The Whitehawk

How can I speak about stupidity if I don’t mention our politician’s own stupid mistakes. Well, in this particular case, it isn’t really a problem of the politician, but of the Portuguese people themselves.

One of our regional city mayors has recently been accused of 23 crimes. Those crimes involved side-tracking the funds of the people for her own personal use. When she found out about these charges she fled to Brazil.

A few weeks after, our elections began, and she returned and entered as a candidate. The thing is, we have this stupid old law somewhere that gives our candidates immunity from legal punishment while running political campaigns or exercising a position.

So she was immune, and continued her campaign normally. The people supported her and re-elected her as their mayor.

Ok, so half of the Americans voted for the most “simple” candidate for president… but this is much worse!

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I’ve decided to add a new category, which will hopefully bring some motion to my blog. Since I always have quite a few complains about stupidity I figured it would be a good theme to bring some articles here and give the blog a more “Dilbert” style to it.

So, to start things up, I bring you a real example of what you should never say during family picture sessions.

In one of my past family get-togethers, which I was unable to go, one of the most stupid things I ever heard of occurred, which made me regret not going altogether to witness such a stunning event. The whole family was gathered around a personal computer looking at pictures taken from that same day. When I say the whole family, I mean the *whole* family, from grandparents to the kids. In one of the photos, one of the women from the family had peculiar look on her face, her mouth was opened as an “O” while she was putting in a piece of cake. When that picture was one showing, she goes and shouts out:

“Look, I have a blow-job face on that picture!”

And there you have it folks, stupidity evidence #1. More stupidity will arrive as I encounter it, but trust me, it won’t take very long.

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My former Portuguese teacher is an avid Mac fan ever since I’ve known her, in fact, we’ve always teased each other at how good one platform was over each other. I used to mock her on the lack of compatibility for Mac applications and she mocked me on how good the operative system was compared to Windows.

Well, the joke is now on me, and my silence about it should be proof enough for her. But in any case, when I wrote the Nano review and told her “I saw the light” she read it and thought it would be a great addition to the Portuguese Mac news site she writes in so I did my best to translate it to my mother language and posted it there.

If you’re interested in seeing the article you can find it here, though it makes little or no difference if you’ve read the English version just below this article.

This is the first time I’ve ever gotten an “honorable mention” on another blog. And hopefully, the first of many. Of course, I also need to start writing more often and think of original content if I ever want this blog to “grow” in terms of readership.

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Since a few months back, when I started watching anime more regularly I began to get hooked on Japanese music. They have a great rhythm and melody and I can listen to it without losing concentration on my work because I hardly understand what any of the words say, though I’m catching some of the words rather well.

If you like Japanese pop/rock, or just like nice music I definitely recommend you this CD. I downloaded it to try out the new tracks and have placed my order just now.

[tags]YUI,From me to you,Jpop,Jrock,J-pop,J-rock[/tags]

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Not much happening blogging wise today, except for my birthday that is
So yes, today I’m officially 22 years old. I don’t know how the years went by so quickly and I used to be anxious to get to this age but now I just wish I was younger again. I guess it’s only normal, but oh well, you live and learn.

My father is responsible for writting the “thought of the day” for his Rotary Club’s reunions and the one he said yesterday was quite good:

“If you always back at the Past, the Present will pass besides you”

So here’s to another year in my life! Cheers!

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You know when sometimes people say that you need to fall or fail to learn something? Well, today that is exactly what happened. Yesterday I was complaining about the immaturity of the comments ForeverGeek is getting and today I’m enlightened as for the reason of that happening.

Even though I love blogging and writting, someone with more experience, said things exactly as they were. His words were neither inspiring nor motivational. They were the plain truth, and I still had much to learn from blogging before my “mentors” sold it off.

Basically I think I was just given too much responsability too quickly. I am currently hired to write at least two articles per-day.

You guys both started out posting opinionated stuff that started flamewars right off. (…) Now, well, your news is a week later than most places, there’s never anything particularly original, mostly just clips from other sites, and it’s mostly stuff that panders to the sort of people you’re complaining about receiving comments from.

Even though some might find those words offensive. I find them enlightening, and what I thought would be solutions for ForeverGeek, such as: Fixing the Submissions script, fixing some errors in the design and general pages, opening the forums to gather a good community  once again. I was way off to what the real solution is, the problem isn’t the readers, it’s myself, and the articles I write.

