I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Archive for the 'general' Category
Just got through a nice series of trials until I managed to write a small howto on how to get your GPRS Orange phone to allow you to connect to the Internet using Linux (which is very convenient, since Orange UK has got nice pay-as-you-go data plans, including one day of unlimited acces for 1 quid… and more importantly because I don’t have connection at home! ;P)
However, this also made evident I don’t have proper ways of publishing articles and other stuff as part of the blog… damn!
Ok, I promise to spend some time refurbishing the website during next week! (You can repeteadly hit me with a copy of “Code Complete, 2nd Edition” if I don’t!)
Last week, one of my all-time super-idols in the Computer Universe joined Google }:D
But you know what is bad about it.. Nobody has published anything yet, I could be the first poster in the whole blogosphere… but, due to this damn confidentiality thingies, will have to wait until more info is available!
*sigh* things one has to do not to be evil…
Anyway, wil post an update as soon as I confirm I can tell… because the guy is definitely worth it! Hint: a lot of the modern concepts of programming, parsing and operating systems were conceived by this person!
give this one a try!
This week there has been a very interesting discussion on the math list at google. Basically one of the engineers was asking about how to encourage mathematical abilities on a children. I can’t post the whole thread, but he has made a nice summary of some of the books and resources that other engineers mentioned in his blog:
Recommendations for Math Prodigies
Most of these are very recommended if you like Maths and/or you happen to have children.
And anyway, now that I think about it, some of these are even MORE recommended if you DON’T like maths. Why? Because they show exactly why Maths are useful. If you read books like “The number devil” you normally can’t help feeling a bit curious about Maths. Books like Polya’s “How to think” show you how to even get better. Plus, other books like “Innumeracy”, by John Allen Paulos, or “Freakonomics”, by Lewitt, which basically have been a huge success, are just about showing the application of basic statistics and economic theory mathematics to our everyday’s world… and how some people (from politicians to sales representatives) misuse these…
I think Maths are fun if you actually know what you can do with them… what do you think?
Tough some of these animations are a little bit “too professional” considering the problems they show, I’ve added a link to GapMinder presentations of the UN Human Development Trend statistics for this year (also in my del.icio.us)
Just this week I was having conversations about this… how come we still don’t realize how lucky we are for being born in a place with a relatively high income & a good health system? How is it that even tough we have everything so easy, instead of trying to help others we prefer to worry about which of the participants on Big Brother we want to leave the house? Don’t we see there are better things to spend our time on?
I think the main reason for this type of blindness is brainwashi… err, I mean educational… you can draw your own conclusions
The total lack of time I always have, added up to the amount of information I haven’t blogged about, has been keeping me away from writing. However, I’ve been given some interesting advice about blogging, so I’m up for getting back to write and do it better. To start with, I decided to keep posting periodically, and give me some 2 weeks or so (maximum) between posts… to avoid getting worried about the amount of info I haven’t blogged about
And of course, I’ll start some point this week with a long long post about some important events I didn’t had time to blog about, from the conference on Scrum, to the last CodeCamp (including photos of me in a Legolas outfit)
Keep connected for more news! };P
Checking the website is taking me longer than expected (damn exams!), hopefully I’ll be back online next week.
Meanwhile, via Jimmac’s -> Jamin’s blogs I found this New Scientist’s article about how to improve your brain. Worth reading.
Also, there’s this project of creating a wiki comprising techniques and tricks on how to become a better thinker: the Mentat wiki. On their own words: “a wiki for exploring ways to become a better thinker. Topics explored on the wiki include memory techniques, mental math, critical thinking, brainstorming, shorthand systems, notebook systems, and smart drugs”. Quite interesting, don’t you think? I’ve been browsing around and will probably give some of this things a try. After all, we know it’s a common problem if there is even a t-shirt for it
