Sep 2011 ¶
Sun, Sep 25 — Team Sugar Labs races at Hub on Wheels ¶
Fri, Sep 9 — I'm a Noogler ¶
May 2011 ¶
Sun, May 30 — Biking & Skating along the Minuteman Bikeway ¶
Sayamindu came up with a plan for a Sunday excursion to the Minuteman Bikeway. Dogi, Marina and I did it with roller skates, with the support of Sayamindu's bike. Adam reached us a little later with a second support bike (which was unfortunately incompatible with Dogi's 50 pounds Gundam gear). Next week we're going to try this again on Memorial Drive. Anyone is welcome to join us with their any wheeled locomotion system!
Don't miss the complete trip commentary in our Codew'z photostream.
October 2010 ¶
Fri, Oct 15 — First classroom sessions ¶
Young children really do learn fast. I can hardly believe that how fast some of them went from using a computer for the first time to browsing the Internet.
See all the photos.
Mon, Oct 11 — Laptops handout! ¶
Finally, the long awaited day has come.
Our team distributed laptops to 3rd, 4th and 5th grade children of the pilot school annex to the Instituto de Formaçao de Professores de Matola.
Considering that this was the first experience for everyone in the national OLPC team, today's operations went remarkably smoothly. We organized an assembly line with multiple stages: box opening, firmware upgrades, labeling, inventorying and checkout.
Tomorrow the school will be closed for teacher's day. On Wednesday, we'll start to see some action in the classrooms!
See all the photos.
September 2010 ¶
Sun, Sep 19 - Kruger Park ¶
This week-end I rent a small car and headed to the Kruger National Park for a one-day visit, dawn to dusk (6am to 6pm).
Highly recommended if you like seeing wild animals and nature.
See all the photos.
Mon, Sep 13 - OLPC Tech Training ¶
See all the photos.
Mon, Sep 6 - Schools survey ¶
Today we visited 5 candidate schools in the province of Maputo to check the status of their infrastructure. All the schools have some electric wiring, but none of them have outlets in the classrooms.
See all the photos.
August 2010 ¶
Fri, Sep 28 — Arrival in Mozambique ¶
See the photo gallery from IFP Matola and Maputo.
June 2010 ¶
Sat, Jun 5 - Report from the Realness Summit ¶
I'm just back from a very productive vaca^W summit in the Caribbeans, where I met plenty of interesting people from various deployments and some old OLPC friends.
Uruguay ¶
Uruguay confirmed some of the things we knew already from Paraguay: the nation is completely transformed by the project, you see children everywhere in the streets using their laptops to do everything from school work to videogames. Many children arrive to school earlier in the morning to get Internet access, but when school starts batteries are already low. Parents are extremely supportive of the project, to the point that the new government elected last year was basically forced to continue what was started by their opposition. Plan Ceibal has often been criticized for not doing enough on the teacher training front, but apparently the short-term goal is global connectivity and hopefully triggering the "generation inversion" phenomenon in which children help their families learn about technology. A generation of teachers with strong ITC skills will come along as a byproduct of this revolution.
Afghanistan ¶
Like Paraguay, OLPC Afghanistan is also running a pilot with 5000 laptops. Before expanding the program further, the ministry of education wants to see factual evidence proving that children who have been learning with the XO are doing substantially better than a control group on which the same $250 per student has been spent on traditional school infrastructure: libraries, video projectors, extra curricular activities, and so on.
This approach made a number of eyebrows raise among the most constructivist participants. After some discussion, we reached the agreement that some scientific data would be nice to have even though the "drug study" methodology may not apply well to radically different teaching paradigms. Afghanistan does not seem like a nation obsessed with assessment, as students get the first standardized tests of their lives when they apply to university.
Mike Dawson of OLPC Afghanistan proposed that a fair comparison does not necessarily have to focus on traditional curriculum. If we're looking for increased critical thinking, problem-solving ability and creativity, we could challenge students with puzzles designed to measure these skills.
eXe ¶
Mike Dawson also introduced eXe, a free and open source authoring tool capable of crearing simple interactive learning games. Its strength is that it can be used by curriculum experts with absolutely no computer programming skills.
Mike is looking to form an inter-deployment coalition to develop the basis for a library of reusable blocks which could be used to build a national curricula, in the style of CK12 or Curriki. These projects already provide very high-quality static content in PDF and HTML formats, while we're looking to create is media-rich and interactive activities.
Mike will be meeting this week with representatives of the Sugar community in Boston to propose eXe as an official Sugar Labs project. There's a lot of technological and pedagogical similarity beween eXe and the Karma project sponsored by OLE Nepal and Activity Central. Perhaps the two projects will cooperate rather than compete in this area.
OLPC ¶
Richard Smith, very skilled firmware engineer from OLPC, helped Waveplace to resurrect a pile of "bricked" laptops donated by former G1G1 donors. Richard gave me a serial cable and taught me how to carry on the procedure. Hopefully we'll be able to replicate this in Paraguay to recover some of the broken laptops at no cost.
Adam Holt came with a bunch of very interesting books, from "Disrupting Class" to "Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology". I couldn't finish any of them during the meeting, but the first chapters anticipated very interesting conclusions.
Because of his Sugar/OLPC duality and technical/educational balance, Adam was able to recruit and organize a huge army with diverse backgrounds, interests and nationality. Many of us see him as a central reference point for a wider community which includes both Sugar and OLPC.
Haiti ¶
The non-profit organization Waveplace has been running pilot projects in Haiti with orphans and other unprivileged children. Since the earthquake, they redoubled their efforts with the help of other international aid organizations.
The team of educators and technologists led by Tim Falconer developed a set of comprehensive lesson plans for grades 3-6 based entirely on eToys.
US Virgin Islands ¶
In parallel with the Realness Summit, a group of high-school students from the Columbus School for Girls, Ohio, organized an after-school program for all the three schools of the tiny St. John island. The program was also sponsored by Waveplace and adopted the same eToys teaching materials developed for Haiti.
Even though I already knew eToys, it was surprising to see how flexible and powerful it can become in the hands of skilled teachers. At the end of the two-weeks program, children were able to create complex stories by making objects move around and interact with each other.
Austria ¶
Christoph Derndorfer, one of the OLPC News editors, reported about the status of pilots projects organized by OLPC Austria. Like the St. John pilot, this is also an after-school program tailored at augmenting traditional school rather than restructuring it. The Austrian Ministry of Education would also like to see some hard numbers proving the effectiveness of ICT in education before putting their full weight into the project.
Christoph summarized the status of the general OLPC/Sugar community. Like me, he would like to see much more academic participation. On the positive side, Graz University of Technology is working on RekonPrimer, a Sugar activity tailored at improving skills on the four basic arithmetic operations.
Real conclusions ¶
By the end of the summit, a strong binding was formed among all the participants, regardless of our widely different professions and approaches to world-wide education.
Many of us asked to follow up by creating some kind of super-organization embracing volunteers from all camps: OLPC (hardware), Sugar Labs (software), educators and deployments.
As a representative of Sugar Labs, I'd be more than happy to embrace this idea. We've been traditionally been very weak on the education front and loosely connected with deployments. We've been trying to solve the problem by attracting people with those interests into our organization, but our overly technocratic community managed to repel them.
By starting off with a balanced blend of educators and technologists, we might be able to achieve what our individual organizations couldn't. Rather than trying to focus everyone on one particular aspect of education technology, it would endorse a wide spectrum of skilled professionals involved in solving the same fundamental problem of radically improving education world-wide through technology, constructionism, interactive curriculum, free software, rugged laptops, teachers without borders and the organized enthusiasm of thousands volunteers.
