I know I haven’t written anything for quite a time, but I sure have my reasons, which I am willing to explain in the following lines. I’ll try to separate this in points such as my university degree, my e-business developments, my health problems and some other stuff, so it becomes easier to read the different subjects and to detect what’s personal and what’s professional.

University:

I’ve been very busy with my university course, and as I am a member of the Student’s Association, I have to work in double. To begin, I’m responsible for the Intitute’s Blog, for all the graphic design related stuff and some other things. For example, I designed a “card” to identify the freshmen from the rest of the people in the institute, which is a parody of Portugal’s “Citizen Card”, whose first name was to be “Unique Card”. Unique Card in Portuguese is translated as “Cartão Único” and its acronym was “CÚ” which means “ASS” in English. Yeah, you’ve got the idea. You can check the work in my DeviantArt gallery. I also designed a poster for the “Mega Dinner” which is a Dinner for all the students, ex-students, teachers, ex-teachers, etc. and as usual, there will be LOTS of people in the dinner (that’s why it’s called Mega Dinner). Last but not least (the most important stuff for me) is this year’s content of the course. In this semester, the course has the following outline: Applied English, Advertising Communication, Communication and Publicity Law, Risk and Crisis Communication and Marketing Market Research.

Conferences:

I have already Two international Marketing conferences in my agenda, one of the being the “International Conference: New Answers for the Future of Consumption”, organized by the IPAM – Marketing School for Business, and the other one is the “Marketing Show: Sold Out – Tendencies and Integration in Marketing”. I’ll be taking live notes in my Netbook and make an article for each one of them.

Increasing my Knowledge:

I’ve been reading a lot of technical books in the areas of marketing, management, public relationships and publicity. I’ll try to make reviews of the books as I finish them, one by one, as well as give some tips based on what I’ve learned in my lectures.

Online Business Implementation:

In spite of the accumulation of excessive work, some things are going well. BricoDap’s new image is up and running and the results are already coming, like some nice and powerful partnerships, as well as some major clients. I’m preparing an article regarding some tips for online stores, how to improve your ROI (Return Of Investment) and increase your conversions, as well as some design tips, based on my experience of BricoDap’s market presence.

Netbook and Cloud Computing:

That’s right! I bought a Netbook (ASUS EEE PC 1000HE) and I’m trying to get myself into cloud computing. The experience has been great so far. I’m making a guide to optimize a Netbook to the maximum, and to get the best of it in every aspect, either in work or in entertainment purposes. This very article is the first one made on my Netbook, and I’ll probably catch up the lost time thanks to the Netbook, because I can easily write up some content while I’m waiting for something else.

My knee and drop foot problems:

After a year since my accident, I feel the knee has good stabilization and I have almost recovered all of my muscle mass and my whole weight. I’m just dealing with some issues with the correct patella placement, and doing therapy to maintain the muscle fibers and tendons active, because of the foot palsy problem. While I was writing this down, I was waiting to get an EMG (electromyogram) done, and after that we are going to decide what kind of surgery will be the best to try to get the leg working the most approximate to a normal leg, so that I can have an almost normal everyday life, and to avoid the use of an AFO (Ankle Foot Orthosis) to walk normally.

My Home Gym:

Another article that is coming up! My Home Gym is done, just missing some little details, like a window curtain, some decoration and getting the audio system finished, because the subwoofer broke down (I sent it to repair and I hope that I can have this finished as soon as possible). I’ve already been doing some exercise, and I have noticed an HUGE difference in my body weight, volume, metabolism, etc! I’ll try to take some pictures to post an update.

And the final words:

To finish, I just hope that with the aid of the Netbook I can manage to get my content done, so that I can keep you guys updated with some info and so that I can share some valuable information to whoever comes across my “experimental playground”. I hope the articles will start to flow and to have some more news next time! See yah!

