Monday, December 29, 2008

XPSP2

After installing Windows XP SP2 one spends about 12 hours downloading updates...:(

Friday, November 07, 2008

Tanning

Do read the italian newspapers, for added comedy value.

Bad designed forms.

What is the "confirm email address" field for? For people that touch type with their eyes closed? I think they should leave it out as a preliminary filter...

General merriment

Although is understandable to be happy when your favourite candidate wins, I am a bit puzzled to see all the merriment as if the battle was won. I see a dangerous confusion between the significance of the recent elections and the expectations from the winning candidate. If you supported Obama and his ideas, then the victory should only mean to you that the majority of the Americans agree with you, they are moved by the same ideals. You could go as far as saying that you're happy because maybe there is hope for some of the other countries where these ideals don't have that much success.

But this is far from saying that your expectations have been fulfilled. You can just hope that they will, in the years to come. You can hope that the policies will be implemented, and you can hope that once implemented they will work. This victory is surely a step forward for the human kind, but is a bit early for all the merriment.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Good trailers

The trailer of burn after reading is definitely one of the best trailers ever. The movies comes out quite late in the UK, but doesn't matter, I can watch the trailer more!

On a side note, all films with a scene of someone backlit that walks into light gradually should be banned. Uh, I said this already. Nevermind.

Recursion

A child couldn't sleep, so her mother told her a story about a little frog,
who couldn't sleep, so the frog's mother told her a story about a little bear,
who couldn't sleep, so the bear's mother told her a story about a little weasel...
who fell asleep.
...and the little bear fell asleep;
...and the little frog fell asleep;
...and the child fell asleep.

(Via squonk + wharfinger)

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Red somewhere.

Props to JT for seeing this deal through. Selling ML at $50 billion on the same day GS is valued at 60 billion seems like a terrific deal to me.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Helpful mail 3

Dear Application Developer,

A Facebook user requested that we forward an anonymous report that your application My movies (application ID #7005215677) is violating Facebook Terms of Use. The user selected "" as the violation category. Any text entered into the additional comments box appears here:

Begin User Text

I can't make it work

End User Text

To protect the privacy of our users, we cannot disclose any further information. Facebook is not taking any action against your application based on this particular report, but we are passing this along so you are made aware of potential problems and respond accordingly to ensure you are in compliance. Please note that failure to comply with the Terms may result in an enforcement action.

If you have any issues or questions, please don't hesitate to contact us by sending an email to developers-help@facebook.com.
Clueless user.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Helpful mail 2

Dear Application Developer,

A Facebook user requested that we forward an anonymous report that your application My movies (application ID #7005215677) is violating Facebook Terms of Use. The user selected "" as the violation category. Any text entered into the additional comments box appears here:

Begin User Text

Please can you help m?
How can I upload my video at facebook

End User Text

WTF.

Friday, September 12, 2008

MSN spam

Hey, I would like to chat with you but I can not get msn to stay online.
You you can send me a chat request here http://#####.blogspot.com
My name on the site it kellylove :P

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Vodafone passport

Oggi in aeroporto c'erano milioni di cartelli che pubblicizzavano la tariffa passport. In pratica paghi 1 euro alla risposta e poi paghi la tariffa nazionale. In realta' e' una mezza maialata per come lo pubblicizzano: induce a pensare che siccome chiamare un cellulare italiano dall'estero (Europa) costa 0.55 eur/min con l'euro alla risposta inizia a convenire dopo 2 minuti di chiamata.

In realta' cio' sarebbe verso solo se la tariffa nazionale fosse zero, mentre, a seconda dei piani, puo' essere tipo 0.30 eur/min, che sposta cioe' la soglia del risparmio (con la tariffa passport invece di quella normale) a circa 4 minuti. Sotto i 4 minuti e' invece piu' costosa, fino al doppio se la chiamata e' sotto il minuto.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Screws

I had a weird problem with the wireless led blinking at something like 10Hz, with the card turning on and off at the same rate (resulting in very very very bad connection and sometimes CPU 100% to process ACPI events).

It took 30min to take the whole laptop apart (list of sony service manuals) and then it turned out to be a loose screw that was causing the hardware switch to "bounce". Tightened it and it's all good.

