Moving On

So an aunt of mine died last monday.

I have to be honest, it was kind of expected. But something like that brings you down anyway.

Still, I see something very odd in the way I react to stuff like this. The last time I actually cried because of someone else's death was some 13 years ago, when my grandfather died. Even nowadays, when I remember him, tears to my eyes almost instantly. Since then I've lost my two grandmothers (both of whom I loved very much). I was crushed by both - but I didn't cry.

My perspective on death has changed a lot, that's for sure. I began to find egoism in the attitude some people have about it - it's as if they wanted the person to stay alive no matter what, only to have them around - even if they don't give much value to that person. On the other hand, a part of me envies that - the ability of showing you're upset for losing someone you love.

In the end, however, I do grieve the departed loved ones, but in my own way. I talk less, laugh less - in a way, live less. For one day only. After that, I want to enjoy life as much as I can, be it playing around, working hard, or whatever else. That's a much better way to remember someone.

In the end, I think it's useless to dwell on negative stuff like death and illness - it's much better to remember the good things about the people we love.

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Guitar Villain

Finally I started learning to play the guitar.

I borrowed an electric guitar from Pivo yesterday and I'm already training chord switching. With time, I hope, I'll gain calluses and start making some noise!

It's going to be a while until then, though. Music has a very slow learning curve. At least, that's what it seems to me right now.

One thing is for sure: as soon as I can get some pŕactice, I'll start playing around with some songs I'm looking forward to playing.

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Gotta earn it.

Yesterday was Yoshi's birthday. To celebrate, Red Five performed their first public appearance - Yoshi is one of the guitar players in the band.

It was so cool. It was the first time I went to a *ahem* concert and knew some members of the band. Their setlist is good, everyone enjoyed it.

Sometimes I wish I had a band. But, since I don't know how to play any instrument, that tends to be a bit difficult. Every now and then I feel a kind of need to learn to play an instrument - there were times when I wanted to learn piano, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, flute, drums...

That makes me wonder how cool would it be if it were possible to learn things like in The Matrix, where all you needed to do was to plug a stick to your brain and the operator would download all you needed to know directly into your brain.

Wouldn't be the same, I think. Things only are worth it if you fight for them. People should earn everything they have - but then again, who said the world had to be fair?

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Still looking for answers.

I honestly don't know what to write about here. I guess it's because so many things have been happening in the last few weeks I haven't had the time to sort it all out.

However I have been doing a lot of thinking. I've been thinking mostly about the way I live and the way I want to live in the future; and I made some decisions concerning my own habits that are very difficult to implement, because they need a lot of discipline - and that's a quality I have less of than I would like to.

Many people may call it paranoia, but what actually catalyzed the change in the way I see the world were two movies I watched only recently.

The first was 'Super Size Me'. I'm not sure if everything shown in the movie is actually true, but it scared the crap out of me. I was already concerned about my eating habits, but after that I completely stopped drinking soda, for example. I'm trying to eat less junk food, and to reach a better balanced diet.

I'm also trying (not very successfully until now) to make some exercise. I'm still not sure what, but I'm doing something.

The other movie that caused this change was Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Until watching it I didn't have an opinion about Global Warming. After that, although I still feel that I need to learn more about it, my habits did change - I'm trying to do my part, and I'm encouraging other people to do so.

I've been giving a lot of though to my future, too. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do after I finish grad school. I guess this is because there are too many variables involved. One thing I know for sure: what I want the most is to raise a family. There are a lot of things that have a weight on making such a decision, such as, 'is it worth it to bring a child to this wrecked world?'.

I'm still looking for answers.

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Criatividade

Aconteceu realmente na semana passada na rádio TUPI FM 104,1 em São Paulo:

Locutor: - Quem fala?

Ouvinte: - É o Vicente.

Locutor: - De onde, Vicente?

Ouvinte: - Lapa!

Locutor: - Olha aí, Vicente da Lapa! Valendo o kit com camiseta e CD do Edson e Hudson. Presta atenção! Qual é o país que tem duas sílabas e se pode comer uma delas? Prestou bem atenção? Há um país com 2 sílabas e 1 delas é muito boa para se comer.
Dez segundos para responder.

