Notes

The silence around here is caused by a 100% increase on the house population.

Our dog, Ginger, was pregnant and gave birth to 6 new puppies (pictures as soon as I get some power into my phone).

The problem was with the first puppy. It was too big (the father dog was bigger than her, so this puppies are big..) and she was couldn't deliver the puppies on her own. So she had to do a C-section.

It went well, but due to the number of puppies they had to do a lot of incisions. So the uterus was damaged, and they had to remove it. Also the ovaries. So no more puppies.

The other problem is that given that she didn't have them in the usual way, she didn't bond with the puppies. If you think of it, try to imagine awaking up from a drug induced sleep (you know, your regular morning), and having 6 rat-sized tubes of flesh sucking hard on you (ok, maybe that imagine is the wrong one for some of you...).

Anyway, the bottom line is that she is not accepting them as well as she should. And that means work for us.

Our first born waked up like clock work each three hours to eat. This time, we need to awake up each three hours to convince Ginger to let them eat. All six of them. Fortunately she has plenty of milk...

So its crazy time around here, not a lot of time at the computer.

I'll try to catch up next week. There is a lot going on with the iPhone launch, the crazy data plans in PT, the new apps, my new desktop at work, and XMPP stuff.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Some articles should have comments turned off.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Well, the kid is out of the bag.

Congratulations to all the the Carmo house (or at what is left of the house, thanks to the wonderful species that are contractors).

Anyway, after two kids myself, I enjoy seeing new parents, in a sadistic kind-of-way.

Unfortunately Rui has already set some pretty harsh rules, ruling out any kind of Perl adventures. Thats just not fair, he could learn so much with Uncle Melo (and now thats an even scarier picture in Rui's mind...).

Sleep, that's for kids.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Last February, Google's Android Team shocked the XMPP world by having the gall of saying that they where moving to a Binary encoding of their GTalk API in the M5 release.

Of course this sent shock waves through the XMPP community, not because they where totally wrong, but because they didn't have the vision to solve it.

We of course understand that they have their hands full (of vapor, some bad mouths would say...) getting the platform in shape for the late 2008 release, and the XMPP.. err, sorry, GTalk protocol is not a top priority.

Well, today Android users around the world can rejoice because once again, the XMPP Standards Foundation has risen to the challenge and unveils to the world the solution to the "verboseness" problem, by introducing the breakthrough Binary XMPP protocol.

This has been in development for quite some time, taking long hours of (sometimes) heated discussion. The goal is to have something that nobody could ever accuse of being verbose (the symbol count is extremely low, and the meaning is clear from the start), but at the same time remain compressible for those extreme cases where bandwidth is at a premium (we tested, and we have code to prove it: a Binary XMPP stream can be compressed to 2% of its original size). We know of clients that live in five-sides-shaped-buildings that, with their hard 9600 baud limits, will be the first to use this.

Its been a great ride, and it feels me with immense joy to be able to put my small signature as a co-author of this spec. Of course, my part is extremely small when you have the documentation genius of Peter Saint-Andre, and Fabio Forno strict guidelines and requirements, as co-authors. Its been a pleasure to work with both on this. And I should also thanks the important Kevin Smith contributions.

And now time to rest. SRV records are up at simplicidade.org domain, and Fabio's CM is running also.

PS: and yes, now you know why the prolonged silence around here.
PPS: for those who have moved on, the code is also available on GitHub.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Just a quick note to say that my fathers day present arrived today, a Booq Python XL.

Its a wonderful backpack, and my 17" is floating inside a bit.

Love it.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

To all fellow fathers out there, happy fathers day!

I'm going to give myself a present today, I'll post pictures when I get it, but in the meantime, damn you Carlos!

On a parting note, have you called your father already? Don't do it like me who always leaves this for last and then forgets about it.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Feel free to pitch in so that I can buy my next birthday present.

The second picture of the setup is amazing...

But yeah, I could settle for something in the range of a 1/50th of the total cost.

(via pfig)

Posted by Pedro Melo at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Things have not been good this past month.

My oldest kid got chicken pox, and a couple of days later I got it. And a week later the youngest got it.

It hit me pretty bad, and only last week I was able to start working again, but still felling a bit strange. This week I've been on and off with fever and body aches, weird.

So a lot of downtime, and given that I'm laptop-less until I can get the LCD fixed, I have "the shakes" like a good addict.

