Signal Eleven

Well, I was unsure whether to post this picture (click on the link for fullsize, so you can read the legend)…

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Nuclear_power_stations.png

… or a scan of my last electricity bill, with the due fee highlited.

Then I’d figured that depicting my country as that red spot in the middle of the map was more dramatic, and less scary then a big number.

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Yeah, like I needed something else to be ashamed of.

First of all I want to introduce to you the comment that my fellow Forumastronautico.it user and scientific divulgator Paolo Amoroso put on his blog. Sorry, it’s in Italian, but I guess the topic allows it :)

Avventure Planetarie: La Rai replica il documentario complottista su Apollo: diseducazione scientifica recidiva

I encourage you to check out the Paolo Attivissimo (colorful) minute by minute chronicle of the shameful broadcast.

Instead of doing what a History TV program should do, that is, presenting historical truth with professional competence, this issue of “La storia siamo noi” (we’re the history) focused on presenting a collage of the childish “proofs” that some people made up to say that “geez, we never landed on the Moon!”.

Needless to say that the main reason that drives these people to insult the effort o the thousand of NASA employees and contractors is… private earning, selling books.

You can find a plethora of bibliographies on the argument, and I’m not going to help you find them because they don’t deserve a bit more of the publicity they already get.

True, RAI saved a bit of face by mildly “debunking” some of the conspirational theories, but the whole concept of the show (the title, “Apollo 11, The dark side of the Moon”, to begin with) gives too much credit on the stories told by a bunch of idiots.

Moreover, this is NOT what we pay MANDATORY subscription for.  But this is part of the reason because I gave up TV at my place since early this year.

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NoOOXML: NO to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard

Yup, I supported this for some time, but admittedly it was more because of “ideologic” haste toward Microsoft than real knowledge of the facts.

This is informative. In brief, it’s about the standardization of the file format used by Microsoft Office 2008.

Historically there hasn’t been any “recognized” standard to store electronic documents, until last year when the ISO ratified the ODF (Open Document Format) as a fully fledged standard. It’s the format used by OpenOffice.org, an office suite open and free and by other office solutions.

This means that ODF is now an international recognized standard, adopted by governments, public administrations, a common ground that ensure that a document written and stored today will be still accessible 50 years from now (if you still give a damn about what you write today), without being hostage of the decision of a single software producer, as happens using .doc and .xls…

who knows if Microsoft Office 2024 (Ultimate Pro! :) ) will still be able to open your high school diary you wrote on your 486 using Office 95 (should you care to do so :) )

Microsoft tried to counteract and keep his “power” on the users by releasing some kind of specs about its new (NEW!) format in Office 200, and formed a commitee to promote the adoption of such format (OOXML) as standard ISO.

First of all, no thanks, we already have ODF. Second, the specs have several questionable carachteristics, and, this was new to me, Office 2008 DOESN’T EVEN FULLY IMPLEMENTS THIS SPECS!

It would be like standardizing a screw with an odd size that IS NEVER BEEN BUILT.

Madness.

I seize the moment to encourage anyone to download and try OpenOffice.org.

If you’re the average Office user you won’t even notice the difference with Microsoft Office and you will save a lot of money. Oh, I forgot, nobody pays for software anymore…well, you’ll have that warm fuzzy feeling of being on the honest side.

And don’t pirate software. It bites you back. If you use Microsoft office for free (!) at home, your governent, school, university, employer, you-name-it will have to provide you the same software in the office, school, public office. And pay for that. Oh sorry, MAKE YOU PAY TAXES FOR THAT.

Oh dear, it’s been years since last time I embarked myself in such a discussion. I feel young ^_^

Stay tuned, more to come.

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I’ve had reports of bad behaviour of my RSS feed (naughty feed! You’ve been a bad, bad feed…)

I sort of know the reason, I’ve been experimenting with ways to redirect the Wordpress based feed (the one generated by the blog engine) to the feedburner feed (I like to keep track of my “Manzonian 4 readers”) and something must have gone wrong.

Truth is, there is no such thing as a drop in solution for a blog, you always have to deal with a myriad of little things (see the problem with the comments on firefox that I yet have to tackle seem to have solved, feedback welcome) that you have to take care of, and, honestly, this website is not on the top of my priority list. I wish it could improve but as time and will allow.

So, dear readers, for the time being I recommend anyone to use the link on the right (the one with the big orang icon) to subscribe this blog using your favorite reader (I suggest my personal favorite, Google Reader).

Let me know if you have troubles with the feeds either in the comments or by contacting me directly.

Stay tuned, more to come.

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VIRGIN RADIO ITALIA

Seriously, is there anything better than sunbathing, relaxing with some music after a semester of hard work?

And what if the music is *the sweetest radio station EVER*???

I used to listen (in streaming) the UK version of Virgin Radio and I liked it (Liked. Not loved. Let’s just say that their concept of “musical rotation” has a pretty short radius sometimes. You can (could. Can’t say for now) hear the same song twice in an hour, and chosen among 15-20 songs…it gest boring after a while).

Virgin Radio Italia is, so far, the best thing on air since the 3y0 expedition to the St. Peters Island back in 2005.

Rock music from today to the seventies, classics and new stuff.

