steve jobs 2005 stanford graduation speech

this is one of the most inspiring speeches I’ve heard. he is most definitely a mentor to the business world.

Select a random item from a List

Hi,

Ever wanted to select a random item from a List<T>? Well, this is an extension method that does just that

/// <summary>
/// Gets a random element from the list.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="T">The list element type.</typeparam>
/// <param name="list">The actual list.</param>
/// <returns>An element from the list.</returns>
public static T Random<T>(this List<T> list)
{
    var r = new Random();
    return list[r.Next(0, list.Count)];
}

To use it:

var list = new List<string> { "first", "second", "third", "fourth" };
var random = list.Random();

Enjoy!

Spring Summer

Sunday late afternoon I headed out to meet some friends. To my amaze, the weather, which is not supposed to be that good was AMAZING. The sun was shining, it was about 20 ºC (which is uncommon at this time of the year), full of green, lots of beautiful and happy people. I went to Belém, bought me a cup of coffee and a ‘pastel de belém’ and sat on the grass reading on my iPad. This was indescribable, the sensation was amazing. I felt warm and free. You should really try it sometime…

Here are a coupe of photos for you to enjoy (taken from my phone so the quality might not seem that good)

Global at NuGet

Now you can install the Global project using NuGet. Follow this link and check the instructions on how to install.

Enjoy

in order to succeed one must fail

It is what it is, it sounds just like you would read it and it’s the ultimate truth. I believe that there are people that fit most of the scenarios in the world, Malcolm Gladwell’s outliers.

There isn’t a formula that says that one has to be or do something in order to achieve its most desirable goals. People have to be what they are and if it means failing during the course of life so be it. You’ll see that sometime, between all those ‘failures’ you’ve learned some valuable lessons that can be used in similar situations in the future. It’s the same with soldiers, the veterans have more chances of getting out of a war alive because they have more experience dealing with them than the rookies. Or even with women, men that had lots of women over the course of their lives (and certainly failed many times) will know how to pick one up rather than a guy with lesser experience in the field. It’s all about experience, trial-error, failure-success.

If you want to know the path to success I urge you to try it for yourself even if it means failure. In my book that’s not a failure, that’s a lesson for life, an experience, an advantage. But don’t forget about them, use them to avoid making the same mistakes again, it will most certainly lead you in the right direction to success.

The things we do for…

I’ve been digging around to find a solution for a couple of problems that I have. This past few days were dedicated to doing just that. But what I found was that the decisions were not always the one’s I wanted but instead the ones I had to cope with. What to do in situations like this?

Well, I found we have these options when we decide something:

• Do what others want
• Do what you want / need

This is nice and all but in most cases these decisions take many variables and we have to analyse them one by one and cross reference between them in order to have the ‘perfect’ decision right? Well, yes and no. The top most variable you have to take into account which matters is if that is what you want and need at that specific time. I know sometimes that might not seem that simple but if you think again, that’s the only thing that matters.

My brother once said something that I will never forget. We were talking about achieving goals and I was saying that sometimes life gives us obstacles impossible to overcome and he said that if we put our minds into it we could. Not because it will magically happen, we all know that’s impossible, but because we direct our lives to overcome these obstacles and get exactly what we want. We might not get exactly that but we WILL, for sure, see that the ‘impossible’ sometimes isn’t that ‘impossible’.

My advice is for you to think for yourselves. Take into account what others might say, that’s a very important factor in decision making but do not let that be the top most reason for the decision you’re making.

Start -> End -> Start

A few weeks back I did something that completely changed my life and my future. It doesn’t matter what, it only matters that, although it wasn’t the easiest thing to do, it wasn’t the hardest. So why am I writing this? Well, this experience thought me some things…

• Not everything is the end of the world, even if it appears to be
• You can overcome pretty much whatever is thrown at you, but you have to want first
• Rely on your family and friends (especially family), these are the people that will be by your side when ‘not so good’ things happen
• Lose some, win some… Just because you won once doesn’t mean you’re a winner and the same goes for the losses!