Tue, Jun 1 - Realness Summit ¶
This week a bunch of hard-core OLPCers and representatives from several deployments gathered on a tiny island of the Caribbean sea for the first OLPC Realness Summit organized by Waveplace.
I also gave three short talks:
We all had a great time together. Besides seeing again my old OLPC colleagues, it was great to meet plenty of new friends who played different roles towards our common goal to provide free and open basic education to all the children of the world.
See all the photos from the event.
Sun, Mar 14 - What are kids using Sugar for? ¶
I'm finally back in Asuncíon. Over the last few days, I had the opportunity to interview a dew dozen children who had been using Sugar 0.82 for about one year. Perhaps the most interesting and controversial finding was which activities are the most popular among them:
- Doom
- Super Vampire Ninja Zero
- Navegar (Browse)
Heh, at least Browse made the third place, I thought. But when I asked what websites they were visiting, the answer was invariably "videos".
Well, at the least I could tell they were answering honestly! We often idealize our young users as being creative, passionate and eager to learn just about everything. Some kids are really like this, I met some in Caacupé. However, the naked truth is that the vast majority would rather spend their free time playing.
Those inappropriate games ¶
It's no wonder kids like the game which, according to the Wikipedia, is "widely regarded as one of the most important titles in gaming history". This is no exaggeration: the first 7 hits for the common word "doom" are about the game itself. Then come the film adaptation and various fan sites. Anyway, how can we blame kids for playing games? After all, many of us played Doom and many other types of "inappropriate" video games throughout our childhood.
We quickly took Doom down from the OLPC wiki soon after it was uploaded, yet it is still spreading fast among Sugar users worldwide. Let's look at the positive sides: it shows social behavior and encourages kids to find technical solutions to transfer activities directly (their old version of Sugar does not allow direct sharing from the journal).
So, what to do now? Do we lock the entire system down so that kids could only install applications that we approve? So much for the "child ownership" principle.
Do we develop a couple of boring educational games, in the hope they will keep our kids from playing the "#1 game of all time"? I'm sure that will work :-)
How about admitting defeat and giving them the level editor too? It could redirect some of the existing passion towards learning about advanced concepts of 3D graphics and game deisgn. Don't underestimate the latent creativity of gamers: over 13,000 original maps were created for Doom by young artits of any age and nationality. Later games from ID Software included a programming language which enabled users to create entire new games with relative ease.
Update: Marten Abente, my Paraguay Educa colleague who added 3G broadband support to Sugar, noted that he used his first computer to play Quake when he was 12, and by the age of 16 he was creating many maps for it. Later on, he worked with a friend at the university to create an entire 3D game engine from scratch with SDL and OpenGL.
Those inappropriate cartoons ¶
What about the videos? The most popular video websites are Flash based. You Tube would work with Gnash as well, but because the required video codecs are patent encumbered, we're not allowed to ship them in Fedora. Besides, both Flash and Gnash are quite inefficient and would feel sluggish on the XO-1.
So I am left wondering what solutions these kids came up with in order to circumvent the technical limitations and watch their favorite videos.
The coordinator of the education team got curious and asked questions. It seems that some smart kids figured out how to rip videos from You Tube, store them in the journal, and then play them back with some clever hackery. We do not know the details of how this is done, but it is quite impressive.
Passion-driven learning ¶
Even though most kids are inclined to misuse our precious educational technology for gaming and other mundane uses, in order to do what they want, they seem to be acquiring pretty advanced problem-solving abilities in a self-motivated and social way; in other words, the purpose for which OLPC and Sugar were created.
Fri, Mar 12 - Interview with Los Scratcheros ¶
(photos courtesy of Carla Crosa)
 The "Scratcheros": Sofia, Jose and Aldo |  Albertito, our youngest volunteer, helping one of our trainers |
Today I spent some time with three siblings of Caacupé who has impressed me and the educators very much with their original creations in Scratch. Scratch is not a school subject, these kids are learning it on their own driven by their own passion.
- What's your name?
- J: Jose
- S: Sofia
- A: Aldo
- How old are you?
- J: 12
- S: 11
- A: 9
- How did you learn Scratch?
- J: We tried all the functions. First, we'll try one function, and see what it does.
- S: Like he said, we experimented with all the functions and check the results.
- A: By looking at the animations of the games bundled with Scratch
- What job would you like to do when you're done with school?
- J: Software engineer
- S: Paediatrician
- A: Nada... ;-)
- Do you like Turtle Art? What can you do with it?
- J: Si. I can create rectangles and other geometrical shapes.
- S: Mostly geometric shapes
- A: Only basic shapes: square, triangle...
- How much time do you spend with your laptop every day?
- J: A few hours.
- S: 6 hours, more or less.
- A: Same for me.
- (Mother's note: they don't use the laptop enough in school!)
- Nobody is teaching you, yeah? You're learning everything on your own?
- J: No, with my sister. We try all activities, and when we find one we like, we spend some time on it together.
- S: I learned the basics of Turtle Art at the trainer's course.
- A: Yes, I learned it there too.
- What other activities do you like besides Scratch and Turtle Art?
- J: Hablar con Sara [Speak] and Super Vampire Ninja Zero, Máquina de discos (Jukebox).
- S: eToys, to edit photos. I need someone to teach me all the rest.
- A: Grabar (Record), to take videos, interview people...
- What would you like to add to Sugar?
- J: The "Snake" game
- S: Strategic games
- A: ...hmm...
- (Mom: They need an automatic spell checker... and a screensaver, of course).
- What's the most annoying problem for you with Sugar?
- J: Can't use the "robot" function in Hablar con Sara (
- S: I want bigger fonts in Pintar (Paint).
- A: Escribir (Write ;-)
- Would you like to learn a little bit of Python with Pippy?
- J: Very well!
Then Jose and I got started. Python is easy, you can explain the basics to a smart kid in less than 30 minutes. I've shown him a few Pippy examples, describing the code briefly before running it, then making small changes to make Jose grasp the possibilities. From his questions and comments, I'm pretty sure that he could figure out the concepts despite my very poor Spanish fluency and my usual disorganized style.
Sofia shows plenty of design talent: she uses Sugar to create short stories featuring her friends. She cookie-cuts their photos and uses Scratch to animate them on fantasy backgrounds with music, sound effects and text. Recently, she started creating line-art versions of the photos using eToys, so her new creations look more like cartoons. At this point, Jose mentioned the Happy Tree Friends, an innocently named Internet series which makes even South Park seem politically correct in comparison! HTF is Flash-only and doesn't seem to work with Gnash — at least, we should be above any bigot criticism for conveying "inapprorpiate content" to young hack^Wchildren.
Sofia also created a platform videogame in which a dog needs to jump around to find the way out from each level, while a bouncing arrow chases him. Technically simple, but shows sensitive use of game-design principles. I'm not sure if the code is entirely new or comes in part from pre-existing Scratch games. It doesn't matter: in Free Software, remixing other people's work is the rule.
We updated Jose's and Sofia's laptops to F11-XO1 Paraguay, build 65, which contains the latest release of Sugar 0.84. Jose had been previously testing my build 45, revealing some bugs in networking and activities.
 Perro Bros |  Sofia's line-art image |
Mon, Mar 8 - Children want Sugar 0.84, for the wrong reasons ¶
 CATS, Fernando's XO repair lab in Caacupe |  Kids waiting to install Sugar 0.84 in front of the CATS lab |
The owner of Centro de Assistencia Tecnica y Soporte (CATS), the XO support center of Caacupé, wrote:
On March 8 2010 14:51, Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés wrote: > Fernando, > > How is the migration to Fedora 11 going so far? Approximate number > of machines to date? Raul, the truth that it's going smooth so far, the boys are very excited about the new version, and the rumor is spreading fast. I think so far my team updated 120 laptops, more or less. FG
(Google translation with my manual corrctions)
I witnessed it with my own eyes: every day, children start lining up outside of CATS' door early in the morning, and keep coming all day long, until the evening. All of them ask for the new version, bui in interesting ways: a little boy said:
"Quiero poner ventanas coloradas" (I want to install colored windows).
They're obviously referring to the Gnome desktop, also known as "salva pantallas" (screensaver). Another kid admired his freshly installed Gnome desktop and proudly declared: "Ahora tienen Windows!" (now I have Windows). In Spanish, therre's no ambiguity on the meaning of the word Windows.
Power of brand. It doesn't rmatter if it's the actual Windows, or even if it really does anything useful at all. It's new, it's colored and it's what adults are using. Oh, and it also comes with a screensaver which makes it irresistible.
So, what do we do? Quick! Let's add a cool screensaver to Sugar! :-)
Of course not, but could we do anything to appeal to kids more than a traditional desktop? I don't claim to be a pedagogist, but by now I've observed our young users closely enough to be able to guess what they're really missing in Sugar:
Yeah, dozen of scientific studies showed how users almost never customize the desktops beyond setting a background image. Kids, however, are a lot more passionate about their precious laptop than the average office clerk using Windows. They do cover the exterior of their laptops with colorful stickers.
 Shy girls hide behind their Barbie-fashioned laptops |  A sugar "hack" (zoom in to see the ASCII art detail) |
Believe it or not, many of these kids also set their Home View with the random icon layout (aka "the Negroponte layout"), because it lets them drag icons around and arrange them in clever ways. I could take many screenshot to prove it, but I particulatily like this one abusing Sugar's user name field to create a drawing on three lines. These kids do not live in the middle of Silicon Valley; it is very likely that they rediscovered the technique of ASCII art completely on their own. The original idea was passed along and successively refined by several anonymous artists.
Finally, what was the gray-scale palette supposed to mean in our UI? I was explained it once, and it seemed to make some sense, but now I forgot. And, whatver the reason was, kids are unlikely to agree with us.
Let's give our users a control panel applet for customizing colors as they wish, or they'll switch to Gnome en masse. I can't blame them, either. What would you have done when you were 8?
Tue, Mar 02 - Charla @ Facultad Politecnica ¶
Today I gave an opening talk at the Facultad Politecnica de la Universidad Nacional de Asuncion. The title was "Empoderar a los estudiantes con el Software Libre" (Empowering students with Free Software).
- Spanish, OpenDocument
- Spanish, PDF
- English, OpenDocument (older version with fewer slides and some factual errors)
 |  |
 |  |
See all the photos in my Codew'z photostream.
Note: I'm not really affiliated with MIT and I'm not even an engineer, but it's a flattering mistake ;-)
Sun, Feb 01 - Concert in Caacupe ¶
We attended to the Seminario Nacional de Direccion de Orchestra in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caacupé.
The concert was amazing, especially considering that it was the first time something like this was organized in Caacupe, and most of the performers were very young.
See all the photos of the concert.
Sat, Jan 30 - Pyeduca Office ¶
more photos of the Pyeduca office
Sun, Jan 24 - Paraguay ¶
I have no time to say much: this place is really cool, my new collagues are really cool... The weather, however, is really hot!
Thu, Nov 26: The Day of Tofurky ¶
All photos:
Wed, Nov 25: Home, sweet home ¶
Exploring Julia in 4 dimensions ¶
The discovery of the Mandelbulb awekened my old passion for fractals.
So I took the time to re-encode my old rendering of the Quaternion Julia set done with POV-Ray. Behold:
The sound track is UranChrome, an old-skool Amiga SoundTracker module composed by TorbJ0rn in 1989.
Downloads ¶
If your browser sucks at HTML5, you can directly download the video files, available in several formats:
| Filename | Resolution | Birate | Video | Audio | Size |
| julia4D.ogv (Ogg) | 1280x720 | 6000Kbit/s | Theora | Vorbis | 60MB |
| julia4D-640x360.ogv (Ogg) | 640x320 | 1200Kbit/s | Theora | Vorbis | 13MB |
| julia4D .avi | 1280x720 | 6000Kbit/s | H.264 | - | 60MB |
| julia4D-640x360.avi | 640x360 | 1200kbit/s | H.264 | - | 12MB |
Rendering notes ¶
It took about 2 weeks of computation on a dual-core machine to render the 2048 high resolution frames contained in 82 seconds of video. My previous renderings at lower resolution and lower iteration count were much faster.
A The high iteration count actually makes the fractal surface a little too polverized to appreciate. Adding transparency and gradients is another bad idea as it complicates things even more. If I find the time and motivation to re-render the animation, I'll look for better balance.
In case someone wants to experiment, these are the scene source and ini file I used.
Video encoding notes ¶
The files were encoded from a sequence of PNG frames generated by POV-Ray, using ffmpeg and mencoder:
# hires mpeg4
please mencoder 'mf://julia4D????.png' -mf fps=25 \
-ovc x264 -x264encopts bitrate=6000:pass=1:threads=2 -o julia4D.avi
# lores mpeg4
please mencoder 'mf://julia4D????.png' -mf fps=25 -vf scale=640:360 \
-ovc x264 -x264encopts bitrate=1200:pass=1:threads=2 -o julia4D-640x360.avi
# hires theora
please ffmpeg -f image2 -i julia4D%04d.png \
-threads 2 -vb 6000k -vcodec libtheora -acodec libvorbis -f ogg julia4D.ogv \
-i UranChrome-fx-short.wav -acodec libvorbis -ab 96k -newaudio
# lores theora
please ffmpeg -f image2 -i julia4D%04d.png \
-threads 2 -s 640x360 -vb 1200k -vcodec libtheora -f ogg julia4D-640x360.ogv \
-i UranChrome-fx-short.wav -acodec libvorbis -ab 96k -newaudio
This is the software I have used:
MEncoder SVN-r29800-4.4.2 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team FFmpeg version SVN-r20372, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al. libtheora-1.1.0 libvorbis-1.2.0 x264-libs-0.26.20091026
The quality of the low-res Theora stream is noticeably lower than the corresponding low-res H.264. I don't know why.
Bernie's brain dump as of September 2009 ¶
The Yard ¶
I've not been blogging much lately... at least not here! Now I'm supposed to blog weekly for my Educational Technologies class:
Sep 15th: Yet another geek party ¶
I'm really too busy to go to parties... but the parties come to me all the time! (see all photos)
Let's party arriba!
Sep 9th: XO-1.5 unveiling ¶
I joined the XO-1.5 unveiling ceremony in DC... and got the opportunity to rip one of the prototypes apart. Wayan of OLPCNews was next to me, so this enjoyable operation made the news!
Sep 7th: Class Acts ¶
I'm in DC for a sprint called Class Acts (Flickr coverage).
Sep 5th: Goodbye Aids ¶
Our housemate Adelaida (aka Aids for reasons we don't care to know) is going back to Hampshire college tomorrow so we organized a great party at the Acetarium.
Photos here: 20090905-goodbye-aids
Sep 3rd: Calculus ¶
Ok, today it was precalculus. I arrived on time, but I still had no paper with me, so I had to ask to someone next to me for a bunch of sheets. Quickly filling up a dozen of pages with notes after so many years of little hand-writing practice has been a bit challenging. My calligraphy still sucks the same way it did back when I was enrolled in Florence.
I'm starting to build some confidence that this crazy idea of going to school is actually feasible. This Calculus A may even be too easy, but I'm still afraid I'd be unable to keep up with Calculus B considering my many little handicaps which include lack of practice for many years and being unable to keep my concentration for long spans of time.
