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Exams

Published by
andrew
at January 13, 2008 in Lisboa. 0 Comments

I haven’t posted in a while so I’ll let you know how my exams are going. On 4 January I took the Product Innovation exam. This course was very interesting and well thought (by Luis Filipe Lages, a great teacher/professor) so studying for it wasn’t very hard. Being properly motivated can make such a difference. From our class of 15 students, nobody failed. Alec and me both finished with a superb 18/20 :-) I highly recommend this course for anyone who is interested in innovation & entrepreneurship.

Next exam was on 7 January: Logistics & Supply Chain Management. We didn’t receive many classes as the professor was often not able to attend. Much of it we already learned in previous years. The exam wasn’t hard and the professor likes too give a lot of points. Didn’t learn much from this course.

Yesturday, 12 January, was the hardest exam. Damn. Analysis of Industry and Competition. There was a lot of micro economics involved with theoretical models to show how certain situations affect competition in a given Industry. The course was rather interesting but very theoretic. The professor (who looks a little like Fez from that 70s show) did a good job to keep it interesting. It’s really a shame that the exam was such a problem: WAY too little time to solve all questions, so you rush through most of the computations without taken much time to think. This not only makes it stressful and unpleasant, it also punishes students who want to tackle the questions thoroughly. Giving the students half an hour more (or reducing the number of questions) would have made it a lot less frustrating. 15 minutes after the exam most answers popped into my head, blaaargh, frustrating..

Tomorrow the last one.. Bluurgh, International Business. It might have been an interesting course if the professor wasn’t so lazy, sleepy, unenthusiastic and constantly leaving the classroom to smoke and drink coffee. On top of that she has such a boring voice and a blank stare. No, this really drains your motivation to put effort in this mildly interesting subject.

So I better get off and hit the books!

No Dakar :-(

Published by
andrew
at January 5, 2008 in Lisboa and Photography. 3 Comments

Tomorrow was supposed to be a beautiful day in Lisbon: sunny, 17°C and the Paris-Dakar starting here. Unfortunately the Dakar organisers were forced to cancel the rally due to safety concerns in Mauritania.

Following several consultations with the French government and taking into account its firm recommendations, the organisers of the Dakar have taken the decision to cancel the 2008 edition of the rally
Amaury Sport Organisation

 
That really sucks, because I love to watch the rally every year. It’s a good break from studying during the exams and the landscapes they pass are so beautiful. (Some nice pictures from previous years)

Dakar HummerToo bad we won’t see it this year. Most contestants however are still here in Lisbon with their cars and teams. When I came back from my first exam (which went well) I was surprised to see both Hummers of Robby Gordon and Ronn Bailey in the middle of Avenida, just outside the metro station. I took some pictures of both cars and their support trucks. The Tuareg of Hardy and Lecompte was also parked in front of the Novotel. Nice rides. It kinda sucks to see them here in the middle of the city in stead of in the desert sand.

Use bigint for Flickr photo id’s

Published by
andrew
at December 30, 2007 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

If you are using FlickrAPI and you are storing the photo id’s in a MySQL database, make sure the column is a bigint :-) Flickr reached the integer limit (2147483647) today with this photo.

We’ve been bitten by this. We are using the Flickr API on the What’s Cookin’ website and we were using signed MySQL integers, which overflowed today.

Wide vs Deep

Published by
andrew
at December 28, 2007 in Business. 0 Comments

5 days ago in a post named the meaning of life I set a goal to learn something new every week.

Yesterday I read a well written blogpost about a programmer who moved into management, and back. He comes up with a thought provoking theory about why some people are better managers and others better programmers:

Managers must work shallow and wide, while programmers must work narrow and deep. People who are naturally tuned to one particular method of work will not only enjoy their jobs a lot more, but be better at them. I didn’t say it was a particularly insightful theory.

Read the complete post even if you’re not interested in management. He makes some good points.

