NunoNunes.org

OpenID TypeKey vs myOpenID.com

OpenID authentication rocks.

I’ve been using TypeKey as the OpenID provider for my domain for a long time now and until today things had gone by without a hitch. But tonight, as I was in a hurry to log in to tarpipe to write a quick workflow to use on my upcoming journey, it just failed me.

Now tonight, of all nights, I became aware that not only has TypeKey undergone some changes, but also tarpipe itself changed something in the authentication page so I was confused for a brief period as to what was failing where. But then I followed the authentication steps and it became obviously clear that TypeKey was the one failing me and having zero time to read all their explanations about the changes they performed (and really annoyed that those changes broke the service they’d been rendering me without any kind of previous warning whatsoever —I’m assuming it is a bug, not a conscious decision, but still, a failing authentication service? Ouch!) I decided to take the only course of action that was available to me on the spot.

So TypeKey is misbehaving but this being OpenID, tarpipe doesn’t really care who authenticates me, as long as they do authenticate me, right?
So I just had to open an account on any other OpenID provider, set up my domain to refer that provider as the one that authenticates me and then everything should work, right?

As it turns out yes, that is all there is to it. I created an account on myOpenID.com (don’t know them at all, maybe it was a good choice, maybe it was a bad choice, I’ll have to look into them more carefully later, but for now I just needed to be able to log into tarpipe and do it NOW), I made the necessary changes to my site to reflect the new authentication provider and voilá, instant gratification! I can now log into tarpipe and create and tweak my workflows at will.

It took me all of 20 minutes, from coming across the problem to solving it. Good heh? :-)

Diary 2008-11-10

Earlier today I tweeted a couple of lines from a song I was listening to and enjoying a lot. This is something I do quite often.

o/’ And if a double-decker bus crashes into us, To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die o/’

This is, of course, taken from The Smiths’ “There is a light that never goes out”.

I broadcast those lines because I was thrilled by the song and it was natural for me to express this feeling in this particular way, but then a strange thing happened: people reacted as if I was having dark and dangerous thoughts and while I must admit that my previous tweets, from the day before, taken together with this portion of the lyrics, could have given them that impression, I was actually in a pretty good mood at the time. I was just listening to, and thoroughly enjoying the pain, drama and misery that is the hallmark of The Smiths and it was great! So I responded with another tweet to try and restore the “truth of the matter”.

Lol, I’m not having dark thoughts, “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” is not a sad song, m’kay?

And yet, people still thought I was troubled somehow. Which was something that gave me a bit of pause, I must admit.
When I realized that they were actually (in the joking/scoffing way that is appropriate to this channel) convinced something was up I just had to reply with:

If I were as susceptible to pop music-induced depression as people apparently think I am I would have been dead by age 14. Get a grip, people. ;-)

But then my own reply gave me even more pause. Yes, I pause a lot.

Nick Hornby wrote in his great novel “High Fidelity” (which most people will have gotten to know by the excellent film that came later by the same name and which constitutes probably the sole best adaptation of a novel to the cinema that I am aware of, but I digress…) the following paragraph:

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

Just to set the record straight, this quote is taken from the opening line of the film, the book version is a little more elaborate, but that is beside the point now. Go read the book. I mean it. Do it. Go! Oh and the soundtrack for the film? Go get it! :-)

Getting back on track here, I think the previous quote, besides being an astonishing tirade as a film opener, has in it the kernel of something really, really serious.
Pop music (most music really, but I’ll mostly stick to this one genre for this discussion) is mainly about feelings —romantic or otherwise— and the most prevalent feeling found in it would seem to be romantic love.
Now love, as we all know, is a bitch. And so while many songs are about the heights you achieve when you’re in love, inevitably there are far more songs about the loss of love and all the pain and misery those situations always bring with them.
Hence the “thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss.”
Well yeah, that’s part of life, isn’t it? And if you believe pop music and cinema (Hollywood may be disqualified for obvious reasons —they usually try to sell happiness to counter-act the seemingly natural state of unhappiness people tend to live in) it is indeed a big part of it.

