Hoje na rua tive a oportunidade de ouvir uma conversa entre dois senhores, certamente com não muito mais de 55 anos, que falavam sobre política. “É certo que estamos na crise mais grave de sempre”, dizia um… “A culpa é desta juventude ignorante, estúpida e irresponsável que só quer discotecas e copos, só pensa em comprar coisas e depois deixa as coisas neste estado! Não sabem poupar estes jovens bestas de agora.”, respondeu o outro.

Serve este post para relembrar todos os que pensam assim, que os da minha geração e os mais jovens que eu, a chamada “juventude”, acabam de entrar para o mundo de trabalho. Mundo esse no qual muitos de nós não têm oportunidade de receber pelo esforço que dedicam e pelo trabalho que fazem. No qual muitos de nós passaram anos e anos a estudar, para ter um curso superior, para poderem ir para as caixas dos supermercados. No qual muitos veem-se obrigados a sair do país onde nasceram para encontrar trabalho e estabilidade em outros países onde haja bom senso. No qual toda a gente lhes tira a esperança e diz: “Isto só vai piorar”. A todos vocês que pensam como o senhor que hoje falava na rua, quero-vos lembrar: A culpa é toda vossa!

Porque a minha geração só agora está a contactar com o mundo de trabalho. Aquele mundo que vocês destruiram. Os da vossa geração, não os da minha. Somos nós, e não vocês, que vamos levar com as consequências do vosso comportamento depravado e inconsequente. Porque somos nós que neste momento estamos a tentar remendar os erros cometidos pela geração dos nossos pais. E porque é que temos que ser nós a corrigir os vossos erros, resultantes dos vossos delírios de grandeza, quando devia ser o contrário? Não deviam ser os pais a corrigir e educar os filhos? Porquê fazer esta situação mais grave e difícil do que já é? Porque é que temos que ser nós, a geração “rasca e besta, que só vive do consumismo, que não sabe poupar” a resolver não só o problema que vocês criaram mas também a lutar por um futuro que vocês destruiram?

E atenção… Não pretendo falar das poucas pessoas da geração dos nossos pais que ainda mantêm o bom senso. Considero que tive uma educação muito boa e agradeço por nunca me ter faltado nada. Conheço muita gente dessa faixa etária que merece todo o meu respeito e que sei que se solidarizam com a situação actual em que estamos. Mais ainda, que pretendem ajudar-nos a resolve-la. Falo apenas aqui dos imbecis que trabalharam durante meia dúzia de anos em empresas públicas ou pseudo-públicas, que tiraram a reforma antecipada muito antes de todos os outros que têm que trabalhar uma vida inteira para conseguirem pôr comida na mesa para os filhos, que recebem pensões altissímas (a roçar o escandaloso) do estado… E que ainda assim, passam o dia todo sentados a dizer que o governo não presta, a criar powerpoints e encher o nosso email de spam revolucionário, a dizer que a geração dos jovens de hoje não vale nada, que não têm pena nenhuma de nós e que não temos solução.

A todos vocês volto a relembrar: A culpa é toda vossa! Só vossa e de mais ninguém. Vocês são os culpados pela fome dos vossos filhos e mesmo assim viram a cara e dizem: “Não quero saber, a culpa é tua!”. Nunca será possível mudar nada até que vocês abram os olhos e vejam o poço para onde nos atiraram. Assumam as culpas! Falam de responsabilidade, mas não a têm, não a querem usar. Atiram-nos com medo à cara, tiram-nos a esperança… Será que são vocês que têm medo de abrir os olhos e ver que destruíram o futuro dos que se seguiam?

E agora esperam o quê? Que vos agradeça? Obrigado então… Obrigado por nos terem mostrado que afinal a vida é ainda mais complicada do que parecia. Obrigado por nos fazerem ter que crescer tão rápido. Mas sobretudo, obrigado por nos voltarem a dar a sensação de que somos capazes e de que se queremos lutar um futuro, não poderemos contar convosco, mas apenas connosco. Obrigado sobretudo por nos fazerem sentir que fomos traídos e que vamos saber responder a isso. Obrigado por nos fazerem sentir que somos capazes de vos ensinar o que é trabalhar a sério, governar, ter sonhos e querer ter uma vida. Obrigado então, se é isso que esperavam ouvir.

