My first contact with Codebits was on its second edition, when most of the portuguese technology related folks I followed on Twitter were attending it and filling up my timeline with insights, private jokes and reports on the event. I remember watching a few interesting sessions online and missing a few I’d like to see because they were not being broadcasted live. That’s when I made the promise I would try and attend this year.

Given the hectic state of things at work lately, I made sure I had the days off when I signed in, mostly because I wanted to pay attention to things and attend as much sessions as possible. When the first session plans showed up, I already had a pretty tight schedule and almost no free slots, but I think this might have happened to too many people and these “popular” sessions would soon be moved to other stages and timeframes. Which is nice.

I came to Codebits with zero ideas about projects and the whole spirit of the thing. If last year the focus had been on RFID and location based apps, this year would surely be the social networking year, something which the Pond launch kinda confirmed (and later the project “score” would, too).

One of the things I liked most about the 2008 edition was the quiz, a series of small web based puzzles and riddles which would, properly evaluated and scored, rank a number of users giving them access to the “real” quiz show during the main event.

Coincidentally, when the first quiz came out, I was with a couple of friends on a bar musing about improbable things, drinking caipirinhas and toying around with Google Wave. In an adrenaline rush I hadn’t felt for a while, we cracked the thing in less than an hour and had quite a few laughs based on the subject. Whenever a new quiz was out, we’d join forces on Skype, Google Wave, email and IM solving the riddles.  That’s how most of us got on stage. That’s how some of these folks ended up in the same large team to develop our “project”.

Of course, when things got hardcore (javascript golf? brainfuck?), we fled. We have a life too. Some of us. Sometimes.

(more…)

…and I’m having a ball…

I often find myself crawling under the desk looking for labels or turning around laptops trying to find half-erased and destroyed panels showing computer serial numbers and other cryptic hyeroglyphs.

Let me tell you about serial numbers. These are quite useful to keep handy in case your stuff is stolen. Luckily, for most manufacturers like Dell, IBM, Toshiba and HP, there’s a way to find these without leaving the desk, providing they’re running some sort of Redmond operating system and using WMIC (Windows Management Instrumentation Command). Custom built systems may not have so much useful information, but it’s pretty fun nevertheless to peek inside using WMI.

WMIC is available on Windows XP, Windows 2003 and later versions. To use WMI information on older operating systems, download and install WMI core for Win 9x or WMI core for Win NT 4 from Microsoft’s website.

There are a gazillion values that can be retrieved/changed using WMIC. The availability of WMI information does vary across different versions of Windows and it requires administrator rights to be run.

In Windows 2000, there are around 4000 properties that can be monitored and around 40 that can be configured. Windows XP raises these numbers to 6000 and 140 respectively.

Now, for instance, to retrieve the serial number of a computer, run the following command on a DOS prompt:

wmic bios get serialnumber

Or to retrieve the model name (these can get quite cryptic sometimes)  run the following command

wmic csproduct get name

When WMIC is run for the first time, it may take a little time until all possible properties are inventoried. Subsequent times you run WMIC, it will start immediately.

Got most of this info from http://www.ss64.com/nt/wmic.html

As usual , YMMV and Microsoft’ MSDN full WMI reference may provide some extended reading and reference on the subject.

Yes, I’m slacking.

One day, my trip diaries will come back to life and I will start doing them in time. So far, London is on hold, Frankfurt (although a very small business trip) is on hold and Pipa is on hold. There are far too many memories, too many photos, too many damn good moments that need to be registered.

While I silently prepare myself to enter hell and (hopefully) come out a little better, I couldn’t help feeling flabbergasted by the sight of photographer Jason Hawkes work featured on BoingBoing. It seems that I have missed his previous series of London from Above photos  which by now, after my second visit, bring along some more memories. All of this, of course, was triggered by the second series of London from Above photos. A must see. A must re-visit.