Thinks seem to be getting better now and I hope to forget the last 45 days soon.

In the meantime, I have about 20 posts in the draft folder so somethings cooking.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

So, without a Mac at home (I only have a borrowed Mac mini now, until I decide what to do with my broken Macbook Pro), I only have a Windows Laptop with a browser.

This means that all the tasks I took for granted, can only be performed now if I have a browser interface to them.

My mail does not, although I almost have Outlook configured to use my IMAP account. My RSS feeds are also out, never used the NetNewsWire synchronization to Newsgator, but I'm now back to writing a bit using Movable Type web interface.

Living in a browser really sucks, compared to all my desktop tools. Really. I don't understand how people prefer Web-based apps to real desktop ones. Granted, the synchronization problem is non-existing if you only use Web apps, but still, it feels a lousy trade-off.

Now back to bed and my next book.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

My oldest kid has chicken pox. It started showing up last friday.

For bonus points, and given that I never had it, I also started getting the symptoms saturday night and by sunday, it became official.

I'm also laptop-less, so my only Mac is at the office.

This all means is that I'll be reading a lot of books in the next 5 to 6 days, and that my mail reading will be mostly non-existing. Same goes for RSS feeds. All I can use right now is things with Web interfaces.

So have a nice week and a happy new year. My festivities will involve lubricating myself in gels to prevent scratching, something that some of you might find exciting.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

... a 18 months old kid with a death wish.

My youngest soon though that my iPod 5G was thirsty, so he offered it a bottle of water. The iPod was stupid enough to accept it, and now, not only I'm out of a Macbook Pro, I'm also iPod-less.

Merry Christmas to me!

PS: anybody going the the US soon? I have a order for you!

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

My problems with pain in the right arm are still here, and I've reduced my laptop-time.

So don't expect many updates in the coming weeks.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

So after two days of tests, apparently I don't have RSI.

The symptoms where similar but as far as the doctors can see from the tests they did, the problem is in my neck. I have a strange twist in my neck, its bent in a strange direction and that causes tension to the tendons of the right arm, causing the continuos pain I feel.

In turn, that causes the rest of the arm to hurt, specially working at the computer.

So, given that I still have almost 30 years of work ahead of me, and doing something else apart from programming is something that I would like to avoid at least for some years more, I've started some treatments to see if it can be fixed.

Apart of the pills to ease the pain, and the anesthetic gels, tomorrow morning I'm starting at the local gym, with a specialized training program to strengthen my neck muscles. As far as I could tell, it will be a mix of swimming pool and some sort of machine. Also, I need to stretch my neck using something that was probably invented by the spanish inquisition.

But the coolest part is that I will have to start using a collar at work, an orthopedic collar.

So let the sex jokes begin!

Posted by Pedro Melo at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

While talking to Alcides Fonseca about my kids, I remembered that I wanted to share something with you: my 3 years old knows the difference between iPod and MP3. And what's more, it wasn't me.

He picks up a Creative Labs thingie and calls it MP3, but both mine and Rosario's iPod are truly iPods.

Cool.

Next step: being able to distinguish between Python, Perl and Ruby...

Posted by Pedro Melo at 05:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

So after the latest laptop cleanup (format, install), I forgot to install AntiRSI...

Yep, i can't feel my right arm. So I will be working at half-speed for a day or two.

As usual it could not come in a worst time, but there some things that you don't mess with.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Two things to make your week start ok:

• Implementation detail;
• Skype problems.

I needed that. The rest of my week, work related, is not going to be easy or fun.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

via All Things Distributed:

2.223 million pre-orders on our sites world-wide. 1.4 million on Amazom.com alone. These orders trickled in over the period of 5.5 months, but from a distributed systems perspective today is the day as these orders go en-masse from pre-orders to orders, being charged and delivered. It is one smooth operation. The planning for single day delivery is truly impressive, especially on the supply-chain, transportation and fulfillment side where we need to do this without impacting the regular delivery flow. 1.3M books are being delivered today weighing close to 1700 tons. The excitement that our customers have for this book absolutely rubs off on anyone involved with the process and it was absolutely marvelous to see the kids run out of their houses when the UPS truck arrived in our street.

I pre-ordered mine January 5th. I got my email earlier today, it should be here early next week.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Well, pfig fell asleep while listening to a Audible book. I could tell you some nice stories about pfig falling a sleep... But I wont.

