Don't Think Again

Really. I mean it. When I'm dead, and nobody can ask me what I want... don't bury me or burn me near a cross or a priest. That's not what I want. I f*%$ing hate priests and religion. My dream would be to die alone, and not be found 'till weeks later. When I was found, my wish is that my death would be the reason and motive for a party: drink, smoke and get laid on my behalf. Please?

Oh, man... Is this trailler great or what? By the way, it isn't a real trailler, but a video who was made through editing and manipulating images from other movies.

I've got a working example of py2pchat, my little chat application. It has a nicely behaved GUI, a networking interface and even a nice icon:   It can only handle incoming or outgoing messages, not both at once. It doesn't have nice features like file-sharing or file-sending. Oh, and you can't run it unless you have Python 2.6.1 on Windows XP (haven't tested on other versions or platforms). It doesn't have much error checking either, but it doesn't crash. Here's a little snapshot of two py2pchat instances running on the same computer: Here 's a link to a zip file containg the .py files and the icon. Any feedback will be welcome! Now I'm going to sleep...

After my hacking days, I've found a very elegant way of letting little text chat clients (or other applications, for that matter) communicating between each other: a "listener" class. import socket, threading class listener(threading.Thread):     def __init__(self, handler, port=5543):         threading.Thread.__init__(self)         self.handler = handler         self.port = port         self.sock = socket.socket()         self.sock.bind(('',port))         self.sock.listen(1)     def run(self):         (conn,addr) = self.sock.accept()         while 1:             data = conn.recv(1024)     ...

I've been hacking around a little program I set myself out to do: a simple peer-to-peer chat application. I thought my main problem was gonna be making the networking interface work without requiring a server, or someone typing in the IP to find his brethren around local and remote networks. As it turns out, I was quite wrong (not very rare, too). I spent 2 or 3 days simply hacking around the interface, and working with text-based GUIs is not very pretty, but wxPython is unbelievably good. As for the network interface itself, I came to figure one thing out: there aren't many truly distributed networked applications around. Maybe gnutella , and GNUnet ... It stroke me just now: games should be fully-distributed too. Instead of having weird, server-based applications like Garena (very popular). Maybe a simple game, like tetris, chess or solitaire... in a distributed network...

I'm currently working on pt-br subtitles for a love-story-anime called 5 centimeter per second (秒速５センチ, Byousoku Go Senchi). Before starting this, I had already watched the movie 3 or 4 times. But even translating it, I can't help myself but to start crying. I'll post it here when it's done.

Sorry but I'm not a human being. I think I'm some weird animal (a lazy one), that has opposable thumbs and a highly developed brain. This isn't a metaphor or make believe. I actually make daily and life decisions with this in mind. My relationships with close people are run solely based on instinct. I've never said I was coherent.

Wanna know why television really sucks when it gets close to the end of the year? Answer: Christmas. If you're a young and bright filmmaker, trying to get a place for you. Trying to show your genius. And if you just had the greatest idea about this guy and that girl, that make a great story. A great christmas story... and if you think your movie will be fantastic, will be about caring and loving and sharing... Please, don't make that movie.

Big disappointment: Miranda doesn't support Google Talk. It's very light: less than 10MB in memory. Really usable, but lacks some of the original program's funcionality. And the winner is Digsby . I'll let you know if anything comes up.

On older PCs, or simply if you don't like wasting computer resources, you might have thought about how bad it is to have MSN Live Messenger, Google Talk, and Aol Instant Messenger running at the same time. I'm testing the some all-in-one messengers, and the first in my list is called Digsby , which promises not only gather many IM services interfaces together with e-mail and social networks like facebook and myspace . As far as CPU resources go, Digsby seems to be quite friendly. I haven't really tested his webcam or voice transmitting capabilities (yes, supposedly it works cross-client too). However, memory usage varies greatly ranging from an acceptable 12MB to up to 60MB. I expect this to vary based on the skins and features you're currently using. Right now, I've minimized Digsby, and it's using between 17MB and 20MB, which is quite acceptable. For comparison, if I close Digsby and start Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger, CPU usage is also very s...

