Alcides Fonseca

I’m still not completely sure what I think of the sit-com The Big Bang Theory. For those who don’t know this TV series, it’s about two nerdy, geeky housemates and the pretty but slightly dumb blonde who moves in across the hall from them. On one side it’s aiming very much to the geek crowd, with insider jokes only geeks will understand. On the other side though it features stereotypical geeks and makes fun of them.

All that aside, in this week’s episode Sheldon explains the rules to Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock, a variation of the known game Rock, Paper, Scissors:

Apparently it’s been around for some time already (invented by Sam Kass), and has been floating around as a internet meme. Here are the rules one more time:

It can be even more elaborate though; check this version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Gun, Dynamite, Nuke, Lightning, Devil, Dragon, Alien, Water, Bowl, Air, Moon, Sponge, Wolf, Cockroach, Tree, Man, Woman, Monkey, Snake, Axe, Fire, Sun.

Yesterday I gave a talk to the Privacy Forum in Auckland, New Zealand, titled Web Meets World: Privacy and the Future of the Cloud. The talk was intended as a scene setter for a discussion with the audience, about 70 lawyers, technologists, consultants, and public policy wonks. They responded well to the challenge, and we talked about the nature of privacy, how expectations change over time, trust.salesforce.com, and more. The presentation is embedded below, and can be downloaded (CC-Attribution-ShareAlike) from Slideshare (I recommend expanding the preso to full-screen so you can read the notes, which contain the text of the talk).

Shared by Alcides Fonseca
Imagine me reading this strip in the middle of the class, raising my macbook upside down so I could read the bottom ones.

Then I glanced at the ring on my finger.
The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever.
I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?
I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take.
I did once—and you all went away.
So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.
You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—
here alone in the dark.
I miss you dreadfully!

–All You Zombies, Robert A. Heinlein

The computer mouse may someday become an endangered species. Instead of rolling a mouse around to move a cursor around on the screen, more and more users will gesture with their fingers on touch screens and multi-touch trackpads, analysts say.

Reads an article published today on PhysOrg. The article also states that in the next 5 years we may stop using a computer mouse, and that some may have already abandoned theirs, it mentions Microsoft Surface, Apple iPhone, HP TouchSmart and a couple of other devices, but in my opinion it doesn’t nail it.

trackpad

Something happened when I got my 15″ Early 2008 Macbook Pro in April ‘08, something that also happened to a couple of friends of mine, and my girlfriend, they’re all mac (laptop) users, as I am, and we’ve stopped using a mouse, there’s no need for it.

I’m a mac user for a week now and apart from gaming never felt the need of using a mouse, I think it’s the gestures; 3 finder swipe, 2 finger scroll, rotate and size of the trackpad.

Not an actual quote, more like a sum of what he told me on a couple of sentences, but I think that’s it, that’s what makes the trackpad replace the mouse: size and gestures. Also interesting is the fact that he, as a desktop user, and my girlfriend used to use a mouse at all times, my gf still does at work on her desktop so it’s an even bigger contrast.

I for one had a Tablet before my current Macbook Pro, it was a cool experience in the first months, but then it got old, it was a convertible and as a convertible I missed the physical keyboard a lot, and when in tablet mode using the stylus on the screen wasn’t a good experience, screen needed to be more steady, and the os/applications didn’t have a good pen input support (some, as in lots, didn’t even display the input that brings up the virtual keyboard/Hand Writting Recognition), it’s far more easy to scroll using the 2 finger gesture than touching the scrollbar with your finger or stylus for example, dragging on the other hand was nicer to do using a stylus.

