@dirceu

Learning with AI

Fri, 02 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

About a month ago I quit my job as an engineering manager at Shopify because I wanted to take some time to go deeper on LLMs. “Going deeper on LLMs” is hand-wavy on purpose: I wanted to explore a bunch of different things—developer experience, safety, interpretability, even the fundamentals of neural networks and deep learning. At a meta level, I also wanted to use LLMs 10x more throughout my day to find out how I can use them more effectively and what are the friction points I could explore in prototypes or research.

My AI setup

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR: to get 90% of the value here, use ChatGPT Plus + SuperWhisper (and if you code, Cursor Pro)

Friends keep asking “Which AI tools do you actually pay for? What should I use?”—so here’s a frozen‑in‑time look at my stack in April 2025.

I pay for a ton of AI tools. I’m explicitly aiming to be at the edge here and learn about different tools and capabilities first-hand—both because I’m curious about it, but also because I’m very interested at the intersection of AI and productivity, so I’m willing to pay to be at the forefront. I definitely don’t recommend this specific setup for everyone, but it works for me.

2024 recommendations

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I last published something online, so I figured I’d get back to it with a short post. Here’s the top articles, books, and games I experienced in 2024.

2024 was a year of contrasts for me. I dove deep into articles and books about personal agency, learning to take decisive action and shape the world around me rather than just reacting to it. This pushed me to examine where I might be holding myself back and helped me make some meaningful changes, especially in the latter part of the year.

Make harmful habits harder to do

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I tend to eat when I’m anxious, sad, or overwhelmed. My brain wants those substance hits (usually sugar-related) and, if it’s easy, I’ll eat all day long.

If it’s easy; that’s the key.

One of the best ways to break or replace bad habits is to make them harder to do, or even to hide them away completely.

With overeating, I did the following:

I threw away all the junk food and expired items.
I deleted every food delivery app and phone number from my cell phone.
I bought a big stock of sardines, jerky, salami, eggs, nuts, and other healthy foods that I can eat without preparation (or without much preparation, at least).

With that, whenever I want to eat something I won’t have sugary treats: I’ll only have foods that are “heavier,” and that makes it harder to overeat.

The floor is lava!

Sun, 28 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes I get into a rut. In most cases, simply writing about a task and breaking it down to micro-steps is more than enough to get me going, but there are situations that I just don’t want to do something.

First of all, I try to confirm the assumption that I really need to do it. If it’s really needed, one thing that helps me is to try to make it fun and exciting by adding some crazy rules to it.

Help me help you

Fri, 26 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In my career, the best way to ensure I’ll get a positive response when I ask someone a favour is to do the work and help them help me.

Take this:

“Hey Sally, I need to develop a module that does XYZ. How do you think I should approach that?”

And compare with this:

“Hey Sally, I need to develop a module that does XYZ. I’ve checked a couple of past projects in which you did that, developed some proof of concepts, and pared down my options to the following ones:

Unblock yourself

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been working remotely for over ten years now, and one of the most important traits I’ve found in successful, productive people in a remote setting is the ability to unblock themselves and get to the next step.

Whenever you’re working on, you’ll always find obstacles and setbacks. When that happens, it might feel more comfortable to say “oh hey, I tried this but I need permission from John before I fix this” or “sorry boss, I need Sally to do XYZ before I do ABC”; all of that might be true. You might need permission from John before proceeding… but is that really blocking every single thing you can do to make progress on this project or task?

Planning is more important than having plans

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I enjoy planning, but I think plans are mostly useless.

Wait, what?

We can’t predict the future, and even mild predictions can be wildly wrong if you think too far ahead. The world is changing fast, and one of the best ways to deal with uncertainty is to exchange plans for options and adaptability. So, in my opinion, plans are mostly useless in the face of our dynamic, exciting world.

Am I having fun?

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I like video games. I’ve been playing them since I was five years old and they are a somewhat constant part of my life. In the last year, though, I have started to cut back on gaming more and more - and it’s not about doing more productive things with my time.

I enjoy playing games in which you can “farm” or “grind” for experience points. I like the game loop, I like improving my characters, and I like that mechanic of getting and completing quests.

