Saturday was not a family day because some of us had to work. No, I don’t mean me. This time is was A. who had to work the saturday all day long. The rest of the weekend (today!) was spent doing family stuff, trying to compensate.
So, the plan was to visit the latest exhibit by the “Pavilhão do Conhecimento” (Pavilion of Knowledge). With a fancy name, “Space, The Final Frontier” exposition shows some of the latest achievments of ESA. Hanging from the ceiling a 1:10 model of the International Space Station shows the complexity of that man-made structure. The visitor’s ability to land a space shuttle or the command rendevouz operations between two spacecrafts is put to the test. Amongst these and another lot of other experiments, I enjoyed controlling the Mars rover from “earth” while he was discovering the surface of Mars. The small robot vehicle was actually a few meters aways but it was cool!
It was a nice time spent learning about (some of them) new stuff!
For those of you how are interested, the exhibit is avaliable until August 30th 2009, but don’t miss it.
Economy is really not my thing. I really don’t what to know much about anything associated with economy, but this cartoon made me laugh (and think) for a while.
(It’s not mine, I took it from somewhere on the web, and unfortunatelly didn’t keep the author for reference.)
Yes, I work with a bunch of conservatives. I found the video of the latest ad campaign from Diesel, and send them the link.
Just because I mentioned it contained Porn no one had the nerve to see it. I understand that being caught seeing porn at work is not the greatest ideia ever… But this ad campaign is based on the notion of SFW (Safe For Work) porn, which replaces all explicit images with cartoon pictures resulting in a very funny movie (and totally harmless)!
Just watch the video and tell me if it isn’t funny…
My father-in-law makes a good amount of wine by the end of each summer. One more, he asked me for some help during the wine making activities. My favorite thing to do before drinking the actual wine is not to catch the grapes, but to help stepping on them. So today, knee deep in grapes and wine and already with a lot of alcohol in the air, I helped to step on the grapes.
In a couple of month, I’ll say something about the taste of the new wine! Maybe accompaning a nice steak dinner.
During my last vacation, I had time to finish a great book. Ensaio sobre a Cegueira is an excellent bedside reading and a great companion for some nice vacations.
José Saramago’s [EN] novel was adapted to the big screen by Fernando Meirelles (the producer of one of my latest favorite ‘independent’ movies - Cidade dos Homens/City of Men). But it is still waiting to premier in Portugal.
Blindness was nominated for the Golden Palm (in the Canne’s Film Festival), and it will be worth the next trip to the theatre.
I use and suggest to everyone a tool framework called Valgrind. Valgrind’s tool suite include very powerful debugging and profiling tools, essential to the development of any C/C++ project. In sum, I strongly recommend it use!
This post is not about any tip or trick on how to use Valgrind. It’s about a more trivial matter… Is about the name ‘Valgrind’, and it’s origins. During the last week I discussed with a colleague it’s origins. I was arguing that the name Valgring was some kind of short to “value grinder”. I now admit: “I was work!”… but very, very, dead Wrong! My colleague was dead On!
In fact, it took no more than 10 minutes to find the Valgrind FAQ, and another minute to find the answer from the authors themselves:
Where does the name “Valgrind” come from?
From Nordic mythology. Originally (before release) the project was named Heimdall, after the watchman of the Nordic gods. He could “see a hundred miles by day or night, hear the grass growing, see the wool growing on a sheep’s back” (etc). This would have been a great name, but it was already taken by a security package “Heimdal”.
Keeping with the Nordic theme, Valgrind was chosen. Valgrind is the name of the main entrance to Valhalla (the Hall of the Chosen Slain in Asgard). Over this entrance there resides a wolf and over it there is the head of a boar and on it perches a huge eagle, whose eyes can see to the far regions of the nine worlds. Only those judged worthy by the guardians are allowed to pass through Valgrind. All others are refused entrance.
It’s not short for “value grinder”, although that’s not a bad guess.
The last phrase says it all. The authors even read my mind, or someone else has had the same crazy idea before!!
I didn’t forget to download the latest Firefox 3.0. This way I participated in a new World Record, and also got my hands in the best browser available in the world. Here’s the proof…
