Pedro Gil Candeias

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Pedro Gil Candeias
Pedro Gil Candeias

Indie web developer, serial founder.

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2012 (12)
2011 (18)
2010 (7)
 

Siri + Reminders = Win

Riding the subway home the other day, I suddenly realized I had forgotten something in my IRS filing. I raised my iPhone to my ear and said:
"Remind me to update my IRS when I get home."

It replied:
"Here's your reminder for when you get home: 'Update my IRS'. Shall I create it?"

A short exchange followed:
"Yes."
"Ok, I created your reminder."
"Thank you, Siri."
"Only doing my job."

Siri on the iPhone 4S does all sorts of technologically advanced things like tell you how many calories there are in a chocolate croissant or checking the weather to determine whether or not you need an umbrella, but nothing comes close to the sheer usefulness of having it take your notes or create reminders with alarms. That's because checking the weather is as easy as tapping once on the weather app icon, whereas taking a note or creating a reminder is a complex, keyboard-heavy operation. Being able to do this by simply speaking into my phone is amazing.
Posted
 

On moving

Fiesta_burden
The old Fiesta, beast of burden

 

I spend a weekend in my hometown roughly once a month. It's a bittersweet experience, as nostalgic as it is joyful. Spending time with my sister and my friends who still live in Oporto is very gratifying, but I always feel a bit sad that I can't take them back with me come sunday evening.

Even though I've been based in Lisbon for the best part of five years now, and most of my close friends live here, it'll probably be a while before this city feels as much like home as Oporto does. There's a wonderful familiarity to crossing the Infante bridge towards São Lázaro, having a beer at the Pinguim, or walking on the Passadiço along Gaia's shoreline. I don't think I'll get it anywhere else in the near future. This leaves me feeling a bit like a foreigner all the time.

Still.

Moving out of my hometown prompted my mind to embrace the world in ways it never could when all my concerns were confined to a small geographical area. Expanded it, if you will.

It's hard to describe exactly what it feels like. One possible analogy is perhaps imagining that you live in a house with just one room, which you never leave except on holidays. At some point, an extra room is added to your house. Your world doubles in size not only physically but, because this new rooms if full of very different furniture and holds the strangest books in its shelves, also intelectually.

Being social animals, we're extremely sensitive to the culture of the place we live in. Our beliefs, prejudices and ambitions are informed by those of our peers, thus affecting our behaviour. By moving from one community to another, these cultures and their tenets become fully evident and it's much easier to identify their influence over one's own beliefs and behaviour. Such introspection can be extremely eye-opening and inspirational. I think that's one of the reasons why people who travel a lot seem so interesting. 80% of that probably stems from their shedding of tribal prejudices and stale ideas.

In the end, I guess moving away from one's hometown (or travelling a LOT) is a bit like the choice of knowledge over ignorance. Sure, ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge makes everything more interesting even if it does come at a price.

 

 

Posted from Amadora, Portugal
 

Another nail in Flash's coffin

It's not just Apple anymore.

The tech community's animosity agains Adobe Flash may come as a surprise to many, but the fact is this technology causes a lot of problems. By simply turning Flash off, any browser gets instantaneously lighter on memory and cpu, and therefore faster and more responsive.

On laptops and mobile devices, the importance of efficiency cannot be overstated. In a time when the browser is perhaps the application we use the most, it's quite harmful to persist using a technology that's known for crashing it and slowing it down.

It's true Flash is still better suited than HTML5 for certain tasks, and its ubiquity as a video player makes it unavoidable for consumers to keep running it, but the times they are a-chagnin'. If I were a Flash dev, I'd be looking at some HTML5 and JS tutorials right about now.

Posted
 

That time when I used to do that thing

I was writing about how much I used to write when I was younger. Then I paused, thought for a moment, and promptly deleted everything.

Then I started writing.
Posted
 

My office's bizarro twin

I'm sitting on the floor. There's a very wide desk by the wall, and a good chair too, but sometimes it's nice to just sit on the bare wooden floor because it changes everything quite dramatically. From this low, the perspective is different than usual. As are the tactile sensations, obviously, and the smells too: the floor is hard and there's a faint whiff of dust down here. Put together, these changes in perception make it feel like a rather different room. No longer my office but its bizarro twin.

I would not know this interesting version of my office if I weren't willing to forego the comforts of my cushioned chair and sit on the floor from time to time.
Posted
 

A quick fix for the dreaded Apache 403 Forbidden Error on OSX Lion

After deciding to ditch MAMP and start taking advantage of Lion's preinstalled Apache2 and PHP, I ran into the infamous 403 Forbidden situation. I tried several solutions, to no avail.

