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Madruguinha: Baixe aqui e imprima! (em PDF)

Como manter um viciado entretido

Sim, eu estou tentando reativar o blog, mas fazer um post só sobre isso seria clichê demais.

World of Warcraft é o melhor jogo de todos os tempos. Para mim isto não tem discussão. Ontem, eu resolvi dar uma olhada no Public Test Realm (um servidor em que a Blizzard disponibiliza a próxima versão para ser testada). Era para ser uma coisa rápida, de alguns minutinhos. Copiar um paladino pronto para lá (eles disponibilizam alguns personagens no nível máximo com o “melhor” equipamento possível para copiar).

Fiz um Blood Elf paladino (meu personagem principal é um paladino, mas é humano) e resolvi dar uma olhada como ficava. Aí resolvi ajeitar o equipamento para ficar pronto, colocar os add-ons que eu uso normalmente (miniprogramas que modificam a interface do jogo para melhorar a usabilidade) e dar uma passeada pelo conteúdo que virá no próximo patch. Resultado… fiquei até as 4h da manhã por lá.

Eu sempre tive muito medo de fazer uma mudança de facção e transformar meu personagem em Blood Elf porque eles são muito magros e como eu sou tank (o cara que fica segurando o monstro gigante e aguentando porrada), isso ficaria estranho. A conclusão é: eu posso me acostumar.

O que me deprime é ver gente tão mal-intencionada que pega e (por ser um servidor de teste), coloca alguns ítens importantes para encantar o equipamento à venda por valores astronômicos (algo como a soma de todo o dinheiro que eu já consegui acumular em um ano de jogo num item que é muito barato nos servidores comuns).

O pior de tudo é que este dinheiro que o infeliz acumula ele não pode sequer passar pro seu personagem e, portanto, não tem sentido algum acumular dinheiro no servidor de teste.

Enfim, espero que eu consiga voltar a tocar este blog. Decidi postar em português hoje, talvez poste em inglês mais tarde. Enfim, é tudo parte de uma estratégia de dominação global… ou não.

Nine awesome ads from 70s and 80s

I won’t repost it, but it worths a lot to take a look at this post:

Amazing! For me, the best is this one:

Previsão do Tempo / Weather Forecast

Translating into English:

Weather forecast stone:

Condition      ->      Forecast

Wet stone -> Rain
Dry Stone -> Dry weather
Shadow on the floor -> Sunny day
White on the top -> Snow
You can’t see the stone -> Fog
Stone shaking -> Earthquake
The stone is not here -> Hurricane (Tornado)

An amazing championship

Since my childhood, to be more exact, after Ayrton Senna died, Formula 1 was never so good as this year and the year before. The emotion had gone away, since Michael Schumacher just owned everybody and the rules made Ferrari so freaking superior that it was impossible for any other team to win the championship.

Last year, for the first time we had a championship with some emotion, but this year, it was amazing. Until 5 laps to the end of the race, Lewis Hamilton was the champion. Then Massa and, inthe very last curve, Hamilton again.

Amazing!

An introduction to binary – Part 2

* This post is a continuation for: An introduction to binary – Part 1

Continuing our introduction to binary, let’s think about how could we express numbers using an alphabet with only 2 elements:

The first two numbers are quite obvious:

But how can we go any further? Well, in decimal, when our alphabet is not enough to write a number, we increment the leftmost number and “reset” any number on its right side; so:

In binary we just do the same:

If it’s not clear enough, think about the numbers as a car’s odometer (click to learn more about it):

When a digit reaches 9 then it becomes 0 and the next digit is incremented. If you bring this to the binary world, when a digit reaches 1, it becomes 0 and the next digit is incremented.

So, we might say that:

Looking at those numbers, we can find a pattern: some of them have only one “1″ and some zeros: 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000. If we look at their values, we’ll be able to notice that they are, respecively, 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16. All those numbers are powers of 2:

What if we replace the number 2 from the base of the multipliers for its binary notation?

To represent other numbers, we can work in an analogue fashion:

In other words: binary is just the same as decimal!

If we generalize the concept, we might say that:

Do I need to explain how to proceed for base 8 (octal) and base 16 (hexadecimal)?

Stay tuned and wait for An introduction to binary – Part 3 (I didn’t know how to sum).

