London to Cambridge Bike Ride 2011

On the 24th of July I have taken part on the London to Cambridge Bike Ride an event that aimed at raising awareness and funds for Breakthrough Breast Cancer.

This was by far my longest bike ride ever with a total of 96km(60mi)!

I went with two friends of mine, João Afonso and Bruno Frederico. We woke up early in that Sunday morning and went by train to the start point in London (in the North of London if I remember correctly), and after registering ourselves we just rode... for ninety six kilometres. OK we also stopped a few times, but just to have some quick snacks.

Stopping for a snack.... *nom nom*

The course was really nice with nice landscapes and some challenging hills, specially one that was really, really steep. I was really surprised by this as I thought that this area, between London and Cambridge, was fairly flat.

We finished the 96km in 5hours, but I believe I could have done a few more meters if I had to!

It was definitely an amazing experience which next year I hope to repeat, I might even get a proper road bike. :)

Finished, and I look fresh, no?

Another thing that I really enjoyed was seeing so many different people riding with us. There were people in disguises, people in suits, people in roller blades, a guy that was picking garbage from the road as he rode, and people with very different ages.

The three riders (João, Bruno and me)

I was also able to raise 60pounds! Thanks to all that contributed: Mariana, Alice, Edward, James, and Sérgio.

Surprisingly enough on the following day I didn't feel sore muscles... if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't move my left knee properly I would have played football on that following Monday. =p

PS: my previous longest bike ride was of about 10km. =)

My Tech Blog

A few weeks ago I created a new blog (yes, another blog...). The idea came from my boss who said that he thought it was important for a developer to have a blog where he can write about his work and techy stuff.
I agree with him and so after surpassing my laziness I created my new blog and named it (Don't) Debug in Production.
It might not be very interesting to some of you, but I thought it was worth sharing here.

This will continue being my personal blog. Don't think that much will change in terms of frequency of writing... Which doesn't mean much as it varies a lot. :)
Let me know what you think of my it!

25th of April Forever

Because I appreciate the liberty to speak my mind and heart I will not forget nor cease to celebrate!

The Carnation Revolution (Portuguese: Revolução dos Cravos), also referred to as the 25 de Abril (the 25th of April), was a left-leaning military coup[1] started on 25 April 1974, in Lisbon, Portugal, coupled with an unanticipated and extensive campaign of civil resistance. These events effectively changed the Portuguese regime from an authoritarian dictatorship to a democracy, and produced enormous changes in social, economic and political structures of Portugal, after two years of a transitional period known as PREC (Processo Revolucionário Em Curso, or On-Going Revolutionary Process), characterized by social turmoil and power disputes between left-and right-wing political forces.
Source: Wikipedia

And here is one of the songs I remember waking up to on every 25th of April of my life...

Short tale of a busy period!

Starting in the end of February and finishing in the end of March, it has been a really busy period here in Cambridge. All in all Mariana and I had 13 visitors, divided in multiple visits with varying lengths!

First was Mariana's sister, Margarida, and her boyfriend, João. Then six friends of ours, Cláudio, Patrícia, Ana, Pedro, Cláudia e Ricardo. Just one or two days later Hélder stopped by on his way to Bucharest. On the following Weekend we had two visitors from Poland, Maro and Kuba, who I had met in Denmark during my Erasmus. Then we rested for a weekend and on the last week of March João Pedro and Kiko spent an evening and a few hours of a night here in Cambridge, before flying with me to Dublin to visit Manel.

It was really, really, nice to have had you all here in Cambridge!! Thank you for coming! I know that it might be a bit rude of me to write only one post about all of your visits, but you know that I'm a bit lazy about writing in my blog, so no hard feelings... =)

With so many visits I think that Mariana and I are becoming quite the experts in showing Cambridge to visitors. Sometimes it even seems that we are following a script, but we assure you that we are not... we've simply been having a lot of practice! =)

For instance during one of the visits we were doing a punting tour in the river Cam and I even managed to correct the punter (the guy that pushes the punt)...

A punter, punting the punt in the River Cam

Funny enough these visits have showed me that Cambridge is bigger and has more stuff to see than what I had thought before! Which I find great, and which make my legs hurt a bit with every visit. ;)

So, who's next? =)

Hello Spring

Long time no see!

Welcome back!

Vinicius de Moraes @ Graduate Union in Cambridge 24th of March

As a member of the Cambridge University Portuguese Speakers Society here is our invitation for our next event, a Film Night:

For the next film night, we invite you to come with us to the other side of the Atlantic with a documentary about the Brazilian artist: Vinicius de Moraes (October 19, 1913 – July 9, 1980). Tenderly nicknamed as “O Poetinha” (“The little poet”), Vinicius wrote more than 400 poems and around 400 lyrics. He was a poet, a composer, a playwright, a diplomat and an interpreter of his own songs. Together with Tom Jobim he is one of the fathers of Bossa Nova, a Brazilian music style which combines a bit of samba with jazz. In this documentary we will have a chance to get to know Vinicius a little bit more (his life, his friends, his loves..) and also Rio de Janeiro, through archive pictures, interviews and the interpretation of his classics.

