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Nando the musician |
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| Music tracks |
| Sheet music (scores) |
Nando the programmer |
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Résumé in English Résumé in Portuguese |
| Open source collaborations |
| Bag, a Python library |
| A backup solution |
― Acho que hoje ele não vem. Já está tarde ― disse vovô, rouco e esperançoso.
Olhei para trás: os olhinhos castanhos de meu priminho Vit ostentavam sua diversão. Como gostávamos de brincar de espião! Fiz sinal de silêncio com a maior veemência.
― Ele sempre vem no início do mês. Pode tardar, mas não tem misericórdia ― soluçou vovó.
― Arre, mulher! É por isso que nada de bom acontece nesta casa! ― bufou vovô.
Estiquei a cabeça para além da quina do armário. Suas feições graves não me encontraram.
Titia surgiu do quintal limpando as mãos. Escondi-me de novo. ― Mas ela tem razão ― contemporizou. ― Ficando aqui, estamos sujeitos a essa desgraça!
― O que não tem remédio... ― grunhiu vovô, aproximando-se. ― Isso não tem remédio!
Disparamos na direção da entrada da casa com estardalhaço. Vit continuou brincando como se não tivesse escutado nada. Eu era maior e não sei se entendia mais, mas a conversa me deixara um pouco preocupado.
― Crianças, não saiam! ― gritou vovó, lá da cozinha.
Esgueirando-nos pelos cantos, chegamos à janela da frente. Olhamos para fora com cuidado para não sermos detectados, pois restava uma pitada de crepúsculo. Ventava muito: a árvore do outro lado da rua parecia tentar desprender-se do chão. Meus pensamentos foram interrompidos por um estalo medonho, seguido de um trovão, que arregalou os olhinhos do meu primo de susto ― e eu mesmo tive um arrepio, que o raio deve ter caído bem ao lado da casa. Em seguida desabou uma chuva de granizo, a qual assistimos da janela.
Um carro ― lembro que era grande e escuro ― parou em frente à nossa casa. Um minuto depois, desceu uma enorme figura oculta numa capa de chuva bege. Enquanto fechava a porta, pensei ter avistado... o quê? Pelo?
Vit riu baixinho e me puxou para baixo. Empurrei-o ― tinha que olhar ― algo não estava certo.
O vulto dirigiu-se à casa da frente. Segundos depois, abriram e ele entrou.
― É um mon ― começou Vit, mas tapei sua boca, pois nesse momento pude discernir gritos vindo da casa da frente, mesmo sob a chuva. O alarido durou alguns segundos, o que era? Consternação? Pavor? Meu mal-estar só aumentava.
A chuva agora estava mais fraca. A porta se abriu e o vulto veio direto para a nossa casa. A cada passo, um pesado estalido. Vit apertou meu braço com aflição. Arrependi-me de fitá-lo, pois ele detectou o medo nos meus olhos. A campainha soou dura: de um pulo, puxei meu primo para trás da cortina, de onde assistimos o resto da hedionda cena.
Vovô veio da cozinha com um olhar de profundo desgosto. ― Não abra ― instou vovó, mas ele a ignorou e escancarou a porta de uma vez só. E junto com a chuva, aquela voz odiosa entrou na casa:
― O aluguel atrasado, senhores.
If you are into classical music, you know how hard it is to organize your audio files.
The most important problem is lack of support for the “Composer” tag in music player software. For a while, this led me to the idea of reusing the mainstream “artist” tag to contain composer information. But then performer information must go into other tags such as “Album” or “Comment”.
The advantage of this approach is that it works with any and all music players.
But it has many disadvantages. First of all, tagging your music becomes an endless nightmare: no tagging software I have encountered out there does it this way, so basically you would have to make corrections manually. Forever. Remember that your are files always coming from many different sources, so you would have to keep track of which files have already been converted to your system.
Also, this kind of reasoning is just conceptually wrong. Though the idea of the “artist” in music is a wrong concept by itself, what it really means in practice is “performer”. If you start abusing concepts you end up with nightmares as repulsive as this system:
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/ClassicalStyleGuide
No solution could be less correct in data normalization terms...
Finally I found it easier to just use the correct tags. Use the “Composer” tag for the composer. The disadvantage is, you have to work harder to find software that supports it. But it is not impossible. Apple products support the “composer” tag. On a PC (Windows or Linux) one can use powerful music players such as Amarok which fully supports the “composer” tag. (On Ubuntu Linux, you just type sudo apt-get install amarok.)
What about my phone? I’ve been unable to find an Android music player with support for the “composer” field. I did find hints on the web and tried a few players, but the tips were written years ago and apparently the newer versions do not support the “composer” tag anymore.
Since phones are unable to carry that much music anyway, I intend to just use any directory-based player. What’s important is that my collection will be correct and give me less of a headache.
Summing up, I have 2 pieces of advice:
So you are going to watch War Horse, Spielberg’s movie of 2011. Here is what you need to know. (No spoilers here, this is safe to read.)
