Major changes in Real Life

For quite some time that I don’t write anything here. Contrary to what may seem this is not due to lack of ideas about what to write, but due the lack of time that I’ve been feeling.

Ironically the last post was about time management and the wonderful advices of Randy Pausch. Even with these advices in mind and trying to put some in practice it becomes difficult to perform miracles when our days have twenty hours instead of the normal twenty-four.

This reduction in hours is due to some recent major changes in my life. Although I haven’t finished my Master degree yet (still missing one course and the Master Thesis) and as you may have noticed in a previous post, I’ve decided to look for a job. To be honest all the spare time was driving me insane.

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Lecture about Time Management

Nowadays time is our most important resource and most of the times we are not able to manage it the right way. With this in mind I’ve found this lecture about time management presented by Randy Pausch.

Randy Pausch was a Computer Science Professor at CMU. Before he died of cancer in July 2008 he presented a couple of lectures about different topics some of which became very famous.

The video embedded presents a few tips on how to manage your time from the perspective of someone who had very few time left. Although it is a huge video, I think it’s worth to spend the time needed to watch it.

How to split or merge PDF documents in Linux?

PDF-ShufflerMost of the times when I had to split or merge a couple of PDF documents I had to use command line tools, which was kind of boring, since it isn’t a tool that I use often so what used to happend was that I always forgot the syntax usage.

Today was one of those times that I needed to merge two PDF documents so I’ve looked around and found PDF-Shuffler which is a small python-gtk application, which helps you to merge or split PDF documents and rotate, crop and rearrange their pages using an interactive and intuitive GUI. It is a frontend for python-pyPdf.

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Have you ever got stuck in a bathroom before a job interview?

Tux on BathroomNever happened to you?
Let me warn you that there is always a first time and unfortunately mine was today.

This morning before I went to the scene where I was going to be interviewed for a job offer, I walked into the nearest coffee shop to spend some time and add some caffeine in the system to be able to wake up properly.

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Samsung S7330

Samsung S7330Last Friday I was presented with a new cellphone, a Samsung S7330!

Although my old Motorola v980 still works, this was a very nice gift from my friends, Paulo Roberto and Carla Sofia. It’s new features brings a breath of fresh air to my mobile activities.

S7330 seems to be a nice cellphone it has a nice and clean look, mine is Noir Black which makes it very bright and shiny, it’s software menus are very intuitive and functional. It has an adaptable touch navigation panel which is multi-functional because it adapts himself to what we’re viewing on the main screen.

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Google Chrome Web Browser Installation on Linux

Google ChromiumTired of the slowness of Mozilla Firefox and curious with the acclaimed performance of Google Chrome (or Chromium, if you prefer), today I’ve decided to give it a try.

Although it is still an alpha version it already allows you to perform the regular navigation activities that you are used to with an incredible speed.

It’s layout is also a bit different of what we are used to, in my opinion it is great, KISS principle all the way.  I also like the new functionalities like the task manager which allows you to take control over the used memory with each tab/window and the browser itself.

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LESS – Leaner CSS

LESS - Leaner CSSIf you’re used to work with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) files, for sure that you’ve already wondered if wouldn’t it be cool if CSS supported variables?

Well, I’ve got news for you: now it does!

LESS or Leaner CSS if you prefer, is an extension of CSS which allows you to use variables, mixins, operations and nested rules. It was inspired by its predecessors – especially SASS, a ruby project which provides an alternative to a lot of the common problems CSS designers and web developers face when developing huge applications.

One of it’s great characteristics is that it is as seamless as possible with CSS, which is great, that way you don’t have to learn a whole new language. Which for me at first sight, was a turnoff in SASS.

You can read more about it in here

GMail support on aMSN

aMSNYesterday I was looking for new plugins to use on aMSN when I’ve found GNotify. A great plugin that allows you to have multiple GMail accounts associated to your aMSN and receive notification messages whenever you receive a new email.

You can download GNotify plugin here, and if you don’t know how to install an aMSN plugin, you can read the installation instructions here.

Trust Universal Laptop Power Supplier Fix

Trust Universal Laptop Power SupplierAround one and a half years my laptop’s charger died, after five years of intense usage it’s understandable. At that time I’ve chosen to buy an Universal charger from Trust which seemed a nice choice at the moment.

Last month it decided not to work, with exactly the same kind of problems the first one had: the end of the wire near the charger box seemed to be broken.

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