Anyways, nowadays laptop sales surpass desktop sales so we’re having more and more laptop users, more and more trackpads, most of those laptops are running windows (despite mac laptop sales being on fire, +28% since latest refresh compared to the same period of ‘07), and pc laptop designers seem to have not noticed the increasing size of Apple’s laptop trackpads, so, even for models released today, like HP’s TouchSmart TX2Z, feature a tiny trackpad:

above: 13" Late '08 Macbook, below: HP TouchSmart TX2Z

I picked that one because it was released today, but I never saw a windows laptop with a large trackpad, it may exist but it isn’t common at all. Besides size and gestures, there’s something else that’s important for trackpad usability: the dreaded bevel, I don’t know who though it was a good idea to put a bevel around the screen of mobile phones, windows mobile devices, trackpads, lucky us the mobile phone lost it many years ago, the iPhone made the windows mobile manufacturers remove it from their devices( apparently it makes it easier to use your fingers instd. of stylus, who would’ve guessed! btw I know it was introduced to protect the screen from scratches but that was a long time ago ), and now, what will it take for pc laptop designers to remove all those bevelled trackpads, left and right mouse buttons from their designs.

So, having read this, do you also think the mouse will be extinct on the next 5 years? I think not, 5 years it’s a long time span, much can happen, both on the PC side and its many manufacturers plus Microsoft with their MultiTouch-friendly Windows 7 and Apple, I doubt this established standard will be extinguished.

Oh, and one more thing, those of you who believe a Minority Report interface would be cool for everyday use should have a little chat with the Starfire actors, apparently waving your arms all day isn’t something you want to do, and that is also true when it comes to regular touchscreens, same it is to say that direct manipulation devices are destined to fail for everyday use, unless the screen switches place with your keyboard and that would create a whole new batch of problems.

Oh Oh Oh(no it’s not Santa), and one more thing.. aww I forgot while writing that silly ho ho ho joke, heh nevermind =]

Edit: ah! I remembered, it’s another quote from that article:

The demise will be hastened by the move toward 3D environments

Re-he-he-heally?

The JavaScript below was pointed out by Aaron Newton, and it comes from SharePoint. Jim Wilson said about it: "and we wonder why windows has 40 million lines of code."

Jeff Atwood stresses on the importance of typing for programming. Though I whole heartedly agree for myself, this issue can be as personal as religion.

I was pretty much a two-finger typist when I started my professional programming career. Productivity through typing was a non-issue. However, it did become a pain when I had to work on a Unisys A Series machine programming in Algol. What was the difference? Not the platform or the language, it was the tools. The IDEs provide features like intellisense that compensate for lack of typing skills. Or so I thought!

After learning touch typing, I realized that smooth typing only helped me program smoother. I have also started to remember more, and rely lesser and lesser on intellisense. I was faster with touch typing than with tools which helped me type. I now like my good old vim, as a clutter-free and fast environment on multiple platforms, to program. As Jeff says, I now spend lesser time in expressing my thoughts into code.

However, I have met those who use their IDEs and such tools so efficiently that typing is not necessary for them. I do not know if they will be more productive with touch typing. Afterall it is not that helpful when you type two alphabets, wait for a second and then use tab to type the word. And then again, typing a programming language is a lot different than typing a natural language, which is where the touch typing is geared at. And you guessed right, unlike Jeff or me, they do not think there is much common in programming and writing.

Though I think touch typing helps me program better, I cannot say the same for you. It will depend on your personal inclination as a programmer. The point is about speed and productivity.

… Ao contrário do “Zé Milho”, o Vítor diz que chega a ser introvertido e até calmo, então no amor não tem nada a ver! O Vítor não é do género que colecciona conquistas, mas sim do que prefere de longe ter uma ida pacata ao lado da pessoa que ama…

na Wikipedia.

Como achei a informação de pouca confiança coloquei uma tag {{citation needed}} no final do parágrafo.

Eu já contribuí para a Wikipedia, e tu?

This strange, half-human creatures could be your cousins. No really; it is a sculpture by Patricia Piccinini entitled The Young Family, which, in turn, is part of a larger installation called We Are Family. Piccinini’s sculptures are an daunting example of the fusing between the ‘made’ and the ‘born’.

The "Silverlight Dynamic Languages SDK" Codeplex project has existed since March 2008, with signed binary releases and source code drops every month or so. Though it's a good ship vehicle for the Silverlight+DLR integration, it's not really an open source project -- mainly as it lacks a public source repository. That changes today.

AgDLR Source Repository

This repository will contain the sources to Microsoft.Scripting.Silverlight.dll and Chiron.exe, as well as Ruby/Python libraries for writing Silverlight applications. Any "feature" work on those pieces of code will be committed to the public repository first, and eventually make its way into MIcrosoft's internal source control so the DLR/Iron* languages don't break it. This repository takes a binary dependency on the Iron* languages as well as the DLR, since this isn't the place to change that code. The source code for IronRuby, IronPython, and the DLR are available elsewhere, but releases on the Codeplex page for this project will still contain source drops of everything.

The repository is hosted on http://github.com, which is a collaborative development site based around git, a "fast, efficient, distributed version control system ideal for the collaborative development of software". You can browse the sources on the website, look at commits, fork your own version of the repository, or just download a snapshot. If you're new to git, just install it (for windows, see here, and here). If you'd like to learn more about Github, or Git, Github guides is a good place to start.

If you'd like to contribute to AgDLR, fork your own version of the repository, commit your changes to your version, and send me a pull request on github. We'll take it from there.

I've already started to work on a new feature which I talked about at Seattle CodeCamp, but that's the next post.

By cramming the still functioning guts of a waterlogged MacBook into an aluminum external hard drive closure and melting a whole lot of solder, the guys over at WolphBite managed to create their own Mac Pro Ultra Mini. It looks great: I want one.

My New Mac Pro Ultra Mini [Wolph Bite]

Shared by dscape
download the presentation for free on his website.

Earlier this month, Rails Envy's Gregg Pollack gave a talk at RubyConf08 called Scaling Ruby (without the Rails). He answered questions like "How do existing Ruby applications use Threads/Processes to scale?", "How do we implement an Event Driven application using Ruby EventMachine?", "What are the current bottlenecks with speeding up Ruby and how can they be fixed?", and "What does Ruby 1.9 bring to the table to speed things up?" From what I hear, it was a very well received and informative session.

Not all of us could be at RubyConf08, however, so Gregg has taken the whole Ruby scalability topic and put together a solid 40 minute screencast called Scaling Ruby. It costs $9 (cheaper than RubyConf, of course) but it's a very solid primer on Ruby scaling issues. Almost every topic is illustrated through Gregg's unique diagrams, and he goes into depth on topics as diverse as event-based applications, threads, Rinda, process messaging, and even "dropping in to C" to write high performance sections of code.

I've been very impressed with the quality of the EnvyCasts I've seen so far, and this is no exception. Lots of practical knowledge delivered in a memorable way. $9 will still seem too rich to many - especially those who think all forms of documentation and instruction should be free (as in speech and beer) - but if it takes Gregg and Jason's fine commercial attempts to encourage others to produce higher quality, free documentation, I'm all for it! They also have screencasts covering Rails 2.2 (see the Rails Inside review) and ActiveRecord.

(Disclaimer: I've received free, promotional copies of the EnvyCasts for review. I have no other relationship - financial or otherwise - with the Rails Envy guys, other than being one of the first to promote them back in the day - doesn't time fly!)

Estes são os projectos que venceram a edição deste ano do Codebits:

1º

AccelMoko (1º lugar público)

Valério Valério

2º

StalkerBits (3º público)

Diogo Ferreira

3º

Nagalhães (5º público)

Sérgio Freire

4º

Who's In

Pedro Eugénio

André Luis

5º

Play With Photos

Carlos Santos

6º

Million Dollar (6º público)

Nelson Correia

Nuno Jesus

7º

Sapo Explorer

Marco Gonçalves

Vasco Costa

8º

Low Power Arduino

Tiago Pinto

9º

Social Landscape

Rui Ramos

Guilherme Morais

10º

Bubble News

Paula Valença

Os vídeos estão a ser editados e ficarão online assim que possível, mais rápido do que em 2007, prometemos.

Outro ponto de situação hoje, com um resumo. Até já.