In this post I’m going to show you some really basic steps that I use on my sites, and can help you improve a lot the search engine optimization for your WordPress website. As for that, you will set up two sitemaps: One for robots and one for visitors… both for indexation but in different ways. You may be wondering, “But why two sitemaps”? Well… One is a XML sitemap, for automatic indexation by search engine robots and the other one is a WordPress page, so that visitors can get to know and check the various parts of your site, and it also allows to improve the inner links on your site. This doesn’t hurt your indexation at all, as it only refers to organized pages, without duplicating your content.

Setting up the XML Sitemap:

For this purpose, I use the XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress plugin. This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog, and allows automatic notification to Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search, upon content modification. It is translated in many languages, has a configurations page where you check whether of not you want some of its automated features to work, customize parameters and features and in case you are not used to work with the webmaster resources supplied by the search engines, it also has some help files and links to allow you to become familiar to Google Webmaster tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and the most recent Bing Webmaster Tools. I really recommend this plugin as it does what it’s supposed to do, and does it very well. You just need to download it, unpack it, upload the folder to your wp-content/plugins/ folder, and activate it in the plugins tab, upon the WordPress Admin Panel. After that, you can access the configurations page on the Settings tab. Further instructions can be obtained with the plugin itself.

Setting up the WordPress Page Sitemap:

For this one, I use Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin. This plugin allows some customization from its options page, on the admin panel, and has some features like support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items in, show comment counts and/or post dates, and much more. To take advantage of this plugin, download it, unpack it, upload the folder to your wp-content/plugins/ folder, and activate it in the plugins tab, upon the WordPress Admin Panel. Then, go to the Settings tab, and configure the plugin to your taste. Almost in the end of the options page, you get to fill  the path to the XML Sitemap that you configured in the last plug-in, making the XML file accessible to real people, as well as crawlable trough your site and not only by submitting it directly to the webmaster tools given by the major search engines.

Making the good even better (optimization!):

As a final touch, I recommend you to have a few things in mind. The Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin needs to be inserted in a page for it to work. Personally, I do not see any advantage to have a Sitemap page in your main menu! It’s ok to have it in a visible and accessible place of your website, but not in the main menu. So, you can make a small text link on the footer or header, and to remove the page from the navigation I use Simon Wheatley’s Exclude Pages Plugin. It is a plugin that adds a checkbox to every page of your site. If you uncheck it, the page will be excluded from any listing of pages, which is usually limited to your page navigation menus. Simple as that.

I hope this helps you to get your WordPress site a little bit more Search Engine Friendly and Optimized, and it just simplifies your life. Also, don’t hesitate to support the people behind this brilliant plugins!

Since my last knee injury, I’ve lost a lot of weight, mainly because of my loss of movement. This has turned me from a kind of athletic guy with a VERY active and occupied life, to a sedentary guy. The result is that I, being at 1.73m (5.66ft) have gone from 72Kg (158.7lbs) to 65Kg (143.3lbs), meaning that I’ve already lost about 7Kg (15.5lbs) mainly of lean body mass, that is, muscle. As I had a long-time project of building a home GYM, this is the opportunity to do it.

To start, I have some spare rooms in my parents’ home (which I’m also living), I have some friends willing to help and the materials to get the construction/preparation works are either cheap, free or I already have them. So… what was in fact holding me from getting the home gym started? First, to be able to get and stand on my feet! (Don’t you think this is in fact a crucial point?) And second, to be able to stand on my feet for some time without feeling a lot of pain. As I am now capable to do this for a moderate period of time, my friends came over, and with the help of my father, gave me a very big helping hand, as I almost watched them work to get this done for me.

My Home GYM project:

Mainly, I’m going to use this GYM to workout my legs (to help me with my knee problems), to correct some joint and posture stabilization problems and to work my upper body, because as I work my legs a lot, I have a lot more muscle on my legs than on my torso, arms and the rest of the upper body. I also have a sedentary work, as I almost remain on a chair for the whole day, in front of a computer, and with the GYM, I can make some cardio workout to stay fit and healthy.