Then it occurred to me... if MAMP was working, maybe there was something in its configuration that I needed. So I set about looking through MAMP's httpd.conf and found this:

<IfModule !mpm_winnt.c>
<IfModule !mpm_netware.c>
#
# If you wish httpd to run as a different user or group, you must run
# httpd as root initially and it will switch.  
#
# User/Group: The name (or #number) of the user/group to run httpd as.
#  . On SCO (ODT 3) use "User nouser" and "Group nogroup".
#  . On HPUX you may not be able to use shared memory as nobody, and the
#    suggested workaround is to create a user www and use that user.
#  NOTE that some kernels refuse to setgid(Group) or semctl(IPC_SET)
#  when the value of (unsigned)Group is above 60000; 
#  don't use Group #-1 on these systems!
#
User myusername
Group #-1
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

Copy+paste that into /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and voilá! Permission problems solved.
Posted
 

Startups everywhere.

Having spent long years complaining that there's no startup scene to speak of here in Portugal, I feel really stupid.

In my defence, these organizations seem to rely mainly on word-of-mouth and newspapers for publicity. The former didn't work for me simply because I can't be bothered to network for networking sake*, and as for the latter... really? Newspapers? Come on.

Well, at least now I found them. There's a pizza night at one of them tomorrow, can't wait to check it out.

* I know, I should probably be more sociable.
Posted
 

Open sourcing AbsenceLetters

Not much to add.

I'm looking for freelance work, and many clients now want to check developers' github before commiting to a gig, there's no reason not to let them see my most recent piece of code.

On that note, maybe I should stop building platforms from scratch and start using open source projects. That way I'd be sure to contribute and maybe network some more. Note to self: stop being a hermit.

Posted
 

Project debrief: AbsenceLetters.com

I spent my free time this past week working on a rather strange project: AbsenceLetters.com, a site that lets you store messages to your loved ones, which get sent in case you vanish. The service determines whether or not you're still around by looking at your twitter feed and, if you go too long without tweeting, it sends you an email asking to manually report in. If this had gotten any traction, facebook, google+ and foursquare feeds would also have been integrated into the system to make it more reliable. SMS notifications would be used in addition to email warnings too.

It's only been two days since the launch, but the analytics panel makes for some grim reading already. Only 100 unique visitors and but a single signup - who didn't actually get around to add any contacts or write any letters. Traffic may still be too low to draw meaningful conclusions, but the writing is on the wall. Like mistrQ said on Hacker News:

I can appreciate why you think this is a problem that needs to be solved. But I can't help feel a bit wrong about it.
(...)
I think it's one of these things that is a 'good idea', but should never actually be followed through.
 
Well the software works, the domain name is paid for and an idle domain has no impact on my server's performance, so it'll stay up for the time being. But active development has been put on hold indefinitely.

However abysmal in terms of interest and adoption, however, this project was a huge win in terms of motivation. See, I have a chronic problem with shipping. The reasons are besides the point, fact is, I rarely get a project done on time. This was different. This thing was conceived, designed and shipped in less than a week. At the same time, I was doing a freelance gig which was also done a bit earlier than expected.

Looks like this year got off to an excellent start in terms of my ability to get shit done.
Now, to ride the wave...

Posted
 

Leaving nothing unsaid

5am.

Slowly, I woke up. There was an idea in my head. The room was dark, even though the shutters were open. Dawn wouldn't break for another hour. I crept out of bed, out of the warmth of Her presence, and tentatively stepped away. My idea needed to be made manifest quickly, lest it be forgotten. Treading lightly on the cold wooden floor, I made my way to the living room, sat on a couch by the window and picked up the laptop.

As dawn came, the preliminary work was done. It was nothing but a sketch made of computer code, but it was enough. My idea had taken root. As I went back to the bedroom, my thoughts traveled a year into the past. In that same house my grandmother still dwelt. In another city, one of my dearest friends still lived. How could we possibly have known.

Less than a week has passed since that chilly Saturday morning. Work has progressed swiftly. I just uploaded a little website, in fact, and created an account for myself in it. Every once in a while, a program will run on its server and send me an email. I'll click a link in it and nothing will happen. One day, though, I won't click on that link. I don't know when or why. Surely it'll be in the distant future. But it will come. And when it does, another little program will take the letters I've stored in its database and send them one by one.

And hopefully the people I love will find some comfort in them.
Posted
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