Deve’s Blog

And after a few days of downtime, here’s the splendid return of Deve’s Blog!
As you may have read in the “work in progress” message that was up until a few minutes ago, the installation of PHP5 by Netsons messed up my blog, that was indeed getting a bit old.
The redecoration works and the update to Wordpress 2.5.1 haven’t been quick, so I took the chance to change my theme. From the trustworthy Regulus to this (obviously customized) Prosumer; more essential, three columns rather than two, a few less features, but a substantially similar feel to the previous one.

I still have some works going on (total bilingualization, random banners back in the header [but with new pictures]…) and a few missing features (the old Event Calendar won’t work with this Wordpress version; and I decided it was pointless to keep the FAlbum plugin for Flickr photos, as now “Photos” links directly to Flickr), but essentially I’m back into business…

Comments and suggestions about aesthetics and functionality are welcome…

18 years since The Last Crusade, rejected and rewritten scripts, perpetual delays, but he finally made it: the most famous archaeologist in the history of cinema is back among us… he’s got a few more years on his shoulders, but has he lost his touch? Will he still be able to excite us? Or will it be just another revival to cash in?

1957, a military convoy heads towards a base in the middle of the Nevada desert. It’s not American soldiers, though, but undercover Russians on American ground, who quickly suppress al resistance and take control of the base. From the trunk of a car, two men are pulled out. We can only see their shadows, and when one of them puts on a hat with an unmistakable silhouette, we know Indy is back…

And in contrast with most people’s expectations, our archaeologist looks in good shape! For those who where afraid this fourth episode could have been a “Indiana Jones and the Hospice of Doom”, good news: Harrison Ford, although visibly older, kept quite fit, plays several action sequences and doesn’t back out from jumps, chases, punches and incredible flights. Yes, he has lost some of the untoppable charisma of his golden years, but in spirit he seems the same Indy as always.

Still…

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“Iron Man?’ That’s kinda catchy. Well technically, it’s a gold-titanium alloy, but…”

It’s time for another comic book hero to land on the big screen: Iron Man. As usual, I knew absolutely nothing about the character and/or the comic book, so I’m relieved from the need to make comparisons (which by the way are an end in themselves most of the times) with the “original”. But even ignoring any kind of background, since I first saw the trailer (I suggest the HD version where available) I decided I absolutely had to see it, obviously at the Arcadia (for those of you who don’t know it, it’s a cinema in the outskirts of Milan, characterized by the Sala Energia ["Energy Theater"], which has a 30-metres wide screen and a THX system certified by George Lucas himself :sbav:)

Well, the high expectations have been fully met…

Plot: quite linear. Tony Stark, a multi-millionaire playboy who leads the most important US arms industry, gets captured in Afghanistan bu guerrilla fighters, and is forced to build weapons of mass destruction for them. Seriously injured by a grenade, Tony, rather than building missiles, begins designing a special armor that allows him to escape. Back in the US, shocked by the experience he lived, he decides to halt his weapons manufacturing facilities and to focus on building a new version of the armor that saved him, so he can step in the front line and stop whoever threatens peace…

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Alcatraz, Milan, April 13th. Kamelot in concerto for their Ghost Opera Tour, dedicated to the omonymous “Ghost Opera” album.
They were supposed to open the gates at 18, so Aresius and I diligently queued up around that time (we probably passed in front of several people in line, but nobody cared). In the end they only opened up around 19, but oh well. We easily got under the stage, as it often happens at the Alcatraz when not that many people are coming; the stage was the side one, that despite being smaller than the main one has the advantage of putting the band just two or three meters from you.

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Well then, since May the 1st I’ve joined the magic world of the Stock Exchange, too! The Stock Exchange, this quite mysterious concept, about which my recurrent question is always: when everything at the stock exchange is screaming out “sell buy buy sell”, how in the world can they understand anything of it? A mystery…

Oh well, anyway, on May the 1st ended my first semester of ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan, during which Accenture duly held aside 10% of my payroll, and then giving me its equivalent in discounted shares… So here I am with my first 59 Accenture shares! And from now on, I’ll be connected on Google Finance to check the situation!

I noticed it’s quite common among bloggers to write posts with just the lyrics of a song. I never did it before, but today, after a went-and-come-back to Turin, for work, I’m gonna do it too…

(sorry, Italian song…)

Tutti vogliono viaggiare in prima
(Ligabue)

Quelli come me si svegliano alle tre
E dicono che i giorni sono corti
E poi quelli come me si svegliano a metà
Rimangono coi sogni mezzi aperti

Avrai ragione te a fare come fai
A stare con chi vince cambiarti le camicie
Ma sta’ a vedere che sappiamo già com’è
Ci riposiamo solo dopo morti

Tutti vogliono viaggiare in prima
L’hostess che c’ha tutto quel che vuoi
Tutti quanti con il drink in mano
Sotto come va fuori come va?
Fuori come va?

Quelli come me si va finchè ce n’è
Ma è come non venisse mai il momento
Con quei progetti lì e quei difetti lì
Che ci fanno stare più contenti

Avrai ragione te a fare come fai
A startene da furbo nel mondo dei più furbi
Ma sta’ a vedere che sappiamo già com’è
Non ci teniamo a togliere il disturbo

Tutti vogliono viaggiare in prima
L’hostess che c’ha tutto quel che vuoi
Tutti quanti con il drink in mano
Sotto come va fuori come va?

