Why the hype?

The last months of work at Webreakstuff were entirely dedicated to the second version of Goplan which we just launched yesterday.

Despite the stressful day, full of last things to complete before the great opening, the whole team is very happy with the result and I’m personally proud of our work.

Goplan isn’t really “done” and probably it won’t ever be. In the next weeks we’ll focus on fix small bugs that may arise with the mass use of the app. Along with this bug-fixing period, we’ll start working on the iPhone app for those who want to manage their projects on the road.

Give Goplan a spin (by signing up here) and send your feedback over. We love hearing from you guys.

For 3 years now, we at Webreakstuff have been organizing the portuguese Barcamp. Every year the audience is bigger and we’re glad to see all this people coming to , our town, Coimbra for 2 days of networking, information sharing and to meet other guys that are doing the same they do.

If you’re interested, come on in and prepare a session. We’ll help with everything we can.

Visit the site we crafted for Barcamp Portugal if you’re joining us or to read more about the event (portuguese).

We, at Webreakstuff, just gave birth to our youngest baby: TotSpot (yeah, pun intended).

TotSpot is a publishing platform designed to make it easier to parents to organize and share their tot’s life. Dads and moms of the world can write up journal entries about the toddler’s day-to-day life, upload pictures, link to videos on YouTube and Vimeo and document “firsts” as well as “favorites”. You know, kids’ stuff.

It was built on Ruby on Rails and uses MySQL. On the presentation layer, we use Yahoo!’s User Interface Library on a couple of things including the grids CSS and the little calendar widget for date picking.

Don’t take this for granted, but I think sometime soon we may end up writing a couple of technical posts either on TotSpot’s blog or wherever else about decisions we took or problems/solutions we found while working on TotSpot. Stay tuned.

Oh, and if you happen to have a baby, give it a spin.

this is a portuguese post about a portuguese event, the usual english babbling will be back in a bit

Há quase duas semanas, lançámos uma formação em Rails para o público em geral.
Para quem queira aprender a trabalhar com esta framework é uma óptima oportunidade. Para quem já sabe Ruby/Rails, o 3º dia pode ser interessante ao nível do deployment, scaling e outros tópicos avançados.

A formação será nos dias 19, 20 e 21 de Maio em Coimbra, no Hotel Tryp.

Há descontos para estudantes ou para quem queira comparecer nos 3 dias. Mais informações no site do evento: http://training.webreakstuff.com/

This last weekend, over at Webreakstuff, we spent 2 whole days hacking around with both hardware and software. Being web developers we write a lot of code on our regular work days, which leads to a few hacks here and there. Still, it’s always fun to play with things that we usually don’t mess with. And that’s what we did this last weekend.

Circuit bending

This was one of the things have always been curious to learn and play with, and now we know why: it is so much fun! We toke apart a little playing guitar (that I “borrowed” from a cousin) and rewired every single solder point that made it change its sound.
Pedro is the responsible for every single distortion or unplanned sound that comes from that guitar. It’s not finished yet but it will be soon. Maybe I’ll update this post later to include pictures of it (inside and outside), videos and sounds of a live performance.

Processing

Processing has always amazed us. You can use it to write visual applications without much hassle. It is written in Java and you’re writing Java code but the cool thing is you don’t notice it – you don’t need to mess with classes, JApplet and such things, unless you really want or need to. Using the proMIDI library, I interfaced Processing and a MIDI controller to build an etch-a-sketch using knobs (that move the cursor) and pads (to clear the screen). Small thing, I know. Useless? I agree.

But these are the kind of things that can get you introduced to a new language, a library, a technology or something else you wanna know about.

Pure data

Just before the end of Sunday, I found myself watching some videos of people playing music with Pure data. Downloaded it and almost no time after installing it, I was sending MIDI signals to it and converting them into sound. Couldn’t play much more with it but I definitely will in my spare time.

All summed up, these were great times. In two days I was able to learn a lot of things. It’s always good when you divert from what you do everyday to learn new things and explore new worlds. Even when you get back to your work it seems better, just like your old bed when you came back from Summer camp. Everyone is looking forward to repeat this with some more people ;) Circuit bending, general electronics, Processing, Arduino. Interested?

