Pedro Assunção » wtf

Seal skin? Really, Crowne Plaza?!?

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:37:31 +0000

This is my fourth time in Amsterdam since i started working remotely. Obviously, once i moved back to Portugal i took all my belongings there and gave up my house in Holland so, every time i come to Amsterdam i have to stay at an hotel in the city. I have experienced three, so far: the Movenpick, the NH Caransa (in Rembrandtplein), and the Crowne Plaza.

All of them are pretty good hotels, though my preference goes definitely to the Movenpick. Probably because they are located in a place that was stolen from the waters, hence allowing them to build a proper hotel building, and not confined to an old historic, small, city centre edification. This means the rooms are bigger, and the whole place looks – well – newer. It is also closer to the central train station, though further from the city centre. But i still prefer it even though their website is done in Coldfusion. Sorry for the geeky comment but i could not help myself

But this post is not about the hotels; this post is about something i noticed this morning while showering at the Crowne Plaza. Turns out that the shower curtains in that place are made by a company called “SealSkin“. That’s right, seal skin.

Now, i’m no hardcore environmentalist, but i would assume the Plaza (and especially this company) to be a bit more sensitive about company names. Is this a thing from older times, when wearing skin was fashionable, or do typical 4/5 star hotel customers (i’m guessing filthy rich business men) still think like this?

Reddit’s RSS only shows article titles

Pedro Assuncao — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:56:44 +0000

Am i the only one who is pissed off by this? Aren’t RSS feeds supposed to be the awesome way of consuming information? And for what? Web page hits? Here’s a newsflash, dudes, your website isn’t that good looking

Here’s what i mean: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/.rss

Can’t touch this (iphone) nah, nah nah nah

Pedro Assuncao — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:10:52 +0000

Ok, this is so freaking hilarious that i cannot help it but sharing. It seems that, when faced with the impossibility of using their iPhones with gloves on, some Koreans have started using miniature sausages (yes, sausages) for that effect. It seems that the composition of the sausage is similar enough to a human finger for the touch screen to work.

I wonder what someone in the 80s would say if you told them that – in the future – people will use sausages as a way to interact with computers…

Google Gears not supported by chrome on OSX?

Pedro Assuncao — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:49:04 +0000

How can this be?

A shoe in for the job

Pedro Assuncao — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:31:38 +0000

Just found this pearl of a story. It tells the tale of an IT employee that sees his resume twisted by a recruiter to fit a job description at a financial institution and how that fact makes him waste his time and money chasing a job where he would not fit in the first place. I would not be surprised if it actually happened, judging from the amount of bad recruiters out there.

A very interesting and eye-opening read, if you work in IT.

New cockroach species found in New York

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:05:18 +0000

It seems a new type of cockroach might have been discovered in a new york apartment. Mutation, very-shy-hidden-for-ages-type, I have no idea but, according to the article:

“[Closely-related] species don’t differ [by] more than one percent, [while] this cockroach is four percent different, (…) This suggests it is a new species of cockroach.”

So there you have it. If it’s indeed a case of mutation (think pollution) I wonder how long until we start growing extra limbs…

Can we finally get rid of oil?

The beginning of the Matrix? Chicken poo equals electricity.

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:12:36 +0000

Chicken matrix. Are we there yet? This article reports a new clean way of turning animal waste into electric power. What I understand from it? A new motivation for chicken farms not to go away any time soon.

No related posts.

Ancient egyptians had bad teeth

Pedro Assuncao — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:00:55 +0000

I don’t know about you, but they just destroyed a bit of my fascination for ancient Egypt…

Turns out that 18% of the 3000 mummies discovered so far presented signs of really bad dental problems which, in retrospective, is something that one would expect at those times when Colgate and Pepsodent were not around

The autopsies were possible using computer tomography techniques, which allow scientists to better understand mummies (including cause of death) without disturbing them.

No related posts.

Reddit developers, please fix this

Pedro Assuncao — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:26:50 +0000

I previously mentioned how dumb it was for someone to have to wait 10 minutes to be able to post a comment on a different thread on Reddit, but this latest discovery is just delicious.

Just tried to post a comment on a post where the submitter clearly forgot to add the link to the news article. Here’s what I got:

Am I the only one who thinks this is not really helpful to anyone? If any Reddit developer reads this, can you please fix it?

Thanks.

SWIFT transfers are monitored by US authorities (even European transfers)

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:37:03 +0000

I was really in shock when I went with my mother to the bank the other day: There was a small sheet of paper stating that bank transfers done via the SWIFT network are prone to have its details shared with US authorities. The network currently has two nodes working with the same data in almost real time, one in the Netherlands and one in the US, and the latter is – well – under US jurisdiction.

From the wikipedia:

Operations centers

SWIFT operates two data centers, one in the US and one in the Netherlands. These centers share information in near real-time. In case of a failure in one of the data centers, the other is able to handle the traffic of the complete network. Currently SWIFT is building a third data center in Switzerland, which is scheduled to start operating in the second half of 2009.^[4] Once this is completed, data from European SWIFT members will no longer be mirrored to the US data center. Also called Distributed Architecture will partition messaging into two zones, the European messaging zone and the Trans-Atlantic messaging zone.^[5] European Zone messages will be stored in the Netherlands and in a part of the Switzerland operating center, Trans-Atlantic Zone messages will be stored in the US and in a part of the Switzerland operating center that is segregated from the European Zone messages. Countries outside of Europe were by default allocated to the Trans-Atlantic Zone but could choose to have their messages stored in the European Zone.

Apparently there was a big fuss about this in 2006 and the SWIFT organization agreed to make changes to its server infrastructure so that the European transfer data would remain in Europe and not be accessible to the US government. I don’t know the current status of the subject but, according to that warning from the bank in Portugal, seems that the data is still shared and accessible. There was a vote for this information sharing to go forward in end of the July 2009 and it was supposed to be accepted, though I don’t know for sure the result.

Anyone with a financial background has more insight on this?

No related posts.