What I’m planning to put inside the room:

• A cheap MP3 Stereo and a Cambridge four point surround system;
• A small piece of furniture, to put the stereo, punching gloves, speed rope and some magazines;
• A punching bag, hanging from the ceiling;
• Adjustable Bench with included Rack, barbell, dumbbells and disk weights;
• Exercise Bike;
• A Multi GYM Machine with 80kg (176.37lbs) total weight capacity;
• Short and wide straight cable bars and a one-hand cable handle;
• An 85cm Swiss Ball;

The Construction of the Room:

We’re talking about a room with an estimate size of 4m (13,12ft) x 6m (19.69ft). At first, we started to work on one of the walls, which had some serious cracks, so we had to break the superficial cement and cover it up again. Also, there was an all-around edge made in plaster that was stuck between the walls and the ceiling. It had to be removed, as it was falling apart, and then flatten the wall, because removing the plaster also removed some of the superficial cement. After that, we passed sandpaper on the walls and installed a hook to hang the punching bag. Next, we had to paint it all, with one of the walls in a different color (I chose a nice blue tone), to add some sense of depth, as the room is not very big, but enough for what I need. After the painting was all done, we proceeded to the clean up process. Also, we installed the lighting on the ceiling, because the existing lamp was purely a light bulb hanging from the cap.

I’m excited about the project, as it is going pretty well. Next step will be installing the sound speakers and verifying the electrical installation. Later, it will be to cover the floor with some kind of shock resistant material, organize the layout where the GYM equipment is going, and put it on its place.  I’ll update the info as I have some more development!

Track In My Head: F.L.G. & Funkerman – 3 Minutes To Explain

The British Band Coldplay is giving away their latest live album “LeftRightLeftRightLeft” (yeah, it’s a weird name, that’s for sure) for free, which you can download on their website. There are some nice hits of the band, like “Clocks”, “Fix You” and the latest “Viva la Vida” famous by it’s copyright scandal involving Joe Satriani. I gave it a try, and it’s worth the download… so, what are you waiting for to get your free album? Go to their website to download!

Director: J. J. Abrams.
Main Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Eric Bana.
Writers: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Gene Roddenberry.
My Rating: 9/10.

To start, I think I need to make the statement that I’m not a “trekkie”. But, I went to watch the last star trek movie and as a micro review.. I liked it pretty much! Yeah. It was funny, full of action and very eye catching. Now, let’s go on with the serious stuff. First of all, I didn’t go to see the movie in a normal situation, but through an invitation for a preview. I found strange that they didn’t have a ticket or a brochure to bring as a souvenir. Second, I was surrounded by security guys, and I felt like some kind of criminal, but the highest point was when I reached the door to the movie room, and with a metal detector I was asked to show my mobile phone. As I have a Nokia N95, they said I had to leave the phone with the security central. I found it kind of weird, but in fact, if there’s any phone that can do a quality rip, is a phone like mine. Apart from being weird, the procedure worked really well, as they stored the phone in a sealed plastic bag with a code and gave me a little ticket with the code, to claim the phone after the movie. After entering the room and finding a good spot in front of the screen, I saw that in spite of being in a movie room with a bunch of normal people, I was surrounded by a geek family in my right side, with the father talking about Kirk and aliens, a mother talking about voyager and warp speeds and the whole family with an eager smile, like they were going to watch some kind of heavenly movie. Then, I turned my head slowly to the left and there were some geeky guys, with old fashioned glasses, a bunch of tech magazines in their hands, like T3, Stuff and Computer Magazines, wearing Simpsons T-shirts. To be sincere, I felt a little weird, but found it funny after all. The lights went out and the trailer exhibitions started. I got curious with Angels and Demons but I definitely have to see Night at the Museum 2! Trailers shown and the movie started, as it is supposed to.

