My steps to learning English - P2 I couldn't help myself, so I decided to look for another method to learn English and I found the Youtube tutorials. There are a lot of tutorials on Youtube about everything! If you like cooking you'll probably find a new way to bake that your Grandma recipe. If you like fixing your car, there are a lot of people on Youtube teaching you how to do that. And, what is even better, you can follow all these tutorials in English, which means that you will learn something new and meanwhile, practising your English speech. I do love painting! So I decided to watch some tutorials on Youtube. The first Youtuber that I've found was Lena Danya, who's a Russian artist that lives in Miami. She's really a great artist and she talks a lot during her timelapse videos. Even that she's not a native American , I can't figure out her accent so for me she speaks English very, very well. Also I've found this guy, Andrew Tischler. I don't know exactly where he is from, maybe Australia, maybe New Zealand...The fact is: He has a different accent but he speaks clearly and at end you can understand everything he says. And then finally I met her: Cynthia Sheppard. She's just the best painter on Youtube. She performs these amazing videos on Youtube and she has a so sweet voice! I almost pee on my paints when she starts talking. Also she gives importants tips about how you should behave to have your artwork recognized. When I started following tutorials, I was making real paintings with brushes, paints, canvas or woods. Because of Cynthia Sheppard, I started doing digital paintings on Photoshop. It was amazing, because I had the opportunity to learn how to handle with Photoshop and I got it from others tutorials on Youtube. Below there's a sample of a drawing that I've made following tutorials. It's a real graphite and charcoal drawing...

My steps to learning English - P1 So, everybody who's not a native English speaker is always looking for a way to learn English and they're always craving so hard to improve that. The most common behavior among Brazilians now is watching Youtube Videos from "gringos" who speak a little Portuguese. These "gringos" are getting a huge sucess among us and I have to say that some of them are really great, like Gavin Roy, from Small Advantages Channel, Marina, from LinguaMarina Channel, Tim, from TimExplica and others. Following the steps of those gringos, we got also some Brazilian Youtubers that are also very good teaching English, like Cintya Sabino (who's so sweet!), those guys from "Inglês Feito Fácil Channel" and Yes! You can learn a lot from them! Another common Behavior nowadays is watching Netflix series. People spend a lot of time watching series on Netflix and they use to say that's a miracle how they learn English easily this way. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for me. I like to watch series and even that I can understand about ninety percent of what they say, I can't store even a word or sentence in my mind 'cause I lose my mind following the history of the serie by itself and I can not get the real way as they speak, like their intonation, pauses and gaps. So even it being something funny to do, definetely it doesn't work for me.

My first Voice Recognition Application. I've seen many applications and websites about "how to learn English" or any other languages. Some of them dares to tell you that you can learn any languages in few days, just following their miraculous methods or just doing their exercises for a small portion of your day. As I am a beginner in this adventure of learning languages, I have to confess that I've downloaded uncontrollably these apps and I have many of them on my cellphone. Recently, I decided to learn French besides English. During this time that I've been learning English by myself without a formal school or course, I realized that I lost much time doing tasks and looking for miracles to learn grammar and others rules, when all that I really had to do was just speaking. Actually, listening and speaking. At this point, I got face to face with another problem. It is easy to listening any language on Youtube videos and it is also easy to read the subtitles. It is easy to produce some of those sounds too. But how could I know that I was producing the exacts sounds. Talking to a native was out of question, because of my shame and a small dose of shyness. Many application allow you to record your own voice and then compare it with the original spoken phrase. It is good, because you can try to imitate the intonation of the native speaker. Unfortunately, the tool that you have to make this comparison are your ears and it may bring you back to your first and unconfident question: "Am I speaking it correctly?". So I decided to develop my own application. One able to give me a reasonable feedback about my pronunciation. To write this application, I've chose the Microsoft.Speech SDK 11, that's free of charges and have some good voices. I've compiled about 4000 phases in French from internet, with the respective translation to English. My app picks up one phrase randomically each time. Then, a synthetized voice read it loud for me in French or English or both. I the same phrase in my microphone and the app gives me a note ("grade?") for my performance. Below, some screens of my app. Thank you for your time correcting this text.