Anyway, he seems to thing that I drink my Harry Potter cool aid via Audible, and its not true. Although I do have book 6 in audio, it was the first Harry Potter I did listen to, because its the only one there. BTW, it is very well done, recommended.

But I did start thinking about my Audible collection. What have I been listening to this past 5+ years?

My Audiobooks group in iTunes has about 180 items, for a total of 8.88Gb of data (around 35.8 days). My most listened to book (yes, I do listen some of them more than once) is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

I have all the Ender books, plus all the Bean books. I prefer these last ones. The sort-of Risk-like action of the Giant series is very cool to read.

I have 15 books of the Discworld series, by Terry Pratchet, including all of the Guards theme, my favorite. I also have about 6 Agatha Christie books, a couple of Al Franken, 3 or 4 about the last War on Iraq (including all of Bob Woodward), C.S. Lewis, some Dan Brown (I listen to the DaVinci Code about 8 months before he hit the stores in Portugal, and read two more before that one. I still think he is a mediocre writer with a amazing capability to dump facts; read/listen to the Digital Fortress to see what I mean).

Douglas Adams is also present, with 5 books. The Bourne saga racks in 3 books, and it would be more if the production of The Bourne Ultimatum, which is pretty bad. Avoid.

John Le Carré is there, being one of my favorite writers. Neal Stephenson make an appearance with three more books. We also see J.R.Tolkien, with the Hobbit.

Then I have about 30 books of several authors. Two stand out: The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman, and Moneyball by Michael Lewis.

Finally I have a lot of Robin Williams interviews with some other Hollywood actors/actress, and a lot of radio shows of Your Mac Life.

I commute about 8 to 14 hours weekly, driving between Figureira da Foz and Lisboa (about 200km), two to three times each week, and this is the only way to make it sane.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I'm not in Lisbon, so I didn't feel the Earth move. At least not at that time of the day.

The question I have for those in Lisbon is very simple: did you knew where you towel was? Just in case?

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

... it's Lego.

Bought a bunch of them at the online store, but one of the ones I wanted apparently is not available in Portugal.

Hey, pfig, can you check out around your town for this and send it to me? Thanks :).

Update: I was able to order it from the online Lego shop! Strange, because last week I couldn't but yesterday it worked, at least they accepted my order. The only thing diferent between the two attempts was that yesterday I was logged on with a Lego Club account. For those wanting to buy 3772, I would suggest that you go to the Lego site, subscribe to the Lego club, sign in, and try to buy it them.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

For the past 3 months, I've been working as a freelancer.

In September, I left my previous employer, SAPO, where I worked for almost a year and a half as the Technical Project Manager for the Jabber/XMPP-powered instant messaging project, Mensageiro.

The switch was due to family issues. My second son was born May 31th, and since then the pressure of doing a 200km commute to Lisbon twice a week was getting a little bit more than I was willing to handle. Also, I was missing out on probably the best years of my kids.

So now I'm working on several projects.

First, I'm still attached to the XMPP project at SAPO while we switch server platforms. I don't think my work there is done (I don't think it will never be, really), and I expect to close some very cool features in the very near future. XMPP is getting a lot of publicity right now, and I praise SAPO for seeing this as a strategic area on which to focus resources.

Second, I'm working on a medium sized Catalyst/DBIx::Class project. This is giving me an opportunity to enhance my DBIx::Class skills. I plan to write a bit about this, but as an executive summary, I can tell you this: I first looked at it around version 0.4-something, and I was not at all impressed with it. The current version, however, is vastly superior, and I would encourage anybody who is doing DBI-related work to look at it.

Same could be said about Catalyst. If you only know pre-5.7 versions, you own yourself a favor and look it up again.

Third, I also preparing a new version of my family business site. My wife and I have a e-learning site, Evolui.COM, that has been a bit neglected in terms of upgrades and feature improvements. I've been re-factoring stuff, mostly in the back-office, to make it more productive for our day-to-day support people, and I hope to start hacking on the main site soon.

All in all, being near my family after almost 7 years with my wife, but always on the road, is probably the best move I made in a long time.

So 2006 had two major life switching events: my second son, and leaving behind 12 years working for others. Let´s see what 2007 will bring us.

Happy new year to you all!

Posted by Pedro Melo at 05:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Lately, I've been feeling "the pain". It starts after 7 hours at the office, and has become a major nuisance.