Here’s my dilemma: I hope I can be both deep and wide. It would be a pity to have studied 5 year of management just to realize that I’m not that kind of guy… ;-)

Catching up on erasmus experiences

Published by
andrew
at December 23, 2007 in Family, Lisboa and What's Cookin'?. 1 Comment

There are still a lot of things I wanted to blog about, but I didn’t have the time to do so. Here’s a quick summary of everything that has happened since then:

First there was Beatrice’s party at our apartment. It was her birthday and we invited a lot of people. I think about 50 in our apartment in total. It was really fun and later that evening there was a gala from the economics faculty of Nova university. (that’s were Alec and me are studying)

1 decembro partyA week later there was a party in the apartment of some other erasmus people, but this really beat all records. I think about 200 people were there that night. Really amazing. An open area with stairs going from one side to the other. (I hope I can get a hold off some pictures) . 4 floors of party people. The name of the street of this apartment was “Rua de 1° Decembro” so they had to give a party there on the first of december. We met some belgian people who study in Ghent there.

Flatmates foto! On 6th december, we had a christmas party with the people living in my flat. We bought gifts for each other and had a 6 course dinner. Everyone had to cook a dish. Ana made guacamole, Monika made a lovely polish soup, Bali and Andy prepared an amazing slovakian dish, Anne served us a nice tartiflette, Alec and me stuffed everyone with cheese fondue and Lena finished everyone off with a delicious tiramisou. One thing did go wrong though: A full glass of white wine got spilled on my MacBook. (It was playing the music) . Luckily my MacBook survived after letting it dry for 3 days.

That week we had our final presentation for the product innovation course. The idea of João and me finished second out of 7 groups. (This is fine, don’t you think?). Alec’s idea finished first of course :-) I can post the presentation if you want, it’s about rPACS: a system for transferring medical images (X-rays) to doctors.

That night we had a goodbye cheese fondue at our place. Most people are leaving to be home for the holidays , so it was a nice opportunity to get everybody together.

What's Cookin'? crowdThey day after the final 5 minute presentation I left back to belgium for the What’s Cookin’? website launch party. The pictures of the party are online on the new website. The place was packed, everyone had a great time and we had the chance to tell people about our next great gig: 1st February, we are organising a whicked what’s cookin’ party in the Vooruit in Ghent. You might want to keep on eye on the what’s cookin’ blog because I think Jan will announce the headliner soon.

Dinner!I stayed in Belgium for a week. It was nice to see my family back. But damn, It’s cold in Belgium (-3°C). Last Thursday, we had kind of a christmas dinner with the family. Really nice. I enjoyed spending time with my brother, sister, Rossella and my parents, and playing with the Wii :-)

So I got back to Lisbon yesterday. I came home to an empty apartment :-( Luckily the Dutch girls Daphne and Claire are staying here for the holidays, so I wasn’t completely alone. And Nathalie is coming tomorrow to spend christmas here. That will be nice :-) Argh crap, I should be studying now for the exams coming up in 2 weeks.

So, I hope I brought you guys back up to speed on what’s been happening here.

The meaning of life

Published by
andrew
at December 23, 2007 in Photography. 1 Comment

The old description of this blog used to be “About Ruby, Lisboa and the meaning of life”. Well I’ve come to the conclusion that to understand the meaning of life, we have to understand the things around us. So I have set myself a new goal: try to learn something new, every day. Or at least every week. And I want to remember it.

That’s where this blog comes in. I will try to make a blog post about the things I learn, so that I won’t forget it. (I tend to forget my thoughts pretty quickly)

So to kick off the new venture: What did I learn today?

Well, I learned about colors. More specifically about digital colors. I read an amazing blog post by Jeffrey Friedl on color spaces: how computers store and interpret colors.

I bumped into this issue because I was having color problems with photos I shoot. I ended up reading a lot more than I planned, but it was very interesting. You should seriously consider reading it if you are interested in photography. If you ever wondered why pictures you take don’t look the same as the real thing, this article gives a partial explanation.

What’s Cookin’? Launch Party

Published by
andrew
at December 6, 2007 in What's Cookin'?. 1 Comment

On Saturday 15th december we are organizing a special What’s Cookin’? edition. We are celebrating the launch of the new logo and website (I’m working overtime on the this!).

I’ll be back in Belgium for the weekend, so if you want to join me for this crazy party, leave a comment or send me an email. I can arrange tickets

The location of the party will be announced on the new website next week, 13 december. That day we will launch the new website.

I’ve been working hard on the website and I hope it will be a welcome change from the boring and clumsy old site we’ve all been coping with until now.

See you next week!

UPDATE: We launched the website today. Read my blog post on the new site.

What's Cookin'? Launch Party
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