Winter Shedding

More to come…

The beginning, rigid-body clipping followed by simulated hairdressing:

The end, after a short refinement run in explicit hairdresser :)

From Coimbra to Palo Alto via Utrecht

I woke up on the 15th of October around 6.30am in Utrecht, and fell asleep on the 15th of October around 7pm in California, 20 hours later, half the world away. It seems weird, but it really went too fast. The trip, the arrival, the whole day. Even now, I’m up for 5 hours almost and it seems like a flash. Is this jet-lag? :x

The past three weeks in Utrecht were quite amazing. I was honestly not hoping to have such a nice time around. Even with Jan leaving a few days after I arrived, and my stomach complaining loudly about the food change in the first few days, Utrecht managed to make me feel sorry for leaving. Again. Kind of amazing how two completely different places can make the same butterflies fly in your stomach when thinking back. It was just perfect to stay at Marcelo’s for the first two weeks. It sort of gave me a smooth transition period from vacations to work. And it’s never dull when we’re together, even with all the work we had with our thesis and report. Then, Steven’s place. Honestly, I didn’t really, really want to bother him with staying over. But in the end it was the perfect place. Who says that the dutch are cold and distant must have never met family de Maat. I really felt like home. Even biking every single time from Houten to Utrecht was funny. And hey, at least I lost those extra kgs I put during summer at grandma’s place!

I really have to say that from October 2008 to October 2009, it was probably the best year I’ve had in a very very long time. Everything in the right proportions, in the right time.

And now comes California, Palo Alto, 6 months at Stanford University in the Levitt Lab. Expectations are huge. But as I said in the acknowledgements of my Major Project Report, Utrecht set the standard pretty high. Let’s see ;)

Utrecht and Holland said goodbye with an amazingly sunny morning, though chilly. Steven’s dad drove me to Schiphol and was a very good company for the trip. In these situations I usually prefer to stay silent and relax. But those thirty minutes of chat kept my mind away from the nervous feeling of getting away and painted a nice picture of my destination. Thanks!

Schiphol was normal, busy with people, busy with life. I checked in my lugagge and found out I didn’t need an extra suitcase afterall. I got my seat number and my boarding time and headed for the gate. I passed through one of those electronics stores to buy a new pair of earphones (not pink but black) and a converter for the power plugs. I should have gotten two :P

The plane was a big 747 named Bangkok. I ended up seating by the window in the row right behind the left wing. My “flightmates” were an elderly czech couple, that didn’t speak almost a word of English, and were flying in to San Jose to visit their daugther. Jan, where are you and your eastern european language group when I need you? Anyways, I was lucky because the lady, that was sitting next to me, was much like a grandma and woke me up really softly every time food came in, or something else was happening and I was fast asleep. I also got a pen from them because mine just stopped writing.. I ended up occupying my 11h flight with House, Heroes, iPod, and writing a few letters down on paper. Oh, and sleeping a bit.

Anyways, I arrived in SFO by 13h. I had sort of arranged a lift with a portuguese Post-Doc here in Stanford but when I arrived there was no one there and his phone was off. Quite a nice start! He later emailed me saying he was ill so no harm no foul :) I managed to get a cab and get my lazy ass to Stanford. I still checked the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) but I couldn’t make any sense of it. During the cab trip the driver kept chatting. He was this asian kind of guy, which in these 24 hours I’ve seen a lot around here, with a lousy accent and kept saying “Stanford! Very good university! Very intelligent you are!”. Parecia um bocado o Yoda, só faltava ser verde.. (Ok, I’m gonna keep this sentence in portuguese. It was a momentaneous wtf moment in my language center)

I arrived in Stanford with a sunny sky and mild temperature. I couldn’t find the lab easily so I phoned the finance wizard of the department and she managed to pick me up. I ended meeting only her and another group member, from Singapore! Jan.. small world eh? The two of them really nice. I already like the lab :) Then, I went home, or sort of. I had to call the guy with who I had arranged the place and he was a bit busy. I waited and waited and finally he picked me up. Seemed a nice guy. The house itself is a bit far away from Stanford. I can’t walk in :( But I can bike in! It’s in an appartment block, and has a pool. The house itself is cool. It has a big living room, and a nice kitchen. The fridge is big enough for two as well. Has a freezer, vaccum cleaner, a balcony with bbq, I mean, it’s really ok. The room is big. Quite big. Bigger than my own room in Coimbra. It has a big bed, a desk, a chair and a huge closet. A large window covers the upper-half of the wall. But there’s just something about the house I don’t find… well… like home. Unfortunately, I don’t have internet. Apparently it broke down a week ago. So… it sucks a bit ’cause I’m isolated. My roommate seems nice as well. German guy, finishing his bachelor, working in BMW.

So, I crashed at around 7pm and slept until 1am. Then I forced myself back to sleep until 5am, when I woke up with a text message from Utrecht. Then I managed to fall asleep again and woke up definitely around 7.15. I met my roommate (yeah, he was out in the evening) and he drove me downtown. Then I took my time to take some pictures with the cellphone and walk around towards the free shuttle bus that Stanford University has. I bought a bagel on my way, saw a guy raising the american flag by his door as he got up, saw some nice muscle cars. Well, felt like in America. Then I caught the bus. The first one didn’t work (“I can’t put it into Drive…” was the driver’s excuse… damn those auto gears..) and we had to move to another one. That one went better. I arrived in the campus, walked a bit until my lab, and here I am since 9. I had lunch already in the cantine and met a few other lab members. I’ll buy a bike today and check a room in another house. Busy day :)

I have some other things to talk about but they’ll come later :) Just to say: I’m here, I’m safe ;)

By the way, the last picture is my lab ;)

Connecting Ubuntu 8.x/9.x to eduroam (Utrecht)

First of all, if you’re dutch, read this. If you’re not dutch, read it anyways. It’s the official page of the ICT department over here and, I must say, it was very well revamped. Kudos to you guys. This small how-to is just a translation of that page with some pictures attached.

My machine is an Asus F6V with a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.04 (LTS). But I suppose this would work in any version upstream. In the page they guarantee anything up from 7.10 works. So, boot up your laptop and…

Select “Connect to Other Wireless Network” when left-clicking the Network Manager applet.

Select “WPA2-Enterprise” for Wireless Security and fill in the fields accordingly

EDIT: In 8.10 and probably beyond, there is a PEAP Version field that defaults to “Version 1″. It won’t work with that one. I had to set it to “Version 0″.

In “Identity” and “Password” type in your solis-ID followed by @soliscom.uu.nl and your solis-Password. Then you have to select the right CA Certificate File. Clicking in the area written “None” will open a browser window to search for your certificate. The little fellow is in /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla and it’s called Equifax Secure CA.crt.

Select the Equifax Secure CA certificate in the path shown above.

Click “Open”, which will close that window (geek humor), then click “Connect”. Wait a couple of seconds for those two green lights to come alive and that’s it. Enjoy!

If I’d have to guess, I’d say any other university is the same, maybe with different Authentication Methods (U. Coimbra I know it’s TTLS/PAP) and certificates (Coimbra takes none). Check your university ICT department page and try to fish this info. Then just alter what you need and it should work.