This is a traditional movie in many ways. But which traditions? Well, you are going to see a (non-satirical) picaresque fictional story about a horse in First World War times, derived from a book for children.
So the foremost tradition is that of the horse movie. You get everything you would expect: themes of friendship between a youngen and a special horse who is one of the most important characters, stunning visuals that only nature and animals can provide, gallops, adventure etc.
Because the horse is perhaps the main character, he is going to suffer. Be prepared for this. However, it’s all in good taste.
Now remember the story has something of a picaresque quality, without really belonging to this genre. To me this means the hero goes through adventures in different places during his life, and whether characters reappear later is anyone’s guess. These episodes may sometimes seem a bit disconnected from each other, however this is part of the wonder, you would exclaim: “what an interesting life”! And I have to say, this falls quite nicely upon a traditional horse movie character who would like his freedom.
So if the plot is sometimes stretched, well, in my opinion this is just part of the genre. There is no satire though.
The First World War is the circumstance that keeps these episodes together. But this is only a war movie to the extent of old, traditional war movies. I mean, this isn’t a remake of Private Ryan, gore isn’t the focus. This isn’t an ultra-realistic movie in any way and Spielberg has been able to mix these 2 genres (war and horse) in a tasteful way.
I guess I mean to say, there is war in the movie, but it isn’t exactly a war movie, it isn’t focused in showing the raw horrors of war, and if it were, you might care that much less about the horse. You gotta like the horse, otherwise the movie won’t make sense! And I understand this is true, that horses did indeed suffer in that war.
The fact that the Germans speak English put some people off; they wanted to see subtitles. I guess they were expecting a contemporary war movie. But remember that children are to be included in this audience... I, for one, felt it refreshing to see raw realism – which would be pointless here anyway – give way to a more direct way to tell the story. This looks back to old war movies, in which foreign characters might speak their own languages a bit for effect, but not when you really had to understand what they were saying. In many ways, that was a better way to just tell a story.
Some people complain that the first part was slow. Another complaint is that there wasn’t enough friendship established between the horse and the boy. I thought the balance was perfect between these two opposing forces.
Finally, you get traditional John Williams music, not so memorable but perfectly adequate. And Spielberg is the perfect director to manipulate your heart, which makes many people mad at him. How dare he?!
Now you are prepared to be entertained by a pretty good film, knowing that it won’t change your life.
When people buy a new computer, it tends to come with Windows preinstalled. Because of this, most people just use it – unaware that it would be much better for them to install Linux instead. Further, Linux is free.
Here is my list of the most important reasons to avoid Windows:
There is a whole industry built on the paranoia, the fear of catching viruses, trojan horses and other exploits. Ask yourself this: How is it possible that the other operating systems (Linux and Mac OS X, as well as others) are much more secure, their users don’t worry, no antivirus software is needed, and things work well with rare exceptions? Antivirus software is constantly slowing down any Windows computer, checking every operation. It is just a very unfortunate thing to worry about...
And they want your money. Antivirus software is always intruding, showing to you that it is working for you, this way you will always remember it is useful, and you are more likely to pay for protection every year.
What is this like on Linux? No worries, no antivirus software is needed.
Because of the antivirus software constantly running in the background, there is no way a Windows system can compete with secure systems in terms of performance.
The user is constantly being bothered by one or another program (Windows itself, Java, antivirus software, web browsers etc. etc.) which wants to be updated. This could easily be so different!
What is this like on Linux? There is a single packaging system to install and update software programs. This means when you are informed of available updates, the information is comprehensive of all the software you have. On Linux you get interrupted much less.
Further, the software that comes with a Linux distribution is much more comprehensive than that which comes with Windows. For instance, on Linux it is very easy to get all the multimedia codecs installed, while on Windows there are many options for this, all of which feel unsafe.
Windows thinks disconnection time is appropriate for installing software updates. (The process continues when the computer starts up again.) There is a way to turn off the computer without installing anything, but if you click on the OTHER way, then you can’t cancel it. This is absurd. Further, it takes forever – sometimes a whole hour – to install updates. No control over this is offered to the user.
What if I really have to go away, turn the computer off, catch my bus and go home? There is no option like “Stop after the current update no. 22 and leave the other 15 updates for later”... Instead, the screen prominently shows “Do not turn your computer off”. Excuse me, Microsoft...
What is this like on Linux? You are notified of new available updates. You choose when to download and install them. Most updates are applied quickly and take effect immediately. Only a few updates require a boot to take effect, and you are never really required to boot right now.
A new notebook tipically comes with at least 5 mostly useless icons in the system tray, in addition to the 3 necessary icons for sound level, network status and battery status. The 5 icons I am looking at now are:
The last two are certainly pointless and I would have them disabled. Actually as I wrote this, avast antivirus created a second icon (as if one weren’t enough to show off its work) and Windows created yet another to say it is downloading more updates... Total icons: 10.
Further, many applications we install under Windows like to add their own toolbars (unrelated to the reason you’re installing the app for) to web browsers, stealing screen space, confusing the user, who most likely never uses the toolbar... Applications add their own icons to the Start menu, to the desktop and to the Quick Launch buttons. The Start menu has its own selection of the most used apps. What a mess!
