Tiago Matos’ Nest

I’m gaming again… this time with more didactic purposes…

The Game is called “Virtual Stock Exchange” and no more words are needed.

Just check http://vse.marketwatch.com/. Subscribe and create a portfolio and start to make (fake) money.
Maybe same day you can really have those thousands of George Washingtons invested in stocks…

See ya

Update: I’m playing with Simão and Couto in a game with the ID Verdadeiros (with capital letter) feel free to join. It will last for 3 months.

Hi!

I just want to expose some toilets inovations that are very popular around here and I’ve never seen them in Portugal.

Waterless Urinols

A more recent innovation are urinals that do not use water at all. Models introduced by Waterless Company in 1992^[2] and others in 2001 by Falcon Waterfree Technologies and Sloan Valve Company, utilize a trap insert filled with a sealant liquid instead of water. The lighter than water sealant floats on top of the urine collected in the U-bend, preventing odors from being released into the air. Although the cartridge and sealant must be periodically replaced, the system does save anywhere between 15,000 and 45,000 gallons of water per urinal per year. They can be installed in all high traffic facilities and in situations where providing a water supply may be difficult or where water conservation is desired.

Waterless installations often include a label warning cleaning staff not to pour buckets of liquid into the urinal (to dispose of dirty mop water, for instance). A large influx of water would wash the sealant through the U-bend and down the drain, causing the urinal to smell until the sealant is replaced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinal

If you wanna check the Top Ten Urinols in the Net: http://www.urinal.net/topfive.html#

And… coreless toilet paper.

As the name say it does have that hole on it, its a compact roll of paper.

After of course automatic water taps are the rule.

What do you think about that?

Hey!

I use from some time the social bookmarks http://del.icio.us, if you wanna add me my username is tiagomatos.

See ya…

Hi!

The “Foundations of Business Administration” was quite OK. Hope to pass it.

I’ve joined Skype community with tiago.duarte.matos@gmail.com as my email so if you wanna add me.

And it continues to be very chilly around here. It’s great to put the beers cooling outside
See ya!

Temperature on Nuremberg
Originally uploaded by tiagoduarte.matos.

This is just the temperature record here… in Flickr there’s a photo of my street dressed in White!

Today Simão Soares, my good old friend, made me notice with one of his remarks that my blog is just too self-centered…
OK, it’s true that this is a personal Blog, specially created for better linking me to whom is reading this far away from where I’m, but it is needing some changes…

It’s also just talks about the present and the upcoming future and almost nothing about the years that past by me…

And there is also some true on your conclusion that I’m getting out of contents to post and that I’m getting more and more addicted to blogging. Weren’t you guessing this by now?

So after “upgrading” the blog to an English version and adding rhetorical questions from time to time I’ll add a new feature that I’ll call (*a decent and creative name is needed*)from time to time.I’ll dedicate one post to whatever flows on my mind about a friend that I have.

So the first people all starting posting about will be and by order: Simão, Couto, Joana e Sofia. These particular order is not random but also doesn’t have any particular meaning… I just thought this way on the way home(by bicycle with 5cms snow).OK, you can guess why S.S. is the first.

OK, it’s all for today…

Just mentioning that I’m now studying “Fundations of Business Administration” and it’s a very interesting topic about me… I can feel my jealousy about all the contents Russo studies, but I’ve made my decision 4 years ago, it cannot be undone by just one eccentricity.

Two more things: I’ve rode my bicycle today, with minus 2ºC, trough Nuremberg to get finished 2 unresolved points.

One:I’ve received some days ago a notification letter ultimating me to pay the December’s rent otherwise I would be expelled from the Student Residence. It happens that in December I went to Portugal leaving the balance of my bank account reduced to some euros… so the their withdrawals bounced 2 times on my account. Just the usual.
They said that everything was clear now and politely asked if they could continue to withdraw money from my account. Those laddies were really very friendly.
Two:I went some days ago and some days before the exam date asking if I could register myself on it. Once more the lady in charge was very polite and friendly and made possible to me to register on one exam two months after the registration deadline. So now I just need to study and pass!I promised her that I will do it!

Right!Enough writing… bye bye.

