Tweets of the month

Portuguese Food Bank - buy food or food vouchers to support this initiative - until June 7th 10:33 AM May 31st

After what seemed like 450 Days in the desert, looking forward to the next 500 Days of new visions, new dreams 11:30 PM May 29th

@AnaPardal @sergiompinto Beijinhos e tudo a correr bem! 4:23 PM May 29th in reply to AnaPardal

Feeling better after a great lunch... Thanks Joana! 4:22 PM May 29th

Very tired... "Hanging Tough, Staying 'Hungry'..." 8:06 AM May 29th

Engineering is building the best solution given the available time and resources, not the perfect solution with infinite time and resources 11:07 AM May 27th

Just received a test PDF invoice. This confirms the integration "bridge" is working! 4:35 PM May 26th

The Enterprise Systems Integration course "bridge" is finally standing. Just in time! 10:15 PM May 25th

It has been a long day... SDA course class (student), SOD course class (teacher) and SOD project help-desk (part teacher, part counselor)! 10:11 PM May 21st

Looking into EDI AS1, AS2 and AS3 specs. Does anyone suggest a good reference? 3:36 PM May 19th

Working with a beautiful Vista... (not the OS) 6:30 PM May 18th

This week hasn't been easy. No energy left for anything except clearing the bookmarks backlog. 8:25 PM May 15th

Having fun with STEP Framework Extensions 7:34 PM May 14th

The new Star Trek: to boldly go where no one has gone before, again! :-) 10:05 AM May 12th

F-Secure anti-virus makes the computer run significantly slower than Windows Live OneCare 12:24 AM May 10th

Yesterday's project delivery went along pretty well. Thanks to all IT people who helped. 6:13 PM May 9th

Switched from Windows Live OneCare to F-Secure anti-virus. Windows Live OneCare was actually OK but USD 50 per year is a rent... 5:55 PM May 9th

The Distributed Systems project is due in only 5 hours. Ending project support. 7:12 PM May 8th

Shifting focus to Enterprise Systems Integration course 10:48 AM May 8th

At Taguspark but no students... Strange, since the next project delivery is on Friday. 11:15 AM May 6th

@AnaPardal Realmente é uma espécie de lotaria... Boa sorte! 11:14 AM May 6th in reply to AnaPardal

Another day, another early morning class. Now I'm at Alameda, next I'm going to Taguspark. 8:30 AM May 6th

The class started 15 minutes after 08:00. Half of the students made it! Now I'm working on projects preparations. 11:03 AM May 5th

Early morning classes. Still no attendance. I'm waiting... 8:09 AM May 5th

Almost no students today... they have a test this evening. Meanwhile, I have a presentation to prepare about Naming systems. 1:13 PM May 4th

Just finished commenting on Systems Integration course preliminary reports 2:37 AM May 3rd

@sergiompinto Thanks! Hope you don't mind me calling you Mickey :-) 2:36 AM May 3rd in reply to sergiompinto

Idea Factory quote

TAs actually do more teaching than Professors.

The Idea Factory, Learning to think at MIT

A question of sleep / Uma questão de sono

Father Hugo de Azevedo talks about how lack of sleep can impact the quality of our daily lives.

/ This post is bilingual: English (U.S.) and Portuguese (Portugal) /

O Padre Hugo de Azevedo fala-nos sobre o impacto da falta de sono na nossa qualidade de vida diária.

O nosso mal

O nosso mal é sono. Chega-se a casa tarde; tarde se janta; tarde se arruma a cozinha; tarde se acende a televisão; tarde se resmunga sobre os assuntos de família; tarde se acorda no sofá; tarde se deita… E cedo se levanta. Que vida é esta? Um disparate pegado.

Com sono tudo se faz, excepto pensar. Excepto sorrir. Excepto ouvir. Excepto prever. Excepto planear. Excepto ter gosto no trabalho, na família e no convívio com os colegas; e muito menos com os chefes. Excepto sonhar acordado, sobretudo com o fim de semana… em que novamente a gente se deitará tarde.

É verdade que, mesmo assim, somos capazes de meter-nos no trabalho até às orelhas, até porque, se não, despedem-nos, ou desclassificam-nos, ou falimos. Mas que não nos incomodem com mais nada! Estamos fartos!

Depois, não há quem entenda esta mulher, quem ature este marido; quem compreenda estas crianças; quem suporte estes sogros; quem tenha pachorra para os eternos problemas daquele irmão, ou do sócio…

E ainda por cima, esta crise! Mais os engarrafamentos…

Não é o nosso único mal, o sono, mas é um dos mais insidiosos e que nos passa mais despercebido.

Pe. Hugo de Azevedo, Boletim da Capelania - Junho de 2009

Entre les murs

Entre les murs



A portrait of contemporary public school in France. Documentary-style. Doesn't risk taking sides in the end.