What is this like on Linux? Since applications are mostly free software – not proprietary –, and because the most important applications are part of the operating system as packaged by an organization, there is no conflict of interest leading to desktop pollution. In practice, the desktop feels simpler and better organized.
Too many applications, and even Windows itself, are constantly demanding the user’s attention, as if saying “I need maintenance”... Countless misfeatures work this way; for instance, Windows offers to clean the desktop for you, hiding icons because you rarely use them. Of course this kind of thing steals your attention from the work you are actually doing, they are annoyances.
Windows users have developed a default reaction to difficult questions that pop up: without even thinking, they click on the X to close the window with the question. Needless to say, this is a pathological reaction to a sick situation. The question could be important, just closing the window could be like hiding a problem from yourself...
The simple fact is user’s aren’t bothered quite so much in other operating systems, these just don’t need any maintenance.
What is this like on Linux? No weird questions pop up, you just work without being interrupted, save from the software update question, which can have its periodicity configured (daily or weekly). Linux should not be installed by people who don’t know what they are doing – but once installed, using it is a breeze. For my grandmother, I installed Ubuntu Linux.
Windows Vista introduced a security misfeature that occurs when you are doing some simple change to the system configuration. A window pops up asking for your confirmation, after all, someone else (or a malicious program) could be trying to execute the configuration, and Windows cannot tell if it is the user...
The effect of this is that the user experience under Windows, as of 2012, is one of clicking much more to do the same configurations, than any of the other operating systems. I wonder, how do these manage to be much more secure, yet bother the user much less?
What is this like on Linux? This problem does not exist, it is just the result of Microsoft incompetence on Windows.
Unless you really need to use software that is only available on the Windows platform – i.e. AutoCAD –, it makes no sense to pay for it. Linux comes with much more functionality and costs nothing.
For Adobe design software you have the option of using an Apple computer, which is not cheap, but does not suffer from insecurity or excess of difficult questions...
Microsoft does not deserve that you honor it with your preference, since it is known for immoral and illegal actions in the computer market, both against competitors and against consumers. I shall mention only one immoral practice against consumers which should be enough to convince you: the Starter Edition – a severely crippled operating system that prevents the user from opening more than 3 applications simultaneously, or storing more than 120 GB on their hard drive, or using more than 512 MB RAM... This is pure evil because in Brazil computers with this system preinstalled have been sold to unsuspecting customers, who then had to replace it.
After winning the browser wars, effectively driving Netscape Navigator out of the market, Microsoft didn’t work on its browser, Internet Explorer, for years and years, ignoring the cries of web developers against its hundreds of bugs. Microsoft only started improving this situation after a better browser, Mozilla Firefox, finally appeared to endanger IE.
Now Chrome is the most popular browser but IE still holds the web back to an extent, since it is still popular but lagging behind the other browsers in support for the newest web standards.
When you use Internet Explorer you help drive the statistics to its favour, which influences decisions that hold back the web. So don’t use it. This is a product that does not deserve your preference.
Vendo um piano de meia cauda Astor. Pode ser experimentado no Jardim Paulista (perto da Av. Paulista), em São Paulo.
O piano de meia cauda Astor G-86, de 1m86cm de comprimento, tem 88 teclas de plástico, pedal tonal, 14 anos de idade e uma bela sonoridade, de piano novo. Está afinado e em perfeito estado. Vendo por R$ 26 mil. Somente pagamento à vista ou depósito.
Se você se interessou pelo instrumento e promete tratá-lo bem, ligue para (11) 9820-5451 e venha conhecê-lo no Jardim Paulista, em São Paulo.
Dear Google AdSense,
This is an open letter because you suck and everybody should know.
In the past I used my gmail to create an AdSense account for my business. Now that business is no more, so I wish the account to go to my physical person, not any persona ficta. You can’t do that??? Really???
It is crazy that you want me to open a new email address (when mine is perfect as it is) just for this.
If you are at all interested in computing or invention or creativity, you shall now watch this talk by Bret Victor.
In June 2004 I started a blog using a full-featured CMS written in PHP. The first post was titled Nando Florestan’s site is now interactive. I was very excited...
Today I am starting a new blog ― and I am also excited because I can finally get rid of the old thing, using something much simpler: Tinkerer, a static blog generator written in Python.
There is a powerful text markup language that Python developers have traditionally used for documentation. It is called reStructuredText. Nowadays, with everybody using Sphinx, reStructuredText is even more popular. So Python developers needed a blog system that supported reStructuredText. Blogging is easier without mental context switching between markup languages.
So when famous programmer Ben Bangert mentioned Tinkerer in a chat, I immediately knew it would be eagerly adopted by Python developers. Ben has just migrated from Tumblr to Tinkerer.
For common people who want a new blog, I still recommend Tumblr though.
What is probably going to happen now that Sun and MySQL belong to Oracle is:
1) They are going to get a world-class boring buzzword-compliant website.
2) All this.