I'm only 35 and I wouldn't like to be unable to work by the age of 40 or 45, so I'm taking some steps. After a recommendation from João Bordalo at the local Mac-for-geeks list, I've installed AntiRSI, and so far I've been able to cope with the forced intervals, even when they appear in the middle of a wicked Perl line.

It's too soon to know if this will work or not, and a trip to the doctor (aka, my father) will be required, but for now, it seems to be forcing me to rest more.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 04:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I can't believe the amount of work I've been having the past few days: new baby, new macbook pro, new schedules...

I haven't open my mail in 6 or 7 days now, and I started by cutting from 230 feeds to 200. I will do a new round of cleanups to reduce them to 100. I have about 30 work related, so 100 seems good. If you have sent me mails, sorry. I should be back to looking at them next week.

The new baby is taking a lot of time. Everything is going well, both with him and my wife. And he is very peaceful. But the extra care and attention the older one requires now, is consuming all my time. It's an excellent investment for sure...

Weather in Portugal, and in Figueira more specific is amazing. Lots of walks with the kids.

Regarding the Macbook Pro, I got my 17" last Thursday, after they arrived at FNAC Norte Shopping. So fr so good. A couple of items of interest:

• It's fast, very fast;
• the screen is amazing. I can work outside in the middle of the day, without any problem;
• it's hot! I'm amazed Apple hasn't gotten sued by someone in the states. Don't even think on running this puppy over your bare legs;
• the fan is always working. It's pretty silent, but it's there. It's not a problem for me because my previous powerbook was also pretty much always with the fan on. And this one is quieter than the older one;
• CenOS was installed on a Parallels virtual machine without any problems, very cool;
• So far most my apps are running ok;
• battery time seems great so far, but my usage has been pretty light so far.

More later, if I can get the time.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

It's a boy, 3.0Kg, 49.5cm length, and he arrived in the 1 o'clock express yesterday afternoon.

Version 3.0 of myself is now in training for the most impressive processing machine, transforming large quantities of milk in large quantities of a smelly brown substance that fils entire diapers.

Older son still thinks this new toy moves a lot, and prefers to play with trains.

Mother is well, as can be expected with all the drugs.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

As you might have notice, sometimes there are weeks where I don't write nothing here.

This trend will accelerate in the next few weeks, while I'm on vacation.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

The Jabber community lost a dear friend this week. Peter Millard, long time Jabber friend, and Exodus author, passed away after a struggle with cancer.

I didn't knew him personally, but the quality and breadth of his work for this community make him a dear friend to all of us.

Peter has written about this loss.

My deepest condolences go to his wife Christina, and is daughter Zoe.

Technorati Tags: jabber

Posted by Pedro Melo at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Well, it was bound to happen.

I got a job offer. A great team of people I like offered me a change to work with some cool applications, and it will still be related to XMPP. The language will change but that's ok, because I also like Ruby :).

So sometime in the next couple of weeks I'll be starting to work at 37Signals. I wont talk about what I'll be doing, expect mentioning XMPP.

I had a great time at Sapo, and I hope they will do well. It was a great pleasure to work with Celso and all the gang.

PS: BTW, today is exactly one year since I joined Sapo.

Technorati Tags: 37signals, xmpp

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

A friend of mine mentioned Reboot 8.0 is coming up, and having attended Reboot 7.0 (and liked it a lot) he asked me if I was going.

My answer is that I'm going to ReBorn 2.0, because my second son will arrive more or less by that time.

A new son is probably the best closed source program I ever been part of.

Have fun, all of you going!

Technorati Tags: reboot

Posted by Pedro Melo at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I've never written down my new year resolutions before, but I want to keep track of them this time, so here they are. I thing my friends already have sufficient ammo to embarrass me on a daily basis, but I want to make their life even easier, one year from now.

The first thing I want to do is to change my main text editor. I've been using vi and/or vim since 1991/92. I've used other editors briefly. LightEditor was one of them, in early 90's, written by two friends of mine, Ulisses and Oscar. But I quickly switched to vi/vim. I had a few months of experience with emacs, but I already had a operating system, I didn't need another one. So I stuck with vim for the last few years.

But times move on, and for the past year or so, my life with vim is more of a struggle to have decent utf-8 support with Terminal.app than anything else. It's probably my fault, but I think that in 2005, utf-8 support is something that should just work. It should be the default. Specially if you are using a Mac.