Ouvinte: - CUBA!

Locutor: (mudo por alguns segundos e algumas risadas no fundo) – Tá certo, senhor Vicente! Vai levar o prêmio pela criatividade. Mas aqui na minha ficha estava escrito JAPÃO...

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Dammit.

I hate RUMP. A LOT.

Apparently, the feeling is mutual.

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Oh boy.

It's cold. COLD. Too cold. But this is cool (!), people tend to get more elegant when it's cold - a lot of clothing is the main reason, I think.

Anyway, there's been a LOT happening lately, and I've had no chance to post about them, mostly because my home's connection is broken - again.

Anyway, the most important thing is that now I have data - lots of data - to analyze. And hopefully there are more on the way, since a considerable portion of my original data was lost - thanks to someone else's mistake. How can a person BLATANTLY IGNORE a warning that there's no disk space when saving experimental data??

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Today is THE day.

Hello everyone.

After a long, long, long while I've logged in to blogger once again to write another post. It's been a while, although there is no good reason whatsoever for me to have taken so long to do this.

There's a lot of things I want to write about, but unfortunately they will have to wait. Right now I'm making measurements that comprise almost all the data I need for the work in my masters degree. After this, I will be left only with some data analysis and writing my d**********n.

I only hope that the worst problems that could have appeared already did so. The ones I faced earlier this morning trying to set up the experiment were already almost unrecoverable... all I want right now is to have a long, nice day of productive work, without any further problems.

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Guitar Hero, R.I.P.

Hey Activision, you guys decided to take Harmonix out of Guitar Hero III? Too bad for you. People love Guitar Hero, but they will sell their souls for this.

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Copy-Pasta.

Now that I'm done with one of the crappiest courses I've ever had, I can even begin to think about studying classical electrodynamics for real. It is a very interesting subject, after all, despite the ugly math involved.

In other news, I can never cease to be amazed by the lack of ethics of some people. The director of the Physics Institute, where I study, has been accused of plagiarism. Regardless of his and his colleages' ethically questionable attitude, what really pissed me off is the fact that this case is most likely going to be left behind, with no punishment and, even worse, no memory of what happened. This seems to be the greatest problem around here: people seem to have no long term memory. In fact, most people seem not even to care.

I wonder what happened to these people to make them so unethical. Of all the reasons I can think of, not a single one seems reasonable.

Sometimes it's very difficult to like the place where I've studied for the last 8 years...

My only hope is that these people are just a minor portion of the whole.

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All is well that ends well...

...too bad it ain't over yet.

It's tomorrow - hopefully - that I'll get over with the due credits for my graduation. All I need is to do well in tomorrow's test - too bad the teacher is not exactly what I would call a good teacher... or a good role model for that matter. But I'm not getting into that specific matter here - at least, not yet.

The point is that I foresee a very unpleasant all-nighter tonight. The fault is, of course, mine, as usual - after last test's complete failure I actually tried taking the studies more seriously, but something happened along the way and here I am - clueless about half the topics I should know all about. But right now all I want is for it to be over. That way I can get away with it and keep being only a regular student...

When am I going to break the vicious cycle?

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'cause pi is good.

Sometimes I can't help but feel overwhelmed by the way some things happen in life. I think about people I knew years ago, and then wonder where they are now. Among these people there are friends I wish I had more contact with, and there are people I wish I got to know better.

But life follows its own path and the best one can do is to try and follow it however possible.

It's an odd feeling, though, when I begin to think how different my life would be if I had met people in other circumstances...

Things happen so quickly sometimes I just wish the world would stop for a minute...

Oh well. I must say, though, that despite the apparent depressive tone of this post, I am very happy. A bit worried - mostly because my deadline is beginning to show its ugly face on the horizon - but happy.

---

Last post was the 100th post on this blog. I wish it were about something more worth the time I took to type the words, but unfortunately I didn't realize that until now, when I logged in to write something else.