But the fact that most of pop music is about pain and heartbreak doesn’t necessarily mean that people must be miserable to enjoy it. People empathize with feelings they know (and even with those have only experienced second-hand) even without being in the process of having those feelings right now. I enjoy Morrissey’s dramatic flare and thoroughly despondent renditions of all those sad and miserable Smiths songs even when I’m happy as can be.
But the question that Nick asks is very relevant and I do believe there is a definite answer to it.

Something happened today, after the tweet exchange that prompted this post, that really brought me down, something that’s been brewing for a while and that was rather inevitable (and which may have come across a bit too strongly in the last few days, thus prompting the aforementioned response to my tweets today), so now, as I’m writing this, I really am sad and of course I, as always, turned to music —pop music— to help me out a bit.
Right now Abbey Road is spinning on my record player and it brings about, as always, the best of feelings.

The Beatles. They’re always there for me.
As is Bowie, as is Iron Maiden and Róisín Murphy and Chico Buarque and Jeff Buckley and Keith Jarret and Coltrane and the Pet Shop Boys and Bach and… And hundreds of others (and yes, I know I failed to restrict this list to pop music).
But they do not control my moods, they don’t bring me down or pick me up, unless I explicitly want them to (and for that purpose I have the appropriate playlists to help bring about those particular mood-swings).
I listen to pop music because I am depressed. I listen to pop music because I’m happy. I listen to music —any genre— because it fits my mood, because of the feelings it evoques or because it helps me to get to whatever state of mind I wish to attain.
Maybe not everybody is like that and I am indeed quite fortunate to have this relationship with music. But I do. And I love it.

So there! :-)

Duelo IX

Não se faz.

É que não se faz mesmo!

Como é que eu alguma vez poderia escolher??

Não consigo votar, pronto.

The Smiths vs. The Cure.

É que não passa na cabeça de ninguém!!

Contrast Podcast - Poetry

This morning, on my way to work, I was catching up on my (huge) podcast queue and I happened to listen to the whole of the “Poetry Intros” episode of the Contrast Podcast.

What an amazing episode! Seriously, I don’t know if it was the theme that brought out a different mood in the contributors, or if it was just one of those lucky coincidences, but most of the songs are really, really good (some better than others and a really varied mix —as it should be, this being the Contrast Podcast).

It is one of the rare times when I feel the urge to keep a podcast around to listen to it again.

And all of this reminds me that I haven’t contributed in a long, long time and I’ve already missed a few very good themes. Nest week’s theme is “Change”. I just can’t miss that one!

Diary 2008-10-17

On this episode of Nuno’s random thoughts: social calendar wars; Winter is coming and what’s good about it; and music on movies and TV shows. Skip it if none of these interest you at all.

I’m a paying subscriber of Last.fm and I absolutely love the service. I use it a lot (as my numbers clearly indicate, 36.000 songs reported in roughly two years is a wholesome figure) and I use it for many purposes, not the least of which is to manage my music shows calendar.
I use it as my primary —actually, make that my only— repository for gig dates, interest, etc. If I’m interested in a gig which is not yet listed, I simply create it in the system and go from there.
But I obviously have other calendars to manage. And for those I use a mix of my own private calendar on my home server and, for other social stuff, I use Yahoo’s upcoming service.
Now, the thing is: while I really do like Upcoming, Last.fm absolutely blows it out of the water for the music events scene and I’m definitely not going to leave it. But then, I’d like to have all the shows I’m attending listed on Upcoming for my friends there to know about them.
I’m not going to even try to build something to that effect, this is just a thought that crossed my mind.
Winter is coming. Days are getting a lot smaller (and we’re about to have DST thrust upon us to compound the effect) and souls are getting discouraged all around me.
Me? Well, I’m not all that worried about cold, rainy days… I’ve got a plentiful stash of great tea in the cupboard (more to come when I hit London again in November), the fireplace is clean and ready to go and, of course, with winter comes that wonderful time most people call “Christmas” and which I think of as “It’s time to watch ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ again.” And it nearly is time for that. Sweet!
I’ve been finding some really good music in a few places which I wouldn’t necessarily expect to find it in. More specifically, in TV shows. Even more to the point, British TV shows.
American series have some fine music sometimes, but the ones I follow nowadays use it as nothing more than a nice background filler and leave it at that.
But take something like, for example, the Secret Diary of a Call Girl (if you’re old enough) ;-) and actively listen to what’s playing in the background during the whole show, paying special attention to the more thrilling or emotionally intense scenes. You’ll find lots and lots of music playing, a fair amount of it fairly recent stuff, and much of it really great. You’ll also find some lesser-known bands which are, by and large, well worth the effort to look into.
On a tangentially related subject, Paris (the film) also has some excellent tunes in it’s soundtrack (enough to make me wonder if I should actually get the CD) with the return of the most excellent Wax Tailor with a song which I assume is new (although I’m not really sure about it) and is sufficiently similar to “Que Sera” —from the great “Tales of the Forgotten Melodies“— to trick me into thinking it was a remix of that same song. Well, it wasn’t, and I let my film-companion think otherwise, so now you know. Sorry, my mistake! ;-)