Missed a day? Don’t overreact.

Thu, 18 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve failed at creating habits in the past. I’ve failed a lot, I should say.

My most common trigger to fail a dietary habit would be overestimating my mistakes. I’ll explain.

A few years ago I decided to try removing sugar from my diet: my goal was to not eat refined sugar at all for 30 days. I wanted to see the health benefits that some people praised so much, and the key there (in my mind) was to do it 30 consecutive days.

What if I’m wrong?

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I used to curse a lot while driving. “Why is this idiot driving so slow? Can’t they move to the other lane?”, I’d complain.

On the other hand, there were occasions in which I’d be showing someone around town, and someone would scream or use their horns at me, and I’d think “Wow, what a douche! If you’re in a hurry just drive past me.”

I’m ashamed to say it took me quite a while to realize the irony there.

What's the next step?

Sun, 14 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When we want to achieve something, it’s easy to get so focused on the end goal that sometimes we get paralyzed.

“I want to lose 30 kg and exercise 3 times per week!”

Well, that’s great! What are you doing about it?

“Oh, uhhh… next week I’ll sign up for a gym.”

And then life happens, and we forget. Or we remember, but we leave it for later because we still have to find a good gym anyway, or maybe because next week there’s that work trip we have to take… In the end, we make no progress and get demoralized again.

Blocking websites

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I love keyboard shortcuts. I enjoy doing things efficiently, and I don’t like using a mouse or trackpad because my wrists hurt, so I end up learning tons of keyboard shortcuts for the software I use on a daily basis.

A common shortcut is Cmd+t on a web browser; that opens up a new tab. The problem is that I don’t stop there; right after Cmd+t, I type:

“h”: my browser autocompletes to “hckrnews.com”
“f”: “facebook.com”
“t”: “twitter.com”
“i”: “instagram.com”
“r”: “reddit.com”

If I’m even slightly bored with what I’m doing or feeling somewhat lazy about a particular task I need to finish, I’ll type Cmd+t and one of those letters, and spend a couple of minutes in one of those websites. It’s always for short periods each time, but it’s still enough to make me lose focus, pay attention to things I should not be paying attention to, get outraged with crazy Brazilian politicians, and more. Also, I do this dozens of times per day.

Minimalism and games

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In the ongoing quest to simplify my life, I have been thinking about what other “hidden to-do lists” I have. I trimmed down books, apps, and even my goals and plans, but I still felt some “open threads” running in background in my head. Then I remembered games!

Ever since I broke up with Skyrim I bought more games and even went back to some of the older ones. That’s fine: the point is not to avoid adding anything, but to constantly curate (more on that on a later post).

Auth0 architecture

Sat, 25 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote on Auth0’s blog! Click here to learn more about how Auth0 architects its services to ensure scalability and high availability to handle more than 1.5 billion logins per month.

Update

The post is spreading out well! It has been featured on Pony Foo Weekly, InfoQ, High Scalability, and SRE Weekly!

Minimalism and to-do lists

Sat, 25 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been learning more about minimalism, and the more I apply this concept to different areas of my life, the happier I become. It’s impressive how simplification and minimalism can make things clearer and lightweight.

One recent area in which I applied minimalism was my to-do list… or, rather, my to-do listS.

I love making lists. I love planning and I have lots of lists related to goals, things I want to do someday, projects I started, projects I want to start, ideas for posts, ideas for projects, plans for things I want to do in my personal life, ideas on how to improve my wife’s business, and so on.

Mobile minimalism

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I used to spend a lot of time looking at my cellphone refreshing Slack, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Gmail, WhatsApp, Telegram… During conversations, during meetings, when I was watching movies, at any time, I’d be “just checking something real quick”. It was boring but also utterly addictive.

I have a much healthier relationship with my phone now; in fact, I barely use it. This is what I changed:

I deleted my Instagram and Facebook accounts.
I uninstalled Twitter, Reddit, and Gmail.
I uninstalled Slack as well, but I install it on my on-call shifts (and remove it again afterwards).
I deleted every social media, game, or general time-sink from my phone.
I muted/silenced most people and groups on WhatsApp / Telegram / Messages, and I check those things once per day or so.
I set a Do Not Disturb schedule from 8 pm to 9 am. During that time, only my immediate family (wife, parents) and a couple of friends can reach me; other than that, I get no notifications.
I cleaned up my home screen to focus on what I want to reinforce.