In the beginning, I thought that the scenes were awesome, with some stunning images to watch, but… I think that the beginning was a bit boring. It happens that it makes sense to be like this, as the first part of the movie places you in the plot and tells you the background history. You get to know that there is a Romulan bad guy named Nero that comes from the future to hunt Spock, as he didn’t save his planet. Kirk happens to be a rebellious kid and Spock is the result of a Vulcan father and Human mother relationship, and in spite of being very intelligent and smart, denies entering the Vulcan council, because he prefers to make it to the Starfleet Academy than to be humiliated for having a human mother. Then, the movie starts to get more interesting. There are some action fights, some nice chicks, some really funny stuff and the Star Trek action begins to rumble. In this parts of the movie, I loved Kirk’s cockiness, the fact that Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy has a space phobia and what he does with Kirk to get him on the Enterprise, by giving him a vaccine with some hilarious reactions, the complications related to Pavel Chekov’s accent, and some more stuff, like Hikaru Sulu being heavily trained in skilled one-on-one combat, more specifically… in fencing. It was also a nice surprise to see Leonard Nimoy appearing as Senior Citizen Spock. Well, by the end of the movie, I was a happy and satisfied person, for watching a science-fiction movie with some nice action and funny scenes, although I didn’t ended up saluting everyone with Spock’s split-finger salute, while saying the famous phrase “Live long and prosper”.

I found the graphics awesome, and in a final thought, I had just watched a very entertaining movie. One final thing that caught my attention was that in the posters and advertising stuff, Winona Rider was always portrayed as being on the main cast, looking like she was more important that some of the other main characters. Only then, after thinking a while, was that I realized that she was in fact Spock’s mother!

Star Trek: Movie Trailer.

Design your way:

The Blog of Web Designer Bogdan Sandu, from Bucharest, Romania. A great source of information, freebies, tutorials, inspiration and showcases. It’s really worth the visit, so check out Design your way, or visit the feature page. Also, his Twitter is a nice source of information…

The Design Gene:

The Design Gene is a showcase of Flash, CSS and Blog websites, run by Jessica Miller, founder and lead designer at Corvus Design Studio, which shows a good example of a showcase website done with WordPress. Nice and clean, updated frequently and a nice example of good taste. Jessica also mentioned TwistedStudio as a “great website that utilizes Slab Serif fonts for accent or logo” in her blog. Once again, thank you Jessica!

E-CREATIVE.NET:

E-CREATIVE is a nice source of inspiration, where websites are categorized in titles such as fashion, automobile, entertainment and sports, and are classified according to design and colors, as well. You can also access a Forum, a Job Board, freelancer listing, recent news, etc. Visit E-CREATIVE or the feature page as “Site of the Day”.

Design Awards Gallery:

Design Awards Gallery describes itself as ” A CSS Websites Catalog aimed to provide you with the stunning collection of the most creative and inspiring CSS web designs from all around the world”. Well, there sure are some stunning websites showcased there, and their own design is really nice. Visit Design Awards Gallery or the feature page. By the way, the categories, tags and keywords were not chosen by me…

My Design Award:

My Design Award, as the name says, it’s an award giving website. Besides the award giving stuff, they review professional portfolios, publish artworks as wallpapers and logos, some free templates and even integrate a mini-social community, in a PHPBB based forum. Visit My Design Award or the feature page.

Colour Crash:

Colour-Crash is a blog in German, with Design related information. Their main articles feature free wallpapers and photoshop tutorials, but they have content like funny pictures, photos, video tutorials, news, etc. I was featured in the “Design of the week” category, among other nicely done websites.

QNT – Quandtnet:

QNT (quandtnet) is a portal site with a selection of digital art magazines and a web design gallery with inspirational sites. As it says in the about section QNT “showcases websites with outstanding appearance, new ideas and a successful perfection”. You can find sites from private and commercial sites, to experimental Homepages, all sorted by categories. Visit QNT or the feature page.

GOUW.NU – Graphic Orgasm Ultimate Portal:

GOUW, which means Graphic Orgasm Ultimate Portal is one of the oldest site submission galleries on the web. They always choose a trendy design, as they change it from time to time. The site is divided in “Cool Sites”, “Previews” and “Daily News” links, which are feed by users, and approved by their staff. As GOUW doesn’t have a page for the sites it features, but only an archive, I leave you with their redirection link to my page, which just opens TwistedStudio’s homepage.

