Differences in coffee

Ahh, so that’s the real difference between all these sexy beverages!

I’m glad Lokesh Dhakar took the time to draw these great coffee drinks illustrations which explain the diferent components used in the making. More at his blog.

Zombie Apocalypse test

As it seems, if there was a zombie outburst in my town (Lisbon, Portugal) I wouldn’t survive for too long.

Anyway, just try the Zombie Apocalypse quiz and see how long you would last in a pandemonium of zombies and explosions everywhere. If you’re inspired, why not rent some great zombie movies like Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days Later or Army of Darkness (ok, not very traditional zombie like but still fun). Or read some inspiring comic books like Marvel Zombies or The Walking dead.

41%

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

Which Programming Lanuguage Are You?

Feel the love... or not

Pwn!

The blog needed something new XD

HackDay 2007 round-up

It’s been a few days since I returned home from London HackDay 2007, the first Yahoo! and BBC sponsored Hackday in Europe was a hit success, this was surely a weekend I won’t forget for a long time.

I have no words to describe how fantastic all of this was, there were talks about many of Yahoo’s and BBC’s API’s and other subjects, a enormous palace, pizza, lightning, indoor rain, faceball, blimps, annoying Nazbatag’s, Lego NXT robots with stencils, Doctor Who, GPS, mentos and coke experiences, Halo 2 multiplayer combat, playing Rayman on the Wii , lot’s of bluetooth and wi-fi hacks, the Rumble Strips concert, beanbags (I got mine!) and over seventy strange, creative and fantastic projects submitted for appreciation by the HackDay judges.

Want to know more?

• See the photos in the Flickr Gallery;
• Watch the short version of the Hack Day London Video (or the 15 minute long uncut one);
• Read the article from Wired Magazine;
• See or experience the winning hacks from HackDay at Yahoo! Developer website or in the wiki;

Anyway, I hope this serves as an example and more events like this show up in Europe, I guess when people feel they’ll learn a lot from the experience, they’ll participate and endure heaven and earth for things to be successful (even indoor raining).

So Kudos to the all the backstage crew at Yahoo and BBC for putting together this amazing event and all the great people who participated.

Interesting Patents

I’ve been truly busy in the last few days and haven’t given much attention to the blog but I’ll put some effort in the next days.

Anyway, I recently discovered Google Patents and decided to list the top 5 most interesting patents I’ve found.

1. Electrified table - cloth Richard E. Mahan

An electrified table cloth to prevent crawling insects or fry your unsuspecting family in anual meetings, who knows.

2. Method of stopping a stolen car without a high-speed chase, utilizing a bar code - Young Ill Choi

This is hilarious and aparently involves one of the following:

1. turn off the engine (uh?)
2. puncture the rear tires with bullets (with a pistol installed inside of both of the rear wheel covers)
3. puncture the rear tires by mechanical means (with two anchor knives which are installed inside of both of the rear wheel covers).

3. Monkey shaped camera bag - Michelle R. Kranz

I think this should be part of the next Bond movie, somewhere, I don’t care. We need a scene with a monkey shaped camera bag, pronto!

4. Finger Puppet - Hobart Ford

“The ornamental design for a finger puppet (…)”, dude, those are glasses… for a finger! How fantastic is that? Well not much, really.

5. Device for the treatment of hiccups - Philip Charles Ehlinger, Jr.

It seems the best way to treat hiccups is to shock someone until it passes, combine this with the table cloth for better results.

So, found any interesting patent worth sharing?

I’m going…

This 16th and 17th June, London is going to be the stage of the next Hack Day.

Alexandra Palace is going to be the meeting place for hundreds of hackers to play with tools, APIs, data, assist some delicious presentations from some respected web developers and also socialize with very interesting and talented people from all parts of Europe.

You can find more information in the official site or take a look at the user-contributed wiki which has a bunch of useful resources for those going.

I have my ticket and my expectations are high, I’m sure it will be a blast so I’ll see you there. :)

the good, the bad, the update

Microsoft delivered yet another impressive update (for better or for worst) for the Xbox 360 Dashboard and Xbox Live (as the two are linked together), to make the list short, here’s some of the new stuff:

* Windows Live Messenger Integration
* More detail in the “achievement unlocked” pop-up
* Enhanced family settings
* New Marketplace blade
* Enhancements to Xbox LIVE Arcade
* Ability to fast-forward, pause, and rewind video as it’s being downloaded from Marketplace
* A setting for consoles to finish downloading content, before powering down
* Crappy Marketplace Region Lockdown :|

Meanwhile, the fine people at Craxtion posted a detailed full list of new features brought by the update, you can read the whole XBox360 May Dash Update (Real) Feature List at Craxtion.

But if you wish for a more visual walktrough, you can watch a video explaining all the new updated features over at MaxConsole.