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Isso é que é diálogo

Comunicado CRUESP nº 04/2007

O Cruesp e o Fórum das Seis se reuniram nesta segunda-feira para dar continuidade à discussão da pauta de reivindicações formulada pelas entidades, na qual o ponto central era a política de assistência estudantil, tema do mais alto interesse dos alunos das três Universidades (USP, Unicamp e Unesp), cujo investimento na área já é, de longe, o maior entre as universidades brasileiras.

O Cruesp lamenta informar que a referida reunião foi suspensa em razão de nova tentativa de ocupação, por um grupo de estudantes, do prédio da Reitoria da Unicamp, onde os reitores e os representantes das entidades estavam reunidos.

Não se consumando a ocupação da Reitoria, os estudantes invadiram, no final da tarde, o prédio da Diretoria Acadêmica da Universidade, um órgão da Pró-Reitoria de Graduação cuja finalidade é prestar serviços aos próprios estudantes, zelando por sua vida acadêmica.

O Cruesp condena mais esse ato de violência praticado contra a universidade pública, sobretudo num momento em que, através do diálogo democrático e construtivo, se buscava consolidar programas de apoio fundamentais para os estudantes (em particular aqueles oriundos da escola pública) e para a vida acadêmica das três instituições.

A seqüência das negociações entre o Cruesp e o Fórum das Seis ocorrerá tão logo as atividades sejam normalizadas.

Campinas, 18 de junho de 2007.

CRUESP

E esse bando de delinqüentes, marginais e desocupados ainda diz que quer o diálogo.

Diálogo é o cacete! Eles querem é causar. Não passam de massa de manobra de partidos nanicos, irresponsáveis e extremistas.

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Ideas are bullet-proof

So I've finally watched V for Vendetta. And I'm wondering what the hell kept me from watching this movie for so long.

I have absolutely no idea whether it respects the comics, but I really liked it - V's character is absolutely fascinating - and his lines are without a doubt the best.

However, I cannot help but feel that the story was under-explored. Everything seems to happen so quickly it becomes a bit difficult to keep up. And I want to see more of V-action.

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On the vicissitudes of using a PC

Today I've reinstalled Windows on my PC.

It's one of those things you have to do now and then, since it seems to periodically and inexorably degrade to a point where anything you do triggers some error.

The good thing is, at least this forces me to do backups, software updates and not-useful-anymore software removal. All in all, even if I didn't have to I probably would still do these periodic reinstalls.

This time, though, I reserved some space for installing Ubuntu - it's been a while since I last had linux installed here, and I'm willing to use it at home again. The reason? I don't know, but probably it's just because I want it...

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Trying out Safari

So Firefox has been getting on my nerves a lot recently. I still can't understand how it got so bad. I mean, I've been using Firefox for a very long time, and I had never have any problems with it.

Until recently, that is. All of a sudden, it became highly unstable, prone to stupid problems like freezing completely, disabling tab navigation, and other stuff like that. I got so annoyed I even considered switching to Interner Explorer. Honest.

Fortunately, another option has just appeared. I'm trying out Safari, Apple's gecko-based browser. It seems promising, and my first impression is good, despite the bugs (which are just bound to exist in a beta version such as this). Also, it has some pretty cool things, like a good bookmark system, an easy-to-use rss reader, a very useful history, and is visibly more lightweight than Firefox.

There are still some pretty annoying problems, though. For one, I still can't use gmail with it - there's some problem with accentuation that truncates the message... also, I can't type in anything in the Post Title field on blogger's posting system, because that triggers Safari to immediately die.

It seems promising, though. While Firefox continues to disappoint me, I'm feeling more and more inclined to make the switch.

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Cidade Limpa

A Lei Cidade Limpa entrou em vigor em 1º de janeiro deste ano, proibindo a maioria das formas de publicidade externa na cidade. Não só foram banidos os outdoors e anúncios gigantes (familiares de quem passava na Rua da Consolação, por exemplo), mas também os anúncios em ônibus e táxis.

A iniciativa é boa - apesar de as agências publicitárias terem esperneado até não poder mais contra a nova lei. Ela ajuda a diminuir a poluição visual na cidade, o que às vezes parece algo irrelevante em meio à agitada vida paulistana, mas que no fundo contribui para aumentar o estresse de quem vive numa cidade tão agitada.