There is also now 1 less screw inside my laptop.

I can see this coming

If I was at plaza...I would have a look at this.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Falsi d'autore.

Si scopre che la foto in prima pagina della Stampa di oggi (Sarah Palin sulla copertina di Vogue) e' falsa. E' un lavoro di photoshop fatto su internet da qualcuno nel 2007, che di colpo e' stato pensato vero da quelli della Stampa (e del Corriere, nelle pagine internet).

Googlando per vogue cover si vede abbastanza chiaramente nella lista quali sono vere e quali sono false...mi chiedo come entrambi i piu' autorevoli quotidiani italiani non abbiamo fatto la stessa ricerca, o chiamato Vogue, o controllato in qualsiasi altro modo prima di titolare.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Helpful mail

Dear Application Developer,

A Facebook user requested that we forward an anonymous report that your application My movies (application ID #7005215677) is violating Facebook Terms of Use. The user selected "" as the violation category. Any text entered into the additional comments box appears here:

Begin User Text

How do you remove it?

End User Text

To protect the privacy of our users, we cannot disclose any further information. Facebook is not taking any action against your application based on this particular report, but we are passing this along so you are made aware of potential problems and respond accordingly to ensure you are in compliance. Please note that failure to comply with the Terms may result in an enforcement action.

If you have any issues or questions, please don't hesitate to contact us by sending an email to developers-help@facebook.com.

Thanks,

Facebook


Reply:

Hi Facebook,

It looks to me that the report is not about the my app violating the Terms of Use, but is actually about a user that

1) can't find how to remove the app.
2) can't find how to ask for help through the right channels.

I will be happy to assist the user, otherwise could you kindly point him/her towards the x button?

Kind regards,

PF

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Customer Service

There is something evil in the way sometimes people in call centers answer saying "I am really sorry to hear that you ... I will do my best to..": no you are not, and no, you won't.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Silhouette

Stanno diventando un po' banali (forse anche i miei post).


Raccomandazioni

Oggi in ufficio ho visto un cartello che offriva soldi (e pure parecchi) per chi raccomandava un amico o un parente per qualche posizione, e poi quel qualcuno poi veniva assunto.

La fiducia nel processo di assunzione e nell'onesta' della gente?

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

£100 for apple.

Say you have £100 to spend at the apple store...what would you buy, say, now or max in a month time?

Friday, June 27, 2008

Busy life 2

Thursday:
7:00 alarm
8:00 catch the tube to work
6:00 come back from work
7:15-late dinner with work people

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Childern wear.

Size 8 stuff available at reduced VAT...just got some boots for a tenner!

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Lucky Day

Congratulations - You recently completed the [] Candidate Assessment Centre Questionnaire and have been selected from the prize draw to win £100 Apple Store Voucher.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Busy life

Saturday:
10-17 working on the project,
17 run home and get changed, dinner
19-03am summer ball

Sunday
11:45 wake up
12-13 Mass
13-14 lunch
14-18 work on project
18 grand father pickpocked (all documents needed to flight on mon)
18-19 various phone calls with relatives and embassy (while working on project)
19-22:45 dinner with relatives + move sisters bags to hotel + work on project presentation

Monday:
6:45 wake up, shower breakfast etc
8am catch tube, say goodbye to sister (leaving)
9am start 1st day of work
17:30 finish work, run to the tube
18:30 meeting with Dramsoc to decide next term plays
19:30 quick dinner
20-23 work on presentation
23-01am hair dressing (I love straighteners)

Tuesday:
7:10 wake up too late, breakfast run to the tube
8:45 start financial training
17:30 finish financial training run home
18:30 run to college to finish presentation
23:30 back home

Wednesday

6:30 alarm
8:00 setup for presentation
9:00-13:00 presentation + demonstration
13:00 run to work
17:00 tube back to college
17-18 principal officer training
18-19 financial officer training (otherwise they freeze the budget)
21-23 dramsoc's play, Much Ado About Nothing

Monday, June 23, 2008

Not so live from ICSB 2008

I've now update the pictures for your viewing pleasure. Just as a comparison, these are the pictures from summer ball 2002.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Live from ICSB 2008

The Marqee in the quad has a d&b Q-series array, stacked on the floor. The DJ is within a trilite cube, 3x5x3 or something like that.

