Renata: I’m trying to find out how to sync Iphone4 with an Aston Martin Fabio: WHAT? Renata: You see, that’s why I don’t have an Aston Martin Renata: It doesn’t sync with Iphone4 Renata: Only older Iphones Renata: I had to actually contact Aston Martin tech support Fabio: It’s a shitty car for sure.

I’m interviewing some people to work as developers, since it’s part of my job as team leader. We had some good people and bad people, but yesterday we brought in a guy that I think it’s worthy of note.

He clearly knew how to program. While he wasn’t a genius, he could get stuff done. Either way, after some deliberation, me and my boss decided not to hire him.

Why? Well, he had a serious problem interacting with people. Part of working as a programmer in a team is discussing problems, explaining what you’re doing and collaborating. He clearly couldn’t do any of these things easily and would certainly become a problem really quickly.

So, fellow geeks, please work on your communication skills. Learn how to present and explain what you’re doing and what you’re trying to achieve. Be more social. Talking to people is part of the job. I made sure we brought the guy for a second interview so we could be sure of what we were doing, but he simply wouldn’t work in a place with loose hierarchy and where you basically have to decide what you’ll do next by yourself.

This is even more important if you want to work as a freelancer/contractor, since you’ll have to be your own marketing/sales department too.

I think my point is that the age of the 100% socially recluse geek has forcefully come to an end. Soft skills really matter these days.

If all this sounds obvious to you, good. This only means you’re already in the right direction. Congratulations.

It’s important to note that I’m NOT an HR person; we only involve HR when we’ve already made the decision to hire.

Take care and good luck.

I really need to find a book written in proper English.

You see, I’ve just finished The Book of Dave, by Will Self. Without giving out too much, it’s a post-apocalyptic tale set in England, where people follow a religion based on a book buried some 500 years before - in the year 2000 - by a crazy taxi driver called Dave.

But this is not the only thing that changed: the inhabitants of Ing (yep, that’s the name of what’s left of England) speak a warped cockney dialect dubbed mockney, and a considerable part of the book is written on it. It really demands some effort and several visits to the glossary at the end of the book to get the reading going. Fortunately the story is worth it, and after 50 pages or so you’re up to speed.

I finished it last week and dove straight into Porno, by Irvine Welsh. I must confess that, as much as I liked The Book of Dave, I was relieved to read a book written in proper English for a change.

Only it isn’t.

The Scottish accent is famous for being a thick mess of syllables that is challenging even for those born in other parts of the UK. Guess what? Welsh chooses to reproduce it in writing. Yeah, it adds to the personality of the characters, but take a look at this:

Ootside Nivir fuckin well slept last night. Didnae fuckin well want tae. Jist sat up looking at they waws, thinkin: the morn, ah’m fuckin ootay here.

I shit you not. I’m still at the beginning and the story is starting to pick up now. I just hope my brain doesn’t melt before I finish.

I swear I tried, but I couldn’t come up with a decent idea for the Linkin Park remix contest. I really thought I had it going for a while, but then it fell apart on top of the suckage of the original material. All I have to show for it is the track alignment mix, since LP wasn’t even decent enough to provide a proper multitrack.

A friend of mine just posted this picture of São Paulo on Twitter saying it’s a “beautiful view from the top of the Tivoli Mofarrej Hotel”.

Yep. That’s supposed to be a beautiful view.

For some reason, I don’t miss São Paulo not even the least bit.

(And for the record, I don’t miss Rio either, even it being much easier on the eyes.)

Basically, add twitter.com##.user-rec-inner as a filter to AdBlock/AdThwart and you’re all set. Click the image to embiggen.

You can use the same trick to hide annoying “features” from Facebook too, just look at the page’s source or use the Inspect Element function to figure out the CSS class names.

(If all of this went over your head, Google is your friend.)

I work as a web developer for theScore, and this review was just published by Cnet:

When I see an app like TheScore for iPad, it forces me to think in big-picture terms, as in: this is how sports news was meant to be consumed. Not in some day-old newspaper or tiny iPhone app, but on a big, beautiful screen jam-packed with scores, standings, videos, and blogs.

Full review here.

I was listening to old Depeche Mode songs today and realized that if Nothing was mixed to sound like one of those shoddy electro-house singles, it would show every wannabe blogger/”producer” how crappy they are.

So I just went and did it. What you’re hearing now is the product of, um, 20 minutes of work. Anything more and it would be too elaborate for your average teenage to whip up in one week.

Jokes aside, it didn’t turn out awful, just kinda bad. It’s just what you get when you follow a formula (which, by the way, proves the point nicely). I’m even thinking of submitting it to some hipster music blogs to see what happens. What do you think?

I uploaded some of my soundtrack work to Bandcamp for all y’all. Enjoy!

The Gerador Zero stuff is still there (and I have to get off my ass and upload the remaining tracks!).

That’s a reboot! You should check it out and subscribe on iTunes. Yes, because I said so.

There are two episodes out already, dude!