Went for a fun birthday party at scout hut in Hackney last night to celebrate Dr Dougie’s birthday. Around an open fire, looking at the scout’s honour and other plaques on the wall, I got talking to a guy called Nick. And we got talking about the Big Issue magazine, which Gibby Zobel used to work for. Funny thing is Nick told me Gibby is now working for Alijazeera (plus other outlets) in Brazil. Coincidentally we met Gibby at a mental health fundraiser in July 2003 with Shirley’s brother Junior. Gibby was off back to Sao Paulo to work, and we wished him luck, so it’s great to see it’s worked out for him. It was nice to hear he’d landed a job and a funny coincidence that it was with the Alijazeera TV station which is in the news with the leaked memo about the planned bombing of the station by Bush the US President (thanks to Meg for the link to this nice Bush satirical interactive). And finally, check out Gibby’s audio recording of Man City beating Man U 4-1 in March 2004 with commentary in full-flowing Brazilian.
Category Archives: Brazil
The Brazilian connection
I had a very pleasant journey back to London in the company of Nicholas Wood-Dow who was at the conference to promote open source software. We touched base on a few topics including Brazil and the connection between the Brazilian ambassador’s wife Lucia Flecha da Lima and Princess Diana, open source software of course (the best example in the public sector being its use by the German Government), and even the Cambridge connection (him Cath’s & me Christ’s). I mentioned I had worked briefly for Linux User magazine (which also included contributions from Dr Douglas Carnall), and said I thought an article on how NASA has used GNU/Linux could motivate key policy makers who love shuttles and space stations and all the rest.
Nick also mentioned the fact that another Nick – Nicholas Negroponte – chairman and founder of the MIT Media Labs, has produced a sub-$100 PC to run on Linux and as I found out is aimed at children in Brazil, as well as China, Egypt, Thailand, and South Africa. It was launched at the the World Summit on the Information Society earlier in November.
