Marco was born in Portuguese Mozambique,
Southeast Africa, on 27.Jan.1974. After the independence of the Portuguese
colonies, his family returned to the mainland.
In 2012, he was the first civilian to
complete his military masters and, in 2017, the first
known person to compute the Information Metric in the
“field”.
In November 2016, he was at his PhD
Supervisor's house in the North of Portugal, Guarda, to
have some Information Theory teachings.
November 2016, he was at his PhD Supervisor's house in
the North of Portugal, Guarda, to have some
Information Theory teachings.
Information Theory class — 17.Nov.2016
In July 2013, he was in a PhD seminar at
IADE
university with Professor
Carvalho Rodrigues and the Professor's doctoral
students.
PhD Seminar in IADE — 11.Jul.2013
Master of Science in Information Warfare, by Academia
Militar Portuguesa in 2012, with the average: 16/20
(Very good). Dissertation grade “Relativist
Theory of Cyberterrorism”: 18/20 (Excellent).
He was the first civilian and person to complete this
course.
Master's defence — 27.Sep.2012
On 7.Nov.2012 he
received a reward from bank Santander Totta for his
course final grade: €1000. He was the only civilian to
receive a prize at the Opening Ceremony for the school
year 2012/2013.
Reward for the
dissertation's grade — 7.Nov.2012
Marco holds a pre-Bologna licentiate degree
in Computer Science Management,
by Universidade Moderna de Lisboa
in 1999, with the average: 14/20
(Good).
A life dedicated to computers⠀
In 1986, aged 12, he entered the world of computers with the
acquisition of a computer TC 2048. He soon began coding in
BASIC, later in Z80 Assembly, reading British speciality
magazines and corresponding with many people.
In 1991, he moved to the Amiga platform,
where he coded shareware and freeware. He received a
proposal from a Norwegian company to market one of his
shareware programs that came on the cover disk of a
popular British magazine.
With the bankruptcy of Commodore in the 1990s, the Amiga
computer was no longer manufactured. His activity as a coder
almost ceased.
In 1995, he went to university and started using PCs. He
quickly adapted to the computer and software because of his
computer background.
In July 2001, he returned to coding as a hobby on the PC
using the DarkBASIC language. He founded the group “Team
SpecNG” with the purpose of remaking ZX Spectrum
games for the PC.
In
January 2012,he began
tocodein the language BlitzMaxfor
Windows,Linux,andMac.This languagewas
difficult to use, the
documentation poor, andthe technical supportin theforum bad.
In March 2013, he moved to the language PureBasic, whose
documentation and operation were much better than in
BlitzMax.
In April 2020, he began to code in Unity.
Beta tester/QA/UX of various software, where it stands out:
— AmigaOS 3.5 & 3.9 for the company HAAGE
& PARTNER;
— Commodore OS Vision 1.0 for the company Commodore
USA, LLC;
— Thunderbird for the organisation Mozilla
Foundation;
— LibreOffice for the organisation The Document
Foundation.
His testing/QA/UX approach to software is very simple: he
interacts with the software like he was a 6-year-old child.
If its use is straightforward then the software is
well-designed, if not, it requires improvements. It is as
simple as this.
Translator of texts/manuals from English to Portuguese:
Pretty Good Privacy 2.6.3i, Gpg4win, OpenSlides,
LanguageTool, DVD2one, DALnet, Alex Chiu's website,
CardBook (add-on Thunderbird), etc. Good knowledge
of translating using Pootle, Transifex, Crowdin and
WebTranslateIt.
Portuguese rules, spelling and morphological dictionaries'
maintainer of the grammar checker LanguageTool for Microsoft
Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird,
Chrome, etc.
Developer of the open-source linguistic tool Proofing
Tool GUI (PTG) to edit dictionaries, thesauri,
hyphenation, autocorrect, and other basic language tasks. “Forked” the British
dictionary on 25.Aug.2013
adding 140 000+ words to this date. It was made
available for Linux, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Firefox,
Thunderbird, etc. It works with all software accepting
Hunspell dictionaries' files. Improved the Portuguese
autocorrect for LibreOffice using PTG.
Contacted numerous companies/organisations/individuals
during the years, proposing improvements to their
websites/products/software.
In June 2017, he was offered a sticker by The Document
Foundation for his commitment to LibreOffice:
In December 2019, he was offered stickers and a mug by The
Document Foundation for his commitment to LibreOffice:
In November 2023, he was offered stickers by The
Document Foundation for his commitment to LibreOffice: