Lots of news are about to come. This will stay here but won’t be updated anymore. It was cloned to the new domain so you can access old posts there but if you have links to this blog they won’t cease to exist [unless wordpress decides to ditch me...] :)

Thanks everyone and thanks wordpress for the blog software and the hosting… see you in the new domain: pmatos.net

This blog will go through a migration into another server. I am sorry if there is any issue with this address in the next few days. I shall update you on the new address for it and on any news soon.

Cheers!

Event-B has a main language structure the Event. An Event has a status (not important for now), local variables (which have a type), guards (which define when the event can be triggered) and actions (which specify how to change the state variables.

I decided to create a local variable rr, but unfortunately I managed to put a space after the name “rr”… so it read “rr ” [look out for the space]. Immediately, RODIN refuses the variable definition and highlights all the occurrences of rr throughout the body of the event as undefined variable. WOW!

I leave you with a screenshot:

Making a very happy story, short: me and my girlfriend started to live together, finished my pre-thesis report for the PhD (hopefully the final thesis date will have a 2009 on it), got an awesome house in Southampton, we moved in and today… we got λ.

λ is our new female cat with 10months that we adopted from the BlueCross. Although the adoption process took around a week and a half and involved a home visit it went smoothly and we have it with us now. She is a beautiful black cat which as soon as she arrived home, and once the door of the carrier was opened, she jumped out. None of the ‘scared’, ‘shy’ stuff we were worried about.

First interesting report was to book a vet appointment, the reception girl asked us for her name and we said λ. She looked at us with a strange look and we said: ‘λ : as in the Greek letter’. Funny enough, she said: ‘Can you spell it?’ Argh… HEY, IT’S A LETTER…
Although I didn’t say that, I thought it and ended up spelling it for her… l… a… m… b… d… a, but it should be written as a single character.

Soon I will give you the first photos! :)

Even though I didn’t manage to write a post for some time now I managed to get into the twitter thingy. So, in case you think I am dead, keep posted with: http://twitter.com/pocmatos

Lisp was fifty last month. Happy Birthday!

Most importantly, Guy Steele and Richard Gabriel did a presentation that sets a new standard on presentations. Funny, provocative, original, concise and bright!!! A must see… a must re-see…

Presentation!

If one day I manage to do something similar, I will feel accomplished! Congratulations to the speakers!

For all the others just interested on what I have to say regarding vaginae [yes, this seems to be the plural of 'vagina'] and Christmas, move on! :)

The number of labiaplasties seemed to have doubled in the UK between 2002 and 2007. Protesters are already doing their job and you can also get some statistics there so let me avoid the statistics and go straight to the subject at hand.

Nowadays, women seem to get shallower and shallower (not in the vaginal sense)! It’s the ginourmous heels, the practically naked standard of dressing, the excessive makeup, the false lips, the false boobs, the false bum… Now they also have false vaginae???

Come on, you must be kidding me! Obviously you can say that it’s your body and you can do whatever you want with it but note that doing whatever you want goes both ways. If women prefer heels to comfortable shoes, excessive makeup instead of their natural clean selves, botox lips instead of their own, silicone boobs instead of their natural ones, etc, etc… I have the right to tell them straight in the face how idiots they are! They prefer to change themselves, even when there’s the risk of damage. Among all the changes there’s risk of facial paralysis, scaring, loss of feeling, pain, bone damage, etc. Fewer and fewer women seem to favour their own personalities, trying instead to use a mask to look better. But what’s better? Women like this tend to get the kind of attention from a very specific male type. And often they get what they asked for and they rarely find an happy ending, but still… they move forward trying to find ways to improve. Well, I thought it would never get to the point of labiaplasties, but it seems I was wrong!

Note, however, that the case of labiaplasties seem different than most other issues, like high heels. Using high heels, even though it screws your feet and most likely provokes pain and uncomfortable walking, is known to be ‘fashionable’ and ‘sexy’ [although I disagree but that's not the point]. High heels are seen by everybody. You want to look good and attract the attention of those around you. Now, with vaginal surgery, whose attention are you trying to attract? There are not many possibilities here… either you are a slut and you need to impress a man every night or you’re just trying to impress your boyfriend with a new vagina, but if your boyfriend loves you more, or even just supports your decision of undergoing a surgery to change your vagina because it might look better then he’s more of an idiot than you are… dump him… otherwise you risk losing him to a better vagina…

And remember, no matter how good your vagina is, there’s always a better one in the nearest corner! Remember : use your brain always and your vagina sometimes!

When I taught Lisp in Portugal, I used to pass this song to my students in their 1st year to get them in the mood… Lets hope this gets you into the mood also and find some time to look at this language! :)