Signal Eleven

YATTA!! (I did it!)

I know these pages have been quiet lately but a man’s got stuff to think about…like passing the last exam (ODE: remember?)

I received the best mail a student can get from a professor. The subject line was “Champagne“. Can you believe it?

It basically said that I’m graduating in a few weeks.

If you’re in Milan and got time to kill on July the 23rd, feel free to take a plunge in the super hot Politecnico classrooms where I’ll be discussing my thesis and become an Engineer!

Stay tuned, more to come!

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The curse of the tiny widescreen monitor strikes again. This might not be original, but I find it useful.

I created another script like Writing Room for Google Docs (<brag>featured script on LifeHacker!! </brag>).

This time is for iGoogle. Allows to get rid of the annoying (but pretty, with the right theme) header bar and the totally useless footer bar.

Should you need the header bar (e.g. for undo-ing a gadget removal), theres a convenient link on top, Writing Room style.

The default is NOT showing the headerbar, since I use iGoogle as a at-a-glance kickstart in the morning. (todo, agenda, mail….the usual)

Example? Sure, there you are.

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My previously published script Writing Room for Google Documents became a Featured Greasemonkey Script in the Lifehacker weblog, by all means one of my favorite blogs.

Check it out! 

Stay tuned, more to come.

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Yep, it really does.

This post is made in order to avoid telling the same thing to 1000 people asking me “how’s it going? Are you graduating next month?” .  I wrote it quickly. It doesn’t have a structure. It’s a stream of thoughts with little or no filter. My English probably sucks more than the average. Be warned.

Today I flunked ODE (Ordinary Differential Equations). My last exam before graduation. I’ve got nothing to complain about, the grade is totally fair. It’s my fault.

I had 3 tests on this session, 20 credits. 2 down (15 creds), one standing. This semester was supposed to be my “cushion” semester. Kind of an extra time to “heal” the “wounds” I got on the road from first year to now.  Three, tough, exams, and plenty of time.  I failed to manage time. I procrastinated. Then I rushed. And then here I am.

Yesterday I felt like a runner on km 41. One, last kilometer to go. The asphalt became glue. Muscles not responding. Tunnel vision. Panic.

I realized I wasn’t going to make it, but I kept walking, not running. I got overtook by my “wingman”. Good for him.

It’s funny that I passed every single exam regarding Computer Science and I’m being held back by a PURE MATH exam, about stuff with little or no real use in my career.

Now what? Now what? My plans go as far as tomorrow night. I can’t even think straight right now. A couple of consequences come to mind: the Chicago Project is officially canceled. Well, it was ambitious, wasn’t it? Maybe it’s better off this way, maybe it’ll turn in something else. Who knows.

My plans for the master degree in Milano change too. And, right now, I do not have the energy to think about it. Any conclusion is biased by a mix of disappointment, anger. I’m exhausted. I need to rest.

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I know, I threw the stone and hid the hand (does this saying even exist in English?).

I haven’t been talking about my project because I’m quite busy with exams and graduat…er…nothing. Don’t want to jinx it, the situation is desperate enough without me talking about it.

Just a quick catch up:

• I paid the $60 application fee for international students. I ended up paying the bank 61,17 € (EURO!) for the process. A fracking robbery.

• I queued in my university offices for an official marks sheet, translated in english, with grades average. Since I’m not graduated yet, it was short of 3 exams, with an average lower than the requirements (req: 24/30. My avg: 23.82, now lowered by a stupid mark I got last week). Meeting the requirements is getting harder and harder.

• I sent a copy of my TOEFL score. (109/120. Come on. Dear UIC, unlike many other people applying, I might not have the average, but I do speak your language! Does that count?). For the records, the required score is 80.

• I started to think about money and, frankly, I got quite scared. Two semesters, 2 to 4 flights, an apartment, living expenses. As soon as I get my mind clear on this, I’ll post some numbers.

Things don’t look very good, to say the truth. The first derivative of my motivation is approaching -∞. Can’t really tell if an inflexion point is about to come. I can’t really compute the second derivative. (I haven’t been making this kind of low-tech calculus humor since high school).

Nevertheless, today I woke up early, packed up my documentation in a neat DHL envelope, and sent the stuff over to the windy city. (36 Freaking Euro, 2 days delivery)

Let’s keep the ball rolling and see what happens, I’m not giving up without a fight. A small fight.

Stay tuned, more to come.