Well I have some uninteresting news such as:

.I’ve bought my flight tickets from Cologne-Vienna and Vienna-Nuremberg for a bargain… I think cheaper than going by bus. Thank you Germanwings and Airberlin.
.I’ve created a www.fickr.com profile for myself. You can reach it by http://www.flickr.com/people/tiagomatos/ I’ll starting post some photos… In fact I don’t have many photos but I’ll easily find time to get some from my friends.

BTW, “Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world”.

Now, addressing to you people, I’ve created a group “Verdadeiros & Amigos” where I think we can all post our photos… of course just the ones where we’re together…
We all have lots of photos that we should avoid to be lost… and what more reliable than an on-line database like Flickr.
I’ve already invite Simão that already has an account.So you can be next just point your browser to http://www.flickr.com/groups/verdadeirosamigos/

Let’s try to put most of our photos over there.

For large uploads there are the Flickr tool where you can send several photos at once…

Let’s share those old pics that you have over there…Hein?

It’s 19.20. It’s, maybe, the earlier post I’ve ever left here…

So here goes the question:

“What’s the most exotic place you’ve ever been?”

For sure sure that for me it’s Istambul… it’s a fantastic place.

10 M people living in the same place; been the capital of three world empires and the only city on two different continents makes Istambul a must see!

I’ve been there for just 3 days, if I’m not mistaken, on the first trip I’ve made in Europe by myself. I had the age of 18 and went with Sofia.

The food is really spicy and the some Turkish just cannot see some tourists… once a guy came almost begging for us to buy him fake perfumes for maybe 1km or so. He was really annoying and then annoyed…

A funny thing happened on the way to Turkey…
Was you know a visa is needed to visit that country but I really wasn’t aware of that in the trip to there… So just imagine the thing. The train stops in no-where’s land, specifically in the border control of Turkey, and we all(foreigners) are demanded to go out the train.

They ask 10€ for each visa. And what’s the point? We didn’t had any pocket money with us…
Finally I remembered that I had 50€ hidden in one of my backpack’s pockets.
It was just pure luck!

Why the hell did I remembered this?

Everybody here in ERASMUS is talking about great trips around Europe in the semester break and some are thinking of visiting Turkey.

BTW, greetings to my friends Emre from Turkey that I meet in Alpine Jam some time ago.

That’s it for today.

Ah! One more thing… Slav from Croatia visited this site and wondered about where were the pics? I think that kind of things go against a blog’s philosophy. What do you think about this matter?

Just before hitting the “publish”, I’ve formalized my application to beREIT the trainshop I talked about on the last posts. I really think and hope to be accepted, lets see!

So I already have my things planned:
From 16-18 February: Carnival in Cologne; 18-25 same month: “Slopes are Still Alive” and from 6-12 March:beREIT.
The time between this events will the filled with my project at nebo.

This week was a very good one to my self-esteem…
I’ve spent it entirely at home in front of the computer…

After tomorrow I’ll stop programming and start studying for the exams. What about you? How are your exams going? A mess as always, I suppose…

My German Language Exame is already next Monday and I didn’t spend one hour studying for it since the begginning of the school year…And the problem is that FH gives us credits for passing the exam and my university will accept them(if I pass…).

Well it’s almost 5.00 a.m. and I need that 5/6 hours of sleep…

Ah! One note… today is the first day that I spent entirely at home. From rising up to going to bed. It’s not bad because today there were hurricane winds here in Germany. I think I’ve missed a great chance of facing up to 150km/h winds…

Some more pages of my book and that’s it for today…And your day was better than my own?

Technical remark: Using a conjunction on the begginig of a sentence as “and”,”but”,”or”… as I often do it’s not completly wrong as I read firstly on one of my books and came across this site http://www.gpuss.co.uk/english_usage/start_sentence_conjunction.htm.

Another thing check this video out: http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/
This Matt have been in all the places a person dreams about beeing and oher more! Impressive!
I’ve got this site link trough my friend Filipe.Tks.

Well… we’re on Exams period around here. Everybody is starting to concern about the upcoming exams and so on.

Personally, I’ll have 4 exams: German, Bussiness Administration, Compilers and Software Engineering… What worries me most is the Compiler’s one. You know all that mess with my project… The exam will be in German and if the Prof. won’t help me out with the translations it will be difficult. Let’s see and hope!

It’s currently 6.45a.m. and I’m going to bed after one well spent night reading about and testing WCF.

I think that this blog needs to work more in duplex mode so will start populating this post with rhetoric questions…

The first will be:

“How the hell will he survive to one more exam period?”

and more important…

“Will this Carnival so happily drunken as the last one?”

About Carnival let me add that I’m very enthusiastic about going to the Cologne’s biggest celebration. I’ve heard a lot about this German fest…

I already have hostel booked, not in Cologne because there was no space for 20 people but in a near city, and the only problem is that we’re going on the 16th and returning on the 18th. On the 18th I need to be already in Vienna for the BEST event…I’ll come by train during the 17th to 18th night.

Ah! Almost forgot… I’ve applied in my LBG to participate in beREIT a BEST trainshop about facilitation, effective meetings and communication in general.
I have green light from the president and I just need to write a good motivation letter to be accepted.

The event will take place where in Germany in March and as usual it will gather 20 people. This time there’s a difference… it will be 10 foreigners and 10 Germans.
Good for me to know some more natives… cause I still didn’t had many chances.

Good bye and good luck.

P.S. Just remembered a thing I’ll gladly accept grammatical, syntactical, lexical and orthographic corrections about the nonsense I’m happily writing around here. Let me improve!

From now on the Blog will be fed with English text… so this will be a kind of next version of the site.

On the this post I intended to talk about how was great to see all my friends after the Christmas vacations but I’m really tired and tomorrow I need to wake up very early so I’ll leave this post to be edited by me next time.

Till then: a big hug and maybe a kiss.

//Update

I’ve arrived Nuremberg on Sunday night, around midnight…
The arrival was supposed to be a little bit earlier but I had some problems on the costumes and a friend of mine from Netherlands had to open all his luggage for the Police. It was a hell, from sweat tests to a k9 inspection and of course the search on all his luggage. Luckily, I could move on without unpacking my stuff in from of him…
It was the second time that I’ve been stopped in a airport, the first was in Milan some good years ago.

I’ve spent all my time, except hygienic and food needs, working for the project I’ve already talked about on the last post… and that was it till Wednesday.

On Thursday I went to the office all day and when I realised it it was already early night.

I arranged things with Andrea to have dinner with her and she was the first I’ve meet after Xmas vacations.
Very nice indeed! She even gave me a present! A book from the same author I’m now reading, Bill Bryson, “Una Breve Historia de Casi Todo”. As you can see from the tittle it’s in Spanish… She was promising that after returning from Spain she would bring me a Spanish book for me to practice the language. I liked it a lot!

I also brought something for her, imagine what… a box with chocolates. The worst thing was the the box came on the airplane cargo bay and got broken… On the next day I bought some glue and I think it will be OK.

OK… Now the real thing. Thursday night as you should all know is the Space Pub’s night, here in my residence, where all the ERASMUS meet for a drink.

It’s a quite good feeling to see everybody coming to the bar, one after one, we all asked the same questions:”How was Xmas?”,”How was New Year’s Eve?” and “Got your hair cut?”
It was like seeing your old life come to reallity once more!

There was a student’s party at BA Hotel but I had to go the office on the next day so I went home at 1.00a.m. or so.

Ah! Almost forgot. Christian invited me for a U-Boot, or something like this, that was the shot of the day for 1€ and was a “Submarine” shot. The difference is that in Portugal it comes with beer and some booze and here came with orange juice and some booze.
Very refreshing…

Next day was Friday and on the evening we went to Humberto’s place to have some drinks and then we went to Nach Palais to a student’s party. It was quite nice but not a big party, everybody is starting to study and I’m should be doing the same. And I’m.

Just to finishing I’ve a new book that I’ve bought on my trip to Lisbon, it’s “Down Under” by Bill Bryson(again) and talks about Australia. I intended to buy “Notes from a Big Country” about America but was sold out.

Well, I say goodbye now…