Dom Nuno Álvares Pereira

Vida do Santo Condestável Dom Nuno Álvares Pereira, de Henrique Barrilaro Ruas

Mas ai do mundo! ai dos homens!, se só houvesse Justiça... A Justiça divina, que é perfeita, é completada pela Misericórdia... A Justiça humana, que é imperfeita, há-de ficar sozinha, há-de bastar-se a si própria?!...

Idea Factory quote

There's a couple of ways to do any problem. You can do it the fast way, and get an answer that's accurate within 20 percent, or you can do it by computer, take two weeks setting it up, and get a result that's accurate with 2 percent. (...) You'll be the boss so learn the fast way so you can impress your assistants.

The Idea Factory, Learning to think at MIT

Google's principles of innovation

Innovation, not instant perfection
Start rough, learn and iterate.

Ideas come from everywhere
Ideas can come from the engineers, managers, users even the financial team.

Share everything you can
Everything is put on the intranet, so employees know what is happening.

You’re brilliant, we’re hiring
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience.

A license to pursue dreams
Letting employees use 20% of their time on what ever they want.

Data is apolitical
There is no “I like”, it is all about the basing decisions on data.

Creativity loves constraints
Engineers thrive on constraints.

It's users, not money
If you can successfully engage users, you can monetize them

Don't kill projects, morph them
Products that doesn’t seem to respond well in the market should be morphed into something the market needs, not canceled.

Quoted from http://fatagnus.com/googles-9-principles-of-innovation/

SourceForge

If you're not familiar with SourceForge, it's one the largest open-source project hosting sites on the Internet.

You can find nearly any kind of software there, from very useful programs, to the irrelevant.

You can link to the site's search page using the following address:

http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&type_of_search=soft&words=Framework

(you can replace Framework by your desired keyword)

50 years of Cristo-Rei / 50 anos de Cristo-Rei

An unforgettable landmark. I just can't imagine Lisbon without Cristo-Rei (Christ, the King).

Besides the deep meaning of Christ looking over our city, there's also the amazing view of Lisbon from there. So much history in front of our eyes...

Read more about it at http://www.cristorei.pt/.

/ This post is bilingual: English (U.S.) and Portuguese (Portugal) /

Um monumento inesquecível. Eu simplesmente não consigo imaginar Lisboa sem o Cristo-Rei.

Além do significado profundo de Cristo a vigiar a nossa cidade, há também a espantosa vista de Lisboa que lá se pode apreciar. Tanta história perante o nosso olhar...

Mais informações em http://www.cristorei.pt/.

MIT, The Idea Factory

The Idea Factory, Learning to think at MIT



A nice account of a student's life at MIT in the 1980s. In some ways it was similar to my own experience at "Técnico". Proof that "no pain, no gain"!

I'll post a series of weekly posts with quotes from this book.

The Miracle Worker

The Miracle Worker

James Keller: Sooner or later, we all give up, don't we?
Annie Sullivan: Maybe you all do, but it's my idea of the original sin.
James Keller: What is?
Annie Sullivan: Giving up!

This is an intense movie. It's on black-and-white but it has more tension than any of the movies I've watched recently - including blockbusters! :-)
A great movie about education.
Highly recommended.

iPhone RFID

Here's a nice video illustrating a possible iPhone accessory.
However, the more accurate name for it would be iPhone NFC.

iPhone RFID: object-based media from timo on Vimeo.

Advanced Distributed Systems (ADS) - naming and file systems

I'm taking a Advanced Distributed Systems course. We read papers and we present and discuss them.

The first two topics were:

Naming


1 - The Design and Implementation of an Intentional Naming System. William Adjie-Winoto, Elliot Schwartz, Hari Balakrishnan, Jeremy Lilley, SOSP 1999.
2 - Locating Objects in Wide-Area Systems. Maarten van Steen, Franz J. Hauck, Philip Homburg, Andrew S. Tanenbaum, IEEE Communications Magazine 36(1), January 1998, pages 104–109

Adjie-Winoto99 is a seminal paper for DHTs (Distributed Hash Tables). DHTs are good for matching items using identifiers but are not so good in matching attribute value ranges.

Another interesting topic were the trade-offs between soft-state (time limited persistence, fate sharing) and hard-state (persistence until explicit deletion). Hard requires recovery, checkpoints, transactions, logs. Soft allows for much faster node recovery.


Distributed File Systems

1 - An application of a context-aware file system. Christopher K. Hess, Roy H. Campbel. Springer-Verlag, London, 2003
2- The Google File System. Sanjay Ghemawat, Howard Gobioff, Shun-Tak Leung, SOSP 2003.

There are subtle differences in consistency definitions. For instance, the Google File System uses consistent and defined.

A file region is consistent if all clients will always see the same data, regardless of which replicas they read from.

A region is defined after a file data mutation if it is consistent and clients will see what the mutation writes in its entirety.

e.g. "The sky is yellow" - it's wrong, but it's consistent if everyone sees the same statement. Consistent isn't the same as correct.

Star Trek

Star Trek

Nero: James T. Kirk was a great man... but that was another life.

