• Do you still remember how fun it was to run after a bouncing ball? Now imagine 250.000 multi-coloured bouncy balls running down the street. That’s the new Sony commercial and even has an website for itself with the full length commercial, making of, mp3 music and lot’s of goodies – a must see (via ensaio geral).
• In my blog feeds I’ve a special category for blogs that I only visit for the pictures. Cute Overload is my lastest addition and match’s exactly that section, but be warned: you might be tempted to run to the nearest pet shop after visiting it.
• And speaking about cute things, if you think a rabbit is no more than a fluffy little animal or that at most, it can be a pet: you are completely wrong. They can do a lot more than that. Rabbit hopping seems to be quite a popular sport in Denmark which holds the honorable world records for rabbit long and high jump, 300 and 99.5 centimeters respectively. If you think it’s a joke (I did at first), have a look at their performance, and if you ever consider getting into it seriously, here is a place to start.
• And to end, two brilliant ads for some reality check.

jeezz, what a weekend… it has been some years since the last time I had to attend to someones wedding, and I nearly forgot why I hate it so much. Not that I have something against weddings itself – I couldn’t care less about it -, but the celebration afterwards, in particular the traditional lunch-dinner is quite something. Wedding celebrations are probably one of those things that vary a lot from country to country; the only ones I know are the typical portuguese and I like to call them: eating marathons.

The starting line is at the bride and fiancé houses (depending with whom you are family or acquaintance with) over some appetizers. There, you’ll find cheese&ham, general pastries, pâté, random cookies and whatever fits in small dishes to fill a large table with them. After everybody had his own full-body photo with the yet-to-be-married by some nifty corner of the house, and the table is nearly empty, everybody gets packed in cars and heads to the ceremony. The event, itself, lasts from twenty minutes to one hour, and always ends in a “surprise” rice shower over the newlywed *.

That done, the new checkpoint is by some greenish background where each couple or person takes another full-body photo, now with new couple and their new hair decoration; this lengthy session is proportional to the amount of guests and is not optional to anyone. Photographer happy, time to head to the next checkpoint: a carefully prepared food fest where the main event takes place.

From my experience abroad, I’ve learned that portuguese people typically eats, well, a lot; and when one starts to eat in appetizers as much as his typical meal, you can guess where he’s going to. Imagine an all you can eat restaurant but with no medium-low quality food: only with bold, tasty, delicious, yummy, i-must-have-a-bit-of-that-too, nobody-dislikes-this kind of dishes. When I said earlier it was a lunch-dinner, it wasn’t because it can be either, but because it can be both: it can last for hours non-stop. It actually gets to a point where it can be disgusting (to me at least), seeing all that ingestion having for finishing line, the physical limits of the body, with everybody trying to cross it.

Of course my opinion is biased due to my limited experience (thank goodness) on this events, and I’m sure this is changing although there are still a big amount of them like this, the old way. Oh, nearly forgot: it’s normal to include some car honking along the way and for the fearless, there’s some dancing by the end (don’t ask me how).

I hope no one else in my family is thinking about getting merried anytime soon: I’m not going, not even if I have to apologize to the whole family. Thank you, but not thank you.

* If one day I get married, I’ll do it in an hot-air balloon; thus, I’ll be the one throwing rice over the guests, when landing :D

Getting home soaked from the rain or being almost run over by swarms of bikes are things nobody wishes for their vacations. Well… I do. And if I add to that the wandering through the streets, the walking by the dutch canals, driving a bike to everywhere, witnessing and feeling a different culture – that can give me a natural high, and no – I didn’t went to the coffee shops. :)

Moreover, to get to know people from all around the world and live with them, again, in an exchange student spirit, swapping awareness of different realities and ways of thinking, stretching and breaking the boundaries that a settled mental string can easily create, both in the differences and the similarities – and smile at how well everything mixes… Oh, and vla! Vla was the cherry on the top of an already perfect vacations.