This is what my home screen looks like:

Reading for mood vs reading to learn

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

For most of my adult life, I read non-fiction books to learn something new, to get advice, or to get better at something I was already doing. I’d focus on reading new books every time, take notes, and (in some cases) try to apply what I had learned in my work and life.

Then, a few years ago I read this quote in “Fooled by Randomness” by Nassim Taleb:

I do not know if it applies to other people, but, in spite of my being a voracious reader, I have rarely been truly affected in my behavior (in any durable manner) by anything I have read. A book can make a strong impression, but such an impression tends to wane after some newer impression replaces it in my brain (a new book).

Reading devices

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I used to love paper books! I fondly recall a copy of The Lord of The Rings that I read and re-read multiple times. I enjoyed collecting books from my favourite authors (such as Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett), and proudly displayed them on my bookshelves.

I don’t like to read paper books anymore. They’re usually heavy, awkward to hold, and end up hurting my wrists (already damaged by programming-induced RSI) if I try reading them for long.

Number of finished books is a vanity metric

Tue, 21 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I used to keep track of how many (non-fiction) books I’ve read per month or year. I’d casually drop that information sometimes on a conversation or use my GoodReads account to boast about that.

What a douche. 🤦‍♂️

Anyway, I never thought much about this until I saw a tweet or interview from Naval Ravikant saying that “number of books read is a vanity metric.” That opened my eyes about my behaviour and changed my general approach regarding non-fiction books.

Silly things

Sun, 25 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In the past few months I took some time to evaluate:

What I do or consume on a regular basis (books, music, games, tv shows, Twitter, etc)
What really brings me joy

One thing that has been sitting in the back of my head for a long time (not fully examined) is that the content I consume has the power to change my mood and even my interests for a certain period of time - which is one of the reasons why I make a point of reading my quotes and self-advice regularly.

Control

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

(Photo by David Travis on Unsplash.)

“More money really DOESN’T make you happy; the skill it takes to be happy with more money is the same skill it takes to be happy without it.”

(I know this is from Amy Hoy but I can’t find the tweet anymore)

This quote has been in my mind a lot recently. This is not just money-related; you can easily replace “money” with other types of objects or circumstances and you get the same overall principle: that being happy/at peace/focused/in control is a skill and it’s largely independent from external circumstances.

Summer == sleep deprivation

Fri, 29 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It’s hot and humid here in 🇧🇷 - hot and humid enough for me to have trouble sleeping during the day, and get a jolt of energy when it’s colder (night and really early mornings).

There’s always a good side though: I’ve seen more sunrises in the past two weeks than I did in the entire year before that!

(Photo by Jake Givens on Unsplash.)

Improving my journaling habit

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

(Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash.)

Journaling - writing to clear my thoughts, feel grateful about the good things, understand better the things I fear, and just to collect important memories - is one of my most helpful habits.

Others have written extensively about the benefits of journaling:

Why Keeping a Daily Journal Could Change Your Life
Become a Better Person by Keeping a Journal
How Tim Ferriss Specifically Uses His Journal To Achieve Huge Goals

I have journal entries in different places and formats dating back to 2009, and I’m always amazed at how it improves my thinking and makes me feel better. However, I always face two problems:

Breaking up with Skyrim

Tue, 19 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

(Photo by Ugur Akdemir on Unsplash.)

I started playing Skyrim on the PlayStation 3, many years ago. I absolutely loved it. It was the first really immersive electronic RPG I’ve ever played, far beyond anything else: I could create many different characters, explore the world, and even roleplay in ways I could only do with pen & paper RPGs before.

My PS3 was full of unplayed games, by the way - it was used mostly for Skyrim and Netflix. After I sold my PS3 I bought Skyrim on Steam, and played a little bit there. After Steam, I bought it again on PS4 and played countless hours again. A few weeks ago I bought Skyrim for the fourth time, now on the Switch, and was immediately hooked.

I love long bus rides

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

(Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash.)

Recently I’ve been traveling quite a bit to visit family members; mostly these are short distances, meaning 3-6 hours by bus (each way). I used to travel a lot by bus when I was a kid - up to 16-hour trips to visit my father in São Paulo - but spent most of my adult life traveling by plane.

I really missed this. I love it!

Resting is part of the job

Sun, 17 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

(Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash.)

I’m a team lead and production engineer at Auth0; as such, a large part of my working hours are spent on reactive work, mostly dealing with incidents or unblocking someone from my team. Since we have people from several different timezones on the team and incidents can happen at any time, I have a tendency to work many more hours than what’s advisable. It’s not super rare for me to start at 8am and go until 9pm, eating lunch in front of the computer.

"Two good things"

Sat, 16 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been going through some rough patches in my life recently, so I’ve been trying out many different things to improve my mood and change how I tackle my days.

A recent favorite has been the “two good things” exercise. It’s very simple: every night my girlfriend and I talk about two good things that happened during the day, and why they were good things. As is the case of many worthwhile practices, this is hard to remember but yields very good results overall.

5-Bullet Friday - Dec 15th, 2017

Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

More than a little bit inspired by Tim Ferriss’ 5-Bullet Friday newsletter, I’ll post here five interesting things I’ve found (or revisited) in the past week.

Nomad List 3.0 is a great resource to find a good place to travel to and work or play. Following the development and launch was really interesting and a huge inspiration.
This list of Battery Life Hacks has been helping me go through the day with my overloaded iPhone 6.
Franz is a recent favorite in the Mac app category; I’ve been using it to open WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Slack, and a bunch of other messaging apps into a single place. I only use the Telegram native app separately (which is always open, which is not the case for Franz).
The Sovereign Individual is a mind-blowing, almost prophetic book published before the year 2000 that talks about remote work, cryptocurrencies, digital nomads, social networks, mobile internet, and much more. Its thesis has been described here as well.
Thought Unfinished is one of my favorite Twitter accounts, with many interesting insights and… well, unfinished thoughts.

Adventures in Burnout: One Physician’s Story

Thu, 30 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Great blog post by The Happy Philosopher:

I’ve noticed that certain people seem especially susceptible, those that are perfectionist, those who like to be in control and take ownership, and those that are most responsive to criticism or praise. (…) Over the course of my own professional life, with the usual trappings of a successful career arc in medicine, the claws of burnout took hold. I was a go-to guy, “The Man”, and I owned the role, but that did not mean that I was never wrong, never made a mistake, or never had a regrettable interaction with a patient or colleague. These were fortunately rare, but the personal damage nonetheless accumulated over time, an ever increasing load of unwanted emotional baggage.

Wed, 29 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Every day is a blank slate for what I need to do. If something I was supposed to get done yesterday didn’t get done yesterday, it’s not automatically on my mind for today. Today’s mind is a clear mind, not yesterday’s remnants.

Jason Fried

Sun, 26 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“The higher you want to climb, the lighter you have to travel.”

Krishnamurti

Improving my mood

Sat, 25 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I’m getting better at detecting my mood through mindfulness; I’m still noticing it on a small subset of cases, but it’s improving! The trick is simple, but hard to execute: I just stop and think “what am I feeling right now?” and then asking “why?” until I get to the root cause.

Sometimes, noticing is enough for things to improve.

Other times, I just realize that I’m slightly dehydrated or sleepy, and I need water or a nap (or both!).

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“If you’re living in a world of supposed-to’s, then you’re living in hell.”

Neil Strauss

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“Good-tier people go after answers, great-tier people go after questions.”

@MecaYilmazoglu

Advice to myself

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I read a lot. I have had periods in my life in which I read hundreds of non-fiction books per year, writing notes about them, trying to apply them, and trying to absorb them. Sometimes I go back through my notes of advice for life, work, and relationships and I inevitably think “damn, that could have helped me just yesterday with X and last week with Y! If only I could keep this in mind…”.

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem & one minute finding the solution.”

Albert Einstein

Sun, 19 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Sat, 18 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“John Maynard Keynes predicted that in the future we’d only work 15 hours a week because he didn’t anticipate that we’d all be mentally ill.”

Ron Charles

Sat, 18 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“‘Oh, I don’t know if I’m doing it right. These other guys seem to know.’ No, they don’t know. None of them know. That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward.”

Robert Rodriguez

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“Your life is a firefly that blinks once in a night. You’re here for such a brief period of time. If you fully acknowledge the futility of what you’re doing, then I think it can bring great happiness and peace because you realize that this is a game. But it’s a fun game..”

Naval Ravikant

Keeping momentum

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It’s being increasingly hard to keep up with my daily creative output habit. When I started this I was on vacation and had 6-12 extra hours per day to do anything I wanted; I could do all those activities in a much more relaxed rhythm and concentrate more on doing and less on being efficient at it.

Now, when I finish work I’m usually drained and don’t want to do much else… at least until I start doing it.

Sun, 12 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“You want your sense of self muted so you can be in the present at all times – not dwelling in the past or the future, wishing for things as you think they should be/were; but experiencing the present as it is.”

Naval Ravikant

Sat, 11 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“When you limit consumption, you start to hear the sound of your own voice.”

Srinivas Rao

Creative output

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I started making a conscious effort to create something new every day. Every day, I:

Write and publish a blog post
Take a new picture and post to Instagram
Write and publish something on Twitter
Write on my private journal
Create a track and post to SoundCloud
Work on different coding projects

I started these on different days and I’m not keeping track of it in any way (to-do lists, calendar streaks, etc), since I don’t want to add any unnecessary pressure; I want this to be fun and interesting, not a chore.

I have a tattoo now!

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I have considered for a long time having a tattoo in one of my arms with a reminder: I wanted something that would bring me back to the present. I spend a lot of time thinking about the past, worrying about the future, or just daydreaming… and the more I learn about life, the more certain I am that being present is key.

With that in mind, today I went to the Black Ink Tattoo studio and got this:

I made... something... in audio form

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been playing around with music composition to learn how to create chiptunes. I’m very very bad at it, but it’s a lot of fun. This is what I made today:

Podcasts I follow

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Some friends asked me for podcast recommendations, so this is a quick list of what I currently have on Overcast. Probably half of it is in Brazilian Portuguese.

Games

99Vidas
The Best Games Period
BigSushi.fm
Game Dev Loadout
Game Dev Unchained
GameDev Breakdown
Jogabilidade
Nice Games Club
Overkill
pico chat
Cidade Gamer
PodQuest
Pouco Pixel
WannaPlay

Entrepreneurship / Freelancing / Work

Bootstrapped
Creative Class
Entreprogrammers Podcast
Hurry Slowly
Invisible Office Hours
Noah Kagan Presents
Side Hustle School
Stacking the Bricks
The James Altucher Show
Rework

Others

Random quotes

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I created a small web app to show a random quote from a list I recorded over the years from books, talks, tweets, posts, podcasts, and more. I have been using it as my browsers’ default page, and it has been helpful in changing my mood and making me take a step back to focus.

You can check it out here. Hope you enjoy it!

Sun, 05 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“Idleness causes fatigue.”

@DamianOcean

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

Christopher Morley

Thu, 13 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“The more aware I can be of fear-based feelings when they arise and the more I consciously make an effort to always be dismissing them, the more my world gains color and depth. I don’t feel like I need a lot of things anymore, what’s around me is pretty amazing by itself and I can be quite happy with it. The best thing I can do to improve my life is to avoid immersing myself in mental projection of possible futures.”

Sun, 26 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“Desire is in fact a form of suffering, it makes you feel disturbed that you don’t have something, and it makes you believe you can’t let yourself be happy until you have that something. Maybe it’s time to decide that you will let yourself be happy no matter what happens in the external world. Be mindful of this in your daily life and bit by bit the suppressed natural happiness will emerge from within you.”

Wed, 22 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“When everything’s an experiment, you shed the fear that comes with trying new things.”

Mig Reyes

Sun, 19 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground.”

Pema Chödrön

What I’m doing now

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

🇨🇦 Living in Toronto, Canada
💼 Working on Sidekick at Shopify (yes, I’m back!)
🦞 Spending too much time with coding agents and with Hermes

Last updated on Mar 22nd, 2026. Inspired by nownownow.

On Final Things

Sat, 15 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Unfortunately, we’re likely to forget the wisdom on offer here within hours. We’ll be back to losing perspective – and overlooking the sunlight and the charm of the breeze. These are the sort of ungrateful minds we all have – which is why we continuously need the resources of art to renew our connection with the unbearable but deeply necessary truths.

On Final Things

Perspective

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Life has its ups and downs, and sometimes we may be down for a while. Maybe the day job pays too little, maybe you’re only doing boring stuff, or that special person started dating someone else, or you dropped your cellphone and it’s broken now… Anyway, lots of things can happen and make us feel bad.

A couple of years ago, in one of these “down moments”, I read one of the most important books of my life: Men’s Search for Meaning. Written by Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychologist that survived the Holocaust, the book describes the daily life in a concentration camp: pain, suffering, hunger, anger, humiliation, and despair… but also the attitude of some victims: they avoided feeling anger or resentment towards their captors, they didn’t drown in self-pity, and they did the best they could to find meaning in that experience.

Who?

Fri, 18 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Hi! My name is Dirceu Pereira Tiegs.

The only thing you should know about me is that I am right:

Hello Florianópolis

Sun, 22 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve never been really happy with the city I’ve lived in my whole life, Criciúma. It’s a small city with not much to do, and although I have friends and family there, I always wanted to experience living in another city, meeting new people, and having new experiences.

I’ve been working from home for many years now, but it took me a long time to realize I was procrastinating on leaving town. Every year I would come up with an excuse:

Installing Raindrop on Mac OS X

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I’m really excited about Mozilla Raindrop; it have many cool features and technologies behind it. If you don’t know what Raindrop is, take a look at Introducing Raindrop.

This is a very short how-to showing how to install Raindrop on a machine running Mac OS X; a more complete guide can be found on Mozilla Wiki.

First, download and install CouchDBX. Then create a file called ~/.raindrop containing something like this:

Finally, install Raindrop and it’s dependencies:

Mini-Review - Erlang Programming

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Erlang Programming is probably the best book I’ve ever read about a programming language, and is worth reading even if you don’t plan to use Erlang.

The exercises in this book are helping me a lot to learn more about functional programming and recursion; also, it’s been a very good experience to use processes and “pure” functions instead of threading and shared-state.

Book contents

Introduction: story, high level overview and cases
Basic Erlang: data types, shell and patterns matching
Sequential Erlang: BIFs, conditionals, recursion, libraries and error handling
Concurrent Programming: process creation and managing, message passing, benchmarks and some theory
Process Design Patterns: client / server, finite state machines, event managers and handlers
Process Error Handling: process linking, exit signals, monitors and supervisors
Records and Macros
Software Upgrade: hot code swapping
More Data Types and High-Level Constructs: anonymous functions, list comprehensions, binaries and references
ETS and Dets Tables
Distributed Programming in Erlang: communication between erlang nodes
OTP Behaviours: introduction to generic servers, supervisors and other applications
Introducing Mnesia
GUI Programming with wxErlang
Socket Programming
Interfacing Erlang with Other Programming Languages
Trace BIFs, the dbg Tracer, and Match Specifications
Types and Documentation
EUnit and Test-Driven Development
Style and Efficiency
Appendix - Using Erlang: installing erlang, editors and other tools

The good

The book have a great structure that teaches the language, functional and concurrent / distributed programming with baby steps;
It’s very well written and formatted;
Exercises! Every programming language book should provide exercises like these - short, well defined and that sometimes challenging.

The bad

The EUnit chapter should be in the beginning. It’s boring to compile and test things manually in the shell. Of course, you don’t need to read it in order, but still.

Dealing with distractions

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Most developers have trouble with distractions. The 5 minutes you take to check Twitter / Hacker News / Google Reader can quickly become 1 hour, and sometimes you need to force yourself to actually do something. This post lists some techniques I’ve been using to get more focused time.

Blocking websites

I’ve been using Alex Payne’s “Get-Back-To-Work Hack” with success for almost two weeks. It’s very simple and while I can easily edit /etc/hosts and un-block everything, I don’t do it. In fact, I’m spending much less time on twitter, email and feeds.

Installing Erlang, Yaws and Erlyweb on Mac OS X

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This is a short how-to showing how to install Erlang, Yaws and Erlyweb on Mac OS X via MacPorts.

I'm a Mac (again)

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Almost three years ago my boss sent me an iBook G4 to work with. It was an absolutely awesome machine: fast, great battery life, beautiful hardware, beautiful OS. I loved it, but after 1,5 years using it some problems arise.

First, the battery just died - it just worked when connected to the charger. Second, I work(ed) with Zope and Plone on a daily basis, and things like running the entire gocept.zeoraid test suite took about 40 minutes. Even PloneTestCase with some functional tests was painfully slow. A Macbook was too expensive for me at that time, but I needed a new laptop.

Usando Emacs

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Desde que comecei a programar eu pulei de editor para editor (sempre usando com mais frequência o VIm), mas nunca parei para me aprofundar de verdade no uso de nenhum deles. Alguns meses atrás eu decidi me dedicar a resolver esse problema e desde então tenho usado diariamente o Emacs.

Por que o Emacs? Pelo mesmo motivo que me levou a aprender Zope e Plone: tem muita gente realmente boa usando o Emacs, o que significa que algo de bom ele tem. Além disso o Emacs é multiplataforma, o que é importante pra mim, já que pretendo voltar a usar Mac OS X em breve.

Why you should switch to Git

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last few months I’ve switched from Subversion and Bazaar to Git. I’m using Git on a daily basis now and I’m much happier with it than I was when using Subversion. In this post I’ll try to explain why and provide some useful links.

When using Git you don’t work on a “working copy” of the last revision (as you do with Subversion) - using “git clone URL” you clone the entire repository: all commits, merges, branches, everything.

Creating RSS feeds with rssifier

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Two of my favorite webcomics doesn’t have official feeds - Malvados and The Order of The Stick (this one actually have a feed, but the images aren’t shown in the feed items). I didn’t like to visit these sites manually, so I quickly wrote a script (which is now a very simple Ruby lib) to create these feeds for me: rssifier.

Quick Tip - Testing Django send_mail

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been working on a Django project lately and I had the need to send some emails from my application. I was trying to figure out how to write a mocked version of django.core.mail.send_mail when I read about django.core.mail.outbox, which apparently is a new feature of Django 1.0.

django.core.mail.outbox is a list of all instances of emails sent with django.core.mail.send_mail that is available only in the testing framework. With it you can do things like these:

Browsers gone wild!

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Dois lançamentos recentes estão deixando o povo que ‘mexe com web’ agitado: o Mozilla Ubiquity e o Google Chrome.

Uma das coisas que eu mais achei interessante é a facilidade de manipular conteúdo; vocÍ pode, por exemplo, selecionar um texto qualquer em uma página, abrir o ubiquity e digitar ’email this to fulano’ - isso irá abrir uma tela do gmail já com um email parcialmente preenchido para o ‘fulano’ (que deve estar nos seus contatos).

Usando o git-svn

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Nos últimos dias venho trabalhando em uma app Django e, como sou iniciante no uso desse framework, todos os dias aprendo algum feature novo para melhorar meu código (como generic views, por exemplo). Para testar esses features o ideal é criar um branch, usar os features no código e, se valer a pena, fazer o merge. O problema: usamos svn na empresa, e fazer branches no svn é bem chatinho (principalmente se comparado ao git). Para resolver isso estou usando o git-svn.

GSoC Summary

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

As the Google Summer of Code coding period comes to an end, I must write about what I have done, so here we go. My proposed tasks were:

The first two weeks were used on this task and on getting myself familiar with gocept.zeoraid codebase. As I said in my first report, I didn’t found anything wrong with the invalidation proccess when doing my tests, so I moved to another task.

GSoC Report - Week 12

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Quick report: this week I’ve finished the ‘reloading’ task - now with automated tests, thanks to the help of Christian, my mentor. Now I need to document my branches and write a post about what I’ve done on the coding period. I need to do this on this weekend, because next monday is ‘pencils down’ date, when all mentors must submit a final evaluation of the work done by their students.

