Um pedido de desculpas àqueles que o usam tanto como uma maneira de publicar melhor os seus blogs e àqueles que o usam como fonte de leitura no dia-a-dia. Foi bom enquanto durou.

Grey like Swiss weather and pierced like Portuguese economy.

Or is it grey like Portuguese economy and pierced like Swiss cheese?

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The only thing it does yet is cycle through the whole hue range very slowly, so it gives a nice smoothly changing environment to the room. It draws its power from a standard wall socket, although I left the USB cable dangling in order to just my laptop whenever and reprogram it at will.

The assembly is fairly simple, all you need is:

• Arduino (I’m using the Diecimila);
• RGB LED (I bought this one);
• some 100 Ohm resistors (I bought these, although if you know a bit something about LEDs you know that different LED colors require different voltages, as such, in order to get better results you could use different resistors);
• Arduino compatible wall socket;
• one IKEA lamp!

All you need to do is connect each color of the LED to an analog out pin on the Arduino, and do some code!

If someone has any good ideas on what else to do with the lamp, please let me know!

In few words, my Macbook Pro just went from perfectly fine to not working at all, a few days after installing Snow Leopard. Technically, the screen does not light up at all. Only after certain acts such as running it on Target Disk Mode or removing the battery for more than 15 seconds; and this isn’t even linear, it only happens sometimes. Mind you, I would love not to blame the new Operating System but there are no evidences that it wasn’t the culprit, mainly because the laptop was impeccable before the upgrade.

Luckily I’m not the only one, apparently. Here’s the Apple Forums thread, in which we are still waiting for an Apple reply. And since I can only bring it into an Apple Store next week, I will have to wait a little longer to get a fix on this. Until then, I’m out of laptop.

More will follow.

Samoa was a German colony until occupied by New Zealand at the beginning of the First World War. Until September 2009 it maintained the German practice of driving on the right-hand side of the road. This practice had been in place for more than a century. A plan to drive on the left was first announced by the Samoan government in September 2007 and was confirmed on 18 April 2008 when Samoa’s parliament passed the Road Transport Reform Act 2008. [...]

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi says the purpose of adopting left-hand traffic is to allow Samoans to use cheaper right-hand drive vehicles sourced from Australia, New Zealand, or Japan, and so that the large number of Samoans living in Australasia can drive on the same side of the road when they visit their country of origin. He aims to reduce reliance on expensive, left-hand drive imports from America. [...]

The change came into force following a radio announcement at 5.50 local time (16.50 GMT) which halted traffic and an announcement at 6.00 local time (17.00 GMT) for traffic to switch from the right to the left-hand side of the road.

from Wikipedia.

Isn’t it funny how economic pressures can change the way we act? And how desperate times can change the way we think? And also, how brilliant ideas are often simple?

I really love this one, guys and girls.

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While watching TV just now I came across SAPO’s new Internet service campaign, and it puzzled me how is it possible that a major portuguese technology company spends their money on creative teams that don’t even have the credit to be called creative. Please, judge it yourselves.

SAPO Fibra Spot TV

I guess that for some people, in times of crisis even our imagination must be used lightly.

We love the fresh smell of flowers at the end of a camping trip.

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Play Me I’m Yours is an amazing project by artist Luke Jerram in which pianos are spread throughout urban spaces inviting each person to hang around, play some music, hear others play and just have fun.