Categories
in the netherlands

white polycarbonate mishap.

01. life’s a little bit on hold, as we start studying for exams, and i pursue my job hunt. it’s not going too bad, i guess, but the anxiety of waiting for answers makes me a little bit nervous. that and waking up with drunk people fighting, wasted bodies running and screaming in spanish on the corridor, close to my door. that’s how i woke up today. i got restless, i felt like going there and making them shut up but i didn’t. i stood there in bed, paralyzed, hands on my ears, waiting for it all to end.
anyway, the good spirits in the corridor make up for the eventual dawn mess. l., one of our floor-mates, is getting married next year, in may, and we’re all invited. she’s overwhelmed with it, and i’m happy she’s happy. this stories resembles a little the "l’auberge espagnol" / "les poupées russes", doesn’t it? the wedding is in china, actually, and if all works as planned, we’ll meet in shangai in a year and a few months. great! :) i’m really looking forward to it!

02. for all of you who ever wondered if this rum i’m always talking about is any good, you can now listen to it here, via livestreaming. give it a try. me and levi lost most of our music last week, which we had on his 80gb external drive, plus some pictures (nothing we didn’t have on film or backup, so no biiiig deal), but still, it didn’t feel good. now we rely on portuguese radios and podcasts more.

03. i’m in love with freitag bags – they’re everywhere here. colorful bags, made of lorries canvas. recycled urban freeways. perfect for the bikes.

04. we had a portuguese dinner on monday (9 portuguese people in groningen – can you believe that?) filled with good food, super bock and moscatel, vinho do porto and lots humour in our own language. oh! and a mad mad idea of returning home (in portugal, that is) by bike. 2200km! maybe it was the wine working… i think we’re all crazy, but if we get the sponsors, i’m on it :D (and yes, we know about the euromillions jackpot…let’s hope that works!)

05. thanks joão, for all the steve jobs’ zen. i can never have enough. :)

Categories
geek links and ideas

and again…

“And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do”.

Steve Jobs, at a speech in Stanford.

Categories
in the netherlands

minus something. no snow. :|

(click for some more widgets’ forecasts, from some people living in the second floor, at 11pm, Netherlands time.)


Categories
just life

where do you think you’re going?

where do you think you're going?

the campos brothers are a bit in the middle of a crossroads. we don’t know very well what the future holds or what exactly we want it to be. anyhow, little brother, hang on, there’s always a solution. today i read this piece of advice here. it fits, doesn’t it?

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life (…) Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do."
Steve Jobs, CEO Apple

Categories
in the netherlands

2 – and we’re back.

back in groningen, for at least another month.
feels great to be here again, finally. we arrived yesterday after a painful check-in at porto’s airport (including me unpacking ALL the contents of my overfiled backpack and not being able to put everything back in again), hours waiting at stansted airport (where we had tupperware dinner party, with our mom’s food and we watched an old lady going berserk), and hours on the train etc. but we were quite anxious to see everybody again, and it all payed off when we found the crew chatting on the second’s floor corridor. some things never change, indeed.
the temperature has dropped to a couple of negatives degrees now, but no snow on sight, just ice spread a little bit everywhere.
levi has started to wear his termotebes (really shielding portuguese (?) undershirts, from when we were kids) and i’ve settled for odlo warm shirts.

levi also went to his stomach doctor, which forbid him to drink alcohol and coffe and smoke. the poor boy is taking his revenge in chocolate (old picture to illustrate what i mean)… :)