So after 14 years, I'm switching to a new editor. My choice was TextMate. I'll be posting my findings in the coming weeks. Changing editors, specially when the keyboard shortcuts are already hard-wired inside your fingers, is scary.

The second thing I'm doing is dumping all the PC-style Logitech keyboards I've been using during the last 4 years. I've used them successfully with my last choice of operating system, Linux, but with the Mac they where never a perfect fit. The Logitech drivers where not that good, and I had to switch mentally from a PC-style keyboard to a Mac-style keyboard whenever I used the laptop keyboard directly. Things only get worse if you take in account that I use a PT layout.

The third thing is to make a decent "About me"-page somewhere around here. It seems that some people want to contact me and don't know how. Can't blame them really.

The fourth and last one I intend to do is complete or share more projects. I tend to talk about things I want to write/do, start documenting and coding, and then nothing sees the light of day. It seems that I'm a starter and not a finisher. I would like to change that.

Some of the projects I would like to start and release in some form or another, are:

• Net::Protocol::XMPP: my 3 years old project to implement a Perl library for XMPP with reusable components, and without any network code;
• POF: POE++, a small layer of object-oriented perl around POE;
• a Catalyst-driven PSP community site for Portuguese people: members would be able to keep their own games list, and the system would facilitate trades between them;
• a sourceforge-like setup based on Trac for all the lisbon.pm.org mongers.
• gather on a single wiki/trac/something all my cookbook recipes that keep me sane every day: scripts, one-liners, tips and tricks, just write the damn things somewhere;
• Kiwi: my geek/programmer/terminal-oriented wiki/oo-database/cross-reference thingy;
• Cronofagius: a system to keep all those cron emails from flooding your inbox/cron-folder.

Small list, I know.

This last thing, the fact that I cannot finish what I start, bothers me. If you want a excellent example, in Portugal, of somebody who seems to be a do-er, look no further than Carlos. In the last year, he put together a great set of services. Kudos to him for that. Lets see if I can catch up next year...

Technorati Tags: xmpp, perl5, 2006resolutions, jabber, textmate, poe, resolutions2006, vim, apple

Posted by Pedro Melo at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I bought^H^H^H^H^H^Hreceived as a present a PSP last October, and to be brief, it's been great.

For quite some time now, I couldn't get myself in front of a TV, plug all the PS2 stuff, and play. Sitting there in front of that brain-sucking-device seemed a waste of time. And it's a pity, because although not a hard-core gamer, I like to play video games a lot.

The PSP changed all that. Given that I can be almost any place I want and just play it, I got myself playing a lot more than I usually did.

My initial game was Ridge Racer. Lots of fun but right now, I've ended all the World Tour races in the first three levels, and two of the last level Max. To complete the entire game, I need to finish the last 4 or 5 races in the last level.

But Ridge Racer is now my second choice. For the last two weeks, I've been playing GTA Liberty City Stories. I loved playing GTA on the PS2, and being able to play it whenever you feel like it, it's awesome.

In the meantime, the usual suspects have also bought a PSP, so we can trade games and tips. And if you speak portuguese and want to participate, join us on our PSP mailing list.

To subscribe, send an empty email to psp-subscribe@lists.simplicidade.org. You'll get an email back to confirm your address and you're in.

So, if you want to give yourself a present this christmas, I recommend a PSP. Just rocks.

Useful links:

• PSP Fanboy: all the news you need;
• PSPUpdates: another news site;
• GTA LCS CheatSheet: all the shortcuts you could use (but really, don't)

Update: fixed email address to subscribe the PSP mailing list. Sorry bout that. Kudos to Hugo Carvalho for the heads up.

Technorati Tags: gta, psp, ridge racer

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I live in Condados de Taverede, on the south slope of the Serra da Boa Viagem near Figueira da Foz.

Right now, we have a big forest fire coming down towards figueira da foz. Started at 15:30.

I can see the flames from my house, 500mts or so away. My neighbor to the north had his home touched by the fire.

Right now I'm watering the roof tops, while planes loaded with water cruise be at low altitude. my house seems to be in their flight path right now, so we get a very closer look at them.

Back to the roof.

Update 20:30: until 10 minutes ago, it seemed that it was traveling west, passing us by. We can look to N/NW and see about 45º of horizon with a red sky, and specs of fire flying in the air.

But a new front appeared to the NE of our house, and that one is moving our way. So nest hours will be bad around here.