GSoC report - week 11

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve nearly finished the ‘reloading’ task described in my last report; now we’re able to reload the config file without modifications. The code is quite simple: we open and parse the config file, using the list of storages defined there to see what storages needs to be removed (and then we disable them) and what storages needs to be added (and then we add and ‘recover’ them). I’m now working on a automated test to prove the implementation is right.

GSoC report - week 10

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Just a quick report: this week I worked on reloading the zeo.conf file, so we can add or remove storages from the ZEORaid server without having to restart it. It seems to be working well, but it needs better (automated) testing and I need to use the correct ZODB.config options to recognize the config file without problems (this has been my main issue for the week). My work is on this branch.

GSoC report - week 9

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This week I’ve been working on allowing to define and remove new backend storages while running using the management tool or reloading the config. I worked first on defining a new storage using the management tool. Using this branch, you can connect to a new ClientStorage using ‘zeoraidX-manage-main add IP:PORT:STORAGE_NAME’. Example:

Now I need to work on the following things:

GSoC report - week 8

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been working on the task I described on my last post, about parallelizing request to multiple backends. After many time getting strange errors on the tests I got to isolate the problem - my code wasn’t handling the exceptions right.

ZEORaid considers ZODB.POSException.POSError and transaction.interfaces.TransactionError valid answers from storages, as they don’t indicate storage failure. The problem was that I was getting some ConflictErrors (a kind of TransactionError) that were being considered a sign of storage failure when running ZODB tests.

GSoC report - week 5

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In the beginning of this week I finished the tests for my last task and done some refactoring on it’s code. My main problem were to get a storage implementation to use on my tests; first I wrote a subclass of ZODB.DemoStorage.DemoStorage, but it wasn’t implementing the full API needed by ZEORaid. Christian said that I should change the base class to ZODB.FileStorage.FileStorage - a pretty trivial change to do, and it solved my problems. After that I fixed some things in the test (that was getting possible false alarms).

GSoC report - week 4

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I had some problems this week (many exams and things to do on university), so this was a slow week on GSoC.

I worked on creating tests for my last week’s patches. Unfortunately I took the wrong direction, writing some code to monkeypatch the gocept.zeoraid.storage.RAIDStorage.__apply_single_storage() method to provide logging and see if the requests are being distributed; Christian later suggested that it should be better to write a simple storage implementation to avoid using monkeypatching (it doesn’t need to be a ClientStorage compatible storage, it just need to implement some needed methods such as gocept.zeoraid.tests.failingstorage.FailingStorage does).

GSoC report - week 3

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Martijn suggested that I should write periodic reports about my work on GSoC, so here we go.

My first task was to test if ZEORaid is processing validations from the backend storages too often. I’ve done some tests in different situations, and I haven’t found anything wrong yet. I have to put more work on this, but it will wait because there are more important things that need attention until the 1.0 release.

GSoC Application Accepted!

Sun, 11 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

As most of you already know, my student application was accepted for the Google Summer of Code project. I will be working on gocept.zeoraid, package that provides a proxy storage that works like a RAID controller by creating a redundant array of ZEO servers. ZEORaid was created by Christian Theune from gocept, who is my mentor for this project.

PyConBrasil 3

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

A PyConBrasil III reúne usuários e interessados na linguagem Python para alguns dias de palestras, treinamentos e confraternização. Este é um evento itinerante - já esteve em Campinas, Brasília e esse ano foi em Joinville / SC (poucas horas aqui de casa), nos dias 30 e 31 de agosto e 1o de setembro.

Um dia antes do começo do evento, dia 29/30, tivemos uma assembléia da Associação Python Brasil destinada a eleição da nova diretoria e de partes do conselho fiscal e do conselho deliberativo. Infelizmente, por causa do mau tempo e consequente fechamento dos aeroportos de Joinville e Curitiba, relativamente poucas pessoas estiveram presentes. Aliás, fui eleito por unanimida… OK, OK, por W.O., não tinha concorrência, para membro do conselho fiscal. Me disponibilizei como voluntário e espero poder ajudar no que for possível.

PyConBrasil 3 - Introdução ao Grok

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000