Tweets of the month

Loved the movie Julie & Julia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135503/ domingo, 29 de Novembro de 2009 01:13:50

Today I ate a delicious Caracol (snail-like) cake. Thanks @joanappardal! sexta-feira, 27 de Novembro de 2009 18:45:40

"If you don't publish it, it didn't happen" -- anonymous researcher (OK, it's me! ^.^) sexta-feira, 27 de Novembro de 2009 16:04:09

Dear US Friends, Happy Thanksgiving! :-) quinta-feira, 26 de Novembro de 2009 23:41:30

@nfma Not news indeed :-) Meanwhile my project is coming along, and automated tests like you suggested have been helpful. quinta-feira, 26 de Novembro de 2009 16:43:30 in reply to nfma

@nfma Not news indeed :-) Meanwhile my project is coming along, and automated tests like you suggested have been helpful. quinta-feira, 26 de Novembro de 2009 16:43:30 in reply to nfma

The weather today reminds me of Boston... :-) quinta-feira, 26 de Novembro de 2009 09:26:56

The weather today reminds me of Boston... :-) quinta-feira, 26 de Novembro de 2009 09:26:56

Going home for the day. Good progress today, but still late. quarta-feira, 25 de Novembro de 2009 20:19:49

Going home for the day. Good progress today, but still late. quarta-feira, 25 de Novembro de 2009 20:19:49

A rainy day at Taguspark with lots of work ahead! quarta-feira, 25 de Novembro de 2009 10:51:59

A rainy day at Taguspark with lots of work ahead! quarta-feira, 25 de Novembro de 2009 10:51:59

Reboot, new Windows 7 theme (Korea), new songs to listen - back to work! segunda-feira, 23 de Novembro de 2009 15:34:52

"When something's broke (...) fight to get it back again!" -- Pearl Jam - The Fixer sexta-feira, 20 de Novembro de 2009 18:52:35

We have one more MSc! Congratulations @guiperpt! I think 15 is a fair grade for your work. sexta-feira, 20 de Novembro de 2009 11:10:48

@nfma Do you recommend using hamcrest matchers for testing or is using plain Java code better? quinta-feira, 19 de Novembro de 2009 12:41:08

Just finished thanking all congratulations. Thanks to all my dear friends! quinta-feira, 19 de Novembro de 2009 10:03:54

@andrerib Parabéns! quinta-feira, 19 de Novembro de 2009 09:05:12 in reply to andrerib

Something Import-Ant for Java developers :-) http://sparrowflights.blogspot.com/2009/11/something-important-for-java-developers.html quarta-feira, 18 de Novembro de 2009 14:46:20

Rise and shine! At least 32 x 365 reasons to be thankful to God for all my life :-) quarta-feira, 18 de Novembro de 2009 07:37:46

@mpanao Uau! Obrigado. Foste a segunda pessoa a dar-me os parabéns! quarta-feira, 18 de Novembro de 2009 07:36:05 in reply to mpanao

Developing terça-feira, 17 de Novembro de 2009 14:06:15

RT @opensuse openSUSE 11.2 is out http://bit.ly/1W87tH sábado, 14 de Novembro de 2009 15:22:48

Well done Nuno: 17! sexta-feira, 13 de Novembro de 2009 13:29:25

Attending Nuno Miguel Viães Rodrigues MSc defense. Good luck! sexta-feira, 13 de Novembro de 2009 10:32:27

@mpanao Bem vindo ao Twitter! quinta-feira, 12 de Novembro de 2009 09:53:59 in reply to mpanao

Good night! RT @pedrocustodio The Berlin Wall, 20 years gone – The Big Picture http://tinyurl.com/y8669z4 quarta-feira, 11 de Novembro de 2009 00:02:17

For several reasons, last week was a productivity black hole. Today I'm (finally) back in business! terça-feira, 10 de Novembro de 2009 15:08:30

Blogging some of the most interesting findings from yesterday's Big Picture day. 2:14 PM Nov 3rd, 2009

Windows 7 is a significant improvement over Vista. 2:14 PM Nov 3rd, 2009

@nfma Thanks for the TDD lesson! I'm looking forward to try this approach in my next work. 1:22 PM Nov 2nd, 2009 in reply to nfma

A life with Karol

A life with Karol by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz

A first person account of the life and papacy of John Paul II. Inspiring. Indeed a great Pope, and a book that does him justice.