There are 30 of that sort of pixel lines (I'll find out what they are), 6 studio beam rigged, 4 strobes rigghed on the front uprights, 2 of which rotating. In additon 4 projectors project some video loops on the 4 sides of the marquee (in diffenrent size)

(Picture to follow)


Live from ICSB 2008

After finding out that 101 in the union is 2.50£ and elsewhere 3£ I feel sad.

Live from ICSB 2008

Dbs is setup as Dbs us usual, + some d&b M4 as monitors and a M7CL. Lighting as usual. The bands are pretty good but unfortunately nobody cares about them. At all.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Live from ICSB 2008

Most of the light in the great hall is provided by the two house lights left on on the rake.

On stage, 2 wind up stands hold a trilite bar above the DJ with 4 MAC 2000 (2 wash 2 profile) and 8 half pixlelines sort of thing. On the floow 2 Mac 2000 profile and 4 mac 500 move around. All is controlled by a Vista. The DJ is lit by the in-house profiles on the side bars.

Behind the DJ the screen is back projected with some nice video.

Sound is provided by Nexo array (5 elements + subs) stacked on stage. (Nothing is flown). Subs under the stage.

(photos to follow)




Live from ICSB 2008

The MDH setup is the following:

2 trilite cubes (2x2x3) which 4 profiles each (open white pointing at the ceilig mirror balls). 1 Mac 500 each and 2 roboscans each. One of the scans has a broken mirror.

On the ceiling there are 15 mirror balls (I think 12" or 15"), the ones with the little battery powered motor. 3 of them aren't spinning

(photos to come later)

Update:

the band is lit by 2 profiles, and some (4?) led bars on the floor. They have 2 monitors + one comms headset for the drummer. The PA are two W-audio speakers (15" + tweeters by the looks of it), controlled by a Yamaha desk (either the 02R96, or the DM1000, they are quite difficult to distinguish in the dark) Over all they sound pretty good I have to say.


Live from ICSB 2008

The rides are very good! The going round spinning thing is really fun, looking forward to go on it again a bit more drunk!

There is also the merrygoround, bumper cars and another very scary spinning thing.

Much better than last year!

Live from ICSB 2008

Greeted by the 7 LED parcans on the queens't tower, flashing on demo mode all the colours of the rainbow, I am ready fom the first pint of the wide selection of beers, from the set of all beers

X = {x | x = carsberg (2£) V x = 101 (3£)}.


Friday, June 06, 2008

Does this include leathermans?

Saw this bcc gordon brown thing:
We are not out to criminalise people who have a good reason for being in possession of a knife, but frankly what good reasons would a youngster have for even carrying a penknife?
Commendable, I just hope cutting tangles of electric tape, removing cable ties and slicing salami are good reasons!

Respect.

I think one of the key traits of Tony Soprano is that when he receives an apology he just goes away. Like that, without saying "it's ok". And is not he doesn't care, he does, he really wanted it. But not, he goes away. Like that.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Badger.

Nella pessima traduzione di quest'intervista, il corriere ci fa scappare pure il, per così dire, refuso.

Tra l'altro, il badget era molto basso...

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

NaN

The price currently displayed for some water in Sainsburys's is:
80p for 2l, NaN for 100ml.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

screen 6

Screen 6 is definitely the best one at cineworld fulham rd. It's rather small and usually movies that have been around for a while end up down there, but sometimes might be worth to wait.

Are belong to us

Today in a piece of code we found this wonderful error message:
if(hComPort == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
printf("COM port can not being opened\n");
return FALSE;
}

Friday, May 16, 2008

Ipse Dixit.

Even if God is dead, you're still gonna kiss his ass.

(Tony Soprano)

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Cartografi

Leggo e ripropongo qui, lol.

Last fm tags

Here two suggestions for a tag to start a radio:

sad (easy listening songs, generally not sad at all)
sopranos (punchy rock songs [including muse, rolling stones...], or weird unknown artist. Generally very interesting)

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Style (2).