Diary 2008-10-03

Here are a couple of things that caught my eye in recent days:

Dropbox: a file storage/sharing system with clients for Windows, Mac and Linux (not to mention a really cool web interface) which “just works”. You know, not unlike the way the iDisk was supposed to work on a Mac, but never really did?
It uses Amazon’s S3 service for storage (but this is just a fun geek factoid, you don’t need to worry about that) and it allows for 2GB of free storage —more if you become a paying customer.
I’ve been using it to share stuff between a couple of Mac and another Linux machine and you know what I said about it “just working”? Well, it’s true;
Evernote: a huge “memory outside my head” system. You feed it web-clips, links, documents, images, audio-clips, etc, etc and it stores, indexes and remembers everything for you.
Now I’m not using it’s full power because I’ve only used it via two interfaces: the web interface and the mobile one.
Actually that’s not entirely true, the one thing that amazed me the most was using the email interface. I took some pictures of a book and a few business cards with my cell-phone and then sent them (via MMS —low, low rez) to my Evernote mailbox and after a little time voilá: all of the pictures indexed and —get this— OCRd!
The OCR works incredibly well, even on crummy cell-phone pictures. When I later searched for some of the words that I knew were on the business cards the card pictures popped up in the results and if I selected them they came up with the words I searched for hi-lighted in it!
So far (it’s only been a couple of days), I’m extremely pleased with it.

Twittlis 5

Yesterday I finally made it to my first Twittlis meeting —Twittlis #5.
.oO( About bloody time too! )

Excuse me? “What in the world is Twittlis,” you ask?

Well, I’m glad you did ask that question! :-)
You see, Twittlis is a meeting of people who use Twitter, who also happen to be around Lisboa on the first wednesday of any given month and who also like to chat with other people (which is obviously a given for almost anyone using Twitter.) The fact that this chatting happens over a few beers and, possibly, a nice pub-food-based dinner doesn’t hurt in the least. :-)

The (sub-)thirty-second pitch is, in words of Pedro Pinheiro (the organizer and afaik “father” of the thing):

Completely informal - arrive at any time, leave at any time. Come meet in person the people who you follow or follow you on twitter.com.

The venue that hosts Twittlis is, at the time of this writing, the most excellent O’Gilins Irish Pub and in it, again in Pedro’s own words:

Besides the wonderful assortment of lagers and ales (and non-alcoholic drinks too), there is a good and hearty selection of dinner choices, at affordable prices.

Oh and contrary to popular belief, the conversations are not all geek-oriented. Really. It’s nice! ;-)

Feed reading with Google Reader

I’ve recently started trying out Google Reader for my rss reading needs.

Until now (and for quite a long time, too) I’ve been using News Gator for that purpose. Together with the Mac desktop client —NetNewsWire— It has been my platform of choice because of it’s seamless integration with the desktop client, it’s mobile interface (which I think is pretty good) and, especially, the ability to synchronize status across multiple readers (yes, even multiple desktop readers).

