{"id":775,"date":"2014-10-31T06:35:37","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T06:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ofalcao.pt\/blog\/?page_id=775"},"modified":"2019-01-12T19:22:20","modified_gmt":"2019-01-12T19:22:20","slug":"775-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ofalcao.pt\/blog\/775-2","title":{"rendered":"Major Alvega"},"content":{"rendered":"

Major Alvega is a fictional hero from my childhood favorite comic magazine, “O Falc\u00e3o”.<\/p>\n

My real name is Jorge.<\/p>\n

I am an Electrical Engineer by formation but systems administrator by chance.<\/p>\n

Married, owl father<\/a> of 2.<\/p>\n

Recently returned from the LEGO’ Dark Night thanks to a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set that my wife gave me us a birthdat present. Then discovered the Raspberry Pi, the Portuguese LEGO community<\/a>, the ev3dev<\/a> project, the LEGO MCP and not even God knows what more will come…<\/p>\n

I don’t really have a focus in a particular area but I do like to demonstrate STEM concepts to my kids and I like to use to use LEGO as a framework or a tool for that purpose. So usually my \u201cLEGO things\u201d are more focused on showing some kind of functionality instead of looking nice. That also means that I fall to the Dark Side quite often, cutting some LEGO wires, soldering, gluing or painting something \u2013 hey, not my fault that LEGO doesn\u2019t make LASER or UV bricks \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Also quite often my small proof of concepts tend to grow too much and too fast. My first “Raspberry Pi and LEGO” project, an escalator, wasn’t tall enough for my older kid… trying to find more liftarms I soon found that there is a large online market of second hand LEGO… I was doomed!<\/p>\n

When I started this blog, I often stated that I am not a programmer. I used some programming languages at university but I really never learned how to program so most of my coding is in fact a lucky mix of googling, copy&past and try&error iterations. Nevertheless, after some experiments with Bluetooth Low Energy protocol, I found myself doing something that might resemble real code thanks to the generosity of lots of people that opened their source to the world. Some even directly helped me!<\/p>\n

So yes, I strongly support openness. Not just open source but open idea – science evolves “on the shoulders of giants” but also on the shoulders of lots of anonymous people who keep pushing it a bit further every day. That’s one of the reasons I like so much to use ev3dev<\/a> with the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 – the possibilities are truly amazing.<\/p>\n

Strong coffee, dark beer, apple-cinnamon, Xutos&Pontap\u00e9s and Martini complete the whole pack.<\/p>\n

You might also find me at:<\/p>\n