That’s what you get…

…if you park your motocycle in a forbidden zone for a few minutes to have a sandwich in São Paulo. Of course it wouldn’t happen to any white/rich person.
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/videocasts/ult10038u658822.shtml

Despite the clear images, all those police men stated they didn’t attack the motoboy. I don’t know if term “motoboy” is used in english, but here in Brazil it means a guy who uses a motocycle to make some money (about $3/hour) delivering things. Bad.

Who needs a wifi switch?

Wifi stop working. Thinkpad x60. Debian GNU/Linux. Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG. Logs below:

Nov 22 12:54:43 thinkpad kernel: [ 5373.816386] iwl3945 0000:03:00.0: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On:
Nov 22 12:54:43 thinkpad kernel: [ 5373.816388] Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work.
Nov 22 16:11:16 thinkpad kernel: [17168.714311] iwl3945 0000:03:00.0: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill switch
Nov 22 16:11:16 thinkpad kernel: [17168.714487] iwl3945 0000:03:00.0: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill switch
Nov 22 16:13:55 thinkpad kernel: [17328.018434] iwl3945 0000:03:00.0: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill switch
Nov 22 16:13:55 thinkpad kernel: [17328.018603] iwl3945 0000:03:00.0: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill switch

…about 1 hour trying to solve that annoying issue, and then I realize there was a f** wifi switch turned off right in front of my face. #FAIL

Big Jay McNeely playing on his back, Los Angeles, 1951

Big Jay McNeely playing on his back, Los Angeles, 1951

Upload feito originalmente por Bob Willoughby

Great moments should be shared.

Irony

…almost sleeping during a pathetic Microsoft’s talk, so an email arrives: “New Debian developer Tiago Bortoletto Vaz”. Oh god! Couldn’t this ticket be closed in a better moment? Of course not! )

Single tree-like navigation topbar for Beamer

I like the Antibes and JuanLesPins themes from the Beamer class. They use a nice tree-like navigation at the top, which provides a good notion about where exactly the speaker is in her/his talk. This feature is especially important for presentations given in places where attendees don´t care too much about being in time.

Antibes and JuanLesPins use the tree and smoothtree “outer” themes. The problem for me is that they provide a 3-level tree navigation (Title, Section and Subsection), plus the Frame Title. I don´t have subsections in my presentations. Also, I don´t think it´s necessary to have the main title in every single frame (but if you enjoy it, try using one of the nice beamer footer instead, for example the one from Madri theme).

Unfortunately I couldn´t find any beamer theme with Section plus Frame Title only. So, a very simple cleanup in the tree outertheme gave me what I was looking for:

beamerouterthemesingletree.sty

If you want to use this, just set it as the outertheme in your tex. Supposing the file name is beamerouterthemesingletree.sty and it´s located in the same directory as your tex file, add:

\userouthertheme{singletree}

Vibration Reduction matters

I’ve just bought the cheap Nikkor 18-55mm VR lens for my Nikon D50. According to KenRockwell.com, this lens does the job very well. Actually I was looking for the amazing 18-200mm VR, but noted it’s too expensive for me. At least here in Brazil it costs 5x more than that 18-55mm.

The question is: once I already own a basic Nikkor 18-55mm which came with the camera, is that worth upgrading to another 18-55mm only because of this Vibration Reduction feature? Well… I was not sure really about that. I just trusted Ken Rockwell’s opinion and decided to give it a try. So, checking the result below you may guess whether I’m happy or not

These pictures were taken in f11, 55mm, 1/4 sec, no post-edition. I did my best to get them as much sharpness as possible. For a 100 shots sampling from Ken Rockwell look for the “Vibration Reduction at 55mm” table here.

Nikkor 18-55mm non-VR

Nikkor 18-55mm VR

Nikkor 18-55mm non-VR detail

Nikkor 18-55mm VR detail

new look, not for me…

but for my wordpress blog!
No blog title, two columns and… the same content

Tragic or Comic?

#540000

(it’s even worse when it’s supposed to be a special one!)

my wine & cheese top three pictures

An oversaturated DC9 photostream

(also sent to debconf-discuss)

Hey all,

I’ve just uploaded some pictures from DC9. It includes those taken during the Wine & Cheese party. Please contact me in private in case you want me to remove your bad look from there (so I can thing about…)

Here’s: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiagovaz/sets/72157621707723876/

enjoy!

International Theatre of the Oppressed Conference

Video stream at: http://pontaodaeco.org:8000/confteatrooprimido.ogg

(I’m having a lot of fun by watching tassia singing in german language )

DC9 – First day

I’ve just published some pictures taken during my first day (night?) in Debconf9. It’s a kind of brainless activity I was able to do tonight after about 18 hours travelling. Enjoy the Chamatrix Metro Station and the nice place we are hosted:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiagovaz/sets/72157621707723876/

(tomorrow I intend to start some useful work here, so I’m not sure I’ll keep updating this set. I’ll try… promise.)

Just to say I’m alive and…

!!!!!

debconf9

Homage to Augusto Boal

The 9 may, 2009 at 20:00 UTC, the Center of The Theater of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro will pay homage to Augusto Boal. There will be a live video and audio streaming available at:

http://aovivo.pontaodaeco.org:8000/homenagemboal.ogg.m3u

It’s recommended using the free software VLC to watch it:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

There will also be an IRC chat room open for everyone in FreeNode, channel #homenagemboal.

Spam of the day

From: Stuart Draper

If you can’t change yourself, change at least your watch.

Some cool audio stuff for Debian

(I was a kind of impolite in not mentioning any detail about the packages I asked for sponsors in my previous post. Sorry about that. Here I’ll try to summarize what kind of stuff I’m currently trying to push into Debian)

Rakarrak is a nice guitar effects processor for GNU/Linux. An ITP was opened about Jul/2008 with no progress since then. I’ve quite often used this software and it seems to be pretty stable – at least in a i386 system.

Tapiir is a simpler one. It provides a high quality real-time delay/feedback effects which can be useful for any kind of audio output. This software used to be maintained by the Debian QA group. It was orphaned few months ago, removed from the archive and now I’m working to have it back again. I’ve talked to the upstream and he has agreed to have Tappir maintained in collab-maint git repository.

Hey, both support JACK

(See Rakarrack git browser)
(See Tappir git browser)

can I haz sponzer?

Looking for reviewer and uploader for #490705 and #521039. Both packages are in git collab-maint. My usual sponsor has been too busy these days. Obrigado!

Uploading request for apticron

Hey, I’m looking for a DD who could push apticron 1.1.26 to Debian – once my usual sponsor otavio@d.o is on vacation. thanks!

scottish musician

Auld Reekie, something to be remembered… yep, today is a nostalgic day.

BrDesktop is back…

…well, at least its website

Since we got Trac 0.11 into Lenny, our great green theme has been broken. So this weekend I decided to spend some time migrating the old stuff to a Genshi template and adapting it for Trac 0.11. Fortunately it worked. Credits go to Skittlish Trac theme, the one BrDesktop’s comes from.

BrDesktop is a Debian Pure Blend* intended to give Brazilian desktop users an easier way of joining the Debian community.

* thanks very much to Andreas Tille for insisting on changing the former (and inadequate) “Custom Debian Distribution ” term. Most important, thanks to Holger Levsen for being strongly opposed to the Andreas’ DISh suggestion!