At a time when I routinely used my iBook laptop, my iMac at the home desktop and my Linux laptop at the office (using the web interface) this made sense. Nowadays I find myself reading more and more online (via the web interface) or on my phone, but rarely do I fire up any of the NNWs on any of the Macs.

So I decided to try out the big G for yet another one of my on-line activities (seeing as it is already the keeper of most of my wired life’s information anyhow).
And the result (not unexpectedly) is that I am now ready to start dropping things from News Gator and start reading them solely on Google Reader.

The only thing that still keeps me from ditching News Gator entirely is the way that the G (doesn’t) handle private (i.e. authenticated) feeds. It has been pointed out to me that there are services out there that deal with this issue, but I’m not the least bit comfortable with having my credentials stored in some mom-and-pop web shop somewhere, so I’ll keep the private feeds safely within News Gator for a while until I come up with something I like better.

And now for the ironic part: why am I writing this now, instead of reading my feeds before lunch? Well, because Google Reader is not working! Ta-dahhh! Feeeeed meeeeeee! :-)

Diary 2008-10-01

In portuguese, because not much of this is of particular interest to anyone except, possibly some of my (portuguese) friends. :-)

Coisas, coisas… quase um mês caladinho. Aliás, caladinho não, que nos “microblogues” (urgh!) e outros tenho andado activo, como sempre.

Bom, de qualquer modo, aqui estão algumas coisas que me apetece dizer aqui:

Estive na Madeira (a ilha) a fazer, sobretudo, caminhadas pelas levadas e veredas de montanha. Altamente recomendado, se alguem quiser umas dicas é só dizer que eu tenho as coisas mais importantes anotadas no jornal de viagem;
Após um ano e picos na minha casa actual (e duas ou três estações perdidas), finalmente plantei as floreiras. Acho que ficou fixe, agora é tentar não deixar a floresta morrer! :-)
Também resolvi testar (de novo e agora a sério) a minha inclinação para o surf (sim, sim, piadinha fácil…) e estou a fazer umas aulas no Guincho.
Vantagens da abordagem actual: ser perto de casa, com horários flexiveis (i.e. as aulas são quando eu quiser e houver ondas, sem outras obrigações de calendário ou horários) e ter companhia (para já, uma pessoa, mas há mais malta a experimentar).
Tudo isto está a tornar esta experiência mais “fácil” e agradável do que a da outra vez (em que fui para um “surf camp” durante uma semana e nunca mais voltei a pensar nisso).
Para já está a ser muito giro, mesmo. E o surf ajuda a dormir de noite, como um anjinho!

E pronto, para já chega de “diário”. Fiquem ligados neste espaço mas, de preferência, com um leitor de RSS, para não se cansarem à espera dos posts tão pouco frequentes. :-)

O Requiem que não foi

No sábado passado (27 de Setembro) fui assistir ao Requiem de Mozart, no fórum Lisboa.

O único problema é que o concerto foi cancelado e “substituido” por um outro concerto de guitarra clássica.
Ora não é que eu não aprecie guitarra clássica, mas convenhamos que não é bem a mesma coisa, por isso vim-me embora e voltei para a festa de aniversário da minha amiga, que tinha abandonado pelo concerto.

Vergonhosamente tenho de admitir que nunca tinha assistido ao vivo a esta peça. Ainda não foi desta. Continuarei a tentar!

Serve este post semi-fútil para demonstrar a minha (r)existência na blogosfera. :-)

Musical odities - The Seventh Sojourn

Last night, for the first time ever, I played side B of the “Seventh Sojourn” LP.

I’ve known this record for ages and I’ve heard side A countless times, but whenever that side finishes playing and I go over to the record player to flip the record over, I always think “well… let me just listen to this side one more time, and then I’ll listen to side B” and instead I’ll play that same side again. And this process is repeated until it is too late and I have to stop listening altogether and go do something else (usually sleep).

Why does this happen? I have no clue, all I know is that ever since I’ve listened to this record for the first time I loved it so much that I just had to listen to it over and over again —always on the same side!
Yes, this is really weird and I can’t really explain it, and it only happens with this particular record, but there you have it. As time went by the habit became so ingrained that I now regard it as an amusing oddity and think nothing more of it.