The video reproduction settings and accepted formats were vastly improved by Microsoft so it’s no wonder alot of doubts were brought up about streaming speeds, resolution, sizes, codecs, etc. Luckily, Engadget sought to end these doubts and explored all the technical issues in the article Spring Dashboard - Video Hands on at Engadget.

“Technically speaking the Xbox 360 now officially beats out the Apple TV in the digital video arena, both in resolution and bitrate. (At best the ATV only does up to 720p at 5Mbps, while the Xbox does 1080p up to 10Mbps; neither supports higher than stereo audio.) ”

If you’re looking into even more details about the new video playback features, the Team Xbox Blog (FYI: MS owned blog) posted a Spring 2007 Video Playback FAQ.

Unfortunately, the update also brought new measures to restrict users from getting content from a region where they didn’t “belong”. The following is a explanation from Microsoft at the GamerscoreBlog reads:

“(…) I understand that there’s often great content that you, me and my cats want on the US Marketplace that isn’t on any of the European Marketplaces – but if people are able to download content in countries that it’s not licensed for, people get upset, content gets pulled, cool new content doesn’t get uploaded to Marketplace, and everyone ends up unhappy.”

“Q: So when will Xbox Live members in Europe get the chance to download the kind of cool content that is, for example, available to US Xbox Live members on Video Marketplace?

Michael Newey: At the moment we have made no announcements about Xbox Live Video Marketplace for Europe.(…)”

Yeah, thanks alot. Thanks for the 1/3 of the US Xbox Marketplace content (Gamerpics, Themes, Game Addons, Movies, etc) and making me pay the same price as the other users.

I’m also very unhappy with the Babelfish style translations over at the Portuguese Xbox Marketplace mixed with the rest of the Dashboard items still in English, it’s soooo fun paying for an incomplete product with half the stuff from the other European countries and waiting double the time for all of it (even though, all the games are in English, so why the wait?).

In other words, if you neglect your users they will end up forgetting you.

woohoo

Yeah, I’m having a field day. :)

On another note, Dilbert’s comic strips always manage to cheer me up. Visit the official website for more laughter and funny games like the Mission Statement Generator - with great words of wisdom like:

“It is our mission to dramatically administrate parallel catalysts for change to stay competitive in tomorrow’s world”

It sure is.

Portuga from A to Z

The following seems to be a humorous work from 4 students at Feup (Faculdade de Engenharia Universidade do Porto) and it’s really , really , really very funny (if you understand portuguese ,that is).

Claudio Ferreira, Grifu, Helena Fonseca and Nuno Martins created this mini-guide to the Portuguese world in Flash, complete with videos and music of all the best and worst that define us. A pity I couldn’t contact the authors, this was sent to me by mail.

Anyway, if you’re feeling adventurous check out the Portuga, from A to Z guide.

what have you been playing this month?

I’m having a trouble trying to find time to spend on so many hobbies, side projects, social meetings and world domination schemes (ok, I partially forgot about these for now hehehe!).
As a result my gaming consoles have been neglected for a while in exchange for other stuff I’ve been doing, so here’s a quick look at the games I’ve started playing lately and still haven’t finished.

And you? what have you been playing this month?

Excite Truck

It feels strange at first to use the Wiimote (or Wii wireless controller) to control the truck’s mouvements but it compensates in the end for a great experience. I enjoyed the graphics but I think more could have been done in terms of debris and surroundings.
It’s very fun to play this with another friend and laugh as we spin the Wiimote up and down and to the sides franquily. :P
The soundtrack is horrible but you can put your own in a SD card so kudos for that decision.

WarioWare: Smooth Moves

WarioWare consists in a series of mini games that are all played with the Wiimote, each one is stranger than the other and as you keep progressing the game speed and dificultyincreases.
The multi-player aspect is the best part of the game and makes it the best party game for the Wii, if you’re going to play alone then the lifespan of the game won’t compensate that much.

Garanted to giver you a laugh (especially drunk).

Hotel Dusk 215

I’m a big fan of old school graphical adventure games and this game reminds me alot of those times. The environment is very unique, kinda reminds me of a certain 80’s music clip featuring the A-Ha but mixed with Twin Peaks.

There’s plenty of intriguing puzzles to solve and dirt to uncover in other people’s stories through the game. The Nintendo DS must be hold like a book and the use of the stylus is very intituive. Recommended.

Marvel Ultimate Heroes

Bash and smash your way through 5 chapters of Marvel goodness, what more could you want?

You can create your team of 4 heroes from the list of dozens of characters, ranging from the Avengers (old and new), X-men, Fantastic Four and a few other freaks ( here’s looking at you Ghost Rider). There’s also several costumes to choose from and unlockable powers.

The levels have a few suprises along the way to avoid keeping it boring but you’ll only make the most out of this game with severall friends which is easy on Xbox Live, erm, not so easy on the Wii.
As a bonus, the Xbox 360 version will have new characters to download soon. :)
Very fun to play and recommended for all comic lovers.

