regulate the sleep pattern. On the other hand, if you always wake up at the same time, you will never have problems with being on time for your appointments and you still make sure that you sleep enough (and only the required amount) because your body will be the one to tell you when it needs to sleep.

(2) Provided, of course, you don’t stay up getting hammered with friends at the local bar. But fear not, your body will ask to recover the next night, by making you sleep a lot earlier. The main thing to keep in mind is that you should never break the getting up rule.

Lunch reading habits

Pedro Assuncao — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:20:21 +0000

Lately I’ve been grabbing a couple of Paul Graham’s essays just before lunch and devouring them along with the meal. And I must say I’m getting addicted to them. He is clearly a well lived, intelligent person whose writing can be really inspiring to everyone, especially developers like me.

I recommend, with no particular order, the following:

The anatomy of determination : He breaks down the concept of determination and which factors can be worked on in order to increase it;
How to be an angel investor : If you are into that kind of thing (and especially if you have money to invest ), Paul explains the basics of investing in other people’s ideas;
Startups in 13 sentences : Explains the 13 things that he typically mentions to every startup founder he comes across. To dos and don’ts in startups;
Cities and Ambition : One of my personal favorites. In it, Paul talks about the kind of vibes that cities usually send your way, and how it is important to surround yourself with people that are ambitious in the same areas you are part of.
Disconnecting distraction : Exploring the concept of distraction, and what to do to get rid of it in order to make sure you take full advantage of your working time;
You weren’t meant to have a boss : Some cool analogies with food and wild life, depicting the idea that humans are not meant to work in large groups, but rather small ones.

But if I had to bring my list down to 2, I would say start with Cities and Ambition and You weren’t meant to have a boss.

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