👶 From when Mosaic took over Gopher.
🏢 VP of Engineering @ Cloudflare
🕹️ Slightly addicted to retrocomputing
Hacking a cheap video upscaler
The ingenuity of combining open-source and open hardware in retro computing is a force of creativity and marvel these days.
One of the conundrums with running old computers nowadays is how you display video. I love CRT monitors; I’m a proud owner of a classic 1084S that I use with my C128DCR, but they’re not easy to find in good condition, are expensive, and are increasingly prone to failure with passing years.
…Building a Frankenstein 64
Last year, I decided that I was going to build a Commodore 64 from scratch. This is the blog documenting the project.
It’s no secret that I love fiddling with retro computers, especially those I owned when I was a kid. When I revisit ancient technologies and hardware that were part of my younger years, I’m overwhelmed with that warm nostalgia feeling. But it’s not only that. Understanding how old computers work is also educational and helps me look at the modern world with a wiser perspective.
…The Cloudflare Lisbon office is growing
It’s happening. The Cloudflare Lisbon office is growing, and I’m excited to announce we just opened six new positions for a new engineering team we’re creating.
We’re specifically looking for candidates based in Lisbon. This team will be working on data insights and special projects for Cloudflare. We operate with small groups of highly motivated and experienced software, data science, and network engineers who like to solve problems, and we work to meet both the challenges of a massively growing customer base and our internal department’s needs.
…Blog migrated to Cloudflare Workers
This blog just migrated to Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare’s serverless edge computing solution, because you know, it rocks.
This is the workflow I had in mind:
- I write a new blog post using markdown.
- I can test things locally before going live.
- When done, I git add the new post to my repo, then push it to Github.
- Website gets burned to static files.
- Website is published to the cloud at Cloudflare.
- I get a success/failure notification in my Telegram.
- Done, it’s live.
My goal was to fully automate this sequence of events.
…Round 3
Here I go again.
It’s been almost five years since I got the courage to end a twenty-year cycle with SAPO and, together with a group of eleven courageous co-founders, decided to create one of the first company builder studios in Portugal.
The rebels in an apartment. The office before The Office, where plans were being made for the soon to be.
On the 20th of April 2016, we launched Bright Pixel at Emenda 19 in partnership with SonaeIM.
…Writing a C64 Asssembly Demo
This is a pure 6510 assembly program for the Commodore 64 made by Bright Pixel in 2019, because why not.
The C64 was a famous 8-bit machine in the 80s and the highest-selling single computer model ever.
Its hardware and architecture set it appart from other 8-bit personal computers at the time. Unlike most of the others, the C64 had dedicated advanced MOS chips for graphics and sprites (the VIC-II), sound (the SID), I/O (the CIA), and many others.
…Writing a ZX Spectrum game
As part of our T-shirt challenge this year at Pixels Camp, we decided that one of the steps would require the hunter to access some sort of retro-computer in the venue, enter some secret codes, and get the instructions for the next step, if successful. As some of you know, I’m a sucker for all things 8-bit. I had multiple Spectrum and C64 machines in my youth (still own a few today) and at that age, I was somewhat proficient at BASIC, Z80 and 6510 assembly code. I remember the days when all we had were the occasional programming magazine in the kiosk and the help of our close-by IRL friends. There was no Internet, no online PDFs, nothing. Access to information was expensive and scarce.
…Culture
I have a boat
Since I left SAPO last year, after an almost exactly 20-year incredible ride, many have been asking me to talk and share on what went good and bad with my career. I guess I’m now seen as the old experienced business guy with grizzled hair who went through a shitload of problems, was able to overcome some, and can probably provide inspirational insights to the next generations. Kind of sad, in a way. It’s either this or they just think I’m a good entertainer.
…The EU Cookie Law is dead
It’s a fact that Facebook and Google (including Youtube) own a sizeable chunk of the global internet traffic and their competitive advantage boils down to two things: computing power and data. These two giants’ core businesses depend exclusively on tracking us to our tiniest move and correlating what they know about us across their products and platforms. And boy, do they know about us.
Eric Schmidt once said, “The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.”.
…Reboot
Celso and SAPO are ‘finito’
Este é o momento em que deixo o SAPO, o projeto que ajudei a criar há 20 anos nas catacumbas da Universidade de Aveiro juntamente com o Junior, o Hélder, o Sérgio, o João Luís e o “Cooker”.
No dia 23 de Outubro de 2015, por volta das 18 horas, apresentei a minha carta de demissão ao presidente executivo da PT Portugal. Antes disso, mais precisamente no dia 4 de Setembro, dia do vigésimo aniversário do SAPO, por motivos que por pudor provavelmente nunca relatarei, tomei em consciência a decisão de o fazer. Horas antes cantava os parabéns com a equipa e apagava as velas do bolo em cima do coreto na Praça José Fontana. Fi-lo com um sorriso postiço, danado com o que o destino me tinha reservado para este dia de celebração. Finalmente entendi, em plenitude, o que era a tal solidão da liderança de que os outros me falavam.
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