A good friend once taught me a valuable lesson in life with six toothpics. He basically told me to make four triangles out of them with breaking or crossing them. After a few minutes and attempts I gave up, and he built a triangular piramid and told me:

“Sometimes, when we can’t resolve an issue the best thing to do is to look at the problem from a third person’s perspective and not from our own.”

And even though he taught me this a long time ago and I remember it, I forgot about it completely when it came to blogging.

Lesson learned.

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I love blogging. My father is a well known journalist in my region, and ever since I was little he has always tried to push me away from pursuing his career so I wouldn’t be compared to him and because it just isn’t a good business to be in at the moment. But when the opportunity emerged to blog professionally I was really happy. And for the first months I didn’t even receive any money from blogging whatsoever. I just wrote away and tried to bring innovative, and sometimes polemic, articles to ForeverGeek.

However, ever since it was sold our audience changed from a mature one to a… well, to what I could only compare in words to blogging brats. And as all brats, if they don’t get a good twist on the ear they never shut up and run rampaging through each article with 1337 or “nigger talk” (not that I have anything against niggers) and just be plain obnoxious.

For that reason I decided to announce that from now on I will be closing the comments on further articles where things get carried away. From racists to fanboys, I’ve seen it all through the comments I get on my e-mail. Some several months old articles of mine still get comments. Most of them are people asking about updates or doubts. All the others are those discussions you usually see between 5 year olds, only with much worse language.

Perhaps in the future someone will offer a netiquette school for such internet delinquents and some sort of degree will be required to be given freedom of speech.

Hundreds of men and women suffered and were killed in the past so we could have freedom of speech. And what do we give them back?

0MG WTF!1!!!1ONE!1ONE w00tz0r s|_|x0rs my b0xx0r5

Someone with skill should make a “Every time you talk 1337 a deceased writer spins in his grave a hundred times” picture.

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Damn guys, you’re way too fast! I wanted to surprise you with the “new” design before I hit this mark but I got more visitors than expected.

I know I promised to show some pics of development, but I’d rather show you the site fully finished because it isn’t a complete re-design but rather a make-over in some aspects and improvement of the current one.

I can however talk about some of the changes:

• Renders perfectly on IE, Firefox and Opera;
• Horizontal Menu no longer glitchy and doesn’t “bounce” if you place your mouse under an option
• Replaced the current footer for a nicer one
• The text color is now black to improve contrast

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Great news readers, I have not only fixed the buggiest part of my site, the menu, but it now displays *exactly* the same on the three major browsers I tested: IE6, Firefox and Opera.

As for the other changes, I changed the font from the Windows Vista’s “Segoe Ui” to Verdana, since Opera wasn’t rendering the correct font using Microsoft’s Weft protocol.

You can also expect small tweaks to the sidebars and lots of improvements in the middle column.

So look forward to all these very soon, I’ll keep you posted and Possibly include a preview picture very soon. In the meantime I’ll continue to write articles also.

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Before you read any further, this short critique will include some spoilers, so if you’re interested in seeing the movie or reading the book then you shouldn’t read any further, thank you for your interest anyway.

A few days ago I went to see this Disney Pictures movie. The trailer seemed interesting and I have a crush for medieval stories so I went ahead to see it with my girlfriend.

During the first part of the movie I found it really neat. I loved how the author managed to fit a story about fantasy during a real event and how some of the values you learn in the movie can be related to human conflicts.

And the story seemed great, until one dreaded part: The lion’s “death”.I couldn’t believe my eyes, a Disney picture where a main and loved character would really die. I could have guessed that the other characters under the “ice spell” would defrost when the witch was defeated, but never the lion’s death.

But to see the lion being shaved and humiliated, the great feeling of sadness and emptiness that poured from his CG model. I was grabbing on to the chair in expectation, and my thoughts came true! He was killed!

However, when he resurrected, I was disgusted. The army sequence just before it was disappointing and very LotR inspired in my opinion. And from there on it went downhill, the story seemed to be completely rushed. The fighting was senseless and random and you couldn’t really tell which side was winning until the good guys had to retreat.

I’m not a great movie critic, not even close. But I left the theater with a feeling of emptiness and disappointment. It was just another Disney picture after all, the same as all others.

I know that the director couldn’t change the plot much. But he failed to carry out the story as well as he was doing in the beginning of the movie and that magical feeling that Narnia had in beginning withered away with each passing moment.

I honestly can’t recommend the movie, and from 1 out of 5, I give it a 2.5.

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