Writting Technology Try Out It is almost the seventeen year of the twenty-one century. Now it is easy for us to touch deeply in the new languages technology. Today, you have online translators, online teachers, and tutors. You have spellchecks apps and you might talk to someone on the other side of the world at a real time. Now it is time to me to try out a new grammar corrector and this text were written under the supervision of Grammarly, a Chrome app that is supposed to make me write correctly. So, I was wondering: Did I write right this time? Because even that the Grammarly is the most mighty tool that I have ever seen to correct me, I still miss a human touch in its corrections. Do you agree with me?

Freebie or freebee? I was buying something in a website online and at the end of the deal, I wanted to ask the seller for a gift. But my weak English do not allowed me to get my intention. In that moment, I got a blank in my mind and I couldn't remember what word I could use to ask him for that: Freebie or Freebee? I still have this doubt, so, if someone would like to help me, I will be very glad.

My first Breakout board for printers. (third part) The printer has three LED to show it condition. The power LED is green and blink all time while the printer is doing its procedure to start. The paper LED is orange and it blinks to show that is a paper jam inside the printer. The Ink LED also is orange and blinks if there is an error in ink conditions. When the printer is ready to print, just the green LED keeps on. If there is a general error, all LED blinks. As I am going to turn this printer in a flatbed printer, I will need to skip some of these routines, in order to make my printer works automatically. So I have to skip the routines to check the paper, because I will not print in paper. Also I have to replace the motor that moves the paper on, because it is weak and I will need of one stronger enough to move the table where I want to place my cooper boards. I have developed a circuit board to read the setup of the printer. The core of this board is a PIC16F877, a micontroller that has 40 pins and some usefull functions that I will need to read the printer. The functions of the PIC16F877 that I will use are the interruptions INTB, INEX and the Timer0. The INTB interruption allows me to read the Paper Feed stepper motor. The INEX allows me to read the encoder of the axis motor. And the Timer0 interruption is just to sleep my Breakout board if not is going on in the printer. Because of the difference of signal that comes from the printer to my board, I need to use a circuit ULN2803, wich is an array of transistors. There is no way for me to change the AC motor that comes with the printer to handle the paper, so I will just read the position of the encoder and I will control a stepper motor with these signals. All the PortA of the pic16F877 is implemented to work as a reader of the LEDs status. As you can see in the picture of my Breakout board below, I am also using a Bluetooth Module that send to my PC on real time everything that happens in the printer. This way, I could know how many steps the Paper Feed motor does to turn its sensor on or off, how many pulses the encoder on axis motor needs to do an entire revolution and the status of the printer. The next step is to calculate the relation between the original encoder and the stepper motor that I will use to handle the new table of the printer. The encoder resolution is 0.0185 mm. per pulse and the driver that I will use to drive the stepper motor has a resolution of 0.0155 mm. per pulse. That is all for now. Thanks for read and for correct it.

My first Breakout board for printers. (second part) After over two hours making tests on the printer, I have figured out that the printer has a procedure to become ready to print. This procedure is composed by several test routines that check all the sensors in the printer. The biggest problem is that these routines are implemented at the same time. There are four optical sensors in the printer. Two of then are optical encoders. One in the axis motor, that send the paper ahead and control it position. One in the printhead axis, that control the position of printhead. There are two common optical sensors to check the paper feed. One is in the mechanism that catch the paper and another is over the axis and it checks if the paper is in the right position over the axis. Both work together. The printer also have a routine to check if the cleaner mechanism is working well and this check out is made by the encoder sensor under the printhead. To start up, printer works like this: 1) Check if the up encoder on the printhead is working fine. To do that it moves the printhead for few millimeters from right to left and then from left to right. 2) There is a kind of brace that hold the printhead on the right position, to avoid damages to it. This brace is handled for the cleaner mechanism. When the motor of cleaner goes unclockwise, release this brace and allows the printhed to go across all axis. If the cleaner mechanism is not working fine, the printer shows a general error. Else, 3)At the same time, the printer checks the Paper Feed sensor and the encoder of axis motor. On power on, the sensor of Peper Feed must be a high signal (3.3 V). So the printer moves the motor unclockwise until this signal is high and then clockwise until it is a low signal. At same time, it checks the motor axis encoder, moving few millimeters forward and backward. 4)Printer checks the Paper Sensor to see if there is a paper jam inside of it. If the signal is high, there is no paper jam. If the signal is low, there is a paper jam and to solve that, printer moves the axis motor quickly forward and at the same time, does an entire rotation in the mechanism of the Paper Feed. If paper sensor is still low after some distance, the printer shows a general error. 5)Some printers also check the cartridges to see if it is all ok, but this is not the case of the printer I have bought. 6)After that, printer checks in it memory if it is time to clean the printhead. This is not a complicated task, so doesn't matter. ....Again out of space to write.

