Australia - Sydney

Thais has put some pictures in her blog already, today I am going to put some pictures of our last days in Sydney.





Manly is a lovely place close to Sydney. In order to go there, you need to take a ferry boat on the harbor. For those who know Rio, if Sydney were Rio, Manly would be Niteroi. Therefore, it is my favorite city. :)



How to throw a boomerang:



How to NOT catch a boomerang back:

A short summary just before Australia

Flavio came up to Sheffield, and joined us to the Malmsteen's Gig:





This double rainbow was the first time that I could clearly see all the 7 colors of a rainbow, unfortunately I couldn't reproduce them in this picture. :(



Cheers

100% Guitar Hero difficult: Expert

I am not a Guitar Hero fan, but what this guy did is just surreal.



The song is "Through the Fire and Flames" which is according to wikipedia the most successful single by the British power metal band DragonForce.

Top 10 footbal misses

I must admit, it is much more difficult do what these guys did than score.

London

Hello,

Last Tuesday, 24th June, I went to London to attend some seminars about dealing with uncertainty in climate models. The meeting was at the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), where I have never been before. The seminars were very interesting, so it worthed going down to London.

The day was quite pleasant, so I could walk from the train station to the RSS (thanks to google maps). Actually from the train station to the place I walked with Tom, which is also doing PhD in Sheffield and we have the same supervisor. And from the RSS to the train station I came alone. During my way I took this picture:

When I was in the train station, which was the International St. Pancreas, I remembered that I was pretty close to the King Cross station, so if you read at least one Harry Potter book, you will know the meaning of this picture that I took. :)

However, I wasn't going to Hogwarts, my destination was Sheffield. And July is definitely going to be a great but very travel demanding month. Be prepared, I will do my best to keep the blog updated.

Don't forget to let me know that you read the blog, write something. It is always good to know that someone is actually reading what I write here.

See ya

One movie and one book, June 2008

Hi ya,

Today, as the title of the post suggests, I am going to recommend one
movie, one book, and one CD. I will try to do this once a month.

The movie: Mongol ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416044 )

This movie is brilliant. We went to the cinema without knowing anything
about the movie. Actually I decided to watch the movie based on a
picture of a guy meditating (I think) and holding a sword. After the
movie I found out that this movie was nominated for the Best Foreign
academy award (Oscar). The plot is basically about how was the life of
Gengis Khan before conquering half of the world. If you have the
opportunity watch it.

The book: Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_Eighty_Days_(book)

I am reading this book right now. It is a classic actually, but I've
never read it. And I have to admit, it deserves to called as a classic.
The plot is quite simple, in London, precisely at 2nd October 1872,
Phileas Fogg, which is such a interesting character, make a bet that he
can travel around the world in 80 days. So he and his French servant
conveniently called Passepartout, which is also a brilliant character,
do the travel.

SYL,
Leo

Previously on Lost...

Hello,

As some people may know, I am a big fan of Lost. For people that don't know what Lost is, I took this txt from the wikipedia:

Lost is an American serial drama television series that follows the lives of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island, after a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles, United States crashes somewhere in the South Pacific. Each episode typically features a primary storyline on the island as well as a secondary storyline from another point in a character's life.

PS: In July I will fly over the South Pacific, so perhaps I can see the island from the window. :)

The 4th season has just finished, and it was Great! I have to admit that the 3rd season was very boring. I still don't accept that Hurley's episode about a van, too rubbish. However, the end of the 3rd season was brilliant, which give me some hope about the 4th season. Even though I had had high expectations about the 4th season, it did not disappointed me.

Finally, more mysterious were explained rather than introduced. And it also gave us a lot of new information for new theories about what is going on. Although I think some things are simply not going to be explained, or the explanation will be just "The Island demands".

So, let me go straight to some theories (just the first and the fourth are mine) after watching the Season Finale:

• Apparently, as Ben said to Jack, in order to Ben and the Oceanic 6 go back to Island they need all to be together, including Locke's body, probably in another flight. Which makes me think that when the plane crash, probably there are some people that the Island was expecting (maybe Locke, Sun, Claire/Aaron, Mr Eko, maybe someone else, and of course Cristian Shepard's body). That's why they need Locke's body to go back. I wonder how they are going to go back.