Hokey, an houseboat dinner, stroopwaffles, homemade vla, crazy Italians moo-ing on their bikes, v&d, stubborn bike locks, vla, dark mysterious toilets, snel trains, strippenkaarts, vla, tips.NL, tschuess papa and vla – I told you before about vla, right?

Twelve days scattered between Groningen, Amsterdam and of course, Utrecht, were enough to make a breakpoint on my life and put myself together. I believe I needed this to strength old convictions and decisions regarding my future; there seems to be an haze in this country that gets into my head and changes it’s pace and granularity. Finding a way to move abroad is becoming an even higher priority.

If it wasn’t for my lil’p thread, this blog might have been buried some time ago. I’ve set so many stupid restrictions on myself regarding this blog – no lyrics, no poems, no “fast-food” posts, no general geekness, no general linking, no triviality of the day, no yet another blog talking about it – that it ended up being a no posting blog.

This is a cease and desist letter to my self-moderation skills; a wake up call to start a rescue operation on a numb blog; and also, yet another post about a dying blog to start the rule breaking around here.

Stand-by.

Tomorrow by this hour, I’ll be on the Netherlands, having my first real vacations in four years :-) After five exhausting years fighting to finish my graduation, I’ll finally have a break, now that my six month internship is over. And I can tell you this for sure: postcrossing has been helping keeping myself sane and to keep my goals intact all through this last months. More than ever, I really needed something to give a meaning to all the bits&bytes, and the huge stack of cold mnemonics that I have to deal daily on my profession. Postcrossing has made this for me – it kept me smiling in the end of the day, nonetheless the constant time juggling to find bits of free time for me and my friends in the between. It worth it all the way.

So for next days, I’ll be on a far far away country visiting friends, places and reviving the old erasmus spirit that I long for so much. Altogether, I’ll be displaying again mine and ana’s photo exhibit tips at the Groningen University. (I miss shooting, me and my camera, – we’ll get even this holidays :D)

On my return, I’ll be starting on a new job, hopefully, more interesting than the previous one – I’m still firm on my decision to go work abroad, but until I find something suitable, I must have a way to pay my bills. (gosh! I start to sound like my father on this one.)

It’s been almost two months since my last post around here. Two months since I’ve launched postcrossing, two months since my concept of free time has been redefined, two months since my life changed a lot. Not just due to postcrossing, but about that, I’ll write on the next posts.

Postcrossing status? What else can I say, it’s a success – much bigger than I ever expected. If someone two months ago would have told me that it would reach where it is now this quick, I would have laugh at it. But now, things got too serious to be laughing about it.

Initially, I only had set two objectives for postcrossing:

• to expand it to more countries than the initial small set;
• and that the total of received postcards would be bigger than the registered users;

Seventy two countries and seven weeks later, I’m up to much more serious objectives and demands now. What was just a personal project turned into a worldwide community of users who share common interests and are connected not just by 0’s and 1’s but by something more.

I can tell you this much: time does not expand. I tried, I failed, repeatedly. I really wish I had more free time to work on postcrossing but I don’t – my internship is still two months to go and a huge bunch of my free time has been to postcrossing alone. But… I must be honest on this – it’s been such a delight to make things work this far, that I’m not abandoning this project any time soon, that’s for sure. I cuddled this idea for so long and now that it has born and is growing so damn well, I just hope I can keep it straight and on the right path for a long time. So many ideas, so little time to implement them…

Finding a new hosting for the website is a priority for the moment has the current solution will eventually be scarce for such amount of hits. This might be a surprise for some, but the server where 2800 users have registered is located in a small storage room in my home, just next to the kitchen door :). It has been doing an excellent job so far, but it’s time to start thinking on a more stable solution, specially because my internet link isn’t appropriate for this anymore. What this implies is that I’ll need to find a way to support the project financially and that’s where the tricky part comes. Let’s see how things go in the next weeks. Please let me know if you are interested in supporting the project.