The new Star Trek: to boldly go where no one has gone before, again! :-)

Nuno do Carmo e os Painéis dos Mestres

Um espectáculo de leitura encenada, muito belo.
Há muito tempo que não me sentia tão Português!
E ouvir Camões é sempre fantástico!

/ This post is bilingual: Portuguese (Portugal) and English (U.S.) /

A very beautiful declamation show.
I hadn't felt this Portuguese for a long time!
And listening to Camões is always great!

Tomcats

Sometimes, one "cat" is not enough... ;-)


I've just finished the support for creation multiple replicas of Apache Tomcat web servers.

It will be part of the next stage in the Distributed Systems course. More details will emerge soon, after the project requirements document is published.

Propostas de Mestrados / MSc proposals

Estamos mais uma vez na época das propostas de Mestrados para o próximo ano! Este ano decidi propor 3 trabalhos a serem orientados pelo Prof. José Alves Marques, todos eles muito aliciantes (assim espero ;-).

O primeiro é sobre a configuração automática de Web Services, ou seja, como é que um servidor e um cliente se podem entender - automaticamente - para que a invocação de operações seja segura, fiável, etc.
O ponto de partida são as WS-Policies (mais informação disponível no WS-Map), mas vão estudar-se as ferramentas mais avançadas disponíveis no mercado, em plataformas Java e Microsoft Dot Net.
O desenvolvimento será efectuado sobre a STEP Framework que é o projecto open-source usado em Engenharia de Software e Sistemas Distribuídos, para se ter acesso total e completo ao código-fonte e conseguir uma implementação simples e eficaz.
Esta proposta destina-se a quem quiser ser um Mestre em Web Services e em sistemas de integração para o mercado empresarial.



Os dois outros trabalhos são em temas mais próximos do meu Doutoramento: RFID.

O segundo é baseado no projecto open-source Rifidi que permite a representação gráfica de toda uma aplicação com RFID. É uma forma de virtualizar um sistema RFID completo, de obter medições interessantes e de mostrar a potenciais clientes. Tem componentes de simulação muito interessantes, usando inclusivamente um motor gráfico de video-jogos.
Esta proposta destina-se a quem quiser ser muito bom em sistemas empresariais baseados em RFID abrangendo toda a empresa e a sua cadeia de fornecimento, explorando também uma componente de visualização gráfica.



O terceiro é baseado no projecto Fosstrak, que é uma biblioteca open-source, que segue de perto as normas da EPCglobal, a principal autoridade mundial de normas para RFID. A biblioteca, existe, funciona e está a ser usada em produtos comerciais de grandes fabricantes. A ideia, proposta pelo coordenador do projecto Christian Floerkemeier do MIT, é analisar o desempenho do Fosstrak usando as melhores ferramentas disponíveis na plataforma Java, para depois o melhorar.
Esta proposta vai permitir um conhecimento próximo das normas EPC e das pessoas que nelas trabalham. Este conhecimento pode ser decisivo para dominar as ferramentas RFID nos produtos dos principais fabricantes, como o Microsoft BizTalk 2009, recentemente lançado.



As propostas detalhadas podem ser consultadas em:
http://web.ist.utl.pt/~miguel.pardal/msc-proposals/2009/


/ This post is bilingual: Portuguese (Portugal) and English (U.S.) /



It's MSc proposals season once again! This year I'm proposing 3 very exciting works, to be advised by Prof. José Alves Marques!

The first is about automatic Web Services configuration, i.e. how can a server and a client integrate - automatically - so that service invocation is secure, realiable, etc.
The starting point are WS-Policies (more information on WS-Map), but the most advanced Java and Microsoft Dot Net tools will be studied.
The development will be on the STEP Framework an open-source project used in Software Engineering and Distributed System courses, for full source code access, to achieve a simple and effective implementation.
This proposal is aimed at mastering Web Services and enterprise integration tools.



The other two proposals are more closely related to my PhD broad subject: RFID.

The second proposal is based on the Rifidi open-source project, that allows a graphical representation of RFID applications. It's a way to virtualize a complete RFID system, to get interesting measurements and to build a demonstration for potential customers. The simulation components are very interesting and include a videogame graphics engine.
This proposal is aimed at excelling on RFID-based enterprise systems covering the extended enterprise and its supply chain, while exploring computer graphics features at the same time.



The third proposal is based on Fosstrak open-source library project, that closely follows the EPCglobal standards - the most important RFID related standards. The library exists, works, and is being used by existing commercial tools. The proposal's idea, as proposed by Christian Floerkemeier from MIT, is to analyze Fosstrak performance using the best available Java tools and improve it.
This proposal will give a deep understanding of EPC standards and the contacts of the people working on them. This can be decisive to become a power-user of vendor RFID tools, like Microsoft BizTalk 2009, recently released.



You can find the proposals at:
http://web.ist.utl.pt/~miguel.pardal/msc-proposals/2009/

Pearl Jam Ten Redux

Save the Last Dance

Save the Last Dance

Derek: "Stepps" ain't no square dance.
Sara: That's ok, I'll dance in circles, probably around you.