* Which film?* Documentary about “Vinicius de Moraes”
* When?* Thursday – 24th of March – 7.30 pm
* Where?* Graduate Union University of Cambridge; 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge CB2 1RX
* Why? * Because Vinicius de Moraes is a singular artist in the Portuguese speaking world with a charming life story.

We hope to see you there!

If you are in Cambridge on the 24th, join us! =)

The News!

For some days now I have been thinking about posting something here, but I had no clue what to post about and today someone* brought to my attention that I had something very important to post. Mariana was on the News of her Department here in the University of Cambridge!!

She had her PhD's second year presentation in February and was awarded the best presentation award of her session. Which I personally think it's awesome, and makes me very proud! =)

For those of you who have no idea what she's working on you can find a short description on that page, which I copy here:

"Mariana Domingos presented her work on Turbulent plumes with heterogeneous chemical reaction on the surface of buoyant bubbles. She said, "In this project we aim to understand how chemical reaction, dissolution and phase change affect the motion of turbulent plumes. This may help mitigate problems caused by plumes, such as the Icelandic volcanic cloud and the Gulf of Mexico oil plume.""

Congratulations to her!! =D

* No, it was not Mariana. =)

Happy 2011!

Hi there!

I hope you had an amazing holidays or end of 2010 days, I know I did. I've been in Portugal for three amazing weeks and returned to Cambridge just a few days after the New Year started.

I must say that this was one of the best Christmas I've had, maybe because I received an amazing gift from my sister Alice and her boyfriend Filipe, I'm gonna be a godfather! I'm really, really happy about it! =D

But that wasn't the only amazing gift, I've also received a PS3! It's fantastic, and I'm trying my best to avoid addiction, which can be really hard. And now my house is even cosier than it was before. :P

I also received other really nice gifts, but I really had to speak about these two...

Before I finish here is my 2010's end of the year postcard!



Happy 2011!

Time to clean my camera's memory card #3

"Let us work!" - taken in Wrocław, Poland

Time to clean my camera's memory card #2

Just another relax dude in the wall...

Time to clean my camera's memory card #1

You've probably heard of the double chin, I present you the double moustache

Christmas break!

After the amount of posts I wrote in Movember I thought I should give you a rest... or maybe I just got lazy afterwards. Anyway here is a new one.

I'm now in Porto for my Christmas break and I'm very happy to be here. Although it's only 13ºC outside it feels really warm, specially because I still have the subzero temperatures quite fresh in my mind... Last Monday the maximum temperature in Cambridge was -5ºC!! That's quite cold... =P

I'm glad I managed to come to Porto because I know of a few people who haven't managed to leave England because their flights were cancelled due to the snow... Fortunately in Stansted it doesn't snow as bad as in other airports so it all went well for me. If it hadn't I think I would've rented a car and drove to Portugal... Fortunately I didn't need that.

Talking about snow last Saturday it snowed the whole afternoon in Cambridge! It was enough to make this huge snow man, named Pep, credit should go to my neighbours Dago, João and Raoul, I only added some accessories.



As it was so freaking cold all the places where cars and people don't pass too much were still covered in snow yesterday... I must say that it made the trip by train to the airport really beautiful. =) Amazing landscapes... other than that snow can be really annoying..

This was taken in Trinity College.

Since I'm not sure if I'll post anything else before Christmas I take this chance to wish you a Merry Christmas! And hope to see you around Porto during my stay! =)

Movember: One day at a time

Movember 2010 is over and so the moustache is soon to be gone. I've raised 111£! =D Thanks to everyone who donated! =) ( the list is here-> http://omeio.blogspot.com/2010/10/movember-donations-required.html ).

Not sure if the Movember website donation system will stay up, but I'll leave the links around for a few more days in case anyone else feels generous and wants to give it a try. =) Here it is-> http://uk.movember.com/mospace/823716/

PS: I wish my facial hair would grow faster... it could have made it even funnier. =)

30th of Movember

The month is almost over and my moustache is almost gone. I did my best to grow it and this is the end result minus a few hours:

From Movember 2010

It has been a fun activity to let the moustache grow, unfortunately it doesn't grow enough to allow me to go wilder and to crazy stuff with it, but at least I made an effort to help this good cause.

I have raised 64£! For that I have to thank everyone who has donated to my page but I would also like to thank everyone who have donated to anyone's page. I hope the end result is good and that the money is well invested in necessary research.

