Book Reviews

Ξ December 21st, 2009 | → 0 Comments |
∇ Fun, Vacation | ∇ , , , , |

 The holidays are the perfect time to read, and I’ve been doing a good share of reading. The selected books where “Peopleware” from Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, and “Clean Code” from “Uncle Bob” Martin.

  • Peopleware ~ Productive Projects and Teams, 2ed 

This book was presented to me as a selection of small essays and articles on team management, but it is so much more than that.
The first thing that becomes clear to the reader is the voice of experience that is expressed in each chapter. Some of the ideas win your over due to their simplicity, they are so obvious that they can’t be contested by anyone. But seeing then written down, black over white, gives then another aura of comprehension.
The authors devote themselves to the issues like the team environment (the physical space that the team needs), team members and their selection and team building.
I really like the metaphor of having a “jell” glue team members, and so increase their productivity. Some introspection really allowed me to relate with the requirements to achieve the “jell formation”, and also identify the issues that make it harder to build a better team.

  • Clean Code ~ A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

The quality of you code is obviously something that should never be disregarded, but after reading Clean Code I’ve gained some very good tools (and specially validated arguments) to say “My code still isn’t ready, it needs to be cleaned!”.
The book purposes the idea that you need several iterations to incrementally clean your code. This alone, is not something new, but the author makes a good argument advocating that most of the time that clean up is not done. This leads to severe code rot, and decreased productivity and decreased motivation and…
Apart from showing several techniques to improve/clean your code, it also defends the benefits of Test-Driven Development. On this subject, I need to do some more investigations but it seems that the TDD approach has advantages over the usual “ill-defined” testing that is the normal approach. At least the book opened the “appetite” for the subject…

 

Monthly DOC

Ξ December 15th, 2009 | → 0 Comments |
∇ Photo | ∇ , , , , , |

Do you like this photo for the monthly “Dualidade Ondulatória Corposcular” contest? Visit and vote. Sometimes I forget to post my monthly photo, but it has a lot of good photos every month.


 

Dutch Horse

Ξ December 14th, 2009 | → 0 Comments |
∇ Family, Travel | ∇ , , , , , |

 

I’m in the lovely company of…

Ξ December 14th, 2009 | → 0 Comments |
∇ Music | ∇ , , , |

 

Portugal: A Detail

Ξ December 13th, 2009 | → 2 Comments |
∇ Photo | ∇ , , |

 

Books

Ξ December 13th, 2009 | → 0 Comments |
∇ Fun | ∇ , , |

Having a bit of free time on my hands, I decided to create a list with the latests books I’ve read. There are still some missing, but the ones I’d recommend are already there.

As usual the list in currently very organized, but I don’t expect it to remain that way for very long. :-)

 

Malo

Ξ December 5th, 2009 | → 0 Comments |
∇ Life | ∇ , , , |


This music allways makes me think about life. Reading the lyrics increased that introspection… Women deserve the world.

Apareciste una noche fria
con olor a tabaco sucio y a ginebra
el miedo ya me recorría
mientras cruzaba los deditos tras la puerta
Tu carita de niño guapo
se l’ha ido comiendo el tiempo por tus venas
y tu inseguridad machista
se refleja cada día en mis lagrimitas

Una vez más, no por favor que estoy cansá
y no puedo con el corazón
Una vez más, no mi amor por favor,
no grites que los niños duermen
Una vez más, no por favor que estoy cansá
y no puedo con el corazón
Una vez más, no mi amor por favor,
no grites que los niños duermen.
Voy a volverme como el fuego
voy a quemar tus puños de acero
y del morao de mis mejillas sacar valor
para cobrarme las heridas.
Malo, malo, malo eres
no se daña a quien se quiere, no
tonto, tonto, tonto eres
no te pienses mejor que las mujeres
Malo, malo, malo eres
no se daña a quien se quiere, no
tonto, tonto, tonto eres
no te pienses mejor que las mujeres

El dia es gris cuando tu éstas
y el sol vuelve a salir cuando te vas
y la penita de mi corazón
yo me la tengo que tragar con el fogón
mi carita de niña linda
se ha ido envejeciendo en el silencio
cada vez que me dices puta
se hace tu cerebro más pequeño

Una vez más, no por favor que estoy cansá
y no puedo con el corazón
Una vez más, no mi amor por favor,
no grites que los niños duermen
Una vez más, no por favor que estoy cansá
y no puedo con el corazón
Una vez más, no mi amor por favor,
no grites que los niños duermen.
Voy a volverme como el fuego
voy a quemar tus puños de acero
y del morao de mis mejillas sacar valor
para cobrarme las heridas.
Malo, malo, malo eres
no se daña a quien se quiere, no
tonto, tonto, tonto eres
no te pienses mejor que las mujeres
Malo, malo, malo eres
no se daña a quien se quiere, no
tonto, tonto, tonto eres
no te pienses mejor que las mujeres…

Voy a volverme como el fuego
voy a quemar tus puños de acero
y del morao de mis mejillas sacar valor
para cobrarme las heridas.
Malo, malo, malo eres
no se daña a quien se quiere, no
tonto, tonto, tonto eres
no te pienses mejor que las mujeres
Malo, malo, malo eres
no se daña a quien se quiere, no
tonto, tonto, tonto eres
no te pienses mejor que las mujeres…

Malo, malo, malo eres
malo eres, porque quieres
Malo, malo, malo eres
no me chilles que me duele
Eres debil y eres malo no te pienses
mejor que yo ni que nadie
y ahora yo me fumo un cigarrito
y te hecho el humo en el corazoncito
porque malo, malo, malo eres, tu
malo, malo, malo eres, si
malo, malo, malo eres, siempre
malo, malo malo eres.

 

Solving online…

Ξ December 4th, 2009 | → 0 Comments |
∇ Mathematics, Tools | ∇ , , , |

There are several online Math tools to do all sorts of things like: plotting graphs, applying operations on matrices… but there is one that I’ve enjoying a while now.

Using Wolfram’s WolframAlpha to solve analyze functions/solve equations (just to make sure the result is correct) is an excellent experience. Just type:

solve  4x^3 - (2 + x^2)x^2 = -3x

and in a second you get the equations solutions and the related plot. This tools is also able to do symbolic derivatives and integrations. See more examples here.

 

Math formulas with LaTeX

Ξ December 2nd, 2009 | → 0 Comments |
∇ Mathematics | ∇ , , , |

You might still don’t know about it, but I’m taking a course on Applied Mathematics. So, you might expect to start to see some strange topics on this blog, specially now that blog this supports Latex formulas using the WP-QuickLaTeX plugin.

The following is just a test…

R_r^t(t_r,t^t) = \rho_r^t(t_r,t^t) - (\delta t_r - \delta ^t) c + \delta_{ion} + \delta_{tro} + \delta_{mul} + \delta_{rel} + \epsilon

\lambda \Phi_r^t(t_r) = \rho_r^t(t_r,t^t) - (\delta t_r - \delta ^t) c + \delta_{ion} + \delta_{tro} + \delta_{mul} + \delta_{rel} + \lambda N_r^t + \epsilon

For those that don’t recognize them immediately, the above formulas are the measurement models for Pseudorange (R_r^t) and Carrier Phase (\Phi_r^t) for the GPS and Galileo satellites.