Em primeiro lugar, como tinha prometido, a gem SAPO.rb já foi lançada (na verdade, há mais de um mês). Desde que me seja possível, quero continuar a manter a gem e a introduzir melhoramentos ou novas features. Para instalar: gem install sapo :)

Um ano acaba e outro começa, normalmente fazem-se balanços e resoluções. Eu acho que também faço:

Balanço 2007

• Afirmação da Webreakstuff. ‘Adoro quando um plano dá certo!’
• Mais um Barcamp que deu um gozo do caraças organizar
• SAPO Codebits (como já disse, esteve tudo óptimo)
• Ver Portugal no mundial de Rugby a jogar de igual para igual com algumas das melhores equipas

(acho que sou um optimista por natureza e isso nota-se num balanço que só tem items positivos)

Resoluções 2008

• Ler mais
• Ter mais tempo para projectos pessoais
• Ter tempo (e disposição) para correr e coisas que tais que me fazem bem
• Dormir menos. O ideal era tanto como o Prof. Marcelo (diz-se que são 4 horas/noite)

(pelos vistos também sou egocêntrico, o que se traduz em esta lista tr apenas coisas sobre mim)

EDIT: Sou tão distraído! :P Já me ia esquecendo: para quem lê isto num feedreader, dê um salto ao blog. Estou a estrear um theme novo que fiz durante a tarde de hoje. Ainda faltam umas coisas, mas deve ficar +- como está: a preto e branco e com fotos dum parvo qualquer.

Espero que tenham tido um bom Natal e desejo um Bom Ano Novo a todo o auditório. Adeus e até um dia destes.

Os meus parabéns à organização! Os 3 dias de pouco sono valeram bem a pena. É sempre bom rever gente conhecida e conhecer outros tantos.

Esteve tudo óptimo: o sítio, as instalações em si e o aparelho estava todo muito bem oleado. Claro que comer pizza em 3 refeições consecutivas pode não ser um sonho, mas hey! havia várias pizzas diferentes e sempre acompanhadas com salada e fruta e tudo e tudo. Comida não faltou!

Quanto ao concurso, houve algumas ideias interessantes que espero que continuem a ser desenvolvidas. Gostei do pessoal que “saiu do computador”, como o Pong de mão, o Pong de cabeça e o PC que tira cafés.

No meu caso participei com uma library em Ruby para aceder às APIs do SAPO e que ganhou na categoria “Programação”. Vai ficar disponível nos próximos dias na Rubyforge, mais sobre isto noutro post, assim que lançar a gem.

Acabou. Já há uns dias, na verdade. Depois de semanas, meses a pensar e organizar o BarCamp, foi quase impossível aproveitar o evento como gostaria. Há sempre tanta coisa para tratar!

Agradecimentos aos participantes, à WaveWeb, Safira, Delta e à nossa Webreakstuff. Agradeço também ao Francisco da Câmara Pereira pelo apoio ao evento, sem o qual não teria sido possível ser realizado naquele local. Obrigado também aos amigos que foram oferecendo a sua ajuda.

Foi óptimo poder voltar a ver o pessoal que conheci no primeiro BarCamp. Até à próxima, pessoal! Obrigado por estes dias :)

Over the next months we’ll be organizing the Barcamp Portugal.

This will be the 2nd edition of the event and we’re trying our best to keep the quality over the roof. Last year we had more than 50 people that had come from all over the country to attend various presentations about several interest areas: Rails, Web, Innovation, Jails <3 FreeBSD, DRM and the music scenario among others. You can check this information about the past year here

This time we’re aiming to have a first day with some talks and in the second day we’ll have workshops. You know, everybody loves doing stuff rather than watching 30 minutes of somebody talking about stuff.

So if you wanna make it to BarcampPT ‘07, add yourself to the list and read more about the event here.

When? 1 and 2 September
Where? Coimbra, Portugal