The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones

The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones

I got this great gift in my birthday and I absolutely loved it! It is a reproduction of Indiana Jones' personal journal seen on the Young Indiana Jones TV show. It is so good it almost makes you believe Indiana Jones is an historical figure (OK, it's not *that* good, but is a nice collector's item).

You can read more about it in the Indiana Jones wiki.

Julie and Julia

Julie and Julia

Paul Child: What is it you REALLY like to do?
Julia Child: Eat!

The Prince and Me

The Prince and Me

Queen: Being royal requires you to sacrifice who you are for who you must be.

The Science of Indiana Jones

Why Did It Have To Be Snakes: From Science to the Supernatural, The Many Mysteries of Indiana Jones by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg

It is interesting to look a little more seriously to one of the most successful movie franchises of all times: Indiana Jones. It is a good read and doesn't take the fun out of the movies.

There are also many other books from the same authors.

Software testing: Mocks vs Stubs

Test Double as the generic term for any kind of pretend object used in place of a real object for testing purposes. The name comes from the notion of a Stunt Double in movies. (One of his aims was to avoid using any name that was already widely used.) Meszaros then defined four particular kinds of double:

* Dummy objects are passed around but never actually used. Usually they are just used to fill parameter lists.
* Fake objects actually have working implementations, but usually take some shortcut which makes them not suitable for production (an in memory database is a good example).
* Stubs provide canned answers to calls made during the test, usually not responding at all to anything outside what's programmed in for the test. Stubs may also record information about calls, such as an email gateway stub that remembers the messages it 'sent', or maybe only how many messages it 'sent'.
* Mocks are what we are talking about here: objects pre-programmed with expectations which form a specification of the calls they are expected to receive.

Reference: http://martinfowler.com/articles/mocksArentStubs.html

Theology of the Body

Theology Of The Body For Beginners

Let's talk about sex, Catholic-style !?

A surprising book that challenges preconceptions about the Church's view of sex, based on the teachings of Pope John Paul II.



(em Português)

Good Bye Lenin!

Good Bye Lenin!

Dr. Wagner: You must protect her from any kind of excitement. And I do mean any kind, Mr. Kerner.
Alexander Kerner: Any kind of excitement.
Dr. Wagner: It would be life-threatening.
Alexander Kerner: And this here?
[Shows the doctor a newspaper reading "Good Luck, Germany. Yes to Reunification"]
Alexander Kerner: Wouldn't you call this exciting?

Something ImportAnt for Java developers

:-)

ImportAnt is a library for the Apache Ant build tool, very popular for Java programming. It is an open-source project, released under the GNU LGPL license and hosted at SourceForge.

Recently it has been re-envisioned as a Wiki of build file snippets that can be copy-pasted to create custom build files.

Enjoy!

300

300

Dilios: Immortals... we put their name to the test.

We're no angels

We're no angels

Jim: [as Father Brown, he is asked to give a speech to the town. He reads from a brochure stuck in his Bible that says "An Encounter with a Bear"] Have you ever felt alone, with no one to rely on? Danger on every hand, in a world fraught with danger, and when I looked into my pocket, what did I find? What did I find?
[flips the brochure over - it's an ad for guns]
Jim: Nothing. There's nothing there. It's all in your head. Look, they can take the money from you. They can take the position from you. People turn their back on you. Everything happens to everybody! And you ain't gonna find nothing in your pocket to stave it off. Nothing can stave it off! Power doesn't do it. Because you never have enough. Money? I don't know. You know anyone who's got enough money?
[holds up his Bible]
Jim: Is God good? I don't know. All I know is... something may give you comfort. And maybe you deserve it. If it comforts you to believe in God, then you do it. That's your business.

Mac VS PC accident

This is my PC telling what happened to him last week... Actually the culprit was the network cable, but the end result was the same.

Final Idea Factory quote

If anyone taught me how to be a good person it was by example!

The Idea Factory, Learning to think at MIT



This was a (long) series of quotes from this book. This series is dedicated to my kid brother, João. By the way, happy 18th birthday brother! ;-)

To End All Wars

To End All Wars

Ernest Gordon: When you surrender in war, you're stripped of your dignity as a soldier. And all you've got left is your fellow comrades, many of whom you've just met.

Idea Factory quote

Some kid is reading my thesis. In the Eiffel Tower of technology, I am a rivet.