A few days ago, I read an article in Darren Rowse’s Problogger about “Seven Essential Applications for Bloggers Using Windows“, written by guest author Shankar Ganesh. I enjoyed the article and in fact, I already use some of the applications, such as FileZilla, FeedDemon and TweetDeck, but I though that first, It didn’t covered all the aspects of a full blogging experience and second, I didn’t got the reason to use paid software versions when today we can rely on free and open source applications, which sometimes offer even more complete and solid solutions than some of the paid solutions. So, I decided to get you to know my point of view. I’m not planning to make statements about specific applications for a specific purpose, but rather to give you some good examples of tools that can help you to take care of several issues that we have to deal with, such as browsing, composing, etc.

Web Browser:

I think it’s obvious that the most important tool for a blogger, a blog reader or a normal web surfer, is of course, the browser. Since the subject is about Windows Bloggers, the question remains “what about the browser?!” should you stick to Internet Explorer? I would certainly not recommend you to. First of all, I’m not an Internet explorer fan since the times of the first browser wars, as I began to use Mosaic and then became stuck with Netscape Navigator for quite a few years, and since then, I’ve been trying to change my mind, but I’m not able to. I’m known between my friends to open a LOT of windows (tabs since its introduction, and I love them!) and every time I get to check a new version of Internet Explorer, I tend to get the same-as-always results… A few errors, a crash and a final punch to the desk. Why would someone put himself to sacrifice with such a painful browsing experience, when there are other good and much more complete free solutions? In my case, I use Flock for surfing and Mozilla Firefox for working. Flock (which is based on Firefox) has a very strong social integration, with automatic interaction with sites such as Facebook, Digg, Pownce and lots more, but it has also a bunch of already installed plug-ins to ease your job, such as a photo uploader, media bar, feed highlighter, web clipboard and a blog editor with automatic spelling checker. On the other hand, Firefox has an huge library of addons to customize the browser as you like, and there are some pretty cool extensions for almost anything you could imagine. Flock has integration with social bookmarks like delicious already installed, but you can install that on Firefox too. This allows me to have two different favorite toolbars, to have an easy and quicker access to the sites or tools that I use the most, depending of what I’m doing, but, at the same time, to keep my bookmarks synchronized. In case this isn’t enough for you, there are always more choices, like Apple’s Safari, the fast and safe Opera, and the most recent Google Chrome.

Content Building and Management:

To compose and to keep track of the content, my most important tools are also the most simple ones: my favorite pen, a cheap and good looking notebook, and a bunch of To-Do Sticky Notes. Why? Because I don’t always remember stuff or have brainstorms in front of my computer, but when I’m on the street, almost sleeping in my bed, or even in the bathroom! It’s also obvious that I don’t carry my pen and notebook to the bathroom, but as soon as I get out, I will write the ideas so I don’t forget them, instead of taking the chance of the computer being turned down, turn it up, think of something else and let the thoughts be lost in time. In this way, I can also take a lot of really quick notes and sketch some information for the content, some ideas for a post or even schedule some tasks to improve the blog engine. Besides the analogical tools as pen and paper, my most used application is windows notepad. Yes, it’s about the same, but in digital format. I make folders about different themes and take up some notes, or even start to write about a new piece of content. For further content development, I use either Microsoft Office or Open Office as my desktop productivity suites. However, I use more Google’s online applications like Google Docs and Google Calendar so I can keep on working everywhere in any computer. In Google Docs you can create and organize documents in different folders, edit them with headers included, check spelling and insert links. You can also work with spreadsheets, where you can organize information in tables, like stats, locations or even list some data. Just in case you are a very tidy up person, you can also check voo2doo, which is a kind of an online to-do list, where you can create tasks, organize them in projects, add some notes, assign deadlines to your tasks and manage all of that in a general dashboard. There’s also Blist, which is about the same, but everything organized on “Weblists” (Blists), where you can create lists or tables, with columns for specific types of data, like money, percent, flags, check boxes, Boolean (True or False) and more. It also lets you import/export data in CSV, e-mail the list, print it, or even publish it like a widget. If you use this wise, it can become a powerful tool to aid you in your blogging tasks.

File Transfer:

As for file transfer, if it’s in FTP, I’m a long time user of FileZilla. It’s powerful, quick, easy to use.. and free. I don’t need anything else for dealing with file uploading in File Transfer Protocol. In case you don’t want a stand alone application for FTP, you can always check Fire FTP, which is a good extension for Firefox, letting it work like a good FTP Client. Besides that, I find Flickr Uploadr (ha! another thing based on Firefox…) a very useful thing to use, because it automatically logs in to your Flickr account, you just drag the photos you want to upload, edit titles, descriptions and tags in a rush, create albums and push the upload button to let it do its job.

Image Manipulation:

When it comes to images, I think a Blogger has two main needs: Take some printscreens and edit pictures to insert in the blog post. To take printscreens, I use the awesome Jing which does much more than take printsceens. With Jing, you can capture a window, a pane or a region defined by yourself! This is an awesome timesaver. That capture can be saved as an image, uploaded directly to Flickr or to a defined FTP and after the upload it gives you the address to the image. Taking a picture is not enough? Don’t worry, Jing records video too, lets you narrate on the fly and saves the video in flash format. What else? It’s free! Now breathe, and lets get going. As for editing images to insert in the posts, you can either install software on your computer or you can use the online solutions that begin to appear in the web. I prefer to use installed versions that run on your computer, such as the multiplatform GIMP or the Windows Only Paint.NET, as they are more powerful, fast, and let you create a corporate image in a simpler way. But, imagine you are not in your computer, you have content to post and you are just missing the image part? Well, in that case, you could use some online image editors, such as the amazing Adobe Photoshop Express, the advanced FotoFlexer, the refreshing Picnik, or the fast and easy (yet, very complete) FlauntR.

Other Stuff:

I do use some other programs to do some arbitrary work. For example, I use FeedDemon to deal and organize my RSS subscriptions. It makes the job pretty simple, but it also has some powerful features like content filtering, offline reading and a “panic button” to mark as read items that you haven’t read in the past few days. You may be wandering: “Why don’t you use Google Reader?” Well… I prefer to use FeedDemon, as I find it faster to get my reading done, and I can also work cloud connected, because NewsGator Online syncs with your FeedDemon, as it uses the same account to keep tracks of your subscribed feeds, so that the syndication reading becomes optimized to the max, with the use of both. For my Twitter Updates, I use TweetDeck as my installed Twitter Client. TweetDeck lets you create groups of users, notifies of new updates, shortens URLs automatically, gives you a glimpse of what’s hot in Twittering, with a TwitterScoop Cloud, and shows much of the general twitter information like your friends updates, replies and direct messages all in one window. Last but not least, I use CutePDF Writer to convert documents into PDF’s.

Conclusion:

There are plenty of tools (most of them being free) that if are well used, can really help you optimize your Blogging experience, letting you work everywhere and in any computer. You can also check that you don’t need to be always online to blog, as the ideas come from your brain, and you just need a pen and paper so that you don’t forguet them. Get outside, talk to people and observe things… let the brainstorms begin! By the way, I will be releasing some complementary articles, from different points of view, to help people that want to VideoLog (Vlog) or PodCast, power up your twittering, WordPress optimization and some more. I hope you find this tips useful and… I wish you a good blogging!

Director: Ridley Scott.

Main Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Daryl Hannah, William Sanderson, Brion James, Joe Turkel, Joanna Cassidy.

Writers: Hampton Fancher, David Webb Peoples, Philip K. Dick.

My Rating: 9/10.