The dilemma is: should I take it easy and aim for the rewarding satisfaction of being good at maths for a change? Or would Calculus B be a better use of my time and money, even if there's a high risk of failing the tests?
I have one week left to change my course plan without loosing any money.
Sep 1st: Back to school ¶
Today I attended my first class of discrete matematics (E-104). I was too optimistic in estimating the time it takes to bike from the FSF to the Harvard Science Center, and as a result I arrived 5 minutes too late. Next, I entered the wrong classroom, and it took me another 5 minutes to figure out that kinetic laws had nothing to do with my course.
When I finally got seated in the correct classroom, I realized I had no paper! So I started taking notes on my laptop, but I was really the only one doing so. Not much because it's not customary for Harvard, but mostly because ASCII is not very well suited for writing math. Luckily, the first class was about logic operations, whose notation is very easy to transcribe on computers. To make things worse, the battery ran out near the end of the class, producing an embarrassing alarm sound that everybody could hear.
My #1 fear, being unable to follow the professor in English, dispelled almost immediately. Besides, this first lesson wasn't very hard in itself. I noticed that the professor accompanies the explanations with several small questions directed at the audience. These days this is one of the few reasons left to prefer a real university over a set of videos on You Tube.
(Go to September 2009)
Bernie's brain dump as of August 2009 ¶
Aug 29th: Lack of clarity from OLPC ¶
The Windows 7 Sins campaing mentions the pressure put by Microsoft on OLPC to switch to Windows as one of the sins. Many of my OLPC and SugarLabs friends were offended by this association and pointed out a few factual mistakes. Contrary to what NicholasNegroponte had announced to the press in multiple occasions, so far only a tiny (unspecified) fraction of laptops shipped by OLPC were actually preloaded with Windows. According to internal OLPC sources, there are no plans for Windows7. Moreover, the announced XO2 will be ARM based, which undermines Microsoft's ability to run any version of Windows except for the CE family crapware that was rejected even by the mobile market.
The FSF has now corrected the campaign web site, but we are left wondering what's actually going on between Microsoft and OLPC; why would Negroponte tell the press that OLPC is shipping Windows when in fact it's not and when their roadmap would make that highly unlikely?
This whole story smells like a huge pile of bullshit, but, so far, nobody has been able to provide a convincing and logical explanation for the inconsistency between Negroponte's press releases and actual actions. It would be really interesting to know, because this conduct is harmful to the public image of OLPC and an embarrassment for Sugar Labs too.
Aug 27th: Windows 7 Sins protest ¶
Today I joined my new colleagues in a protest against Microsoft in BostonCommons. Throwing Windows 7 and Mac OS X boxes in a giant waste basket was a lot of fun.
Aug 20th: Back to Boston ¶
Today I jumped on a plane from Pisa to Boston through London (where I met DavidWoodhouse for a quick lunch).
I'll be staying at the Acetarium, where the rent includes a nice bike, japanese food, and a lot of good company. Over the next 6 months, I'll do an internship at the FreeSoftwareFoundation, take courses at the HarvardExtensionSchool, and of course work on SugarLabs' infrastructure, community and governance.
I don't really know how much of this frenetic life I can take before I'll need to stay in a comfortable room with padded walls... Ouch, this reminds me that I don't have health insurance here!
Bernie's brain dump as of June 2009 ¶
June 12th: Tuxel Cart 2009 ¶
My good friend Massimo of Tuxel (behind me in the photo) organized a great trip to the Siena Kart Course.
Bernie's brain dump as of May 2009 ¶
May 14 - 24: Sugar Camp Paris ¶
I attended the Sugar Camp Paris 2009. Great event, great people, great organization. Simply great.
Bernie's brain dump as of April 2009 ¶
April 30th: Departure ¶
My father's photos ¶
Throughout our journey, my father also took plenty of shots with his video camera.
How to spend 8 hours in Paris ¶
Our flight from Narita arrived at Charles de Gaulle at 4AM, and the connecting flight to Florence was at 1PM. Could we spend all this time sitting in the terminal?
No way! The battery of my camera was dead, but my father took some photos of Paris.
For the first time in my life, I had a really bad impression of Paris. Coming from Tokyo, any place would seem very dirty, but in this case the garbage was real, abundant, and smelled intensely of alcohol, urine and vomit. Perhaps April 30th was a special "drunk men day"?
GEEK UPDATE: A productive flight ¶
On the flight back to Europe, I spent some time hacking on GeekiGeeki to add little goodies such as
- a grid view for photos;
- automatic generation of human-readable link tags from wiki URLs;
- a common parser for argument lists such as "foo|bar=1|baz=3";
- the ability to specify css style for links and inline objects, which I'm using to produce
floating thumbnails on the side of pages without resorting to HTML
These new features will make my wiki markup even lighter than before. Moreover, these additions actually resulted in further simplification of the codebase rather than code bloat. Way to go!
git diff --stat v3.0..HEAD geekigeeki.py geekigeeki.py | 709 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------------------------- 1 files changed, 352 insertions(+), 357 deletions(-)
If you notice any regressions in the output, please report them to me. I'm hoping to release 4.0 soon.
Tags: stuff that matters !bloat as simple as possible but no simpler
One last day in Tokyo ¶
We gathered all our left energies for a tour de force of a bunch of touristic locations highly recommended in our guide:
- The Edo Museum, along with a wonderful temporary special exhibition of Osamu Tezuka.
- The Ameyoko markets
- The Ueno Zoo
- The Narita airport :-(
April 29th: Back to Tokyo ¶
Hostel ¶
After one last tour of the town, we left from Nikko in with a low-cost private line (2h40, but only 1100 Yen all the way to Asakusa).
We had just one evening and half of the next day to spend in Tokyo, so we quickly dropped our luggage to the Tokyo International Youth Hostel, a sort of nazi camp with a great view on the 18th floor of a high-rise building in Iidabashi.
Akihabara ¶
Because there was a strict curfew at 11PM, we had to take the metro during the rush hour (photos and videos) to reach the Electric Town (photos).
April 28th ¶
Guided tour ¶
Pictures of our day-long waterfalls tour are now online. Our friendly guide, the Buddhist monk whose name I forgot, answered many of our pending questions about Japanese traditions and religion. Hiking through these sacred mountains and woods was an enjoyable experience.
TODO: assemble a good video from all the scenes I took along the way
Nikko Temple Area ¶
In the afternoon, we went to visit the world heritage site. One would expect to grow bored of Shinto and Buddhist temples after seeing many of them all over Japan, but visiting the Nikko temple area was once again an extraordinary experience. And I could finally spot a few Mikos too!
April 27th ¶
Afternoon: travel to Nikko ¶
Nikko is in an adjacent valley east of Nagano on the Japanese alps. Unfortunately, no train lines and buses connect them directly, so we had to take an expensive — yet very fast — Shinkansen detour all the way down to Saitama and then northbound again.
Once at the station, we immediately realized it was a good deal, after all. This mountain town overflows with temples, world heritage sites and statues of Buddah spread in an extremely beautiful natural environment with many great falls, ancient woods and hot springs where even wild monkeys take an onsen.
Our hostel is ran by Zen monks and serves an unforgettable vegan dinner with seit. In the evening, we exchanged excited stories with a family of Italian tourists from Milan who had chosen to travel by car rather than by train to save money and gather access to places unreachable by public transport. Quite a smart idea for groups of 3-4 people who aren't afraid of driving on the left.
Surprisingly, one of the monks speaks perfect English. He told us that he lived in California for some time. An explanation worthy of the plot of a very bad 007 movie, where locals always happen to speak English somehow, saving James from the embarrassing need of resorting to silly gestures in order to get his stupid Vodka Martini the way he likes it.