Note: don’t expect to find on this blog more posts like this one about postcrossing. From now on, I’ll keep postcrossing subjects to a minimum. I always aimed on this blog to keep my geek side apart and I intend to keep it that way.

I’m reading a book by Paul Auster called book of illusions, where this guy David is depressed for more than a year, but gets kicked out of it by a trivial mute movie, just because it made him smile – nothing else had worked for him. Everybody has his own small set of simple little things, everyday small details, which have the power to bright up the day. David’s, was Hector Mann’s films.

Mine, it’s postcards (among other things). Doesn’t matter how was my day, having postcards on my mailbox always makes me smile. From family, friends, acquaintances, picture postcards or even silly propaganda ones, has long as they have something written by someone, they all turn my mailbox into a little surprise box. And that doesn’t work just me, as I found out that there are more people with this healthy-kinda-silly-but-inexpensive addiction.

So what does a computer geek like me? Yet another electronic postcards website? Well, no. E-cards don’t have anything to do it – doesn’t have half of the fun nor interest, imho. That’s not how IT should come in, about postcards. I believe the correct approach should be like the bookcrossing project which used the internet, to bond together thousands of individuals and make their experience richer, not the oposite.

Since last December I’ve been working on this idea I had, inspired precisely on the bookcrossing, but to allow anyone to exchange postcards with random people on the world – I’ve called it postcrossing. How does it work? Well, it’s a website and you can find all the information about it at www.postcrossing.com, but the main line is: if you send a postcard, you’ll receive one back. The more you send, the more you receive, but always from different, unknown people that also joined the project.

The website is online since yesterday and it’s still growing so if you like postcards or just want to browse around, jump to www.postcrossing.com and leave some feedback, I really would like to get some comments and suggestions about it.

• learn first aid
• use public transportation
• get fitter, feel better
• shop locally
• brew your own wine or beer
• love a pet
• watch less TV
• cut your own hair
• go to the top of a tall building and look at the view
• take time to listen
• play a musical instrument
• tell someone you love them
• ride your bike
• walk in the snow
• arrange flowers (practice ikebana)
• hold a free concert
• take up culture jamming
• use a mug, not a plastic cup

This are the tips tips :), or on other words, it’s the names of the photos which are (still) being displayed at barcode. Another tip which was almost included was do something you think you are unable to and was meant to be a photo of the exhibit itself, as none of us (me and ana) ever imagined to be doing a photo exhibit one day. It could be one of this.

(more tips photos)

It feels funny, having people looking at my photos. Not just people, but complete strangers, who might have complete different ideals on photography, art or simply decoration. Eitheir way, the small sized photos on their white A4 frames have produced the intended effect and I grin when I see people bending over or strechting to try to have a closer look on them… I can’t help myself picturing white thought balloons over their heads, and judging from their faces, most of them have a ‘?!‘ written on it. :)

Tips has been my most recent pet project, side-by-side with another one I’ve been cuddling on’n off since last december and which is still cooking – I’m just working on the last details and hopefully it should go online in the next few days. As a teaser, it’s called postcrossing and the goal is to allow people to receive postcards (paper, not electronic ones) from random people all over the world, for free. Stay tunned.

You know that feeling when you are working at your computer and you keep thinking on a zillion different things but the ones you are trying to focus on? Yes, that feeling that makes you open every weblink that you come across, but none has anything to do with whatever you were supposedly working with? Ever found yourself walking through the place, with no destination or reason, and not recalling taking the decision to get up – just having the need to do it?

Now imagine this is at work.

Exactly.

Six years ago, simple things like shopping, meeting someone new or calling a stranger on the phone could be from hard to unbearable. I had S.A.D. and I had to have professional help to fight it.

Tomorrow, I’ll be making by myself a four hour talk for a bunch of Porto University system administrators, and I’m mostly worried if I master all the technical issues.

Although most people don’t understand it, winning this battle was probably my biggest achievement in this last years.