João Martinho - Personal home page

My name is João and I'm a computer science graduate and computer programmer. I use this page as my space on the web and to share things that interest me. Feel free to get in touch with me or check out my online profiles.

Interests and hobbies

  • Cinema - my favorite themes are historical drama, courtroom drama, and the mafia.
  • Computing - mostly infrastructure, operating systems, and cryptography.
  • Desktop Linux - the distribution I use is Debian with KDE (that I insist on calling Kool Desktop Environment).
  • Literature - I'm not a bookworm, but I do enjoy a few books. My favorite one is The Count of Monte Cristo.
  • Poetry - with a soft spot for the epic genre ever since I read The Lusiads in high school.
  • Video games - I've always enjoyed older games from the 1990s and 2000s.

Projects

My most significant personal project is ORBE, a web application based on Spring Boot and plain HTML/JavaScript that I wrote as my undergraduate thesis in 2025. Its purpose was to help professors and students in the CS department handle the document exchange required for the thesis preparation process.

Originally, the name Orbe was not an acronym, but a word referring to a sphere or globe, and in the context of my project it had no actual meaning; it was just a name I found pleasant-sounding and simple. Later, I decided to adopt it retroactively as a recursive acronym: ORBE Registra Boletins Eletrônicos (in English: ORBE Records Electronic Bulletins).

Additionally, I wrote EPUB Cleaner, a Shell script to normalize and standardize EPUB files according to a custom style sheet.

Recommended reading

  • Email Self-Defense - a complete and accessible guide by the Free Software Foundation on email encryption with PGP. Sometimes it feels way too much like a cypherpunk pamphlet, but still very useful. :)
  • End of 10 - everything you need to know about the end of Windows 10 support and the reasons to migrate your computer to Linux.
  • Keep Android Open - a protest initiative against Google's requirement to register all developers, which poses a threat to independent app stores and an open Android.
  • Use plain text email - a manifesto for the advantages of plain text over HTML for emails. Includes email client recommendations and step-by-step guides to configure them.

Contact

Times change, and with them change our desires;
Our being changes, and our confidence;
The whole world's framed of change in every sense,
Ever taking new qualities and fires.

Continuously we see novelty's tires,
Differing from custom in its consequence;
From ill we keep but memory's defense,
And from good (if any was) what sorrow spires.

— Camoens
Translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton