Très très froid

You have to see it to believe it!
Yep, it snowed this much last week.. at Montpellier!
And last wednesday, the temperature dropped to -8°C at night!!

(super) Road Trip!

Hi there everyone! I'm back! I was hoping to do my laundry tonight but apparently somebody moved in the apartment next to the laundry room, so it's closed. Tant pis, I don't feel like going back to the lab anyway (yes, I'm fed up with my thesis) so I'll revive my blog, which has been kinda quiet for the past few months.

For a good reason! I've been to Brazil on vacation, a summer school, Germany on work, Italy for fun and now working like crazy! Not so much time to write..

So, I was obliged to go to Germany by car to get my precious PC over to the DLR for seting up the final demonstrator for the final review meeting of the european consorcium, the AccuRobAs. I left around 10:20 on a beautiful sunday (the 11/10) and arrived at Munich (close to Pasing station) at my hotel around 22:30. A nice trip, no surprises, was a little worried that my credit card would not work in Switzerland but it did. Beautiful paysage in the French alps, near Grenoble!






Switzerland was boring as always and I couldn't go so fast on the Autobahn cause I was running out of fuel! so most of the time I spent looking 4 a gas station. Not so much fun (I did 180 km/h once on a longer stretch but that was it). Once again proud of my little Brava (champagne)




And yes, I did have to work very very hard in Germany. I don't often say this, cause I think it sounds stupid when sobody says that he or she had to work his ass off (in my opinion, that's lazy talk). But it was the beggining of the (still ongoing) most stressfull period of my life. I've been pretty much having all stress symptoms I could ever detect: aftas, alergies, loss of hair, my eye's jumpin, cannot sleep, anxiety, etc... But they had good beer! And I had quite a few..

Weissbier

Finally, the demonstrator worked at the last minute and it was a big (HUUUUUUUGE) relief. I had to switch between 4 acquisition boards to make it work. Damned, it was stressful..

Job done, I headed south to Bologna (yep, trenitalia on strike and I had to go pick up Sara -- merde alors)... After a rather weird crossing over to Italy (weird mountain/death roads in Austria) I picked Sara up and headed to Deiva Marina, in the Cinque Terre national park!

Here it is:

And that place is super cool! While the rest of Europe was under heavy rains, I was enjoying a beautiful sun and very pleasent temperature. This place is really amazing, it's definetly worth checking out! Here are some pics

Overall, I drove around 2500 km !! Not bad!!!

On monday, I headed back to Montpellier (was glad to be back home) and to work! Not really :P I had to go sailing of course! I took a weekend to go sailing on a proper boat around the Montpellier bay. Was not so much fun though.. Much less sportive than the Catamaran and the weather didn't help (we spent saturday docked at Sète and that wasn't much fun).. It was, however, an interesting experience and now I know that if I have to go back to Brazil by boat, I'm probably going to die :P

Here are some videos that I've uploaded to my youtube account:





e esse video é o mais engraçado.. O lobo dos mares ensinando a gente com toda sua didatica (fais ce que je te dis, je m'en fous comment tu l'as fait, fais-le et c'est tout!)



And that's not all! I still did very very short laps with a lamborguini Superleggera, like this one here:


But i drove it like this :P



So.. that's how it ends, the story of my second semester at Montpellier.. Between some Salsa lessons and the thesis, that's life "south-of-france" style..




R

Latest News!

Hi there everyone, i haven't been posting anything for some time now .. lotta stuff going on, finishing my thesis and everything..

just wanna tell you all to check out my youtube page, I've recently posted some videos there

www.youtube.com/rogerioar

and while doing it, check out this old tune! :P
http://www.deezer.com/listen-3155191

White Bus Demolition Derby

This one goes for my friend Pedro, from Seven Lakes city, Brazil, thanks Pedro for sending me these cool vids!

So, leaving the thesis aside for a second, this is worth a post on my blog, of course! ;)

First I'll let you see the white bus from hell, terrorizing this city in Russia! This guy must consider himself a lucky **********.



white bus strikes again



and again!



Now here's the full story!
:P



anybody that understand russian can explain this to me?? me, i lived 23 years in Brasil and I've never seen this amount of destruction!

long live TransUrb, Gyn!

Aints and Traffic Jams

I guess some people have seen this video on youtube,



This was a study from the Nagoya university on the phenomenon of traffic jams!

Now, let's take this incredible lesson from nature

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23176/

cool, right??

R

German way of life

Galera, peço a todos pra lerem o post da minha amiga Fernanda, que faz seu doutorado em Munique sobre uma festa de aniversario alemã.. Ela descreve muito muito bem o desconforto que nos latinos sentimos durante as celebraçoes dos nossos amigos germanicos!!

http://mochilaoacademico.blogspot.com/2009/09/jeito-alemao.html

pessoalmente, eu dei umas boas gargalhadas!

Violencia na midia

Assim nao da. Apos a repercussao mundial do caso, eu assisti uma entrevista com o tal deputado amazonense na Internet, onde ele explicava como ele conseguia as noticias antes da concorrencia. Seu segredo? Botava equipes de reportagem no IML, que corriam antes do 'carro-tumba' nas cenas de crimes para obter sua reportagem. Francamente.. Que sede de sangue é essa pela parte dos telespectadores que motiva uma equipe de TV a realizar tal plano? Seria grande a diferença entre os circos romanos, onde o publico assistia pessoas sendo devoradas por leoes na arena e a televisao brasileira, que publica apenas o "aftermath", o famoso " Tah laaah mais um corpo extendido no chão"? O ridiculo vai além dos programas "sensacionalistas" de nomes sugestivos como "chumbo grosso" ou "190", que passam apos o almoco . A triste realidade da midia brasileira se mostra mais claramente no horario nobre, na famosa "seçao sangue" dos telejornais das 8. Se o que estou dizendo parece novo para voce, experimente notar o conteudo dos primeiros 30 minutos de todos telejornais da noite.

Faremos agora um paralelo com a televisao francesa. Apesar de nao ter uma televisao em casa, é facil diferenciar o teor das noticias que por aqui sao difundidas. Reportagens sobre atividades de verao, curiosidades sobre o pais e regiao, entre varias outras reportagens mais edificantes. Qual seria entao as consequencias de uma televisao menos sanguinolenta? Nao é dificil concluir que, naturalmente, o teor das conversas entre colegas de trabalho, familiares e amigos é significantemente mais descontraido, menos pesado e mais alegre.

Atravessando a fonteira com os "fratelli", a minha curta estadia na bela Italia me deixou a marcante impressao que 90% de todas conversas naquele pais giram em torno de 2 principais assuntos: Berlusconi e o nosso caro papa. Ainda duvidam do que estou dizendo? www.libero.it, ou www.repubblica.it .. vedi e credi

Tal poder da midia sobre as populaçoes é conhecido desde muito tempo, mas uma pergunta para no ar. Até que ponto todo este fenomeno nao se trata de um circulo vicioso? Até que ponto o telespectador realimenta a midia, pois afinal a midia tem interesse em prover ao telespectador aquilo que ele deseja ver, seja pelo interesse de vender "telesenas", arrebanhar fieis ou manipular a opiniao publica. Tudo isso nos tras de volta ao caso do deputado amazonense.

http://terratv.terra.com.br/Noticias/Brasil/4194-244868/AM-deputado-nega-crimes-para-aumentar-audiencia.htm

bbc news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8200820.stm

le monde:
http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2009/08/13/l-audimat-etait-presque-parfait_1228385_3222.html


O que tem voce a dizer sobre isso?

R