I'm not an elder, but I've been around the net for a while. I'm guessing few people would actually complain if I stated that Google has changed the way people interact with the web. Maybe we should say there are two internets: internet B.G. and A.G. (before Google and after Google). Searching was really something slow and painful (sometimes it still is), even though we had Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and all those 1990s companies. I repeat: it was google that changed the web, not some abstract "way-everybody-searches". I'm interested in this because I tried downloading MSN Live Messenger typing "msn download" in Google and in Live Search. Guess who sorted the results better? Google did. Inspite of the fact that Live Search and Live Messenger all come from the same company. Now, I've been reading lately that Google says that the best way to improve searches (and other services, for that matter) is to gather, store and compare personal information. Wh...

The wikipedia page about amor fati starts by talking about the words, and what they mean: love of destiny. The mistake here is trying to give a definition without telling about the "hors" or outside of this conception. The expression was thoroughly used by Nietzsche. This isn't new... What did he meant?

I think this was the first lassegg video I've ever seen. Great one too.

This post isn't about me. After all, I didn't apply to Seth's program for two very good reasons: I had something lined up, and I couldn't afford to live at that place without taking at least a part-time job. But this is so freaking cool! Read up: "The smartest and most motivated young people are no longer itching to become investment bankers and lawyers. We're always hearing about a shortage of engineers or nurses--but there never seems to be a shortage of people eager to work 90 hours a week helping to move money from one pile to another." I can now proudly brag that my choices were based primarily on the assumption that I shouldn't do things just to hum along (i.e. investment banking or whatever...). I can now also humbly state that I'm still not sure about what I really should be doing-accomplishing-moving in a Seth-Godin-sense. But then again, this is "beyond the scope of my research"...

I heard people suicide more on holidays than average days. I'm not a "holidayist" myself, so I'd suicide equally on any day. Maybe I wouldn't suicide in holidays, because it would seem I was "Oh so sad" because of the holidays. Surely not suiciding this Christmas. No, sir.

You can now check for youselves why I decided to call these guy videos as "experiments".

This guy does very nice work. Maybe I'll post some of his experiments later on.

Aproveito a pluralidade linguística da internet pra postar também em português. O São Paulo, um time de futebol relativamente grande, foi campeão de mais um desses campeonatos que eu nem sei mais distinguir. Observei as discussões entre todos esses times de nomes estranhos: Corinthians, Cruzeiro, Galo, São Paulo, Palmeiras... Discussões acaloradas entre pessoas completamente estranhas umas às outras até então. Lembrei de quando os episódios 1, 2 e 3 de Star Wars foram lançados, num período próximo ao da trilogia do Senhor dos Anéis. E as discussões entre os fãs era: qual é a melhor saga, qual dos protagonistas é mais (ou menos) gay... Futebol é o vício de quem não tem coragem de se admitir nerd, afinal de contas, todo mundo sabe que o Frodo e o Sam têm um "lance".

Well... nobody can force you into doing nothing, so - please! - ackonwledge that everything you are and everything you do are your responsibility. Don't sit around doing nothing, or sit around - if doing nothing is what you want. Any project, any accomplishment, any amount of money... can't envelop a life. Don't pay to much attention to what everyone else is looking at: marriage, love, money, business, movies, celebrities, games... You can't be a part of "everybody". It'd be too sad.

Planeshift is like World of Warcraft, a 3D Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), but free. More than that, it's been produced by hobyist programmers, artists and musicians. It's free to play and was built freely. When I say free, I mean freedom AND no money. Cool, huh?

A little of geekiness can't hurt anybody, specially on these CSI , House and Dexter . The MSN Checker Sniffer is a little program that uses the WinPcap driver to tap onto someone's IP address and actually see or block their conversations. The catches: you can't tap onto any IP address, but only local ones; to really use this, you'd have to buy it.

I had read about Welcome to the NHK a while ago, but I didn´t feel like watching it then. Last month I got up to speed on Naruto Shippuuden, so it seemed logical to squander around a little. The anti-hero is a college student who dropped out and became increasingly anti-social. Everything sort of just pours out of this simple idea. Actually I was scared when I watched the first episode, but then I found myself strangely drawn back and back again.   I can't see this as a child anime, the theme is adult, and most of the action actually never happens. Most of the so-called "action" is simply the desperation, anguish and terrible expectations of our favorite anti-hero otaku. Thinking of animes, the main character rarely is what the anime's about. This one, for instance, is not about the character, but mostly about Japanese society and our post modern society all-in-all. We're not concerned about who has the most "chackra" (Naruto), or whose sword is bigger ...

