Sleepless in Brazil

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Since September 24th I've been speaking in Brazil at JUGs, Universitys,
and at Sun Tech
Days as part of the September
Month of Java in Brazil .



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I spoke on September 24  in Maringa to ~500 JUG
members/students/professors, September 25 in Toledo to ~ 500, 
September 26 in  Xanxere to ~ 200, September 27 in Porto Alegre to
~70, and in Sao Paulo there were ~1000 attendees.   We spoke in a
different location each evening which meant
going to sleep late and waking up early the next morning to travel to
the next location.  The guys organizing this obviously do not
value sleep
and time to run (I'm a avid runner)  as much as I do !   They
also
don't have the same conception of safety, our driver was going 90mph on
a 2
lane road with oncoming traffic which didn't phase Bruno and Eduardo,
whereas I was seriously praying to God for my life
!! :)  The attendees in each city were very friendly and
enthusiastic which compensated for the difficult schedule  (but
next time I will insist on more time to travel between destinations!)
.   Also we drove close to the beautiful  href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igua%C3%A7u_Falls">Iguaçu_Falls 
and we flew through the beautiful href="http://www.guiafloripa.com.br/">Florianópolis 
(note to self,  next time make sure to schedule a little time to
rest
and see noteworthy sites ;) .



During this trip I spoke on:

• Building an application with Java EE,  Spring, or
  Seam.  Here are the href="https://techdayscode.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=9988&expandFolder=9988&folderID=9988">slides
  and here are some blogs related to the slides
  • href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2007/05/pagination_of_d.html">Sample
    Application using JSF, Catalog Facade Stateless Session, and Java
    Persistence APIs
    
  • href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2008/01/sample_applicat_5.html">Sample
    Application using JSF, Spring 2.5, and Java Persistence APIs
  • href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2008/01/sample_applicat_4.html">Sample
    Application using JSF, Seam 2.0, and Java Persistence APIs on Glassfish
    V2
  • href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2007/07/sample_applicat_1.html">Sample
    Application using JSF, Seam, and Java Persistence APIs on Glassfish
• Connecting the world with REST. Here are the href="https://techdayscode.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=9988&expandFolder=9988&folderID=9988">slides
  and here are some blogs related to the slides
  • href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2008/09/screencast_abou.html">screencast
    on a RESTful Comet application
  • href="http://developers.sun.com/appserver/reference/techart/cometslideshow.html">RESTful
    Web Services and Comet
    
  • href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2008/08/a_restful_pet_c_1.html">RESTful
    Pet Catalog
    
• MySQL for developers. Here are the href="https://techdayscode.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=9988&expandFolder=9988&folderID=9988">slides
  and here are some blogs related to the slides
  • href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2008/09/mysql_for_devel.html">MySQL
    for Developers
  • href="http://blogs.sun.com/enterprisetechtips/entry/combining_groovy_grails_mysql_and">Combining
    Groovy, Grails, MySQL, and the Java Persistence API
  • href="http://developers.sun.com/appserver/reference/techart/cometslideshow.html">RESTful
    Comet application using MySQL
    
• Hands On Lab:
  Learn to Build Reliable and Secure Web Services using JAX-WS and WSIT
  here is the link to dowload this lab and some related blogs:
  
  • Metro™:
    try
    out simple and interoperable web services
  • href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2007/09/sample_applicat_3.html">Sample
    Application using JAX-WS, JSF, Spring, and Java
  • href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/caroljmcdonald/archive/2007/09/sample_applicat_2.html">Sample
    Application using JAX-WS, JSF, EJB 3.0, and Java
    

I learned a little about Brazil in conversations over dinner:

It was good that USA
kicked out the Brits before we discovered gold, because the Portuguese
took away a lot of Brazil's gold. USA has probably had more
economic stability (until recently) because we always had a
strong middle class, whereas in Brazil historically there was a href="http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908770.html">big gap between the
rich and poor with the wealth concentrated in a small percent of
the population, however this has been href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6993546.stm"> improving
recently. 

Brazil had really bad
inflation during the 1970s, ~ 25% per month !  Brazillians
told me they used to take their salary check and buy food for the whole
month the same day.  But now the Brazillian
inflation is under control, they paid off their debt,  and the
economy is doing well. Last year they received more foreign investment
than any other country.  

Last year Brazil made a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/11/08/brazil.oil.ap/">
huge oil discovery  which could raise Brazil's petroleum
reserves by
~40 percent and boost Brazil into the ranks of the
world's major exporters (drill baby drill) .  Brazillian cars are
required to run on a gas ethanol  mixture and they have a very
cost-effective process to produce ethanol from sugar cane. Brazil's
sugar cane-based industry href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil#Comparison_with_the_United_States">
is far more efficient than the U.S.
corn-based industry. Sugar cane ethanol has an energy balance 7 times
greater than ethanol produced from corn , and Brazil's sugar cane
based ethanol industry has not caused food prices to increase.

Bruno told me that
he grew up near the amazon forest and used to swim in rivers with
piranhas,  he said they don't bite unless you have a cut and are
bleeding, can you imagine swimming with these things ?

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Here are some photos from my trip :



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