UK International Keyboard Layouts

After some developing I am proud to announce that I created a project in SourceForge to have open available and free software to correct the abnormalities of people who own computer bought in the UK (with UK Keyboard) and have to write in other language than English.

With this you can install the new keyboard layout in your machine and start using it like the US International version, being able to have dead-keys and to use accented letters so need to write that email in Portuguese for example.

The address is http://sourceforge.net/projects/ukikl/ andthe windows version is ready to download.

I am planning a Mac Version for the end of this month and a Linux version for the next. I will give update here.

Learning ( how to pick bike locks)

Yesterday I and Giseli went to Clare College to print some stuff she need for the language classes in the afternoon. We arrived and locked our bikes in from of the Old Court. When going out of the college, Giseli's lock was not opening anymore.

Just before leaving home we had used some oil in this lock because it was a bit difficult to open. Apparently the problem just got worst. It was turning the key very well now, but still not opening. We decided to give up, since both were late and left it to solve today.

After arriving again today and expecting for some miracle, Giseli tried the lock again and it was as yesterday. Well we had lunch and then I went to do the dirty job.

First I went to the porters lodge to try to find someone with expertise in cutting locks. The porters are responsible for taking out bikes students leave indefinitely in there.

So they told me the basics:

- Normal (non D-locks) lock can be easily cut with a big scissor to cut metal. You don't need even to do much effort. Very easy job.

- D-locks cannot be cut, but the "hammer strategy" works with them. The porters gave me a big hammer and told to punch on the straight part of the lock. No cheap (less than £50) D-lock will resist to this technique.

In the end, after just 3 tries with the hammer, the lock was open. The porters were right.

This shows why it is so easy to have you bike stolen in Cambridge. The locks that the bike shops sell together with the bikes are really bad, but keep their business in selling bikes... :)

Back to my duties

Well, after a very good and month long vacation in the sunny-sunny Brazil I am back. I have loads of things to do right now and also to write in the blog.

During this time I was in vacation I wrote some posts ideas in my mobile, but due to the lack of internet connectivity I will be feeding this during this week.

PhD a vulcano of feelings

Well this post is being written during my flight from Milan to Heathrow. I spent the last 3 days in Sicily/Italy talking with Giampaolo Bella and his students in University of Catania.

I can say they were really nice to me. Specially Giampaolo that in the beginning was a bit unsure about my ideas for the PhD, but in the end he told me that it could be nice to implement this as an extension of the inductive method. It was a relief, since I believe that Larry doesn't understand fully what I want, but he did. He also did something I was not used any more: he took me by hand and made me see good things and bad things I have been doing lately. In reality I felt that he was expecting a genius, and found just a mortal guy.

Either way, I gave a talk over there in Italian, and it is here:


Talk given in Catania from Jean Martina on Vimeo.

Cambridge Bike Ride Series

Well as promised, this morning I generated more two videos of the Cambridge Bike Ride Series. This one is not so good (but better than the first), since I did in a hurry. The camera was not in the best position in my helmet and the path was really bumpy.

The things I modified was that I actually edited this one. Instead of putting the video in RAW mode I added some advertisement for my blog and a sound track. The original sound is horrible. I also tried to fit on the desires of people who commented my first video in you tube: Soundtrack (the same I was listening while cycling), cars, people, busy areas, and doing bad things on transit :)

I am publishing just one video today, because they need some editing, and this takes time. This video shows this route:


Show Full Map

Hope you like:

Talk for the Authomated Reasoning Group

Today I gave a talk to Automated reasoning group here in Cambridge, trying to explain my PhD research. The video bellow shows the talk in full. Basically I explained the method I will be using and delimited the problem I plan to cover in my PhD. For those not in computer science, it just another bullshit :)



Well maybe not that bullshit, because it should be at least good enough to earn the PhD degree. Basically is a form to give assurance to secure communication protocols by proving (in mathematical style) that the protocol has the properties expected.

After filming the video, I started another quest: Upload to someplace and make usable in my blog. I uploaded it (just a bit more that 110Mb, and made with my mobile) to youtube, but they just allow films with no more than 10 mins (mine has 28). I did some research and actually found viemo, which according with the reviews has the best post processing codec and allow people to upload more that just 10 mins.

It may look idiot, but because incapacity of youtube engineers in creating an engine to search for proprietary content, and to avoid people uploading entire movies (as if they would no spilt in small chunks) the created this ridiculous constraint.

Next week I will post the same talk in Italian, since I will be presenting it in Universita di Catania, in the mWSF07 - The 2007 miniWorkshop on Security Frameworks I hope you all like the distraction.

じゃん えべるそん

Well this post is to show other things that I did last Saturday: I was writing my name and training Japanese calligraphy at some friends house. Well じゃん　えべるそん means Jean Everson, and for those who are not used with Japanese characters it is hiragana, the basic Japanese writing.

They also wave another two alphabets. One that is phonetic base called katakana and a second that is Chinese based ideograms.

Here is the Video:




The coolest thing is that within one our of me sending the video to youtube I got a comment in it :)

Foto Updates from Hackintosh

As I promised, here are the picture of my HP DV 2000 running Mac OSX. After more than 5 days with it in my hard-drive, I decide not to keep it, because some essential things doesn't run in it, like power management, wifi and the computer heats a lot.

Hackintosh Odissey

Well, now I can state that I have a fully functioning hackintosh :) I finished installing my HP laptop with MacOS 2 days ago. It works very well, eve faster than a macbook I bought 3 months ago for a friend in Brazil.

Lessons learned :

• EFI is something really important, and there is no reason for us to stick in BIOS except that Microsoft does not support nativeEFI .
• Don expect to make your hackintosh work 100%, because device drivers are still a pain.
• Although I liked a lot I will be uninstalling it soon, because my wifi wave not worked, the microphone and the power management also.

I will post later some pictures of my HP Laptop running MacOS X

Sleeping in Airports

Today I received a very nice feed from a site I signed up. It called my attention because it is something I am a bit used to: Sleep in Airports. The guys are Professional ins this matter, and I am just a beginner.

This reminded me the day me and Giseli arrived from Italy in Stansted, we got a 3 hours delay in passport control, and lost the last bus to Cambridge. This time Giseli had the great idea to rent a car, since I had to be back in Stansted at 6:00 to fly to Germany.

The bad thing was that we had to sleep the when coming back from Germany because the passport control again. I also already slept in Lutons twice :)