Tomorrow, of course after our morning yoga and vegan breakfast, we're going on a day long guided hiking tour with the monks, which sounds really cool.
UPDATE: ouch!
Morning: Zenko-ji ¶
In the morning, we tried again to visit the Zenko-ji. Even on a Monday, the queue was not much shorter. A nice volunteer guide advised us that the pilgrims where queuing just to touch a wooden pole with an inscription on it that was right in front of the temple, and we could skip aside if we weren't interested. So we did.
We still had to queue for half an hour inside the temple to reach the secret chamber where we would get the rare opportunity to see the hidden Buddha, visible only once every seven years. Quite a lucky combination! I was impressed by the devotion of the people around me. The spiritual side of Japanese people does not seem to clash at all with their high-tech lifestyle.
Behind the temple, we were led down a narrow staircase to a dark and twisty corridor beneath the temple. We had to walk in the pitch black obscurity, touching the walls in search of a metal key of enlightenment. I could finally get hold of the key and turn it, but the most enlightening part of this experience was hearing the crowd of tourists apologizing for bumping into each other all the time ;-)
I only have outdoors photos becuase taking pictures inside was strictly forbidden. A monk yelled at me just for fiddling too much with my camera, which was quite surprising, considering how tolerant Japanese people usually are towards our ignorance of their culture.
April 26th: Matsumoto again ¶
Back to Matsumoto ¶
Our ryokan in Nagano was simply great. Everything was traditional Japanese-style, including the room, the onsen and the breakfast.
We tried to visit the Zenko-ji right next to our ryokan, but we spotted a really long queue of pilgrims at the entrance, so we went back to the station to visit the Matsumoto Castle, one of Japan's top 3 castles (photos). The adjacent museum was also great (photos). On our way back, we've found a peculiar dancing show with cute little girls and their teachers.
Apparently, by leaving Nagano we missed some kind of prayer or event held by Tibetan monks at the Zenko-ji. Too bad, it might have been a good chance to show some support for the Tibetan cause. Go, Tibet, Go!!
April 25th: Matsumoto ¶
Yesterday, we arrived on a rainy night to the mountain town of Matsumoto, where a lady with a car took us from the station to a cozy family held hostell. The next day was rainy, so instead of going right to the famous Matsumoto Castle, we spent the best part of the day at the station and with some dumb shopping.
In the evening, we headed to Nagano, a city famous for the 1998 winter olimpics and for an ancient buddhist temple.
April 24th — over 1 megameter by train ¶
UPDATE: the report for April 21st is now available!
We left our comfortable hostel in Kyoto early in the morning for a second Shinkansen ride of 360Km, this time on the faster Nozomi. The one-way ticket was "just" 10,250円, equivalent to $105 or €80.
Unlike Kyoto, there aren't many sites of historic interest in Hiroshima because, quite unsurprisingly, every building in the city center is at most 64 years old. With one notable exception. Coming such a long way only to see a broken dome and a the surrounding park might seem crazy, but it was definitely worth it. One of the most dramatic moments of human history happened right here not long ago, and survivors of about my father's age can give their first-hand testimony with the help of black and white photographs and melted items from the museum. After causing so much horror and observing its consequences, what did we do about it? We quickly built thousands of bombs much more destructive than Little Boy. Smart move.
As usual, I couldn't refrain from taking a load of photos here too. These probably can't deliver the pain in the chest one gets by visiting the museum, but might still be a little disturbing.
In the afternoon, we returned to the Hiroshima station just in time to catch the 16:01 Shinkansen for another 690Km ride to another location which will be revealed in due time. Don't miss the next amazing episode of Bernie's Adventures!
Also check the story behind the millions of paper cranes sent from all over the world in memory of the little Sadako.
April 23rd — Last day in Kyoto ¶
Morning: Arashiyama by bike ¶
In the morning of this sunny day, we biked to a few locations on the east side of Kyoto:
- Dakakuji, an active Shingon Buddhist temple
- Tenryuji, another beautiful Buddhist temple with a beautiful Zen garden, next to a bamboo forest
- Monkey Park, a place where you can closely observe and interact with Japanese macaques.
Evening: a city I did not like ¶
At last, I've found a place I actually didn't like much in Japan! The first impression of Osaka's central station was that it was old and dirty. Of course one could still eat on the floor, and coming from Kyoto's station might have compromised my judgement. There was big crowd of busy people everywhere, and if you bump into someone, they don't apologize for it.
Our copy of the Lonely Planet highly recommended Dotonbori at night for its "Blade Runner views", so we headed there. They must have watched a version of the movie with bad special fx, because all I could observe in Dotonbori was a narrow street sided by neon signs of restaurants and pachinkos. Just above average, imho, and certainly not worth the time and the price of the train ticket. Unless you're a moth, perhaps.
We granted our guide a second chance and choosing their highest rated restaurant in Dotombori, one specialized in udon. There was no English menu and the only food I could order was a chest of cold spaghetti on a bamboo crate with no sauce but a cup of soy sauce, also cold of course, in which one could dip them separately. Or so I understood: the waiters were extremely kind but wouldn't speak English, which created even more confusion. Dulcis in fundo, the bill was much higher than usual and they wouldn't take credit cards.
We rushed back to the metro to Shin-Osaka, JR train to Kyoto, local train to Arashiyama, where our bikes were still waiting for us for the ride back home.
April 22nd ¶
Kyoto Higashiyama ¶
Today we walked along the east side of Kyoto, north to south:
- Ginkakuji — rock garden with a view point;
- Eikando (home page) — an active Buddhist temple
- Chion-in — huge temple with the largest bell in Japan
- Sennen-zaka — a trendy touristic way with maikos (aka geishas);
- Jishu-jinja — a temple hanging on a cliff with an impressive scaffolding;
- Fushimiinari-taisha — The multi-torii tunnel. My #1 favorite shrine!!!
Food ¶
Eating in japan can a challenge for a vegetarian who also happens to dislike fish and crustaceans. The average menu has about 5% of veggie dishes, but many restaurants in tourist areas specialize in traditional food such as sushi and tempura. Imitations of Italian kitchen are close to perfection, of course: in Tokyo, we had perfectly reasonable spaghetti with eggplants.
Even with my options severely limited, I could still find several exquisite dishes. I quite like soups, including miso shiru, ramen and others I ordered by pointing at the fake dish in the restaurant window without ever knowing their name.
My favorite food so far is Omurice. Yeah, perhaps it's not as sophisticated as the average Japanese recipe. Hmm... I guess learning to appreciate complex and delicate flavors takes some more time.
As for beer, I still couldn't find one I like. The most popular ones, Asahi and Kirin, are just tasteless dry lagers. All the drafts I could find taste like Asahi too. The only good beers I had were at the Delirium Cafe in Tokyo, where I had a delicious Kwak followed by a cherry flavored Kriek. Too bad we had to stop at just two to make sure we could find the way back to the hostel :-)
Now I'm looking for a place where I could taste vegetarian sukiyaki, the favorite food of Ataru Moroboshi.
April 21st ¶
Great temples everywhere ¶
Yesterday was rainy, but it didn't stop us from biking around and visiting quite a lot of stuff:
- the Ninnaji temple;
- the Ryoanji temple, with its puzzling rock zen garden;
- the Kinkakuji temple (aka golden temple);
- the Nijojo castle, which is actually two castles for the price of one;
- a quick tour of the Kyoto downtown;
- the International Manga Museum was closed already. Grrr....
x264 goodness ¶
I re-encoded all videos from MJPEG, the crappy native format of my Canon camera, to x264 (aka MPEG4). Firefox 3.1/3.5 still doesn't grok it with the video tag, but I didn't have a Theora encoder installed.