“Blade Runner” is a science fiction movie, directed by Ridley Scott in 1982 and based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, 1968, “Do androids Dream of Electric Sheep.” Is undoubtedly a work very ahead of its time, that can now be considered a cult film, because upon its realization, it covered topics too little in vogue, as the theme of the humanoids, the evolution of technology, the past and future of civilization, and all its surrounding themes.

The film begins with an apocalyptic vision of Los Angeles in 2019, with huge skyscrapers and a very dark scenario. It is here that rolls the action of the film, which provides a uniform view of the vision of it, adding some mystery and bringing us to use our imagination.

In this beginning we are given an introduction about the Nexus 6 Replicants (Developed by Tyrel Corporation, a company of Genetic Engineer Dr. Eldon Tyrell), made following the image of man, but almost indistinguishable, even to exceed men in strength and agility, and matching them in intelligence. It is also explained their use as slaves for humans in dangerous tasks, and the definition of the special police officers “Blade Runner’s”. It is also emphasized the fact that removing a Replicant, is not defined as to kill him but to send him to “retirement” thus eliminating the assimilation of life among humans and Replicants, putting an ethical label to the extermination of the machine.

Then, we are placed on the plot of the movie, where Harrison Ford embodies the role of Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner seconded to retire 6 Replicants who fled to earth, in a kind of rebellion, led by a Nexus 6, Roy Batty. The purpose of this rebellion is the search for the origin of their identity, and an attempt to prolong their life, because even though in some subjects, they were beyond the man, the Replicants only had 4 years of life, a measure imposed by the Tyrell Corporation in order to limit and control their action.

During the film, we also realize that to control the Replicants, beyond their limit of existence, they were given pictures and experiences of an imaginary past, therefore they could have bases to build a conscience and develop it. The Nexus 6 Replicants were awarded with that past and a series of photographs, so they could do associations and remember the images that have been impregnated, giving the process some sustainability and veracity. With this, we noticed that throughout the film is given great importance to the visual sense, as in fact, part of the images were associated with memories. It is also given importance to the eye itself, perhaps to emphasize the symbolism of visual memories, because the film begins with what we see through the reflection of an eye, the Replicants make a visit to Chew, an eye creator, which “guides” them to J. F. Sebastian, and the use of eyes in the Voight-Kampff test, a test used to distinguish between men and Replicants through involuntary expressions of empathy.

This also leaves us in the reluctance on the true identity of Deckard and the question if he is human or a Replicant, throughout the movie we see some compromising situations, such as the fact that Deckard had a collection of photographs as the Replicants, the police officer that followed him knew about the existence of his memories about an unicorn (shown by the origami that he left him) and even his passion for Rachel, a Replicant so advanced that was almost impossible to distinguish, who was capable to show feelings, affection and concern to Deckard. However, when Rachel asks Deckard whether he had already been subjected to the Voight-Kampff test, he hesitated and ended up not responding.

This same advanced demonstration of learning and character building is shown in the final parts of the movie, by the Replicant Roy, at the time of the final persecution, because we see that despite of the conflict, he ultimately saves Deckard, while giving him a morality lesson, proffering the words: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those … moments will be lost in time, like tears… in rain. Time to die.”

All of this, leads us to a path, with messages such as the problem of destruction of the environment and ecosystem, the possible consequences of policies such as capitalism and consumerism practiced today, which could lead to disproportionate enterprise power, the lack of freedom and an almost ubiquitous police presence to try to impose control in the population, the future and potential problems of genetic engineering, migration to foreign colonies as a way to start a new life (which can in some way remind the migration to the United States of America at the time of its colonization and occupation), all in a dark, mysterious, vague and distant environment.

Such an involvement created by the scenario and this whole mystery, leads us to reflect, and note that although the messages that are transmitted, the biggest mysteries are related to messages that are subliminally given during the film. What is an human being? What defines us as humans? What is reality? And who determines what reality is? What’s the limit of our perception? Undoubtedly an amalgam of philosophical questions that are gently released to our minds, making us reflect. As well as reflecting about the fact of living, quietly or with fear, with uncertainty of our origin, of where we came from and when will be our deadline.