Anyway, yesterday I left it up to a friend to choose a record to spin while we were all chatting before dinner was ready and, lo and behold, he chose this one! Which was thrilling because when side A finished playing I got up, went over to the record player and flipped it over to side B. Yay!

Now if only we hadn’t been so engrossed in conversation I could have actually listened to it… Alas, as it was, side B of “Seventh Sojourn” was played in my turntable, but I didn’t really listen to it.

Oh well, baby steps. I’ll get there eventually.

Diary 2008-08-28

Passados quase exactamente cinco anos, voltei ao Casino do Estoril para assistir a um concerto daqueles gratuitos, neste caso do Sérgio Godinho.

Desta vez sem cenas rocambolescas de troca de sapatos —afinal vinha directo do emprego—, a coisa nesse aspecto correu bem.
Aliás, não foi só por aí, o concerto como um todo foi bastante agradável (não posso dizer que tenha sido muito mais do que isso para mim, porque na realidade eu não sou assim tão fã da música dele), e a prestação quer do Sérgio, quer da banda de apoio, foi bastante boa.

Ficou-me a dúvida no espírito: como será que um artista com uma carreira como a do Sérgio Godinho, com tantos anos e tantas músicas escritas e produzidas ainda aguenta fazer espectáculos em que toca a trindade (aparentemente mais do que obrigatória) do “Com um Brilhozinho nos Olhos”, “O Primeiro Dia” e o “A Noite Passada”? Não é que eu desgoste, sobretudo porque não sigo de todo a sua carreira, e estas músicas, claro, conheço-as todas de ginjeira, mas ele não se farta delas, o coitado?

A propósito, a versão do “A Noite Passada”, só de guitarra acústica e voz podia ter corrido melhor. Eu sei que ele é bastante apreciador de dissonâncias e tal, mas neste caso em particular é capaz de ter abusado um bocadinho… Ou isso ou tinha a viola afinada noutro tom em relação ao que estava à espera. (Sim, estou a brincar!)

Somos os “máiores”

O Marco Fortes é o máior (sim, leva assento no ‘a’, é mesmo assim).

Senão vejamos o que disse este nosso possante atleta de alta competição após a sua brilhante prova nos jogos olímpicos: “Ah e tal, isto correu mal porque era muito cedo, eu de manhã estou bem é na caminha”.
Ah grande homem! Desculpem, “Ah Grande Homem!”, assim é que está bem.
Aliás, eu também acho, de manhã está-se bem é na caminha.
Esta coisa de ir até ao outro lado do mundo em representação de Portugal, porque os ditos portugueses acharam que ele é tão bom atleta que vai dar o seu melhor e conseguir uma prestação minimamente condigna, e ainda por cima fazerem-nos saltar da cama cedo para ir atirar o raio dos pesos campo fora é vergonhosa!! Um abuso!!
Estão loucos ou quê? Atleta que é atleta faz as coisas ao seu tempo, no seu ritmo, ao seu bel-prazer!
‘tugal esteve bem aqui. Sinto-me orgulhoso de ser representado de forma tão condigna por este belo espécimen. Obrigado, pá!

Aliás, vamos lá registar aqui algumas das pérolas que este iluminado decidiu partilhar com o mundo:

“Já tenho uma experiência dos Campeonatos do Mundo de pista coberta, em que comecei muito bem, mas cheguei à prova e deixei-me deslumbrar por aquela atmosfera e esqueci-me do que é que lá fui fazer.”

(Isto prometia, já sabíamos que tinhamos aqui potencial para uma boa representação. No mínimo para uma representação do papel de bôbo, mas adiante, que o melhor ainda está para vir…)

[Disse o Marco que] o seu maior desejo é que os atletas com “melhores marcas estejam de rastos e que não possam com o peso na sexta-feira, que durmam mal, comam qualquer coisa que lhes faça mal, que não queiram ir para a pista, coisas assim”.

(Snif! Desculpem-me, mas este espírito desportivo —especialmente nas olimpiadas— deixa-me sempre emocionado.)

