It’s been a busy cultural week. After a quick trip to Lisbon to watch “Star Wars in Concert”, the city of Coimbra was gifted with a performance from Nouvelle Vague. And what a concert it was! Would rate it top 3 in all the concerts I’ve attended in my life.
The sound, the set, the ambiance, the company, everything was very good. Piece of advice: if you can, go and listen. You won’t regret it.
Today, (28/02/2010) due to a storm passing along this fine country, my region was out of internet, cellular phones, tv, ATM’s, you name it.
All these technologies are marvellous. The downside side is that we are quite dependent of them. We simply can’t afford of not being able to have access to them, we have no way of connecting with our family, friends and eventually, the world itself. No one really thinks of these services as vital to one’s life, but as soon as we’re deprived of them they take a whole other level of importance.
Hours passed by as I was trying to do something on the internet, listening to some news on TV, etc. I read a fine book, but nonetheless i found myself disconnected from the world…
Let’s hope that we’re better prepared next time.
Adam Smith, one of the fathers of modern Economics, laid the foundations upon which most of our society rests, in monetary terms. He also speaks of creative destruction, meaning that from times to times a wave of destruction strucks the economy removing the inefficient companies and opening space for newer, more efficient ones.
Contrary to the beliefs of the owners of the closing companies, this actually does good to the general public and society as a whole, allowing us to pay less for the same/better services due to the removal of the already mentioned inefficiencies. By working for the self benefit, one usual works for the benefit of the society as a whole. Working to improve our business by making it more efficient allows us to remove unnecessary spending, thus making the prices go down, maintain general profit margins and allowing one company to sell more than their not so efficient rivals. To the consumer there’s a net gain, allowing him to pay less for the same product. This is a part of what capitalism really is.
But and what happens to the owners of the closing companies? They have their money invested on the company, workers they have to fire, wives to tell the bad news, etc. A typical familiar drama.
The suffering of the few for the greater good…
And so it arrived, finally. At least on my Macbook.
Being a technology geek, let’s go for a clean install. So lets backup all my important stuff. 50 minutes…
DVD inside tray, restart. On boot, a very Microsoft-like screen: all black, with an annoying blinking white cursor. What the hell? Must have made an error somewhere. Let’s do it again! Sh*t… Same story…
Oh well, back to Leopard and use the installer provided. Utilities, select drive to install, yada yada yada… This restart everything appeared as expected. What? 55 minutes to install? Wasn’t it supposed to be fast? Hey, if I’ve got this far…
Half a movie later… Hmm, finished. Another 50 minute wait to get back my stuff, plus a few program downloads and install. Another hour, I suppose. Hey! this login screen looks quite familiar… Gah! I just made a regular upgrade…
Install apart, it is very good. The laptop runs cooler, Safari opens lightning fast, Exposé is more logic, and the directory opening on the docking bar just got useful. The wireless signal strength on airport is a good innovation. But what got me was that it finally got rid of the most annoying thing. On my Leopard, if you had an enormous directory list and you were scrolling down, if you entered inside one and got back, it would go to the top of the directory list. Quite annoying. It was fixed!
Next step, clean install!
Being in “Cartola” while doing this post, listening to different people with different voice tones and loudness, I really thought about one thing that keeps us together as a group of people: Language.
Language is what allows us to communicate between ourselves. It is something that stimulates one or various senses, a common code that is understandable between 2 or more people to share some information. While we Humans usually speak, some people who can’t will communicate using other methods, like signs.
Language permits the translation of abstract thoughts into something that all will understand. This is particularly important on programming languages. Things considered quite hard to express, ideas that one have to solve a particular problem, can be expressed on a standard code that, while being considered unreadable by the common mortal, will be quite clear for the one familiar with the language.
That being said, why doesn’t Java support unsigned data types? And why aren’t they naturally objects?
We are organized into a group behavior known as a society. On a practical note, there are those who give the orders and those who obey them on a tree-like flow with quite a few layers. All for the greater good, the society itself, that is. This is true on most political or government systems, and should be quite good for those who are in charge.
On a daily basis, we have contact with this type of hierarchy on school or at work. While on school it is supposed to achieve a fast and good learning method, professionally speaking it is necessary to someone to lead the way. To give a common goal.
I used to think like this, and it’s quite funny as right now i consider it an utopic view of things. Most people don’t care about how it’s done, they just want it done perfectly and preferably, for yesterday. Wouldn’t all things be better if instead of the objective itself, most people focused on the path to that objective?
For me there are two general things that define existence as a whole, space and time. But as a living thing, I need to be alive to acknowledge that existence, I couldn’t care less if time and space existed if I wasn’t alive.
