…when waking up to THIS view instead of “YAY SNOW!!!” you say “Awww CRAP!”

…and a few hours later, considering the money being spent on transportation, the cost of rearranged meetings , the missed earnings, the drop in GDP…you call Milano “an expensive snowdome”.

Stay tuned, more to come.

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pESApod is a six legged rover designed and built by a team from Scuola Superiore S. Anna in Pisa, Italy. They gave a demo of the rover operations in Montecatini during the convention.

You can check out my post here: Waiter, there’s a six legged pESApod in my convention!

Stay tuned, more to come.

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Since someone might be looking here to know something about me, I’ll post a few updates.

After graduation I basically reset my mind and sat idle for a couple of months, taking care of a few things I’ve been postponing a lot and devoting time to things that really matter on the long run.

The big news is that my Politecnico come-back is different from the standard script, as I did not applied for a Computer Science Master, but for an eBusiness & ICT Management one.

Yep, that’s right, I jumped the river and landed among those people every respectable Engineer had made fun of, at least once. The Management Engineers.

I’m enjoying my time in this funny land between a tech school and a business school. My mind is still struggling with the new learning patterns and things are going pretty fast. I’ll post something else on this in the future.

I’m among the founding members of ISAA, Italian Space and Astronautics Association, a group dedicated to the promotion and divulgation of astronautics, astronomy and related science.

It’s a spinoff of the well known Forum Astronautico, the largest Italian-speaking community of space supporters. And so is my podcast, Astronauticast, that just reached its second season and it’s getting better and better (and modest :-) )

In a few weeks, we’ll be in Montecatini for the annual Astronauticon, the convention now reaching its third occurrence. Check out the website and you are more than welcome to join us!

On the lighter side, I write for the Dead Man Writing weblog, or as I like to call it “the blog without an editorial guideline”. I basically dump there random thoughts in Italian (as opposed as what I used to do here) and so do the other editors. I might have another ace in my sleeve regarding one of the other DMW authors and the randomness factor. Stay tuned.

I also mantain another website (not polished enough yet to be linked here), have a part time job as a Phone Marketing/Political research operator (one of those annoying guys calling while you’re having dinner, right).

Aaaand, with running, swimming (sometimes), sleeping and talking to my girlfriend 1000 km from here I pretty much fill my 24 hours in ways I did not think possible.

And this is what’s keeping me from writing here!

If you want to keep on track with what I’m doing, besides the above links, check out my Twitter page at http://twitter.com/Mike_twitter, add me on Facebook (Michael Sacchi) or drop me an email.

That is, if you’re remotely interested in hearing from me. Which is odd enough.

Thanks for the attention, and….

stay tuned, more to come!

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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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Well today is RSS awareness day, and RSS advocates should promote and raise the global awareness of RSS as a tool.

Not this time. Remember ODE? Well, it’s time to try again and this what is going to occupy my labour day afternoon.

Instead, I’m gonna link you to a very informative post on “Avventure Planetarie”, hoping Paolo will forgive me for the recent content piggybacking (Voyager, now RSS…)

It’s in Italian, (and I know a few readers will be pleased), but for you non-italian speakers, check out RSSday, the website promoting the event presenting RSS using a nice video. (with an awful audio, though)

Oh, and I expect to see a definite increase in RSS subscriptions in tomorrow stats,  mmkay? :-)

Stay tuned, more to come.

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Yuppie Flu are an Italian band that plays lo-fi pop arranged with analog electronic keyboards [from Last.FM, I suck at recognizing genres]. Their songs are in English, so go ahead and look for them, it’s really worth it.

The new album came out today, with the cool formula that Radiohead pioneered last year: pay-as-much-as-you-want. Yes, even nothing, for a 160 kbit/s, MP3, DRM Free version of the album.

I bought it and I’m not telling you how much I paid. It’s not zero and it’s not 1 euro. But it’s not the 15€ they offer for the physical CD version, nor the 25€ CD + T-shirt version. I strongly encourage you to try the album, and pay, even a symbolical sum, for it. This is how music distribution should work.

Get it here. It’s the homepage, but the links to buy with paypal (not incredibly usable, to be honest, but maybe it’s monday’s Human Computer Interaction test speaking for me :-) )

Stay tuned, more to come.

-– EDIT:

I posted before learning of this kind of contest they have. Apparently, by posting on my blog about the new album, I might win a ticket for one of their concerts, and give away one to one of my readers.

But I have to set up a contest as well! So…the reader that will post the best comment (i.e. the most convincing one: BE ORIGINAL) is going to come to the concert with me, should I get the tickets. Start fighting, multiple entries allowed :)

…come on guys, not so fast…

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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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Once again, I borrow the words of my friend and science communicator Paolo Amoroso, on his blog.

“RAI neglects science for the sake of audience”

[...]

“A waste of public money for shows that deny the genuinity of the Apollo lunar landings”

[...]

“In the march 3rd episode of the show ‘Voyager’ RAI gives free speech to the conspiracy theory ramblings”

[...]

“Roberto Giacobbo (hosts) Voyager, a TV show for everything misterious….for a 8 years old child!”

But there’s more. A friend and fellow partecipant in the italian Forum “Forumastronautico” noted and commented on every error and misconception presented in the shameful show, an impressive display of ignorance (or, more likely, lucid exploitation of the public ignorance)  that totals an astounding rate of one error every 36 seconds of show. Enjoy (in Italian, sorry)

Makes me even happier for not owning a TV .

Stay tuned, more to come.

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Check it out! 

Stay tuned, more to come.

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