You can see a list of people who have donated in one of my previous posts. Thank you very much again! =)

If you haven't donated and are feeling like doing it, just do it! =) You don't need to give a lot, and you don't even have to tell me your name... any pound counts! =)

You can donate through my page: http://uk.movember.com/mospace/823716/ and I've even written some guidelines to help you out: http://omeio.blogspot.com/2010/11/movember-how-to-donate.html.

I hope you have enjoyed my pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them! =p

#UPDATE
I have now raised 111£! =D Thank you all!! =)

Movember: How to donate!

Before Movember ends I thought I should do a quick tutorial on how to donate, you will see that it is very simple and I assure you that I don't even smell the money! ;)

Anyway here it goes:

1- Go to my page (or other Mo-brother or Mo-sister page)
2- Press "Donate to me" or "Donate to my team"
3- Choose the amount: for example: 5.00 (don't forget to add the '.00' otherwise you will get an error)
4- Enter your card details.
5- Enter your billing address.
6- Press continue
7- Press Process payment. And confirm by pressing "OK".
8- Add a message or select the box that will make your donation and message private.
9- And then choose "Submit Message and Collect Receipt" or "Skip And Collect Receipt".

And that's all! =)

Try it!;)

Movember 12th - Back to the Seventies

Today I had a football match with St Johns and I thought this would give an amazing picture. Too bad my shorts are a bit longer than they would be on the seventies... but the thought is there.

It is also sad that we lost the match today... but we're getting better, today was just 1-0. But I would really love for us to win a match for a change...

Hope you enjoy the picture... and better yet I hope that it gives you an urge to donate! I've already raised 40£! =)

"Senhor do adeus" RIP

"O senhor do adeus" or Mr Goodbye (in my own translation) was a man that lived in Lisbon and that for who knows how many years went most, if not every night, to Saldanha (a place in the city of Lisbon) and stood in the side walk waving to the people that passed by. He did this for so long that he became part of the city and was quite well know.

There was a blog about him created by a Portuguese jazz musician, Filipe Melo, who was his friend and used to go to the cinema every Sunday with him and with another guy called Tiago Carvalho. Filipe and Tiago used the blog to write the "senhor do adeus" views on life and reviews of the films they used to watch. "O senhor do adeus" was also invited to a quite famous radio show called "Prova Oral"(this link doesn't seem to be working...will try to find the correct one later), from Antena 3 a youth focused radio station.

This week "o senhor do adeus" has died and many blogs and newspapers have reported it. In one of the news articles I learned that something really touching happened. A group of more than 100 people got together tonight in Saldanha to wave at the passers by in memory of "o senhor do adeus". Rui Zink (a Portuguese writer, that was there tonight) said this was probably the best "funeral" he has ever seen, and I must agree with him.

The only time I saw "o senhor do adeus" I had already heard of him. At first I had thought that he was kind of weird, and maybe he was, but then I came to believe that he was just one of those characters that make a city unique. Today when I heard that he had passed away I read a bit more about him and got the idea that probably a bit of Lisbon is now gone with him. Later when I saw this news article I felt that if I was in Lisbon at this moment I would have been there tonight. I felt that someone like him who has been there for so many nights trying to help people in a very simple way, waving goodbye at them after each day of work, probably making them smile, deserves a goodbye like this.

Goodbye "senhor do adeus", Rest in Peace.

Movember 2010 - Evolution

As you might have noticed I've added a Movember dedicated space to my sidebar. There I'll put pictures of the evolution of my facial hair. =) Also there's a nice button to donate! ;)

Halloween 2010

Today is Halloween here in the UK and yesterday I went to a party at Darwin College. As always I didn't prepare anything in advance to dress for the party, but in the afternoon I went shopping with Mariana and came across an immitation of a Freddy Krueger claw, and so I decided to dress up as Freddy Krueger.

With a hat, some skin make up and the claw I was ready to party! =)



I should add that the make up was quite a challenge to do, first I painted my face red, then cleaned it a bit, then added black and gray, then cleaned a bit more, and in the end I added fake skin make-up. Now I know that I should've started with the fake skin, and then paint a bit with red, or something like that. But I think the end result was quite scary...

Movember - Request for donations!

It starts tomorrow! =)

Please donate to Movember through this link: http://uk.movember.com/mospace/823716/
.

I'll post my first day picture tomorrow! =)

#UPDATE#
Here I'll list the donations that I receive, sorted by donation date.

1- João Silva, 10£
2- Luís de Castro, 10£

3- Mariana Domingos, 20£
4- Chris Endres, 10£
5- James Cox, 4£
6- Maria Lourdes Domingos, 10£
7- Carlos Fernandes, 4£
8- João Oliveira, 33£
9- Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, 10£

Total: 111£!! =D

Thank you for donating! =)