The Idea Factory, Learning to think at MIT

JUnit Pocket Guide

Excerpts from JUnit Pocket Guide:

Battery of tests

JUnit:
- Runs tests automatically
- Runs many tests together and summarizes the results
- Provides a convenient place to collect tests
- Provides a convenient place for sharing the code used to create the objects to test
- Compares actual results to expected results and reports differences

Each Test class:
- Has 0..1 setUp() (@Before in JUnit 4)
- Has 0..1 tearDown() (@After in JUnit 4)
- Has 1..N testX()

Write tests first! (test-driven development)

Tests are a practical way to think separately about interface and implementation.

Stubs can avoid the allocation of expensive resources (like remote servers).

Learn APIs with tests.

Document assumptions with tests.

Incorporate tests in your build process for maximum benefits.

--

This book is now a little bit outdated because of JUnit 4, but it still is a great introduction unit tests as a first-class concept in your programming, part of the build process.

Write tests first!

Final Day Without Yesterday quote

The microwave background was discovered in 1941. Andrew McKellar, at the Dominion Observatory on Victoria Island, B.C., discovered an excitation temperature of 3K…. Factually speaking, this was just as clear cut a discovery of the background as that of 1965, but the world was not in an intellectual position to appreciate it, demonstrating the great importance of sociological factors in assessing the merits of scientific work.

Great credit accrues to those who make a scientific discovery when the world is already teetering on the edge of it, whereas the discoverer who is markedly too early scarcely earns a footnote in scientific history.

Fred Hoyle, “Final Remarks”

The Day Without Yesterday, Lemaître, Einstein and the birth of modern cosmology

--


These quotes are dedicated to Georges Lemaître and all other Scientists at heart, in search of the Truth.

Test-driven Development

The principle of test-driven development is to program the tests before the main application.

The application implementation should start with the "simplest happy path". After this, tests can be part of the development cycle: code, compile, test, execute. Tests are executed in all builds.

Just like compilation errors, test errors should be fixed as soon as they are detected.

And what about errors in the test code? :-)

The test code should be so simple it's obvious it's right.

The test code can be so complicated it's obvious it's wrong.

--

Learn more about this on Nuno Marques's blog.

(em Português)

The Semantic Web

Excerpts from the article The Semantic Web, by Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila; published by Scientific American in 2001:

In general, computers have no reliable way to process semantics.

The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web where information is given well-defined meaning. It should be universal and as decentralized as possible, even at the cost of not having total consistency.

The Semantic Web leverages Knowledge Representation techniques: structured collections of information and sets of inference rules.
Gӧdel's theorem: "Any system that is complex enough to be useful also encompasses unanswerable questions and paradoxes like 'This sentence is false'".
Semantic Web researchers accept that paradoxes and unanswerable questions are a price that must be paid to achieve versatility.

The challenge of the Semantic Web is to provide a language that expresses both data and rules for reasoning about the data and that allows rules from any existing knowledge-representation system to be exported onto the Web.
Adding logic to the web means: to use rules and make inferences, choose courses of action, and answer questions. The logic must be powerful enough to describe complex properties of objects but not so powerful that agents can be tricked by paradoxes.

The semantic web will enabled machines to comprehend semantic documents and data, not human speech and writings.

Ontologies are collections of information, a document or file, that formally define the relations among terms. E.g. a taxonomy and a set of inference rules.

XML provides hidden labels for data. RDF provides meaning, stated in triples: subject, verb, object. Each is universally identified by an URI.

The Semantic Web can also include physical objects identified by URIs and described by RDF.

Required work:
- Proof interchange format;
- Service discovery;
- Digital signatures to achieve trust.

--

The Semantic Web is indeed an ambitious and useful research goal. However, a question lingers in my mind: How will the Web be annotated to start with?

How can people be motivated to make the extra effort to annotate their contents using the mentioned "off-the-shelf software for writing Semantic Web pages"? Maybe using an approach similar to CAPTCHAs?

Effective Information Visualization

1. Ask a specific question

2. Gather information

3. Apply a metric and represent it using: size, color, location, network, time.

Color is good for enormous sets of data.
Networks become a mess with more than 100 nodes.

Rule of thumb: Use 3 dimensions or less of information! Tell a story!

Reference: Matthias Shapiro, O'Reilly Ignite

(em Português)