“Cheguei à conclusão que de manhã só estou bem na “caminha”. Lançar a esta hora foi muito complicado. Apesar de ter entrado bem na prova, com dois lançamentos longos com mais de 19 metros, no último lançamento as pernas queriam era estar esticadas na cama”, disse o atleta, em declarações à RTP.

(Tá tudo dito. Tuga Powa!)

Mas (e há sempre um mas) nem tudo na nossa representação nos jogos olímpicos corre bem, infelizmente para nós, desgraçadinhos.

E a culpa é de quem?
Bom, a culpa é de pessoas como a Vanessa Fernandes que, imagine-se, fala antes da prova de forma comedida e, até, com sensatez e depois, para cúmulo da desgraça, ainda ganha uma medalha.
Uma medalha!! Como foi ela capaz de tamanha ousadia? Uma atleta que demonstra humildade e inteligência? Uma atleta que se esforça, que dá o seu melhor quando lhe pedem para o fazer, não quando lhe apetece e ainda por cima ganha algo?!?
Que é lá isto? Quem se julga essa mulher para tentar arruinar a imagem que o seu colega tão árduamente trabalhou para conseguir? Que coisa pretende ela afinal? Demonstrar que em Portugal existem atletas com cabeça? Pessoas com noção da responsabilidade? Pessoas com carácter? Pessoas que se esforçam?
Corram já com ela, digo eu! Não pode ser, o mundo ainda pode pensar que valorizamos pessoas dessas. É uma vergonha. Proponho a abertura da caça à bruxa Vanessa e seus semelhantes. Queremos mais Marcos Fortes. Eu, enquanto contribuinte e financiador da nossa comitiva olímpica assim o exijo!

Quem faz o favor de criar para aí um daqueles abaixo-assinados da Internet para começarmos a fazer pressão?
Eu não posso que estou um bocado cansado. É que isto logo depois do almoço não pode ser, hein? Depois do almoço é mais dormir a sesta (aliás já fui ali dizer ao chefe que eu agora vou é esticar os neurónios para a caminha e talvez volte mais tarde ao trabalho, se me apetecer). Mas se alguém quiser fazê-lo eu até fecho os olhos ao esforço desmesurado que dispenderam e assino a coisa. Ah e obrigadinho!

Prestação da casa

Treze meses depois de ter comprado a minha casa actual fiz uma asneira de todo o tamanho: Fui ao meu home banking e pedi um extracto, filtrado apenas pelas prestações da casa.

E depois vi a evolução da dita prestação com a subida constante das taxas de juro.

Não sei o que raio é que me deu para fazer tal coisa. Que grande estupidez!

Não que eu seja totalmente irresponsável, eu sei bem o quanto pago pelo crédito, mas ver aquilo assim, tão linear (ou será exponencial??), tão organizadinho, sempre a subir, todos os meses…

Aaaaargh!

New iPod Classic

The new iPod is in da house!

I finally made up my mind for the 160GB classic. It was a no-brainer, really, as my music collection alone was more than the 60GB of the old one and on this one I will also carry my photos, videoblogs and so on and so forth.

It is slim, grey, heavy and has a nice engraving on the back with a line from one of my favourite songs (it actually took me a while to decide what I wanted engraved in it, you know?)

So the advantages of the new iPod are:

My car supports it (haven’t tested it yet, but it should) so now I can operate it using the standard car-stereo controls, which is way nicer (not to mention safer);
My music collection can continue to grow at it’s own pace without me being in constant need of deleting and moving stuff around to make it fit into the iPod.

Soooo, I now have an old 60GB iPod Photo (third generation, if I’m not mistaken) with heavy, heavy use, which is still in perfect working condition (appart from the scroll-wheel which sometimes stops responding and requires a locking and unlocking sequence to start working again).
This baby has been with me through thick and thin and I was considering keeping it for the sentimental value (of which it has a lot), but then I realized how silly that would, so now I have to find a good home for it.

Can’t wait for the new one to synch up so I can start testing it! (It will take a while yet, that’s for sure…)