Ivo Anastacio's blog

Book Review: The Coffee Trader

noreply@blogger.com (Ivo) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:29:00 +0000

Last night I finished David Liss's second historical novel, The Coffee Trader. In this book we are taken to XVII century Amsterdam where the main character, a Portuguese Jew named Miguel Lourenço, tries to make a fortune with a plot to control coffee - an obscure drink at the time - across the main European stock markets.

The story is fast and engaging, full of jealousies, betrayals and intrigues, but I must admit, the quality of the details is what really makes this book stand out. The way the author describes taverns, streets, houses, businesses, people in general, but the Jew community in particular, clearly shows that a lot of research was done.

Thumbs UP!

Expresso's Special Dossier on IST Taguspark

noreply@blogger.com (Ivo) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:17:00 +0000

Expresso, a weekly Portuguese newspaper, published last Saturday a twelve page special dossier about my university, Instituto Superior Técnico - Taguspark. In it, you'll find information on ongoing researches and activities, future strategy and many interviews with teachers, employers and current and former students.

Below you can read the full dossier.

Special Dossier IST Taguspark

Best Blogger Templates by Mashable

noreply@blogger.com (Ivo) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:28:00 +0000

Following Pedro's post about his favorite Wordpress templates and André's post complaining about the Blogger default ones, I ~~made my own list~~ googled and found this nice Top50 Blogger Templates article.

Some are really nice and I'll certainly try them out once I get bored of this one.

************

UPDATE:

My friend André made a post about 2 other good resources for blogger templates you should also check.

My Favorite RSS feeds

noreply@blogger.com (Ivo) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:24:00 +0000

Although classes are over, I still have a couple of exams to do and projects to finish, as such, my time to write here hasn't been much. So today I decided to quickly show you what my favorite RSS feeds are.

Hope you find something that interests you :)

News:
CNN
TSF Online (pt)

Tech News:
Sapo Tek (pt)
Exame Informática (pt)
Forbes.com - Technology News
Reuters - Technology News
The Economist - The Internet
CIO
Read/Write Web
TechCrunch UK
TechCrunch
VentureBeat
Mashable
LifeHacker - Top

Design:
Smashing Magazine
Six Revisions
Woork

Blogs:
Signal vs. Noise
ScribeFire
Google Geo Developers Blog
High Scalability
OnStartups

Others:
Dilbert Daily Strip :)
Apple Movie Trailers

As you can see by the image below, I like to know what is happening out there :P

Check my Google Reader widget on the sidebar to see what news I found most interesting recently.

Best Firefox Add-ons

noreply@blogger.com (Ivo) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:09:00 +0000

In case you don't know me, let me just tell you that I'm one of those guys who likes to try out tons of software, always searching for the best software portfolio to have installed, almost as if a crusade was going on. However, if I had to choose a single application as my favorite one, it would be Firefox, and version 3 only comes to confirm that.

The main reasons I'm such a fan?

#1: Add-ons

Here's my personal choice (All Firefox 3 compatible):

Adblock Plus
Gets rid of ads and banners.

Colorful Tabs
Colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface.

CustomizeGoogle
Enhances Google search results by adding extra information.

Delicious Bookmarks
Seamlessly integrates your browser with del.icio.us.

Download statusbar
Gets rid of the download window by showing all the information on the statusbar.

DownThemAll
Download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox, nice for large files.

Firebug
Probably the best web development tool you'll find.

Gmail Notifier
Allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications.

Google Reader Watcher
Checks your Google Reader for unread news.

IE Tab
Enables you to use the Internet Explorer engine inside Firefox.

Mouse Gesture
Allows you to execute common commands by mouse gestures drawn over the current webpage.

PDF Download
Whenever you click on a PDF file, PDF Download lets you know before trying to open it, and then offers you choices such as downloading, opening, or converting it straight to HTML.

Session Manager
Allows you to restore closed windows/tabs.

Taboo
Lets you save a page for later without cluttering your bookmarks.

Web Developer
Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

Exch
Currency conversion sidebar.

#2: ***Brand NEW*** "Awesome Bar"

One new feature of Firefox 3 I'm loving right now is the "Awesome Bar".

"Okay, so the official name is the Location Bar, the field where you enter URLs you want to visit. But beta testers have nicknamed it the Awesome Bar and it is, well, pretty awesome. Enter text in the Location Bar and a dropdown list appears of pages from your browsing history that include that text, not just in the URL, but in the page title or the page's tag (see #4 below). The list even includes Gmail messages that include that word in the subject line. If you've already visited a Web page, there's a good chance it's useful to you. The Location Bar lets you very quickly search that useful subset of the Web." - Edward N. Albro, CIO.com

Why a Blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Ivo) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:34:00 +0000

After almost 5 years as an Information Systems and Computer Engineer student, you who know me, might wonder why am I only now starting to blog or why am I launching another blog to the already crowded blogosphere.

Well, there are in fact many reasons but the main ones are:

* School time is almost over, friends that now I meet every day will very soon be living different lifes, and we might lose contact. Hi5 profiles and twitter accounts are a nice try to keep them close but not very interesting most of the times, so I'll try blogging;

* Good english writing is a requirement in my (future) line of work so this will be another chance to improve it;

* A blog might be a good tool to manage my own knowledge, as I intend to write about decisions I make as a final year student, books I read, software development challenges I face, etc.;

* A nice blog seems to be a good way of promoting myself.

And this is it, my first post, hope I can keep you interested with my future ones - I'll try to update this blog every week - and don't forget to subscribe to the RSS feed.