Blade Runner is certainly a movie far ahead of its time, in large part by the speculation and questions that it raises, with a philosophical touch, which makes us even doubt of our own reality. In case you are a fan, or just plain curious about the movie after reading this analysis, view the trailer bellow or buy some Blade Runner related stuff like DVD’s, original sound track, T-Shirts, collectibles and so on!

Blade Runner: Movie Trailer.

(Final Cut version)

Back in November, I had an accident which caused an injured knee. Not a normal injury, but one of the worse things that can happen to a knee: a joint dislocation. This injury was caused by a really big hyper extension, which made the knee bend just too much (to the opposite side it is supposed to bend) completely breaking the Posterior Cruciate Ligament (PCL), the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL), and partially tearing the Lateral Collateral Ligament (LCL). This also caused the Common Peroneal Nerve (CPN) to get injured, leaving me with a partially paralyzed foot, due to CPN Palsy. It was all diagnosed through MRI’s, clinical exams, an electromyogram (EMG) and damn.. this whole process hurts a lot.

Accident and Diagnosis:

The injury happened in 8th of November 2008. It was a Saturday, and I was participating in a rally paper, an university event. My team was doing really good, until I slipped, one of my team mates slipped too, falling over me, and the knee broke. As simple and stupid as that. I sat down on the floor and stood still, with my leg all twisted. I tried to put the leg straight, but I just couldn’t. First, because of the ligaments that were broken, and second, because my leg just didn’t respond from the knee to the foot. You may seem surprised, but I didn’t had a lot of pain in the moment. Me and my mates waited for the ambulance, I then entered the emergency room in my local hospital, and waited for 3 hours until something was done. (It’s more important to save a life than a broken knee, and believe me, I do care about that, by experience.)  Then, I stayed for a week in the hospital, for observation. In spite of thinking that I was going to surgery after a week, the doctors sent me home for a full month of immobilization and rest, because the knee was so swollen and full of edemas that would complicate the surgery. These sure were some hard time, as I could not bend my leg for anything, and I was always under the effect of painkillers. After the first month, I returned to Hospital for the surgery. Another week in an Hospital bed, and some more nice room mates.

Surgery and Recovery:

The knee reconstruction surgery procedure consisted of an allograft for the ACL and PCL,  that is, the transplantation of ligaments from a cadaver source. The ligaments are fixed though the use of screws. It was a surgery of about 6 hours, with lots of recovery pain. (For you to have an idea, I was on morphine for two days, after the surgery, and with heavy painkillers for about a month and a half.) After another week in the hospital for observation, I finally went home. Started physiotherapy in January, doing things like Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS), Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS),  Cryotherapy nerve stimulation, Isometric and weight exercises for muscular reinforcement, Hydrotherapy, and lots more. By the way, the nerve regeneration process causes a lot of tingling, and sometimes can even become painful, because the sensation is so strong that it feels like burning.

Current State:

I’m still dealing with this, as the recovery time for the knee is about 6 to 8 months, because of the almost two months of immobilization, which caused a lot of muscle loss (in all I lost 6Kg, or 12,3 pounds), and the recovery of the nerve can take up to two years. I’m not fine, but I feel much better, since my knee is giving its first signs of strength and although I can’t still move my foot, I begin to feel sensations as touch and temperature. To help me with the palsy situation, I use an Ankle-Foot-Orthosis (AFO) which helps to stabilize the drop foot situation. It consists on an L-shaped piece of plastic, that runs along the sole of your foot and wraps to the back of your leg, on the upper calf, by the peroneal head. My actual Orthosis is from Otto Bock, and I’m very very satisfied with it, since it is much better than the first one. With this AFO I can put on normal shoes, and with the knee getting stronger, I can now even drive. I’m still recovering, and hope to recover the most that I can, but only time will tell. By the way, I’ve been taking pictures of my recovery since the accident. Get a look at some of them on my Flickr Gallery.

Track In My Head: Slipknot – Psichosocial

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