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(no time to read my ramblings? Jump to the script here)

Heh. When procrastination brings productivity. I was working in Google Documents on my thesis, and felt that something wasn’t quite right. The header was taking too much space and on my 13.3” widescreen every vertical pixel is precious.

So I came up with this tiny Greasemonkey script that allows to toggle the header bar in Google documents, providing more room for working. Plus I wasn’t really feeling like working on the thesis ;-)
Example after the jump

…from this…

…to this…

You can find the script here.

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Happy new year to my readers.

Things have been a little slow here at S11, but something’s coming up :)

In the mean time, as a filler I’ll show you this link

Year in Review: The 70 Best Lifehacks of 2007 - Lifehack.org

2007 has been a year of renovation for me. I managed to meet most of my NYE Resolutions (and that “most” in place of “all” is the reason why I do NOT have resolutions for 2008. Graduation is among the 2007 casualties…)

I worked on myself in the productivity and personal development area. It sounds stupid, I know, but I did enjoy trying to follow small pieces of advice that look nothing different than “common sense”, but when put all together give a nice perspective of what I do right and what I do wrong when it comes to deal with personal productivity. Plus, I love the term “lifhacking”.

Time flies. I feel old thinking about how fast last year flew by, but I can say that I’m pretty satisfied of my 2007 and eager to do even better in 2008. I rank pretty high in the motivational scale these days, and I’m full of projects…

Don’t worry, I’m not turning this blog into a personal diary or something, but…I don’t want to jinx it so, as usual…

…stay tuned, more to come.

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Just for the records. I had a macbook in repair a while ago

They kept my precious for a month. Changed the logic board. No more light flickering, yay! Changed the topcase. It was so shiny, for a while. Now with my dirty hands it’s not.

I’m afraid on the long run it’ll break again, it already have marks where it broke the other time. I guess I’ll have to live with that.

Battery and AC adapter: THEY DIDN’T EVEN LOOK AT THEM.

The thing is that here in Italy we don’t get to have Apple Stores with Mac Geniuses, but private shops, often (not always, you’ll see) with Dumbasses™ working there.

Now the warranty is over (although for italian consumer law I should get 2 years. I’ll look into that).

The charger still have false contacts, and the battery was down to an astonishing 60% of capacity.

But here’s the good news. I walked into another service shop, because I was too lazy to cross the city and go where I bought the thing. Well, without a receipt, just by looking up the serial code of the machine, they checked if Apple had a warranty extension on my battery, and CHANGED IT, right on the money. Shiny new battery. I *love* when people do their job and they do it right. If only those suckers in the first shop cared to look into the problem (and they had a month to do it)…

Now, let’s go fighting my private war with the first shop over the battery charger. Should I have to shed 60€ + VAT, I’d rather do it for Leopard.

Stay tuned, more to come.

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Sorry for the non-activity of these days, I know you’re not checking the site too eagerly (after 2 days without posts the traffic drops to nearly zero)…but of course it’s because you’re all top tech readers using RSS and syndication…

I’ve been in semi-vacation, hangin’ out with friends that were flying by Milano for a few days, and now it’s my turn to fly out for a little while, to Budapest, HUN, to be exact.

I’ll come back with some new content, after the break.

Want to keep the site alive during the stop? Did you try win-get ? Leave a comment about that topic and see if other people found it useful.

Ok you got me, I’m shamelessly begging for comments :-)

Stay tuned, more to come.

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This is a question I got quite often (read: 2 or 3 times) in the past few weeks.

The answer is not easy, because most people asking it are friends or family (non computer savvy) that found the URL on my IM status or in my email signature.

Let’s start with “what (is a) Signal Eleven“. Caveat lector: it’s boring.

I tend (somehow improperly) to mix and use the expression “Signal Eleven” and “Segmentation fault” interchangeably.

According to Wikipedia:

“a segmentation fault occurs when a program attempts to access a memory location that it is not allowed to access, or attempts to access a memory location in a way that is not allowed”

In some systems (Posix compliant, but if you’re reading this, it’s not going to tell you much :)) this is notified to the program via a “message” (a signal) called SIGSEGV, that is, usually, signal number 11.

Now you got the “what” .

The “why” is much simpler. This is a frustrating error a new programmer encounters during his experiments with programming, and may have security related implications.

Well, I am a programmer and I’m interested in security. The name reminds me (and my geek readers) of an anomalous situation, like those that I blog about sometimes.

In short: I really liked the name.

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