Eric Lemaître: 1958-2012

We met in 1975, in boarding school.

For some reason, the director had decided that there was to be a band of students playing at the end-of-year celebrations and had gotten in touch with Eric to make it happen.

Since he was in the same class as my older brother (a budding keyboard player, back then), it was only a matter of time before the both of them informed me that I was to be the drummer in the new (unnamed) band. Not that I was known anywhere for my drumming, mind you. I had a vague idea that I could do it and my brother, in his infinite wisdom, had decided that my “career” needed a push. I never remembered to tell him that playing with him was fine, but that I was scared witless of having to play with Eric, whom I regarded as a “real” guitar player. At age 14, unsurprisingly, I had never played with any other musicians before.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,700 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Exploring Emotions: Ask It Forward

A beautifully simple concept, by Eduardo Bragança. The first installment is Lisbon, music by my older brother, Pedro.

12 Cities, 12 Months, 12 Questions. An art project that wishes to eternalize people as part of their own creations, allowing spontaneous thoughts or a spiritual thinking to be as much inspiring process as a work of art.

Ending on a painting exhibition in 2013, this 12 documentary series explores people emotions and the questioning. Making people as the own art piece of this creation.
– Eduardo Bragança

For language nerds

But do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss?

Intriguing

“Portugal”, a comic book by Cyril Pedrosa

Make WordPress.com content shareable on Diaspora

Following the seemingly very popular post on how to share your blog’s posts on Tumblr, here are the instructions to do the same on Diaspora.

Start by visiting your dashboard, and go to Settings > Sharing. That page will let you add a custom service:

Clicking on “Add a new service” will show you a window where all you need to do is specify the following values:

Service Name:

Diaspora

Sharing URL: 

http://iliketoast.net/dshare.html?url=%post_url%&title=%post_title%&notes=%post_excerpt%

Icon URL:

http://joindiaspora.com/favicon.png

Voilà! Instant Diaspora sharing on WordPress.com.

WP on Tour: Roll Your Own

My to-do list for this week has the “Book flight to Barcelona” task, to attend WP on Tour. For those who don’t know what that is:

The idea is to step out of your daily (office) environment and work at a challenging location somewhere in the world.

Like a holiday, but then with WordPress geeks :) Everybody is welcome: bloggers, designers, programmers, entrepreneurs, etc.

Simply one week of fun, working, sightseeing, brainstorming, relaxing and inspiring each other.

It should be lots of fun; one of the greatest perks of being part of the WordPress community is the ease with which you can connect with people who, under “normal” circumstances, wouldn’t have crossed your path. If you’ve ever been at a WordCamp, you know exactly what I mean; WordCamps are one the main reasons why I now know so many people in the community, but most importantly, why some of those people have become very good, personal friends.

Upon reading the comments on the WP on Tour’s and and WPCandy’s post, I could not help but notice how popular this whole idea of a WordPress-geek-week is. I also noticed that many people would really love to either join (the first edition is sold-out, unfortunately) or else host something similar.

News flash: you can do just that, right now. It’s supposed to be an informal week, for small groups that want to spend that time working “as usual”, but together. Think of it as 7 days coworking under the sun (or the snow, if that’s your thing) with the added bonus of probably getting to meet local developers, designers and bloggers.

It’s also easy to do. Since it’s meant for small groups, planning can be kept to a minimum, and all costs are shared. Not much more difficult than planning a family vacation. Come to think of it, it is a family vacation of sorts

So, there. Go ahead and organize your own WP on Tour. If you need pointers and help, you can always get in touch with Karim, the inaugural organizer, I’m sure he’s glad to explain how he did it.

Nota para los WordPressers de Barcelona y alrededores: nos quedamos en Sitges del 15 al 22 enero de 2012, que tal unas tapas y copas en Barcelona o una visita vuestra a Sitges?

Proud dad

My daughter, by Andrew C. Kovalev. Speechless.

On the subject of drummer jokes

“…results suggest a bottom-up explanation of the link between temporal stability and intellectual performance…”

(pdf) Intelligence and Variability in a Simple Timing Task Share Neural Substrates in the Prefrontal White Matter

I, for one, always had a thing for Lead Vocalist Syndrome jokes…

…it has become impossible for most citizens in these corporate states to find out what is happening in the centers of power. Television news celebrities dutifully present two opposing sides to every issue, although each side is usually lying. The viewer can believe whatever he or she wants to believe. Nothing is actually elucidated or explained. The sound bites by Republicans or Democrats, the Liberals or the Conservatives, are accepted at face value. And once the television lights are turned off, the politicians go back to the business of serving business.

Chris Hedges – Why the revolution must start in America