What is life? Mankind has been asking this same question for ages, and I believe we might not find a true answer. If we did, it would be God Himself, and I say this as not a religious person and those who know me in real life can testify that. The beginning of Life just can’t be explained because we’re inside of the concept. It’s the same with Mathematics, Math can’t prove itself since it’s using its own concepts and proofs.
With this I believe we must not waste our own, we should enjoy it, live it well, build some kind of legacy and hope that when we pass away the others will remember us for doing good things. That is my aim in life.
In the memory of Carlos Eduardo Marques Pinto. Carlitos, onde quer que estejas, um abraço…
The holidays are here, for most people anyway. I’m not one of them. 
We seem to have the need to let go of any work responsibilities we have and let loose on a beach/camping park/luxury hotel far far away. It’s just a thing we really can’t explain. We work all year around doing something that tires us, annoys us, gives us headaches, makes us sleep bad and prefer going somewhere else to be annoyed by others, sleep bad on the camping park, have huge hangovers, or just tire us by visiting foreign cities with lots of museums.
There’s really just one big difference. Someone forces us to do the first one, while we wait all year to do the second one.
It’s the same thing with any other activity. If a few years ago I was forced to read a book, I’d never lay my hands on it. If the same book was presented to my on any other occasion, if it was interesting enough I’d never stop reading it. I have always played games in my life, computer ones and normal ones. It’s just a hobby of mine. Yet, I had a games course this year on my university and while I learned quite a few interesting concepts, at the project part the thing could have gone a whole lot better.
Once again, it was almost forced on my group to do something using a certain framework. While it has its strengths, we had other things to do and also had a few group problems, but most importantly we needed to do it when we should have wanted to do it.
Well, this week I need to get back to work while my colleague is on vacation.
I’m Portuguese, so when a fellow countryman has the world’s spotlights upon him I should be proud. Even if he speaks a strange language, neither Portuguese, English or Spanish, I should hear his spoken words like music. Even if his dressing style would embarrass quite a few, I should buy my wardrobe on his sister’s family store.
Some may say this is just old and pure envy. After all, he has the world on his feet, does for a living what he likes most (apart from orgying) and that gives him more money per year than us common mortals can win in a lifetime.
But it may be just me, but apart from the money part it just doesn’t impress me. He was born in the same geographical border than me (and that could lead quite an argument about Madeira Islands but that would be another post), but I can’t really see how that is supposed to make me like him.
Speaking about football, which I’m not a big follower, he scored one great goal on the match against my team. On Portugal’s squad he has said some quite nasty stuff and some say that his exhibitions aren’t that impressive. So why should I be impressed?
Yet all the newspapers spent 30 minutes when he was presented on Real Madrid’s fans. There were wars happening in the World, people fighting for their rights, yet all that was important for 30 minutes was a football player saying 2 sentences in Spanish and giving a few kicks on the ball.
It’s “Fátima, Fado e Futebol” all over again.
Music, books and movies… All different kinds of art to entertain us. You can find them all online, readily available for the download of anyone wanting a particular item. Yet, in my own view, not all should be attained in a digital way.
One of my pleasures in life is to buy a new book. Go to the local bookstore, search a few minutes for that eye catching book, check the latest offers, read a few more pages of that book that, while interesting, you’re not quite ready to spend a few euros on it. After the purchase, the smell of the fresh paper, the texture of the recently acquired pages. That’s a big part of the experience of having a book. Almost the same of smelling a recently bought Karate-Gi. Weird, I know, but if anyone has done it, you know what I’m talking about. Then after reading, adding the book to your longtime kept library with your other “treasures”.
On the movies part, the pleasure of walking to the cinema with a friend, sitting on a quite comfortable seat, the dark room where all of your senses except vision and hearing are ignored. That hour and a half where time stops passing (if the film is good), and the world stays outside, not bugging you with its problems. Ah, lets not forget the annoying popcorn eaters and their “munch-munch” sound, but that’s another story. All in all the cinema is a quite pleasurable experience. Afterwards if the movie was really good, buying the DVD. The same can be said by any good TV Show, at least I would like to own the originals of the full series of Seinfeld, The Simpsons, House MD, How I Met your Mother, The Family Guy, South Park, just to name a few…
Music on the other hand, feels different for me. I really don’t mind of not having a CD. It’s odd, I can’t see music, I only hear it. Maybe because I don’t spend almost anytime of day just hearing music, I’m just doing something else and music is a nice compliment for that particular task. Yet, I can’t live without it. Like that need that you have yet you can’t really tell how important it is. Need to buy that Mp3 player though…