My first Breakout board for printers. This is my first time here talking about my job. I will try to write using some technical terms, wich might be boring for you to read if you do not like of this topic. I am a computer engineer and my main job is the development of solutions for CNC machines. To make my job well, I need to work with printed circuit boards and it is not good to build in small quantities. You have to make a kind of handmate job to have a good prototype. Usually, I do like many people which have the same problem. One by one piece, printed by a laser printer and later transferred do a cooper board. This is a slow process and when you make a mistake, all that you can do is ask God for more pacience and redo everything. I went to the internet, looking for a good solution to my problem and I have found a lot of ways to make this job. The way that really moved me on was a single printer transformed to print directly over the cooper, using UV cure ink. These printers are exactly like this one that you must have at home or in your job, just suffer some transformation to accept the new ink and to print over solid materials like cooper sheets (in my case), glass, wood, cell cover and so on. The ink for these printer is an UV ink that just dry after be exposed to a source of UV light. They call that Flatbed Printers. If you do a search in the internet, you will find lots of these printers, some homemade, some Chinese brands. You will figure out that these printer might not be too expensive in your country, so you should not have any reason to make one yourself. But this is why you do not live in Brazil, a country of the thirdy world, like me. In every Chinese website that you see, you will find printers like that for less than $1000, but here you not pay less than $6500 and you are going to buy a kind of handmate printer that definetely is not good. If you choose to buy directly from abroad, you will not make a good business, because of the fees that you have to pay to our government. So I decided to make one myself. I bought a new Epson printer and I have expended around $700 on it. To change a common printer into a flatbed printer, the first thing that I had to do was learn how works a printer. After turn on it for the first time, I lost over two hours just making tests and recording all movements of the printer. I think that I will need more space to finish this entry...If you read this one, please take a look in the next entry. Thank you.

Estou a praticar Português. Estou a aprender português de Portugal. No texto de hoje, descreverei um facto acontecido no Brasil, em formato de matéria jornalística. Título: PRECISAVA DE CHEGAR EM CASA. Um jovem tinha indicações dos pais para estar em casa a horas, mas como a grande maioria dos mais novos, calculou mal o tempo e já estava atrasado para obedecer às ordens superiores. Estava no Terminal Metropolitano de Campinas, no Brasil, e foi então que teve a pior ideia possível – roubar o autocarro que ali estava estacionado, vazio e com as chaves na ignição. Parecia a solução para um problema que aparentava já não ter. O que se seguiu acabou por atrasá-lo ainda mais. Depois de conduzir o veículo ao longo de mais de 15 quilómetros, até à região de Valinhos, foi mandado parar pelas autoridades, que lhe pediram de imediato algo que não tinha, a carta para conduzir veículos pesados de passageiros. "Ele viu a chave na ignição e aproveitou o autocarro para ir embora", disse o sargento do Batalhão de Operações Especiais da Polícia Militar, Daniel da Silveira, explicando que a desculpa dada na altura da detenção parecia uma brincadeira, ele estava mesmo atrasado para chegar a casa, como conta o portal Globo. Além do autocarro, o jovem foi ainda apanhado com algum dinheiro e mais de 50 passes de autocarro. O jovem, que a polícia diz estar a ser acompanhado por sofrer de depressão, acabou por ser libertado. Quanto à multa, como já aconteceu a (quase) todos os jovens, acabou por ser paga pelo pai. P.S. Não consegui reeditar o título.