I confess I had been procrastinatining watching this movie, since I've gotten disappointed by most movie-from-anime's I've seen. Naruto movie's suck. But this Fullmetal Alchemist's movie rocks. I'm not giving you spoilers or walkthroughs, but I can say this is as good as the original series itself. It picks up where the series left off, and show the continuing events afterwards. Must. See.

I'm not sure about entertainment. You've probably noticed I do consume a lot of it, but doesn't it makes our mind numb? Doesn't it transform human beings into buying machines and workers, and all sorts of bad things? And then there's art. It claims a status for itself that might be overrated. Art is a problem, even if you try to explain it through countless studies and interesting ideas and compelling political views. Entertainment isn't. Simple difference. Let's give it a try... how do you define art? Can't? Me neither. How do you define entertainment? Anything that's fun, and that'll help the time to pass and brighten up the day. If you watch a good moving picture, and you came out of it exactly like you were when you went in, but a little less stressed out... sorry, it was just a popcorn movie. It was entertainment. If the person coming out of the moving picture isn't quite the same as the one who went to watch it, it was art. And ...

Anyone who knows me personally knows I'm kind of a dork about series... I watched Fullmetal Alchemist, Naruto, Bleach, Heroes, Lost, House and may many others. My number one is Dexter. This friendly guy in the picture is actually a very neat serial killer. Maybe you should get to meet him.

  I'm have to tell you one more time: if you ever so much as went to college, even if for one semester... you should check out phdcomics.com .

Fine. Call me a dork. But I just can't help myself! These two little applications are so nice! The first, fast and expensive one is VMWare . Of course I didn't buy it, and simply used VMWare Player, which is a stripped down version. The Open Source, portable and cool application is QEmu ! What do these apps do anyway? They create a separate environment inside your computer, just like a new computer! VMWare sets some layers, but then runs the code directly on your hardware. QEmu takes emulation one step further, by simulating even the CPU itself. Whay should I care? [or] What can I do with VMWare and QEmu? Well, I can't think of all possibilities, but right now I'm writing this blog on Firefox on my Windows XP laptop. At the same time, I'm installing Knoppix (which is one of my favorite linux flavors around) on this machine, on a QEmu image. Why would you want another computer inside your computer? That's a nice question too, but easier to answer. When I was usi...

Interestingly, the more I get to know about Japan's distant culture, the more it seems that the exchange and the influences western and eastern cultures have on each other are twisted.

Another song from the Fullmetal Alchemist anime. 鋼の錬金術師の歌。

Here's the image:   Here's the original link: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1005    

I'm not exactly new to the world of blogging and to the internet, and - still - this world itself is still pretty new. What I've come to realize these days is that there is no such thing as "mainstream" in the net. No so long ago, if you didn't have money, you couldn't produce high quality content. That is not true anymore, neither for video, music nor for publicizing texts or books. So the odds are that, if you're good, or even average you'll find a way to keep getting audience from the net. Of course, I don't see this as a problem. Google got big because he made it easy for people to find stuff on the net (not just the web). Their search engine and optimizations and ideas are just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Other guys copied the ideas from Google and spiced them up, and also got successfull: Facebook and Myspace are simple examples. Well, here the problems start... I'll simply take the "blog example": Google indexes b...

Clear footage! Amazing! Unbelievable! And the music rooocks!

Last night was my turn at getting my back scratched by that painful tattoo needle. Of course it'd do it again. Well... I'm gonna have to do it again, because my tattoo isn't gonna be ready for at least another two sessions.

Just about one hour ago, my girlfriend finished getting her first tattoo. Tomorrow, it'll be my turn. More on this later.

I was browsing by my Google Reader subscriptions this noon, and I've come across this really unexpected article called "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science" HTML link here . By the way, the original Slashdot.org post is here at this blog, over at the right column. Two cool things about this paper: 1) Teaching a radical novelty is cruel. 2) Always keep your ears sharp for cheap metaphors.

While reading this article I came to realize two things: nobody has to upgrade if they don't want to; and people chose not to upgrade to Vista because it didn't offer anything new. On one hand, over the last decades, not having the latest software (and the hardware to run it) meant you're excluded from the digital and modern world. On the other hand, the newest products always were amazingly new, not just the same old products with a new face (as happens with Vista). Moore's law really has its upsides and downsides, doesn't it? It'd be really cool, inspite of what happened to the high-end, that the low-end would become ubiquitous. Believe me: it's not.