April 20th ¶
Best hostel ever ¶
The Utano hostel in Kyoto would rival many five star hotels I've seen. Sorry I couldn't take any photos in the Onsen.
Impressive station ¶
The Kyoto station is an impressive modern building, worth a visit by itself.
Shinkansen tour ¶
In a jounery report, the details of transportation are usually left out as uninteresting. Except if one takes the fastest train in the world! We took the Tokaido Shinkansen line from Odawara to Kyoto, riding on a 700-series train for the Hikari service (not the faster Nozomi, but still very impressive).
The ticket cost a whopping 11240 yen per person, and I'm not even getting a machine body with it! ;-)
See the the photos and don't miss the pass-through and the on-board videos.
April 19th - Hakone day 2 ¶
We took the suggested touristic itinerary around the Hakone mountains which employs all sorts of transportation means: bus, cable train, rope way, cruise boat and bus again.
Along the way, we could see the volcanic sulfuric vents and pools, the Ashi lake with its breathtaking view of the Fuji-san, the ancient cedar avenue, the old post, the detached palace gardens and the beautiful shinto jinja shrine of with its torii diving in the lake.
Of course, I took plenty of photos of the Hakone trip.
April 18th - Hakone ¶
We arrived in a small town near Hakone. I'll publish photos later.
Update: photos of the hostel are now available.
April 17th - Ghibli museum in Mitaka, Ginza ¶
The museum was actually a bit of a disappointment, but maybe just because I had my expectations so high. Cameras weren't allowed inside, so I only took few photos.
In the afternoon, we walked around the shiny neighborhood of Ginza. See the photos.
April 16th - Fish Market, Gardens, Tower of Tokyo, Temple ¶
We had a very intense day where we visited a lot of places all around central Tokyo:
- Tsukiji Fish Market (Japan Guide)
- Hama Rikyu Gardens ()
- Zojo-ji Temple (Wikipedia)
- Tokyo Tower (Wikipedia)
- Reiyukai Temple (official web site)
- Imperial Palace Gardens (Japan Guide)
- Edo-Tokyo Museum, which was already closed.
We'll try again when we come back to Tokyo (official web site)
NOTE: photos still being uploaded, gomen nasai!
Seeing so many beautiful things at such a high frequency might make one's head spin. In fact, this evening I've been dangerously close to faint in an Onsen, which was really scary because I had never lost consciousness before. I had walked all day with very little food and drink, which might have been part of the problem, but diving in thermal water for a long time has certainly triggered it. What a gaijin who can't even take some hot water!
April 15th - Skyscrapers everywhere ¶
Compared to Tokyo, every other city I had visited would seem dirty, old, boring and disorganized. I can't find the words to describe my amazement walking around this amazing city full of wonders.
Photos for today:
- Shinju-ku — The district of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.
- Roppongi — A rich district hosting modern art museums (Art Triangle) and night life (Wikipedia)
- Pachinko — Popular Japanese slot machines
Update: now finished uploading the photos
April 14th - Arrival in Tokyo ¶
I couldn't resist grabbing a super-cheap round trip to japan, a place I've always wanted to visit. By "always", I mean: since when I was in kindergarten, watching great series like SteelJeeg and MazingerZ on TV. My dad accepted to accompany me in this trip even though he wasn't particularly fond of Japan. Until now, that is!
The first day was simply amazing, but I'm way to tired to tell a lot about it. The many photos and videos that I'm still uploading will hopefully serve documenting this long day appropriately.
NOTE: if you can't watch the videos embedded in the wiki, get yourself a recent browser featuring HTML5 or send me a patch adding support for old-style HTML video embedding.
Negligent ¶
Yes, I've neglected to update this blog for a few months. This isn't because I had nothing to talk about. In fact, these months were quite intense, with a lot of notable events, including:
- 2009 Jan: Visited the East Coast with Silvia
- 2009 Jan: Attended the XO Camp 2
- 2009 Feb: Attended the Fosdem 2009 with a few friends from Italy and SugarLabs colleagues
- 2009 Feb: Visited Brussels, Riga and Stockholm with Tommaso
- 2009 Mar: Organized a small revival of SystemShockBBS with a few original users
- 2009 Apr: Attended a meeting/miniconf in Bolzano with WalterBender
I am currently back in Florence, trying to find a way back in the US.
It is excellent idea. I support you., VIAGRA BON MARCHE OU 100MG X 20 COMPRIMES EN LIGNE, [url="member]VIAGRA BON MARCHE OU 100MG X 20 COMPRIMES EN LIGNE[/url], member VIAGRA BON MARCHE OU 100MG X 20 COMPRIMES EN LIGNE, ckgoyo, acheter du viagra, [url="index]acheter du viagra[/url], index acheter du viagra, =O, acheter viagra, [url="member]acheter viagra[/url], member acheter viagra, dyraoe, acheter viagra, [url="member]acheter viagra[/url], member acheter viagra, 096, acheter viagra, [url="member]acheter viagra[/url], member acheter viagra, pkteya, VIAGRA COUPON, [url="member]VIAGRA COUPON[/url], member VIAGRA COUPON, 757, generique viagra, [url="index]generique viagra[/url], index generique viagra, 760731, acheter generique viagra, [url="member]acheter generique viagra[/url], member acheter generique viagra, 652, acheter viagra, [url="membres]acheter viagra[/url], membres acheter viagra, 817411,
This space intentionally left blank
The story continues at November.
Bernie's brain backup of October 2008 ¶
Fri, 31st October - Ties ¶
Met my old buddy Ties on Jabber and he pointed me at a few nice photos from his Flickr photostream:
- http://flickr.com/photos/80049722@N00/2848749676/sizes/o/in/set-72157607884586577/
- http://flickr.com/photos/80049722@N00/2749741413/in/set-72157607884586577/
Fri, 31st October - Critical Mass ¶
A few friends from 1CC invited me to this subversive event called the Critical Mass. I used the complimentary Acetarium bicycle.
While our group of 200+ bikes was riding on a roadway, we went into a road block. They knocked down a couple of bikers and tried to stop others. I also ran into a young cop who had the bad idea of walking to the middle of the road.
It was a lot of fun :-)
Tue, 28th October - Daneel and Giskard ¶
My old PowerPC iBook served me well for over 5 years, accompanied me around the world twice or so, carrying three Linux distros on the same hard drive. Not to mention all the stickers, which conferred it great hacker value. One month ago, the integrated ATI GPU broke beyond any possibility of repair.
Such a great loss had to be compensated with something at least half as cool. I chose a lightweight Lenovo Thinkpad X200s, with a LED backlit 12" display, a low-voltage U9300 processor and no stupid CD reader or writer.
Today my package was delivered home and I installed Ubuntu 8.10 Interpid, just one day before the official release.
Mon, 27th October - Embedded Systems Conference Boston ¶
Today I gave a talk about porting Sugar to the Beagle Board, a nice development system for Texas Instrument's OMAP3530 processor.
Slides here: SugarBeagle
Details of the talk here: a
Tue, 21st October - Back to Boston ¶
I have greatly missed this place ever since I had to leave earlier this year. My visa is still a temporary B-1, which means I'll have to leave within 3 months. During this time, I'm planning to give a talk, finally nail down the SugarLabs server infrastructure and meet with the OLPC folks to discuss common goals.
I'll be staying at the Acetarium, the most exclusive hacker accomodation in Cambridge.
Fri, 10th October - ENEA research center ¶
Me and my uber-geeky Italian friends went to visit the ENEA Research Center on the Brasimone lake in Emilia Romagna.
The center is located inside a dismissed nuclear plant, quite a suggestive setting for a lab researching fourth-generation fission reactors and even nuclear fusion for the ITER international effort.