So, despite the fact that something in my life has ended does not mean that my life ended also. Be cheerful and live your life.

New Windows 7 Phone… Yes, OS and PHONE :)!

Yep guys, today at the World Mobile Conference Microsoft announced their new gadget in the mobile industry, the new all-in-one mobile OS and phone. Check out the comments and video from the guys from Engadget here to see more details and get a pretty good idea of what does it look like and maybe compare it with other mobile phones out there.

From my point of view, the UI is kinda of messy, too much things flying around. I couldn’t find context in them but in their defence I didn’t played around with it to know. One thing all you people might like is the social integration within the contact apps. You’ll be able to connect to your favorite social networks (Facebook, Twitter) all in one place. I personally don’t really care about that since I’m not that much into that social stuff.

Indeed, new phone but is it a new era for the mobile industry or just another phone?!

Cheers

About my Kindle 2

Hi,

A couple of days ago a got myself, from Amazon.com, a brand new Kindle 2. First let me drop some curiosities to some people here in Portugal who might want to buy it.

Amazon has a great overall service. I made the purchase on a monday night and got it on thursday at 11am. The Kindle was sent using UPS service and I could track (almost) in real time where the package was and at what time it left/arrived at some place. With the tracking code you could check it using Amazon‘s own service or you could go to UPS site (they had a more detailed view of it).One VERY GOOD detail was that as part of the order Amazon charges a fee, ‘Import Deposit Fee‘, that covers any tax or customs fees that might be charged for the Kindle. They also take care of releasing the product from the customs so you don’t have to worry about anything, the Kindle will arrive at your place without any concern on your part. So people from Portugal, you can buy it without any problems.

Well, regarding the Kindle itself. It’s a very nice reading device. When I first opened I was a bit disappointed with the screen size. It took me a while to get used to it actually. Another thing that I missed when reading reviews about it was the fact that internet only worked using it’s 3G wireless card, which is free in Portugal by the way . You cannot connect to your home wireless network. One cool thing though is the fact that you can browse Amazon‘s Whispernet network, search and buy books all for free. And it takes less than 30 seconds to download a complete book. Check out Amazon‘s wireless coverage here for Europe

With their new firmware you can read pdf content out of the box and it’s cool for some books. One thing that disappointed me was the lack of good pdf to Kindle converter that was good. None of the softwares I tried were good (Stanza, MobiPocket, Calibre).

But if you want a reading device and you are one of those people who love to buy books this is a very cool alternative. The books for Kindle are cheaper, you can buy it on the PC and load it to the Kindle via the USB cable or buy it or download it directly from the Kindle. I got used to it now and me and my girlfriend love it. Overall it’s a pretty darn GOOD device. Very cool christmas gift for me

Cheers to all

A new feature on the MailHelper class

Hi

Today I added a new feature on my MailHelper fluent class that allows

List<string>

or

Dictionary<string, string>

as parameters in the Add method when adding new addresses.

Hers’s a sample code:

private static void SendMail()
{
    var mailsWithDisplayNames = new Dictionary
                       {
                           {"Person", "person@samplemail.com"},
                           {"Another Person","another.person@samplemail.com"}
                       };
    var justMails = new List
                {
                    "wow.another.person@sampleperson.com",
                    "ok.another.person@sampleperson.com"
                };
    var mailHelper = new MailHelper("smtp.gmail.com", 587);
    mailHelper
        .From("Sample Person", "sampleperson@samplemail.com")
        .To(to => to.Add("AnotherSamplePerson", "anothersampleperson@samplemail.com"))
        .Bcc(bcc => bcc.Add(mailsWithDisplayNames))
        .Cc(cc => cc.Add(justMails))
        .Body("Trying out the MailHelper class with some Html:<p style='font-weight:bold;color:blue;font-size:32px;'>html<p>)
        .Subject("Testing Fluent MailHelper")
        .IsBodyHtml(true)
        .Credentials("someUser", "somePass")
        .Ssl(true)
        .Send();
    Console.ReadLine();
}

UPDATED: I managed to get the project into GitHub. You can grab it here.

Enjoy