Comic Fans

If you happen to be in Lisbon I recommend you visit BDMania, which is in my opinion one of the best places to get international comic books or other interesting/rare merchandise.

Spider-Man 3 is coming and it’s shaping up to be fantastic, in the meantime, here’s some juicy content from the extended fight scene with Doc Octupus on the train from the second movie on Youtube.

Posters for the upcoming Transformer’s film are up at SuperHeroHype.

Mii’s are everywhere

Those Mii’s, they’re so funny and they seem to be raising in popularity from day to day, there’s even some online Mii creators in Flash, have you tried making your own Mii? or maybe your friends, it’s sure to give you a laugh.

This week

It seems some people just realized we “discovered” ( or bumped ) Australia along time ago.

OpenID 101

OpenID has been generating a lot of talk in the blogosphere lately, mainly among “web 2.0″ related sites. Don’t know what OpenId is? well, according to the official site:

“OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.
OpenID starts with the concept that anyone can identify themselves on the Internet the same way websites do-with a URI (also called a URL or web address). Since URIs are at the very core of Web architecture, they provide a solid foundation for user-centric identity.”

Well, that’s dandy and all, I won’t have to memorize 200 combinations of e-mails and passwords each time I join up a newly created website or service by an unknown startup (wink wink).
But for that we need moremore developers to get around to implement OpenId in their apps, right now some major websites have recently expressed their wish to do so, so why won’t we do that in Rails too? :)

It’s simple, so I gathered a bunch of resources, from simple explanations to videos to help take away any doubts.

What is OpenID and why should you care?

David talks about OpenID

OpenID Rails plugin

Rails, OpenID, and Acts as Authenticated - Ben Curtis

The OpenID Protocol for a Rails Consumer - Screencast

7 OpenID Resources for Rails Developers - RubyInside

Happy reading.

Advice from Mr. Miyamoto

In a recent interview to MTV, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto spoke a bit about the Wii, the Nintendo DS and ended the interview with an important advice for newer generations about life:

“I’d always been told growing up as a young child that America is a country that always is taking on new challenges, and that is something Nintendo has been doing.

My feeling is that the more you take on a new challenge and the more you sacrifice in trying to accomplish that new challenge and the more hardship you experience trying to overcome that challenge, the more that you grow as a person. Really, I like the idea of trying to do things differently from other people.

My advice to the MTV audience would be, don’t just continue to pursue the same fads that everyone else is doing. See what you personally can create and what you personally can bring to the world instead of following down the path that everyone else seems to be following. The more you can step off that path and be your own person, the more you’re going to grow and the more that you can experience in the world.”

You can catch the whole article at MTV , there’s also a partial video of the interview.

You want to build a startup?

Lately I’ve been real busy and hadn’t enough time to dedicate to this blog all the attention it deserves, so I decided to share some of the stuff I’ve been reading in the last few days about entrepreneurship and building a startup.

I’ve gathered a bunch of topics which cover most of the essential stuff you need to know when you’re thinking about dismissing your ’steady’ job and starting your own company focused on products or consulting. One of the great things about the internet is that you can take advantage of all the information lying around and learn something from other people’s point of view or mistakes.

5 reasons to create your first startup - Particle Tree

Small Biz 101: How to Get Started - 37Signals blog

Small Biz 101: Cash Flow -37Signals blog

Small Biz 101: No one starts with a masterpiece - 37Signals blog

How to start a Startup - Paul Graham

Ideas for startup - Paul Graham

Six Interesting Stats About Startup Success - onStartups

Roadmapping: How Your Product Finds Its Way - onStartups

Startup Suicide: Five Ways To Kill Your Startup, Which Will You Pick?

Do you know any useful resources to add to this list? Any advice worth sharing?

Naide Gomes wins another medal

Congratulations to Naide Gomes for winning the Gold Medal on the Long Jump competition, last Saturday on Birmingham’s National Arena, the second day on the on-going European Indoor Championships.
It’s another fantastic victory for Naide Gomes and portuguese sports but the award was left almost unnouticed in Portugal’s most sold sports newspapers (with the attention going to national soccer instead).
It’s a shame since Gomes’ winning leap was also a national record.

You can find more information on the the official website of the BEIJING 2008 Olympic Games.

Moo cards

A friend of mine just received a bunch of Moo Cards today.

Moo is an online printing service that lets you turn your Flickr photos into small business cards. (like half the size of regular ones). After you login to your Flickr account, there’s a nice drag, drop and crop interface which lets you choose your pictures for your cards.

You can order 100 of them for $20 and Flickr Pro users get 10 extra cards for free (wee). Quite frankly, they look awesome and are better than those “enterprise” black-and-white -and-looking-very-seriously-respectfull business cards.

I’m going to order a batch of them and show them when they arrive.