No entanto, fico me perguntando qual vai acabar sendo o real efeito dessa lei na vida do paulistano. Nos últimos tempos eu venho percebendo a mudança significativa na paisagem da cidade por causa da remoção de toda a publicidade externa, e sou forçado a dizer que é bem provável que essa lei possa acabar tendo o efeito oposto do esperado.

Isso porque, no lugar dos anúncios, em muitos lugares ficaram os "esqueletos" abandonados das estruturas em que eles costumavam ficar afixados - postes de outdoor, pra citar um exemplo mais evidente. Quem passa na Marginal Pinheiros na região da Cidade Universitária ainda pode ver uma fila imensa deles, ainda ali, como fantasmas.

Mas o pior disso não são essas estruturas abandonadas - que, mais dia menos dia, vão acabar saindo. São as pixações e outras depredações visuais, tão comuns hoje em dia. Elas estão por todo lugar - evidência de que existe gente sem noção de que as idiotices que eles escrevem podem não agradar aos outros. Se a Prefeitura pretende ser minimamente coerente, ela deve tomar providências para limpar as fachadas da cidade e evitar que elas voltem a ser vítimas de vandalismo.

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Why I hate crowded places

Today was the Gay Pride Parade in São Paulo. The city's most prominent avenue, the Paulista Avenue, was completely taken by about 3,5 million people (according to the people who organized the parade). My girlfriend wanted to see it, and it was on the way home from her granny's house, so we would have to go there anyway.

First of all, I'd like to say I don't hold anything against other people's sexual options. Everyone should be free to decide about their own lives.

My problem is with crowds. For one, it's an experimental fact that people's intelligence decreases with the number of people in a crowd. Usually it's the lowesst individual IQ divided by the number of people. And so, people in crowds do a lot of stupid things. Like pushing other people like there's no tomorrow, just to walk from point A to point B.

And they drink a lot. A LOT. And drunk people are among the most annoying people in the universe. Not to mention when they throw up because they don't know how to drink.

Finally, there are those who don't go anywhere without wanting to pick a fight. All these people want is some uproar, tumult, chaos, disturbance, and stuff like that. And these are the worst, I might add - they are the ones who end up showing up in the newspaper when they spank another person, get arrested, or do some other stupid thing like that. Obviously, though, the fame goes for everyone who has anything to do with the event these Nature Mistakes were in.

All of these factors really have the power to make me really angry. In occasions like these I get so upset my stomach hurts, my head hurts, my whole organism gets upset.

But what really upsets me is that, being angry like that, I fail to take into account what other people want or think. I get obnoxious, stubborn, even stupid (after all, I'm another element of the crowd, and the intelligence decrease applies to me as well). My girlfriend was really looking forward to this particular parade, and in the end we didn't stop even for a minute to look around and see the good things that happen there - after all, and this I have to say in favor of gay people, they are usually more true to themselves, and more honest with other people, and in being so they become really interesting people because they are genuine.

Anyway, the point of all this gibberish(?) is that I hate crowded places because they bring forth the worst parts of my personality, aspects of myself that I don't like at all.

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Nothing really new.

I can't say I have something really new to post here - I'm posting really to simply not let the blog stay too long without being updated.

I began carrying lunch today - I mean, I cook it the day after at home, and take it on tupperwares to Physics. My hope is that this procedure will help me increase the quality of my meals. By the way, I'm feeling guilty because it's almost three weeks without sending Ju my "food diary". I should be more responsible.

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Electrodynamics revisited

Yesterday I began reviewing Classical Electrodynamics. One of the things I regret about my undergrad life is that I never got to actually learn anything about electromagnetism. The teachers for both courses I took were... incompetent, in the lack of a better term. All they did was recite the book and use slideshows to talk about the subject... exams were just as crappy, to say the least.

Of course, much of the blame is to be taken on me, too. I did not take the initiative to study it for myself... and now I'm having to catch up.

The funny part is, I actually like studying electrodynamics.

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