* This post is a continuation for: An introduction to binary – Part 1

An introduction to binary – Part 1

Decimal revisited:

Before you start to understand binary numbers, you must first understand the decimal numbering system:

Let’s start from a very simple number:

What does that number mean? Well, we may say that:

or

Considering that (for those that are not familiar with logic, the “upside down V” means “AND”, and the arrow means “IT IMPLIES THAT”):

So, we can say that:

Now we can see a pattern here: considering that the rightmost digit in our number is called the less significant and the leftmost is the most significant, we might say that the most significant digit has the exponent 0 and as the digits become more significant, the exponent is incremented. From now on, we’ll call as n the position of a digit, starting from the less significant digit.

Digits x Alphabets:

Now the question is: why are all the digits multiplied by ?

Let’s go back to basics:

We can express any integer number in the decimal system using the “alphabet” defined on this set:

And, if you have half a brain, you’ll be able to count and notice that we have 10 (TEN) digits on this set. So, we say that the base of the decimal system is the number 10 (TEN).

If we dig a bit deeper, we can understand why the numeral “10″ represents the number TEN:

Using just one digit, we are able to represent the following numbers:

How do we represent the next number?

Well, consider that 9 can be represented as 09, what we do is just increment the leftmost number and “reset” everything on its right:

First thoughts about binary:

Now that we understand about the decimal system, just wonder how could we represent integer numbers using an alphabet with only two digits (BInary has the prefix BI, that means 2) defined as:

Just a tip:

Want to know more? See An introduction to binary – Part 2

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Antonio Henrique, o Gatão das Gatinhas

Esta não interessa pros gringos:

Zanzando pelo MySpace, achei esta criatura terrível fantástica: Antonio Henrique, o Gatão das Gatinhas.

Diz a lenda que ele gravou o tal disco nos anos 80. O fato é que a coisa é absurdamente tosca!

Confiram!

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=384079554

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If you speak English, this post is worthless, but it talks about a trash Brazilian singer (the lyrics only make sense in Portuguese)

Listening to Oasis

Yesterday, Oasis launched their new album. Some of the new songs are available on MySpace.

I’m listening it, if you also want to, just go there!

Former Prime Minister of Sweden Switches to Mac

This is amazing! The former prime minister of Sweden (now Foreign Minister), Carl Bildt, posted on his blog that he decided to buy a Mac and stated:

To say that I do not regret the step is the month big understatement. My only criticism of myself is why I waited so long to take the step.

Read it by yourself (translated from Swedish by Google Translator)

Google for Representative

Now that city representatives elections has ended here in Brazil (and that this candidate has been elected), we can talk about it: Caxias do Sul, one of the biggest cities in southern Brazil had a Google candidate.

Gustavo Toigo Vereador

Any resemblance?

Note: the sentence under the hypopotame means “It will be nice!”

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Edit 1: If anyone wants to get more information on the representative, check his website: http://www.gustavotoigo.com.br/

Farewell Microsoft

I didn’t post this earlier, but I am not a Microsoft Student Partner anymore: I had to resign due to potential conflicts of interest with my job.

Anyway, I believe this is a good time to get independent, since I have 2 macs, I’m trying to learn Ruby, my top wishlist gadget is an iPhone and I have an Apple sticker on my car.

The point is that I actually wanted to be free to say what I think of the technology market:

Microsoft is stuck on an old paradigm. Some time ago, Bill Gates stated that when the technology paradigm changes, the “number one” company get lost and someone takes its place. It happened to IBM and it’s happening to Microsoft right now. Software + Services is a good approach, but Cloud Computing is the future.

I see no reason for an average law student, for example, to use Microsoft Word in order to develop a simple homework: Google Docs is perfect for that. She can even share it with her colleagues and collaborate in real time! Outlook is past! GMail is far better! Windows Live Search is a joke, they are literally PAYING for you to search with their engine, but it’s not enough, since Google Search is far better and Live Search does not find relevant matches.

On the mobile field, Microsoft is really out of the game. I have a Windows Mobile cellphone (Moto Q GSM) and it really is a shame: sometimes it gets mute (I can’t hear nor be heard), so I need to RESTART and it gets back!!!!! It’s Windows 3.1 for cellphones! iPhone runs the same Mac OS X kernel that a Mac Pro runs! And it’s beautiful and it runs OpenGL 3D games! Google Android has the same idea, but with Linux!

Windows Vista is another mistake: I tried it since CTP versions older than Beta 1, and used it since November 2006 (until January 2008). Vista was the main reason that made me go back to Macs. While MS slept for FIVE long years, Apple launched 4 Releases of Mac OS X, got customer feedback and delivered the most advanced, beautiful, easy to use and powerful personal OS EVER!

Sorry, Microsoft, I really don’t mean to hurt you, but It’s impossible to ignore it. As it’s impossible to ignore the great advances you made during the last 6 years: .NET is the best programming platform ever made. C# is the language I love and I strongly believe Windows will have long life due to gaming and enterprise worlds, but it’s not enough to keep the “number one” position for a long time. Therefore, it’s obvious that the company lost its focus due to the paradigm changes that Google and Apple are causing and if you don’t focus on doing WHAT YOU KNOW, Microsoft will be just another competitor on a very heterogeneous market.

And maybe that’s the best that could happen!

Once again, this is not an empty rant, but a warning to the company that drove my aspirations since I started being a nerd (when I was 9), to the company I served for almost 4 years and that I dreamed that someday I would work for.

Farewell, Microsoft, I hope you adapt yourself for the upcoming years.

Sorry for the bad english, but I’m too lazy to review it, and it would lose the spontaneity.

Slashdot and Brazilian Elections

It’s amazing how a simple computer application can make people impressed: Slashdot published a note about brazilian voting system and it generated a lot of replies.

John Sokol writes “I just heard from a good friend and Linux kernel hacker in Brazil that they have just finished their municipal election with 128 million people using Linux to vote. They voted nationwide for something like 5,000 city mayors. Voting is mandatory in Brazil. The embedded computer they are using once ran VirtuOS (a variant of MS-DOS); it now has its own locally developed, Linux-based distro. These are much nicer, smaller, and cheaper than the systems being deployed here in the US. Here is a Java-required site with a simulated Brazilian voting system. It’s very cool; they even show you a picture of the candidate you voted for.”

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/07/002922

10 things safer than stock exchange

1. Play poker with the devil, my soul vs. 1 billion dollars
2. Bungee jump with using a nylon fishing string
3. Play Russian roulette using a fully loaded machine gun
4. Spend vacation time in Iraq
5. Take a walk on North Korea wearing a T-shirt with the United States flag
6. Jump into a cage full of lions with a big steak wrapped on the neck
7. Go to Mecca wrapped on an Israeli flag
8. Take a nap on a railroad
9. Spend a holiday on the moon wearing a t-shirt and shorts
10. Yelling that you are a terrorist in a guided tour through The White House

Do you know other? What’s yours?

WTF?!?!!? SertanEMO!?!?!

Oldie, mas… só agora que fui ver… a Fresno tocando com Chitãozinho e Xororó!!!

Hilário… o pior de tudo é que combinou muito!

A parte mais engraçada é que o Paraíba (Lucas) foi meu colega na faculdade!

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To the English speakers, this is an Emo band from my city playing with the most famous “Country” (in fact we call it “Sertanejo” here in Brazil) singers in Brazil. It’s funny, but the mix worked (I’m not a big emo or country fan, but it worked well)!!

The funniest part is that the lead singer of the emo band was my classmate in the university!

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OMFG

I usually don’t post about soccer, but today is a special day: my team, that was almost dead and buried won a spectacular local derby this weekend: Internacional 4 x 1 Gremio for the Brazilian Championship.

It was an amazing score, since Gremio was the leader of the championship and we were only at 11th position. To complete the whole shebang, they lost the leadership. I really am not real soccer fan, but this result needed a special mention.

For those who are not used to soccer, 4×1 is really an amazing score: it’s something like 120×32 in basketball!

Meh

Algorithms I class:

Today’s topic:

Loops.

I develop software since I was 9 years old, why am I supposed to go to such kind of classes?

Meh!

Far better now!

Now we can access it just by typing http://leonardopires.net/

Welcome

Hi all,

This is my first first post on this blog!

I’m trying to set up the domain to point to WordPress.

Let’s see what happens!

Cheers!

Leonardo