We moved António to another house, of friends in the city. He will sleep there tonight. Is safer.

Update 20:50: the second front is picking up steam, and it's a bit scary. The noise of the pine trees burning fills the air.

I'll try to get some pictures, but Murphy as always, is not helping: both cameras where out of batteries.

Update 00:40: We can see the top of the flames from the house. The second front is still dangerous to us.

Right now, there are 4 or 5 main areas burning. Near my brother-in-law house, we could see flames around 20/30 meters.

Going to sleep a bit, check back around 3:00 to see is the fire near us os closer or not.

Last update: I woke up around 3:00 and circled the house. I climbed to the roof again. The front that was closer to our home was controlled around 400mts from our home. We got lucky with the wind direction.

The areas near Buarcos (and notice that Buarcos is inside the urban perimeter) where still burning. My brother-in-law was awake most of the night, the fire was less than 100mts from his home.

Around 7:00 things where pretty much controlled around the city. The fire had turned north, to the mountain.

It's Tuesday now, and before getting back to Lisbon I was able to drive through the open roads in the mountain. Basically, it's not there anymore. The entire south slope is gone. All the trees, vegetation burned to the ground. I don't have exact numbers yet about the total area that was burned.

Officially, there was no house burned down, but I saw a lot of roofs with burned areas and houses that had everything burned all around them, so it was very close. Our neighbor to the north, the terrain around his house burned down. I saw the flames licking his walls and windows.

The north slope was still burning monday evening. It was declared extinct around 20:00 yesterday, but around 150 firemen where position to spend this night controlling the area.

We had 250 firemen, around 50 trucks and 4 planes in the area during the day and a half that the fire was active. There are no words to thank them all.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 06:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Portugal is under the worse forest fire season that I have any recollection of. I think that statistically, 4 years ago we had a worse year, but I'm not sure. This year, even if the burned area is lower, they hit several villages and there was substantial property loss as well.

I live in Figureira da Foz, by the ocean, near Coimbra, and we have a big fire right now near some important paper factories. They called in three CanadAir planes to fight it, and they choose to resupply in the river here 500 meters from my office. This was the fourth time they passed over and they keep coming, 4 or 5 minutes between refills.

The videos where taken with a Sony CyberShot with Auto-focus, so you'll see the image blurring from time to time. Also some solar flash is present sometimes, but I think they are worth the download time.

Tips on how to make the videos smaller (and for future reference, better) are appreciated.

First video was taken from my office window, it just shows the refilling part of the flight.

MOV02948.MPG, 27,5Mb, 1'20

The second one, I moved over to the river bank, and shows the approach they do near (understatement of the year...) the bridge and the refilling part. The second plane is impressive in that only at touch-down, we curves to line himself with the river...

MOV02949.MPG, 40,6Mb, 1'57

The third focus only on the approach "near" the bridge.

MOV02950.MPG, 42,3Mb, 1'57

I don't know nor I care how much this guys earn for this job. It's not enough...

They leave Spain and Italy to come here and clean our mess, when our elected officials are taking a break at the beach, and there are really no words of gratitude that we can give them.

Thank you.

fixed: MIME-types are now fixed. update: all videos now available.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Does anybody know where can I buy a IAXy in a European online store?

Very much appreciated any pointers.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

My ADSL2+ link is now up and running. 2048 down, 256 up. It was painless to install and configure the Huawei router provided by the ISP I'm using. Connected my old Airport base station in bridge mode.

Now I can work without having to worry about the bill at the end of the month. Last month, I had a €99 surprise from my previous ISP. Well, it was expected. I'm not accustomed to use a pay-per-use link.

I was just browsing their marketing site, and this page stands out. Not bad, but for a real switcher-like experience, the videos are lacking some background music :).

Technorati Tags: airport, adsl

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Back from vacation. One week on a luxurious hotel and spa. Sometimes you have to indulge yourself.

In fact, I got back Tuesday, but I was catching up on email and feeds: around 400 mails (after the 3645 spam messages got put aside by the wonderful SpamSieve) and 750 items on NetNewsWire.

Now back to our regular programming.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Day started at 5:15. Almost 5 hours of downtime of my service, pure stress. It's fun to debug distributed systems, closed source, with lousy debug and lot's of threads. It's not fun to find out that a stupid NLS_LANG can cause so much trouble. I hate Oracle sometimes.