Sem mais de momento, e a todos vocês que pensam isto, tais como os senhores na rua e que nos puseram aqui, deixo-vos o meu mais profundo nojo…

Anyway, Microsoft succeeds at failing again. The Windows Live initiative wasn’t a complete failure at the beginning because they still had Messenger to cover their backs. Tonight, Microsoft achieved its goal and failed tremendously! A huge number of people was depending on this service, including myself, even to communicate with persons that were right around the globe.

So, what is the solution? Put your hands together and thank Google for the GTalk! And Microsoft too! Because at each step, they just give me another reason to laugh at their faces and incompetence!

I will be sure to post your next fail, so keep up the good work, Microsoft!

Warning, the following video contains some epic fails along with some awesome epic manouvers!

This book tells the story of two apparently normal twin brothers, Sophie and Josh Newman which are introduced to a magic and mythological world through the hard way when the book store of Nick Flemming and his wife, where Josh worked, is attacked by a magician called John Dee. Nick and Perry Flemming (his wife) defend the store with magic arts and lose the battle, allowing John Dee to steal the a very old book called the Codex (or Book of Abraham) from them and kidnapping Perry. This book contains ancient spells, amongst with the secret potion that kept Nick and Perry alive for hundreds of years. With the aid of the twins, Nick Flemming, which is an alias for Nicholas Flamel, starts an epic battle to recover the book and his wife, Perry (who is actually Perenelle Flamel), while they find out that the twins are actually two important pieces of an ancient prophecy, having powers that even they cannot imagine.

The story is incredible and very well written, with some amazing and unexpected twists. When the reader thinks that something is quite predictable, the story takes our mind in a 180º spin and everything is once again impossible to predict. However, some people may find the writing style oriented to children. In my opinion, it is not, it just gives a false sense of simplicity that allows the reader to understand the whole story, but makes us think at the same time.

The only problem I found with this book is that it assumes that the reader knows a whole bunch of things about both mythology and  technology. It was not a problem for me because I actually love both of these topics, but I don’t think that everyone knows what is a Golem, or who are Hekate, Scathach and Morrigan, or even the story of Yggdrasil (the tree of the world, whose roots cross the nine underworlds and keep a legendary monster (Nidhogg) in closure in the dark underworld of Nilfheim). However, the book provides some footer tips that can be quite helpful to understand it, if you have the basic knowledge about mythology.

I really liked this book and its sequel (The magician). I keep waiting for the third volume, called “The Sorceress”. I classify it as a must-read!

However, in both portuguese and spanish radios, there was a music that kept going on the air, called “The boy does nothing” by Alesha Dixon. Well, it became quite popular due to its jive-like rhythm. But lets pay a little bit of attention to the lyrics, shall we?

Well, it starts off with:

“I got a man with two left feet
And when he dances down to the beat
I really think that he should know
That his rhythms go go go”

Ok, so far not too bad, so she has a guy that cannot dance and she seems to be quite upset about it. At this point, I’m thinking that she just had one too many shots when she wrote this and she just couldn’t tell the difference between a man and an umbrella. Nevertheless, she repeats these wonderful artistic verses and goes directly to the chorus:

“Does he wash up? Never wash up
Does he clean up? No, he never cleans up
Does he brush up? Never brushed up
He does nothing the boy does nothing”

Girl, let me tell you something… If you are with a man that doesn’t know what water is, then you can’t be very clean yourself either! Besides, what in the world does that have to do with dancing? If the smell bothers you, then try closing your mouth, or don’t even breathe… At this point, my opinion about whoever wrote these lyrics are way beyond the excess of alcohol! xD

The song ends with these beautifully crafted pointless verses: “And if the man can’t dance he gets no second chance”. Maybe if you wash, and clean and brush (and possibly learn how to sing…) sometimes, maybe then you can ever get a second chance in the music world.

Here is the song if you have never heard:

Promise that I’ll be posting some news as soon as I get back here…

To start, a small problem with the vertices was corrected. Somehow the vertex data was getting scrambled all the way through the CMOL (Conspiracy Mesh Optimization Pipeline), and I ended up removing some of the optimization routines that could be handled in another way by DirectX himself. And by doing so, the GenerateAdjacency problem was also solved! This way, the meshes are more perfect and faster than ever!

Also, I’ve implemented a XML parser system from scratch. With that, I created implicit support for something else: Scene graphs! And this is a very important part of the engine, as some objects might now be loaded directly through a simple configuration file. This is great for scenarios, lights, etc., but also for the future creation of a visual editor for the engine!

With so many new features, something logical occurred! A game is being developed on top of it and I can guarantee that it is already in a very advanced state! Stand by for more news!

Wow, it has a background picture! Similarities with Google search are a mere coincidence… Also, it brings an innovative feature which helps the users to find the information they are looking for much faster, as stated by Microsoft in bing’s site: “Bing is a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.”. Hasn’t Google been doing this for years now? And from my experience while using Bing’s integrated search on MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network), I would prefer to have a fifty million pages glossary where I could find the search terms I wanted! At least it would be alphabetically ordered and the amount of results is approximately the same!

Anyway, Bing has another innovative feature: Ads. Doesn’t Google have those too? Yes it does! The difference between Google’s and Bing’s ads is that in the Bing’s case, 90% of the pharmaceutical ads are falsified! According to this article, which by its turn is based on a “report by KnujOn and LegitScript”, 90% of the pharmaceutical advertisements present in Microsoft’s Bing are not authentic.

This means that if you actually buy something from these links, although it has a genuine pharmaceutical company name and apparently a genuine link too, you will probably be buying some counterfeit drugs from the Russian Mafia (as stated in the article) or from India. Before saying anything else, lets see how this can happen. Apparently, if we try to register an ad in Microsoft’s Bing we are asked for some information. Name, description (the ad itself), link and display link! The link and display link don’t need to be the same. So, I could put an ad there where the display link would be a legitimate one like www.google.com but the actual link would take the users to somewhere like www.please-steal-my-health.com.

This is a clear lack of caution (and attention?) from Microsoft as this goes way beyond the computer security, but all the way to our very own health. I must say however, that I’m pretty sure that any other service (like Google) also has some scammers like these, but Google has much more caution while doing this! So, if you just started using Microsoft’s Bing, be careful… Its not only your computer that is at stake but your health too…

The book tells the story about a boy, Dante Cazabon and a girl Beatrice Argenti, who live in a world in which people cannot dream. Dante is a poor orphan, who works as a kitchen boy in the asylum at the island of Tarnagar. Bea is the daughter of two rich doctors who work in the asylum. Their country is ruled by Dr. Sigmundus who banned crime and violence from its land by giving people a special drug called Ichor. Every adult must take its dose of Ichor which makes them obey to the rulers order, work blindly for the good of society and become unable to dream. The story starts when Bea is about to perform her maturity ritual where she will take Ichor for the first time, against her will. A short time before, she meets Dante, the poor kitchen boy, and their lives change after that moment, as they meet a strange patient and discover a strange form of power that can bend time and space.

The story is wonderful and belongs to a trilogy named “The promises of Dr. Sigmundus”. It is very well written and presents the reader with some amazing surprises every moment. In a world where nothing is what it seems, and based on some real-world scientific facts, the story is a challenge for our minds as it presents us the twisted story of the country of Gehenna. The second volume of this trilogy was already published, by the name of Gallowglass (or the Broken Mirror) and I’m already reading it too. So far it keeps the same level of ambience and atmosphere as “Hollow People”. These books take me back to the “His Dark Materials” trilogy as they represent a wonderful world, troubled by the actions of some dark force that if we think about it… Its not so different from our own!

If you like fantasy stories and romances, this book is the way to go… One of the best books I’ve read so far!