Tutti vogliono viaggiare in prima
E che il viaggio non finisca mai
Tutti con il posto finestrino
Sotto come va, fuori come va?
Fuori come va, fuori come va?

Siamo quelli che da quelli come te
Non si fanno mai pagar da bere
Perchè siamo quelli che
È meglio se lo sai
Con quelli come te son sempre pari

Di qua tutti vogliono viaggiare in prima
Tutti quanti con il drink in mano
Sotto come va, fuori come va?

Tutti vogliono viaggiare in prima
Tutti con il posto finestrino
Sotto come va, fuori come va?

“How is it you aren’t writing even one post during this 4-days long holiday?!”. Well, first of all I kinda worked from home on Friday. And secondly, it was formatting time!

The ancient custom of the periodical Format C: dates back to the dawn of the computer age, and tends to take place at the same time as spring cleaning (and indeed the wood of my [real] desktop saw the light again just a few days ago :hmm:)…
Well, I don’t think people still uses the real “format c:”, there are more refined ways… anyway, as could be expected, the scheduled formatting didn’t go smoothly, so I spent a couple of days on it, formatting probably 5 times. But it’s ok. Now I’m 70% operational (still several programs to install and configure, but the base is there), and I lost my Audigy 2 on the way, as it had started to tragically crackle and pop during games. I thought it was a driver matter, but I found no way. Now I physically removed it and am using the on-board audio (and I have to say I can’t really tell the difference… but of course, I can’t even tell the difference between a CD and an MP3).

So no posts… be patient…

Some time ago I received a message on my Flickr account, notifying me that some of my pictures had been preselected to be included in a Schmap guide (?), and asking me if I gave my permission to it. I said yes, so a few days ago I got a confirmation that they actually used two of my pictures on the East Coast guide (here and here are the two links).

Now, I haven’t really understood how this Schmap works; at first sight, it seems like an interactive touristic guide, but I didn’t delve too deep in it. So I said: let’s post a couple of lines here, and maybe I’ll find someone who can enlighten me and tell me if it’s worth the time to explore Schamp a bit more. In any case, I can still show off my two pictures being used

It all began near the end of 2003. I installed Jedi Academy (JA) on my PC and began playing. The single player was funny, although less charismatic then its predecessor Jedi Outcast because of the main character (an anonymous academy student compared to Kyle Katarn? Please…).
But why not trying it online? With a saber staff (”staffa” for friends), the double bladed light saber used by Darth Maul (who was the undisputed source of the best fights in Star Wars movies).
So I began working my saber on a few servers. For some reason I can’t quite recall I played on a network of US servers who kept track of stats and rankings, wihtout realizing that a 200 ms ping was quite tragic for reaction times and playability… Still, I wasn’t doing too bad. My first master, if so I can say, was LoI-Fate, who taught me the basics and a few particular techniques to use the saber staff.
Slowly I began joining the Italian NGI servers, where thanks to my glorious Fastweb connection I managed to have 0 ping (and everyone kept asking me if I owned the server :asd:)! I definitely noticed the difference, I could play way better, and I also began duelling with and getting to know some Italian players, so I permanently moved on those servers.
After improving a bit I was noticed by a couple of clans, but in particular by a bunch of jerks dressed up as Sith :rotfl:, who were accidentally the strongest Italian JA clan: =RS=, Renegade Sith.

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Well, I’m speechless. No updates from FEBRUARY 24TH. And this post I’m going to publish has actually been in draft for ages, but I was convinced I had at least posted it…
But that’s it, and so here I am, picking up this old post, a short recounting of the ASP aperitif in Turin…

So a couple of Saturdays ago [now that I'm posting, it's a few more than that...], on March 1st, I went to the Alumni ASP aperitif, organized in Turin. The pleasant surprise was the concomitance of the CioccolaTò, a recurring event in Turin, obviously based on chocolate…
Fatto sta che un paio di sabati fa [ora che posto, ormai qualcuno di più...], il primo marzo, sono andato all’aperitivo degli Alumni ASP, organizzato a Torino. La gradita sorpresa è stata la concomitanza con il CioccolaTò, ricorrente manifestazione torinese ovviamente incentrata sul cioccolato… Couldn’t miss it!

Too bad there were only two of us on the train (ok, three, but good old Sivo got there late and we didn’t meet him :hmm:); and overall, the number of participants from the glorious first cycle of the Alta Scuola Politecnica was not very high: fortunately there were some people from the second and third cycle, as there certainly weren’t more than fifteen of us from the first cycle (and we even lost il Duca! on the way!)

Anyway, a nice afternoon walking around stands and buying chocolate, drinking a cup of jasmine chocolate, really good; and a cool evening chatting and finding out what we “talented” people are doing a few months from the diploma.

Too bad my psychophysical conditions weren’t exactly optimal due to my working rythms, so after just a couple of drinks (although those drinks very definitely more loaded than usual) I was saturated… I decided to avoid the after-night and went to the historical Hotel Italia in Corso Stati Uniti, that was our welcoming refuge during a month of internship in Orbassano, at the Centro Ricerche FIAT. I couldn’t but miss my fellow of disadventures Nik, who is hereby officially decreed “big jerk”.

Anyway, a few weeks from then I went on to enjoy the various types of chocolates I bought… I still have to try the chili pepper chocolate, but so far Peyrano’s milk chocolate was definitely the most impressive…