Called a night around 22 hours, just in time to catch a movie.

If you ever get to watch a movie this month, choose this one: Sin City. One word: wow! It's so nice to see Jessica Alba again, the beautiful Manticore-engineered Max.

Going to bed now. The day starts at 5:30 again tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: oracle, puppy, sin city

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

After waiting almost 5 months for my order, I finally received my Iconize me! order this week. It was worth the wait!

You can see the result on my blog homepage, also on each archive page.

I choose the premium package, and I got a small .GIF useful to be used in webpages, a monstrous JPEG (2000x3000 something 300DPI), and a PDF version, vector version of it. Sweet!

Posted by Pedro Melo at 01:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

After carrying the same backpack for 3 or 4 years now, I was given a new one yesterday, as a birthday present.

Anyway, I decided to switch to the new one today, I can use the new one, it has more pockets. And I have a lot of stuff.

A lot of stuff. Those that know me personally know what I'm talking about. I carry with me around 10Kg of stuff always.

Anyway, I decided to document the contents of my backpack. You can find the result at my Flickr page.

Thanks, Cristina, this was a great present.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 01:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I'm sure of it!

Just yesterday, I was talking with Celso about good UML tools to use with our Macs. And just now, Rui writes about two of them: CanonSketch and TaskSketch. And they are written by two portuguese persons from Univ. of Madeira. Very cool!

I confess that my knowledge of UML is close to zero. I know what it is, in a general way, but I don't know how to use UML in real life. But I need to learn it. We have some people that work for us that use it, and I can see a lot of value there.

Now, I only need a good book about UML (suggestions anyone?) and see if I can generate Perl/Ruby/something from the exported XML files.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Techy rap? I think I died and gone somewhere...

Thanks goes to Brad to open my mind to this new genre.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

The day was ok, lot's of XMPP stuff, solved a couple of problems, created a few, learn some more.

I found out that, apart from Exodus (a Windows Jabber client), I could not find anything else with decent support for MUC. TKJabber might be be an option, but couldn't get it to work yet.

So I need a quick MUC-admin-client. I'll write one tonight it seems.

But now it's time to go. When I arrived at work this morning, I started my VPN connection to the lab network. It's now almost twelve and an half hour long session. It's enough.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

BabySafe. Pay the gentlemen. It's really the only safe way to put your laptop in the hands of the kid. It protects your data (although your screen is still a bit exposed).

And why you want to put the mac in the hands of your kid? Well, it's warfare. My wife prefers Windows, and I prefer UNIX and Mac in particular. So we have to win the kid when he's young.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I know Rui since 97 or 98 (can't remember) but only yesterday we noticed that we almost have line-of-sight between our homes in Lisbon (!!).

As he said, we should try to link our wireless networks some day, if not for listening to each other iTunes playlist, to have two different internet links. My 2Mb ADSL should be up and running sometime next month (I hope...), and his link is from a different provider.

Good connectivity... hums...

Posted by Pedro Melo at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Today is my first day at the new job mentioned earlier.

I'm now at Sapo to work on XMPP. I'll be working on the server-side, mainly.

The long period of silence is a direct result of a lot of work. Leaving my previous job requires documentation, 8 years worth in certain areas.

BTW, the documentation was mostly done in Kiwi, so I'll be publishing some of it in the near future. Also, I asked to bring with me some tools I wrote (or co-wrote in some cases) with me. I'll be cleaning them up and putting them on CPAN.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Today is my last day at the office. I'm moving to a new place, starting April 1st.

I'll be sort of on vacation for the next 3 weeks. The next week will still be documenting stuff (Kiwi has been really helpful, I must clean it up.) in text and audio (very useful).

I've been working here since March 97, 8 years ago, and after 10 years doing ISP stuff (real-time provisioning systems, offer management, and middle-ware stuff), I need a break.

At my new job, I'll be focusing in XMPP, server-side mostly. I'll also have a little bit of Identity stuff, and single sign-on.

More about this later, right now, clean up time.

Gloria from the album "Under a Blood Red Sky" by U2
Visite Du Vigile from the album "Ascenseur Pour L'échafaud" by Miles Davis

Posted by Pedro Melo at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

You want to write bugfix and you write bigfox.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Saturday was St. Gadget Day. I went to Porto to rent my old apartment. I was done earlier than I though, and by that time I got an SMS from Rui saying that he saw a Mac mini at a local store in Lisboa.