Enjoy all the photos by asterix: brasimone 2008
We didn't blog very much this month. Actually, we didn't blog at all.
And we go so proud of it that we use plural to refer to ourselves.
Wed, 13th August - Ties photos ¶
My geeky roommate Ties just sent me a link to his Flickr photostream. Enjoy:
Wed, 13th August - Monkey Business ¶
I have not much to shor or tell, so you get to see this archive photo of a monkey with a cute baby eating corn flakes:
Sun, 3rd August - Home sweet home ¶
My wonderful GeekiGeeki just gained the ability to display directories and preview thumbnails of images, turning it into a sort of poor man's Flickr. Overall, it increased the size by a whopping 50 lines, but, what the hell, it was well worth it!
Now that I gave my parents and non-geeky friends enough techobabble to worry about, here is a picture of me and my roommates in our living room.
Yes, that lard ball on the left is me... And, yes, this darn diet is not going very well, even though I abolished alcohol, sweets and plenty of other Good Things (tm) :-(
Also note my highly stylish head & neck suntan.
You can find many more photos here: BagdolHome. If you find the "hidden" links, from there you can navigate through my whole photo archive. With such a wiki, who needs iPhoto? ;-)
I've also retroactively updated last month's July2008Blog with pictures and some more details.
[the story continues at August2008Blog
Bernie's brain backup for July 2008 ¶
Fri, 18th - Goodbye party ¶
Fri, 11th - Osho Tapoban ¶
We spent two days at the Osho Tapoban, a commune where they teach a particular meditation technique by an Indian guru called Osho.
Tue, 15th - Boudhanath stupa ¶
Sat, 12th - Swayambhunath, the Monkey temple ¶
Today me and Silvia went to visit the most famous Buddhist temple of Kathmandu. Miki, a friend from the Hash, came along with us.
Bernie's brain backup for June 2008 ¶
Sat, 28th ¶
Hash House Harriers ¶
I completed my first Hash without taking a shortcut! About 12Km, 2.5hrs, almost non-stop running... and I even got two nasty leeches in my shoes. Read the full commentary with photos.
Tue, 24th ¶
Heckuva ¶
Oh, gosh... my ego is expanding so much one it's gonna blow up the office!
Mon, 23th ¶
Me @ OLE Nepal ¶
Sat, 21st ¶
The Hash ¶
My friends and colleagues are members of something halfway between a sports club and a secret society:
So I was dragged into this Hash, even though I'm probably one of the laziest man in the world. It's like a race, but we don't care who wins: the fun is running through the spectacular natural environments of Nepal, searching for hidden indications of the path forward in the form of stashes of bits of paper. I'm writing this on Tuesday, and my legs still hurt a lot, but I had a lot of fun! Next week I may even be able to complete the whole course ;-)
At the arrival, we form a circle and if you get called in the middle for some reason you get to drink a lot of beer — quickly! — or throw the rest of your cup on your head. Newcomers (aka virgins) like me are bond to drink as part of their initiation, but any excuse seems to be good for a round.
Here's the full commentary of this week's event with a brief description of me and my knee-high socks:
Sun, 15th ¶
Kathmandu ¶
I'm sitting in the airport hall of Doha, Qatar, waiting for my third and final plane to Kathmandu.
I'll be spending the next 2.5 months in Nepal working as a volunteer for OLE Nepal. I don't know much, but I have high expectations.
Bernie's brain backup for May 2008 ¶
Linux Tag ¶
The whole SugarLabs team attended LinuxTag:
More pictures: http://www.skolelinux.de/~ralf/LT2008/
Wed, 7th ¶
SugarLabs ¶
We are working to make Sugar an independent, decentralized, FreeSoftware project: http://www.sugarlabs.org/
The story continues at May2008Blog.
Bernie's brain backup for April 2008 ¶
Wed, 30th ¶
Simply disgusted ¶
Are we really selling kids to these people?
I took my distance from OLPC management (aka resigned), but I'm still fully committed to the olpc principles the way everybody but one person intends them.
Sat, 26th ¶
OLPC One ¶
Check out this heart breaking video made by our great sysadmin HenryHardy:
Also available on YouTube if you like proprietary web applications that prevent you and others from getting back what you have uploaded in its original full quality format:
Sun, 6th ¶
Birthday party in London ¶
I had a few idle days, so I headed to London. Actually, I drove there! London is just 4h30 away from Brussels, plus the ferry boat, for which I spent a lot of money because I showed up at the port without having booked a ticket in advance. Next time, I will know better.
I got hosted by Cristina, and on Sunday we had a birthday party a friend of hers:
The story continues on April 2008.
Bernie's brain backup for March 2008 ¶
Thu, 20th ¶
More blogs ¶
Our friends of OLPC Austria also reported on the event:
I've finally distributed all the remaining laptops, and I'm flying back to Brussels.
Wed, 19th ¶
The laptops arrived! ¶
Tue, 18th ¶
OLPC demoed to the EU president Danilo Türk ¶
Today we have been received by the President of Slovenia, and President in charge of the European Union, Danilo Türk. I was asked to show him some of the unique features of the XO. Somehow, I managed my excitement and performed a decent presentation.
Before leaving us, the President expressed profound interest in the OLPC educational goals. This means our project is likely to receive support within the European Parliament.
Update: President Türk knows about the shortage of Internet addresses, and was impressed by our laptop being IPv6-ready. We mentioned that the infrastructure is currently a show-stopper in most places, but the President said this issue will have to be addressed if we want the Internet to scale to the point required by our ambitious project.
Media coverage:
Mon, 17th ¶
OLPC presence at the ACP-EU meeting in Ljubljana ¶
The newly born OLPC Europe team attended the ACP-EU conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Representatives of OLPC Austria rushed here on very short notice to help with the OLPC booth. We demoed the laptop to 79 delegations of the African countries, members of the EU parliament and dignitaries of the United Nations Development Programme. Not surprisingly, the laptop was called "the killer event at the ACP-EU meeting".
Media coverage:
- Meeting opening cerimony: watch?v=GLKK-ZYEsuk local copy
- MEP Nirj Deva interview: watch?v=VMiVtUOT97E local copy (<- GREAT STUFF!)
- OLPC press conference: watch?v=tHYdpsNTQIg local copy
- article
- TODO: add everything else
Fri, 7th ¶
Talk at Palazzo Vecchio in Florence ¶
Bernie's brain backup for February 2008 ¶
Sun, 25th ¶
Fosdem OLPC Team ¶
Sat, 9th ¶
Red Panda ¶
Today I visited the Cairns tropical zoo. They have this cute red panda:
And I could feed kangaroos and wallabies and even cuddle a koala! I have a picture to prove it, but it's not digital.
Photos ¶
Arnd has flickr'd a few photos form our visit to the HealsvilleSanctuary:
I like this one with the both of us caressing a Wallaby:
Fri, 8th ¶
So long, and thanks for all the fish! ¶
Back from diving. I've seen plenty of small fish and medium fish, including the ClownFish (best known as Nemo). I had little luck with the big ones: I've seen only one shark, around 2.5 mt long, but it was really shy and ran away too quickly for me to follow. Yes, sharks do not attack man. If you know otherwise, you must have seen it in a movie. No sea turtles for me, although my travel mates did see many and even touched them.
I've also seen two dolphins, but those don't count because I was on board. And, for some reason, they soon decided that we were uninteresting and swam away.
But now for the amazing thing: during my night dive, *lots* of big fish came around us. I'm ashamed to admit I can't remember their name: they were mostly gray, as big as medium sized dogs, with a bump on their heads, and big lips. They have learned to follow the torch lights at night. They're absolutely not interested in us, only what our beams were pointing at. Every once in a while, I'd spot a small fish in the dark, and the big ones would swim really quickly and smash it! And then spit the little bones! So cool!