• The Black Rock is in the Island, probably due to another time when the island was moved it happen that the ship was unlucky and was there just before the Island appear from nowhere.



• When Ben moved the Island, he was somehow transported to another place (Tunisia) and in another time (1 year ahead, 2005). We know that the Island moved, however, we don't know if it moved in space, or time, or both. My Guess it was at least in time, which I think that the Island is at the same time as Ben. About moving in space, is a possibility that would explained the plane with the Mr Eko's brother that flew from Africa a bit far from the actual estimated position of the Island (somewhere in a tropical region between Australia and Los Angeles).



• The Last, but not least, is about what Locke said in a flash-forward to Jack (I think), he told him that after the Island has been moved a lot of bad things happened. In my opinion, I think some people just get crazy (as Desmond in the best episode of the season) and they couldn't fid their respective constants. Maybe Locke in the future was just in one of these "astral" travels, but different from Desdmond, Locke went to future where he was killed.

Yeah, very cool... There are more crazy theories, but I've written only the ones that I remembered while I was typing this post. There are a lot of things to b explained or at least mentioned in next episodes. For example the numbers (4,8,15,16,23,42), the Black smoke (a.k.a. Lostzila), Richard Alpert's group, Frank Lappidus and Desdmond futures, etc.

Th bad thing, we need to wait until September 2009. OMG in this time I am up to finish my PhD... I didn't thought about that...

See ya

Weekend in Sheffield

This week, a couple of friends from Warwick. Maria (Portuga!) and Joao, come to Sheffield for a weekend off. They went to Chatsworth on Saturday, which is a a lovely place. At the same day on the night, we had dinner together at a Lebanese restaurant. On Sunday, we went to Weston park where we meet Afzalina (photo), she is also Maria's friend. Then, we went for a pub to have lunch.

Me, Thais, Afzalina, Maria and Joao

This guy was looking for Rebels at Starbucks in Sheffield:

"*I* (pause) want (pause) coffee"

On Thursday I am going to give a talk in Warwick. I will talk about BACCO (Bayesian analyses of computer code output) which is the topic of my PhD.

That's all folks!

Podcasting

Hello,
Recently I have discovered another utility for my mp3 player.

The podcasts, what is this? Have a look at this video:

Now you know everything about podcasting, I am going to list some interesting podcasts:

• Nerdcast (In Portuguese) It is a weekly podcast about several Nerd/Geek topics.
  
  
• Dude we are Lost Podcast (In portuguese) As the name suggests it is about Lost.
  
  
• Getlost Podcast (In English) Another podcast about Lost, however this one is spoiler-free, which is good when you are at the end of the season.
  
  
• Plus podcast (In English) Podcast about Maths, very Geek I know, but it is quite cool actually.
  
  
• BBC Podcast (In English) You can listen several BBC radio programs, very good for practicing English, specially British English. ;)

I hope it is going to be useful for someone.

Cheers,
Leo

New month's resolution! :-)

Hello everybody,

Well, after Carla and Waguinho have asked for updates in this blog. I decided to create a list with resolutions for June:

• Update this blog at least once a week!


• Login into orkut and facebook only on the weekends.


• Improve my English, specially the writing skills


• Eat more fruits! :-)

A very short summary about what happen to us since last time we posted:

1. We've been to Edinburgh, Scotland.
   
   
   
2. We have been to Brazil to see our friends and family, Yeah!




1. In BH: Thais and I were bridesmaid and groomsman in two lovely weddings:


Waguinho and Tati


Wandinho and Val


2. In Rio: We met some friends


From left to right: Thais, Carla, Aline, Gustavo, me and Cris!


Moises, Keila, and me at Itacoatiara (O vida ruim so!)




3. Thais and I went to Dublin, Ireland


Thais buying a pint of Guinness (not really, but she could do it) at Temple's Bar, Dublin


4. Thais and I and a group of friend from Warwick have been to Italy, in Pisa, Perugia, Assisi, and Florence


In Assisi: (From left to right) Maria, Michal, Flavio, Mouna, Cecy, Thais, Silvia, and me.


5. We did some travels around UK for conferences, and in the rest of the time we basically worked (or stayed online :) )

That's it!

See you soon,
Leo