So I went to the local FNAC to see if I could spot one (first excuse). I also needed a new phone (second excuse) because my T68i had died that morning. The On/Off/No key did not work anymore. I had already talked to Rui about this, and settled on a K700i (also from Sony Ericsson).

So there I am, at FNAC. No Mac mini was found, but I saw the new (by portuguese standards) DSC-L1, a 4.1MegaPixels Cybershot. My previous older P1 was stolen some months ago and I was shopping around for a new one for quite some time.

The K700i was not available at that particular store, but the L1 was very nice. So I'm now the proud owner of a DSC-L1 Cybershot.

It's very small, that was my first impression. It fits neatly in the palm of my hand. Picture quality is very good for my average consumer standards. My wife as a 5MegaPixel Cybershoot, I don't remember the model, and I never liked it because it had to many controls and menus. This one is much simpler to use, which is nice to me. I read the manual from cover to cover, and I can memorize some things, but I don't use it everyday, so I tend to forget about a lot of them. It becomes very important to have a simple interface.

Anyway, I was a couple hundred Euros lighter (DSC, plus a Memory Stick Duo Pro 256Mb; I also bought a Griffin-Technology iSqueeze), and still no phone.

So I went to another FNAC, in Gaia. And yep, they had it. And yep, I have it too now.

It's a very nice phone. Nice and bright display, much improved over the T630 that I got at work (that I passed on to my wife). The camera (not that I use it much) is VGA quality (you can check the usual "Dead or Alive" pic), and it's good enough. Sending MMS is very nice, because it sends them in the background, freeing the phone for other stuff.

The phone is not tied to any operator so I'll be able to use it in the future (I'm changing networks in a month or two, more on that later), and that also means that I don't get any stupid locked icons and backgrounds. I was able to configure it with my home-page in no time, and I was able to sync with my Powerbook with no problems. 10 minutes later I add all my contacts inside the phone. iSync totally rocks.

One thing new for me: I can use Bluetooth File Exchange (a Apple app) to browse the content of the phone and get the pictures. Very nice. I was not able to do this with my T68i, not that I needed though. But it's nice to browse all the stuff inside the phone.

I haven't tried GPRS with the Mac yet, but there is no rush (famous last words).

The games that come with the phone (not that important) are nice. I was impressed with the quality of a tennis game that was preloaded. It's much better than Virtua Tennis that I got in my Nintendo SP. Impressive stuff.

Pairing the bluetooth HBH-600 headset was also trivial, but I haven't got the setup exactly as I wanted. I can't get the headset to be recognized all the time.

So, at the end of the day, I add a new camera and a new phone. Plus minor gadgets... It was a good day.

As I was leaving the store, I remembered that this particular FNAC has the Apple stuff in the first floor. Well, I still had a couple of minutes available, so I climbed the stairs.

And there it was, a 1.2Ghz Mac mini. What can I say? It's really really good looking piece of hardware. I took it in my hand (singular really), it's really light.

So yeah, Nuno lost the bet (I can't find a reference to it in his site, though...) and he owes me lunch.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

I love distributed systems, and I love reading about it.

Thanks to posts like this, I get plenty or extra reading material. I would like to work there, the kinds of problems they are solving are really what makes my brain wake up in the morning with a smile.

Seatle is a long way from Portugal, though.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

8:30

wake up, feed António for the third time since midnight

9:15

take Ginger into the garden, throw the ball a couple of times

9:30

leave for the office, make small detour to coffee shop for breakfast

9:45

work: mostly cfengine stuff, trial and error

13:30

home for lunch. Play a bit more with Ginger to calm her down

14:30

back at the office again, cfengine getting much better and saves a lot of time

19:30

home. Play with Ginger, she's never tired

20:00

arrive at the beach, with António and my wife, for a walk

20:45

home, António needs a bath

21:10

Milk, milk, and more milk

22:00

dinner

22:20

play with António until he falls a sleep

now

see today's pictures and rest a bit. It's hot, 28º outside

Today I got 10 out of 12. Tomorrow I'm hoping for more.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

António is going to be three months old next week. Sometimes he is pissed about something and starts yelling at the make-father-go-beserk-pitch.

But, my wife found the perfect drug to keep him quiet: Garfield! Yes, Garfield is the new designer drug to make kids (well, at least our kid) quiet. You wouldn't believe it. It's magic. Show him a nice print