In two words, their slogan “STYLE ROCK”. Check out their website (link above) for the frequency in your area and the internet streaming feed (if it’s working. I think they’re still experimenting)

Thanks to my buddy Zazza for the heads-up on this!

Stay tuned (quite literally), more to come.

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80% Geek

Well…That’s more than I expected. I’m unsure whether to feel honored or scared of myself.

I know this is boring, but it’s freaking 37° Celsius outside, 34 in the room where I’m writing (comments bragging about your ass being cooled by Air Conditioning will be moderated, be aware.) - I can’t do REAL work.

Leave a comment with your score. Oh, I’m aware that the comments render AWFULLY in firefox, I’ll work out a solution as soon as the temperature drops below my “no work” threshold.

Stay tuned, more to come.

…nope, I’m back.
HAD to edit this. I’ve been challenged by my roomate, and alas, for a single point, I lost.


I bow before the 99-ish nerd Ale :)

Stay tuned, more to come.

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Back home, somewhat disappointed, from the ICWE Conference in Como, I went through my daily RSS reading routine, that I had skipped this morning because I had to leave early.

Well, apparently, the email is SOOOOO dead, I mean, like, you know….OLD, soooo dead.

Turns out that a number of teens, interviewed, had funny ideas about the role and…you know…”coolness” of the communication media called “email”. Do kids still say “cool”?

I feel kind of old as well when I read stuff like this, as I never got really caught up in the whole social networking thing…I find it stupid, but then again, I’m probably just old fashioned…I keep telling myself that the white hair on my head is the result of stress but…duuuude, I’m sooooo, like, old!!!

Do you want to feel old as well? Follow the link! And if you feel old, leave a comment. Or you can…you know…email me.

Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead | CNET News.com

Stay tuned, more to come.

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While waiting for the correction of the exam that I took last week, which was in part focused on this kind of stuff…I ran across these 2 pages.

And when I found myself giggling and whispering “amazing” I *knew* I couldn’t rate any higher on the geek scale.

http://cs.joensuu.fi/%7Emmeri/usbraid/

http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm

A RAID (RAID 0, I suppose) with an array of USB storage keys and floppy disks…

I…I mean, I can’t decide which is cooler! The first being somewhat useful (resonably fast storage, alas limited in size. I wonder how it’d perform with USB magnetic hard drives) or the second (I mean…IT’S COOL…as only stupid an pointless things can be!)

We’re hitting hard on the geek-o-meter here, so..

Stay tuned, more to come.

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Scott H Young » Reclaim 75% of Wasted Net Time With a Daily Ritual

I seriously need this one.

As a matter of fact, it’s nothing mind blowing, I had committed myself to something similar the past.

The lack of a daily routine caused by the end of the uni courses and the consequent change of habit made me switch back to unregulated madness.

Got to start over. Anyway, being a good blogger, I’ll try to blog about how my life has changed when I decided that I want to be organized.

Stay tuned, more to come

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I am the happy owner of a Macbook 1st ge (base model. 32 bit core duo 1.83 GHz, 60 Gig HD…etc)

I’m in love with my white cute little Macintosh, but I had my share of troubles that I decided to share with the world on this post. Please note that nobody should decide against buying a Mac based solely on these informations. As an “Apple Fanboy”, like it’s common to be named these days, I strongly encourage people to do the switch from Windows to Mac. It’s a hell of a leap forward. But I’ll leave this for another post.

My Mac had the whole lot of the 1st gen problems.But I’m picky

To name a few:

1. Sudden Shutdown Syndrome (”Holy c**p, I was working you whiteish piece of plastic-and-circuits!”). Solved with a firmware upgrade. Thanks Apple.
2. Decoloring of the wrist resting place (99% of the time known as “wash your hands when you get home, before laying your filthy claws on the mac”. Not sure if its the same issue other people had. My issue almost vanished with Blish and other glass cleaning chemicals)
3. Noisy power plug: when the cpu is idle, this thing makes a whiny sound, but it’s barely noticeable. I don’t know if it’s related to the other power plug problem (see below)
4. Screen Bezel cracking open near the iSight. This one happened a few days after purchase. Brought to service, they stated to have changed the screen bezel, now it’s as you see in the (sorry, bad) picture and not moving. I consider it a non-issue now.
5. Power plug with stuck pin. It’s not simply stuck like most stories I read about on the net, where poking the pin with a needle makes it pop out. This is worse because it moves freely, looks like the spring inside got out of place, or broken. The symptoms are apparently not serious (charging/charged light on the plug not always working). I hope it doesn’t have something to do with the indicated capacity problem of my battery (between 75% and 85% after almost 12 months)
6. Battery…well I said everything above.

On to the more serious issues

• Screen lamp flickering when working on battery and not at full brightness. Haven’t been able to reproduce this at will, but it’s happening more and more often and with greater effect.
• “Slice” of plastic coming off. The lid has 2 “things” (I have no idea of how to call them even in my mother language) that presses the wrist rest area, and the result is….see picture:

So I’m taking this baby to service again. Hope they won’t keep it away from his daddy for too long.

What did this story teach us? “Early adopters keep whiny blogs!”

Stay tuned, more to come.

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