tales from the crypt( ) » rants

dyslexics of the wolrd: untie!

bruno — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:42:31 +0000

EuroSport, a few minutes ago.

…and then they were three

bruno — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 01:21:27 +0000

the blue screen of twitter

bruno — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:15:14 +0000

I’m not going to talk about the way social networks (Twitter, mostly) have gradually killed blogs as personal publishing platforms. Simplicity. Flexibility. Ease of use. Limited formatting. Networking.

I’m not going to talk about the fact that it’s by now proven that social networks (Twitter, mostly) often become the first source of breaking news (lacking accuracy and reliability – but hey, we like it short and direct).

I’m also not going to talk about Twitter’s lack of scalability and stability. It’s often usual to see the smiling fail whale whenever the two facts I mentioned before combine together.

Today, Twitter was down for one hour or so. My first thought was “what in the world is happening capable of bringing twitter down to its knees?”. But the stupid whale wouldn’t say a thing.

I’d later find out it was some “sudden failure”. But I bet it was the combination of two episodes. A new earthquake on Haiti and @billgates (what took him so long?) joining Twitter. These were the trending topics the minute Twitter came back up and they stayed like that for some time.

(edit: the first episode would lead to a quite quick humorous response by @workforfood: an appropriate blue whale of death)

So, Twitter, here’s an idea. Next time you fail whale on me and something is happening in the world, get a static page with the top trending topics so we get a general idea of what’s happening. Either it’s #billgates, #earthquake, #haiti or #obama, we’d like to know. Kthxbye.

consciência tranquila

bruno — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 01:37:34 +0000

Nos idos de 1998, baldei-me ao referendo do aborto para ir ter com uns amigos à Expo’98. Eram favas contadas, o país era prá frentex e aquilo estava ganho. O referendo não passou e eu arrependi-me desde então de não ter exercido o meu direito de voto. Felizmente, o referendo viria a passar uns anos depois e pude (finalmente) tirar esse peso da consciência.

São duas da manhã. Entre copos e outras coisas boas que esmiuçarei aqui a seu tempo, estou ao telefone e ao computador a ajudar os meus colegas de trabalho. Vou dormir uma miséria de horas. Mas vou acordar cedo para ir votar às 9 ou coisa assim, porque depois tenho que ir ter com bons amigos para uma lauta refeição e para aproveitar os últimos dias deste verão maravilhoso. Vai-me custar levantar cedo. Mas custar-me-ia mais ser surpreendido pela eleição de alguém que abomino e saber que não tinha votado contra isso. Que não tinha feito a minha parte. Que não tinha exercido o meu dever.

E é só isso. E agora vou ali dar umas cabeçadas à almofada.

gmail themes

bruno — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:40:02 +0000

So half the geek population on the face of the Earth has its panties in a knot because Google Mail has themes and because the “Terminal” theme is so nostalgic. Believe me, I’ve done all sorts of things in front of these thingies back in the days when all the interwebs we had were gopher and FTP by email.

Back to the 21st century. All hails and praises, a lot of people still use mutt as a mail client and all sort of console tools… but has someone bothered to try to actually use the “Terminal” theme for more than 30 minutes without getting a headache?

I thought so…