I just realised that I really like Lorraine Bracco. I think she's really uber cool, I wish they offered her some other good part.

get flv from repph.

One thing that sucks about streaming in flash is that the flash player on linux uses al lot of CPU, especially full screen an doesn't interpolate very well.

The solution is to download the flv file and play it on mplayer or whatever else. Here's a small script that does it from repph:

#!/bin/bash
wget $1 -O page.html
axel -o $2.avi -a $(egrep file=.*flv page.html |sed 's/^.*file=//' |sed 's/&.*$//')
rm page.html

Style

There is something in the way Patrick Dempsey talks that reminds me so much of Robert De Niro.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Ipse dixit.

Now fuck off and die, you fucked up slag.


(Possibly one of the best lines from closer (2004/I), which I loved)

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Dear PB writers.

Dear Prison Break writers,

It is my duty to inform you that a gunshot playing from a loud speaker can not possibly be mistaken for a real gun firing at you. Please redo episode 3x12.

Thanks.

Pietro

Drunkness vs drinking.

Drinking alcohol is now banned on the Tube.

Is this against drunk people on the Tube? It would be if drunk people were drinking. But it seems to me that if you're drunk you're unpleasant on the Tube much more than someone not drunk who's drinking.

So the real thing that is annoying is drunken behaviour on public transport, and not drinking.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Cose fatte bene.

Forse una delle cose migliori di Prison Break e' la colonna sonora.

Monday, May 05, 2008

T-bag.

Despite the fact that he is bad, my favourite character is T-bag. Ok, he is real bad. But I still sort of like him.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Voto agli immigrati.

Io oggi vado a votare. Alle amministrative di Londra. Non ho dovuto riempire nessun modulo, ne' fare niente, mi e' arrivata per posta una cartolina che dice "vai li' tra le 7am e le 10pm" e scegli tra i 10 candidati sindaco. Si puo' votare anche per delega, pensa un po'.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Politica inglese.

Ora qui c'e' un dibattito perche' il leader dell'opposizione ha chiamato il primo ministro "loser". E gli dicono che sta rendendo la politica un teatrino eccetera.

Principianti.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Correlation.

The cross correlation between all DSP questions of all times is equal to 0.

Friday, April 18, 2008

S&TC voiceover

Every time I watch a bit of Sex and The City (yesterday I happened to watch the trailer of the movie) I can't help to notice how much I don't like the voiceover recording (I think is Jessica Parker talking).

It sounds like dry and horrible, like someone recording in a cheap mic in their bedroom. Maybe is an effect they want to achieve on purpose for some reason, but just compare to the voice of Mary Alice in Desperate Housewives to hear what I think is a much better production.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Politiche 2008.

Alla fine, tra tutti i mali, almeno la situazione pare "sbloccata". In bene o in male qualcosa si muovera'. Non inizieranno mica a scavare?

Monday, April 14, 2008

Grillo solare.

Il buon Filippo Facci si scaglia contro Grillo perché nonostante sia ecologista, pannello solare eccetera ha un contatore da 20kW.

Ora, ma un giornalista che scrive su una testata importante, come fa a misurare i consumi di qualcuno così? I kW del contatore si riferiscono alla potenza erogabile, non alla potenza erogata.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Subtitles.

French subtitles are possibly the only thing that is worse than chinese subtitles!

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Waste of time.

One of the worse things Facebook could have done is to roll out the translate in Italian thing in Exam Time!

Neve.

Qui nevica fitto, con fiocchi grandi.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Oh my God.



(mio nonno, a 86 anni, usa internet senza grossi problemi!)

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Fixing man color output.

It took me 1h to find the damn solution: add the -c option to groff, troff and jroff in /etc/man.conf, because the new color output by groff screws the man output quite a bit.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Oscar.

For once I agree with all the oscars, I think they were kinda fair (not sure about best movie....maybe TWBB was deserving more, but I am still happy). I am particularly happy for Javier Bardem, and also about the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year (for some reason life of others wasn't nominated). So everybody happy.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

vmware.

Vmware is very very very king. The key is to use samba to share directories and not the built-in sharing function, and in 5 minutes you have a full windows up and running. Goes pretty fast and is generally good (tm).