Lorem ipsum

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I'm doing some web development so I was looking for some dummy text to place inside the web templates I'm doing. I came across some sites and realised they all had the same type of dummy text to exemplify the content, like the above, so I questioned myself "Is there any site that generates this nonsense text?". And the answer to my question was, "Yes there is!!".

In fact this piece of random text, is not that much of a nonsense, and it is based on a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, which makes it more than 2000 years old! Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500, truly amazing!

You can find a website that tells the whole story and generates some Lorem Ipsum for you, at http://www.lipsum.com/

Other place, and maybe a more fancy generator, can be found at http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/generator3

Daniel Tammet one of the great Savants

Yesterday David, my work colleague, told me about a BBC show he watched some time ago about savants. This show in particular was about Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant who has fantastic mathematical and linguistic learning facility. After all the things David told me about this man, i was really curious about what he could do, and watched the entire show at youtube. And i can tell you, this guy is amazing! He knows seven different languages and can learning one in about a week, like he did with Icelandic to be interviewed on national TV. But in fact he's even more skilled at maths, as he can make huge number calculations only using his mind, and used his memory to recite 22,514 digits of pi.
But the more curious fact about this guy, is that beside the fact that he has all the autistic characteristics, he is still capable of maintaining social relationships, which is not common on a person who suffers from autism.
You also see some other cases, like Kim Peek, the men that inspired the movie Rain Man, that can read, well i would call it "absorb", a page of a book in 8 to 10 seconds, and use his photographic memory to "store" its content.

You should follow my advice and watch this show, it will worth every minute, and i bet you will be as amazed as i was.

1/5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOc...
2/5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfoGsX...
3/5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7oEdE...
4/5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqLzoi...
5/5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMz3gj...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet

CodeIgniter - a PHP web framework

Last friday at Sapo Codebits i had the chance to get involved in a project that uses a PHP web framework. Well, this is quite a novelty to me, since i don't do any web development for about 3 or 4 years, and the last time i did it, it was for a university project using PHP in the most horrible way i've ever seen, sticking all the code directly in the html file.

These new web frameworks out there (CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Django, Ruby on Rails, etc.), give a refreshing way to build your applications. Using the MVC model, you can separate what is background operation from what is presented to the user. This might not be new for you, but it is for me :) .

CodeIgniter is in my opinion a pretty good web framework, and ables you to develop a simple application from scratch very quickly. It is oriented to performance and small footprint, and it is ideal for people that don't want to loose a lot time configuring everything and be forced to restrictive syntax rules like in CakePHP.

Starting to develop is very simple, you just download the tar.gz or zip file, extract it, and copy it to your web directory root, modify a couple of files to reflect your database configuration and site url, and your ready to start some really awesome code typing!

The site has some video tutorials that i truly recommend if you what to try it, and good and clean documentation. It has also links to tutorials and more videos made by community users, with contents ranging from initial setup and basic introduction to web 2.0, ajax, and advanced features.

Oh and i forgot to mention that CodeIgniter is Open Source, so you can download it, use it and modify it if you like. Well for me this is quite important :)

I recommend it! Give a look at:

http://codeigniter.com/

http://codeigniter.com/tutorials/

http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/

http://codeigniter.com/downloads/

Sapo Codebits 2008

Indeed, it starts tomorrow!! And i'll be there!

Windows Vista in 2 minutes

Pretty simple way to install Windows Vista on your machine.
He had some problems at the beginning but everything went fine afterwards.

Today's ephemerids

Well, just some of them...

1888 - Jack, the Ripper, makes his fifth victim: Mary Jane Kelly.
1918 - Germany becomes a Republic (see Weimar Republic and Reichstag).
1948 - Luiz Felipe Scolari, Brazilian football coach.
1989 - Fall of the Berlin wall.
1995 - Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes creator , retires and dedicates himself to panting.
2004 - Internet browser Mozilla Firefox 1.0 was launched.

Note: all links point to Portuguese sites.

Make magazine

Have you heard of Make magazine?!

From the site:

About MAKE

MAKE Magazine brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. MAKE is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. We celebrate your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.

Published as a quarterly since February 2005, MAKE is a hybrid magazine/book (known as a mook in Japan). MAKE comes from O'Reilly, the Publisher of Record for geeks and tech enthusiasts everywhere. It follows in line with the Hacks books and Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks, but it takes a highly visual and personal approach.

Our premiere issue showed you how to get involved in kite aerial photography — taking pictures with a camera suspended from a kite — and how to build an inexpensive rig to hold your camera.

This is a really cool magazine and site for people that know something about electronics, are just curious about it, or just like to watch some insane stuff that you can do, for example, with mint cans (like me!).

These are some examples of what these guys are doing,

A lunch box guitar:

Something i can't quite understand what it is :P

And many more.

Take a look at the site, it has lots of videos, pdf tutorials, and give it a try in one of the weekend projects!

http://www.makezine.com/

Rednecks for Obama

This picture just made me laugh.
So this is the change they were talking about!

Shouldn't these guys be voting for Mccain?!

20 month old kid and IPhone

I'm really not a iFan but this videos surprised me a lot.
It's fun to see such a young kid interacting with a sophisticated device.





Fernando Afonso must be a great dad! :D

Mouse Pad Warmers?!

Some hours ago i thought to myself "Man! my hands are really cold! They're always cold when i'm at the computer, there should be something to keep my hands warm!". And then i thought "I'm certain that some idiot (a person with great ideas) invented something to handle this situation".

Well it's true someone has invented a USB Mouse Pad Warmer!

You can take a look for yourself.

I'm not sure if this object is practical, but if it keeps my hands warm maybe i'll give it a try.
Anyway in my opinion it's a great idea!

Happy veganism day!

Since the fiftiest anniversary of the Vegan Society (UK vegan and vegetarian society) in 1994, that in the 1st of November is celebrated the «world vegan day».
So for all of you out there that are vegan or vegetarian, HAPPY VEGAN DAY!!

More information at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Vegan_Day
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacto-ovo_vegetarianism