We played like this for a while. Poor little fish! But those big ones ought to eat somehow, shouldn't they?
The reef is one of the seven natural wonders of the world for a reason. A zoological garden underwater. Highly recommended to divers and snorkelers.
Thu, 7th ¶
Crusade on the reef ¶
I'm boarding on a ship to the GreatBarrierReef. I'll be diving all day (and night!) to see the wonderful fish and coral. As a secondary objective, I'll be doing an SSI advanced diving course.
Wed, 6th ¶
Tropical paradise ¶
I just arrived in CairnsCity, a small town in the northern part of Queensland. The flight was AU$99 plus taxes (about AU$115): you fly cheap in OZ!
The climate here is clearly sub-tropical: very warm and wet even at 7AM. A rain forest surrounds the city. The sea is 28 degrees Celsius, even at night!
Mon 4th ¶
Sydney ¶
I'm SydneyCity! :-)
But the weather is crappy :-(
I took a domestic flight from Melbourne to Sydney for just AU$79 plus the usual taxes. It rained all day, but the hostel is huge and has a covered swimming pool at the 8th floor.
Finally, I managed to walk around the city. The parks are as remarkable and well kept as those in London, but with sub-tropical vegetation. The OperaHouse is as impressive as you would expect. The bridge is even more impressive. If you liked BridgeConstructionSet, you'd love this one!
Sun 3rd ¶
Zoo ¶
Along with a bunch of other hackers from the LCA, we went to the HealsvilleSanctuary zoological garden. They had all the "usual" animals: kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, wombats, along with the Tasmanian devil and many others.
The kangaroos were not protected by a fence, but they were too scared to come close to us and would just jump away when we got too close.
One wallaby, instead, liked being caressed on the head. They are peaceful animals, very much like grown up rabbits, but with a big tail, clever little forehands and... of course, a pouch :-)
The story continues at FebruaryBlog
Bernie's brain backup for January 2008 ¶
Sun 27th ¶
Down Under ¶
Yesterday I had to clear my room, pack my stuff at OneCambridgeCenter, and say goodbye to many, many good friends and colleges. I don't even know when I'll be able to see them again. Not exactly a happy day, you may have guessed.
Today, after 22 hours of flight, I started to have visions. At the baggage reclaim, I thought I was talking with the kernel god LinusTorvalds. He said that userspace is easy and that he cannot exactly agree iwith some of the choices made in Python. We'd really get along if it wasn't just a dream :-)
Later on, I reached the hotel and got into the elevator with a ginger guy that looked vaguely familiar. I asked if he was going at LCA.
— Yes.
— Are you a software developer?
— Well... not primarily...
Blink!
— Oh, you must be JonathanCorbet, the editor of LinuxWeeklyNews!
- Indeed.
Today was a really exciting day! I needed something like this to compensate, at least partially, for leaving Boston.
Hi Bernie! Just stepped here looking for the photos of XOs hanging from the ceiling (i wanted to show them to my father) and found you leaving!
So, have a nice journey, enjoy conf.au and see you soon!
— PiroPiro
Sat, 19th ¶
Another trip to NY ¶
I'm planning to go to NewYorkCity tomorrow with a bunch of friends. But this time I guess we'll catch a different transportation: we were booking the FungWah (aka ShittyBus), when ChrisBall came and looked at us funny. "Are you sure? Those buses have a habit of catching fire on the highway".
Apparently, it is really true:
Sun, 13th ¶
Bernie the rockstar ¶
If you were considering hiring me, or entrusting me to do anything serious, you'd better watch this first:
- BernieIronMaiden - [1.8MB] if you have the free OggTheora codec
- BernieIronMaiden - [3.6MB] if you're stuck with proprietary QuickTime codecs
- nothing - [0MB] if you're stuck with the proprietary MediaPlayer or RealPlayer codecs
Q: why doesn't my browser play the link right away rather than asking me to download it?
A: because my wiki doesn't support mime-magic yet
Q: why don't you just let apache serve media files?
A: because a CGI has no way to "handoff" a file to the web server once they've been invoked
Food and Power ¶
Here's a stupid movie by SamuelKlein, ArjunSarwal and myself:
- FoodAndPowerHigh - [62MB] OggTheora stream, quality 10
- FoodAndPowerMed - [26MB] OggTheora stream, quality 7
- FoodAndPowerLow - [16MB] OggTheora stream, quality 5
If your computer cannot play the above links, you should really consider installing a free media player, or just switching to Linux which comes with all the free media players and codecs out of the box. Meanwhile, here's a workaround:
- FoodAndPower - [103MB] original AVI stream from our shitty camera
These also prove the quality of the OggTheora codec. After seeing this, I think I'd recommend using it for its technical advantages in addition to its legal advantages.
In producing these movies, I found out that:
- mencoder has bad support for ogg-theora
- transcode kinda sucks
- ffmpeg seems the best command-line encoder of the three I tried
- The easiest solution if all you need is encoding anything to Theora is ffmpeg2theora.
All you have to do is:
ffmpeg2theora FoodAndPower.avi
Sat, 12th ¶
Cow power! ¶
My good friend ArjunSarwal recently made the Slashdot front page with his story about Cow Power!
Fri, 11th ¶
Crank, Crank! ¶
Today we got this pleasant surprise.
See the movie: StephenReillyCranking. The guy cranking is DanielDrake, Gentoo kernel maintainer and wireless guru.
Larger versions of these pics are available at OlpcCrank.
Sat 5th ¶
The little computer that just won't die! ¶
OneLaptopPerChild is not enough. There should definitely be
My good old friend MicheleConsoleBattilana, CEO of CloantoCompany, recently sent me the latest edition of AmigaForever 2006 Premium Edition.
While the OpenFirmware can't boot off a plain CD-ROM designed for the legacy 16bit BIOS, it didn't take too much hacking before I could get the actual UAE binary to start from the Terminal activity:
- Plug in a USB CD-ROM unit
- Open the Terminal activity and type:
sudo mount /dev/scd0 /mnt cd /mnt/Emulation/UAE ./uae -f af_boot.uaerc
You may want to configure the system for the very high resolution of the XO display:
- Open the System disk
- Open to Prefs drawer
- Use the Screen preferences editor to set a higher screenmode (uaegfx:1152x864x16 is close to full-screen and neat)
- Use the Font preferences editor to enlarge the Workbench and Screen fonts (Topaz-11 is a good choice)
- Use the ToolManager preferences editor to enlarge the font of the Dock
- TODO: The mouse pointer could also use a bigger sprite, but you'll have to design one yourself
The emulation is fast and smooth. I didn't have much success with the demos, mostly because I was unable to reach an adequate emulation speed on the Geode while running UAE with legacy 680x0 processors, which disables the JIT CPU emulator.
Look here for additional details. A big thankyou to MicheleConsoleBattilana for providing a free copy of AmigaForever, a fine tribute to the coolest platform ever!
Thu 3rd ¶
The XaoS strikes back! ¶
I enjoyed bundling this OldSkool activity for the XO:
See: XaoS
It certainly needs some more sugarization work for which I have no time.
Wed 2st ¶
Haiku Laptop ¶
Today we shipped our machine affected by dlo#5575 (touchpad mostly unfunctional) to Japan for further inspection by ALPS. Just before closing up the plastic case, I've left inside a little fortune cookie for them:
If you're wondering what it means, it's a piece of japanese poetry called a HaikuPoem. Google for it.
Tue 1st ¶
Trip to Walden Pond ¶
This really happened on Monday 31st Dec, but who'd go read last year's blog entry now?
So, Adam, Arjun and myself went to this Walden Pond place, where the famous American poet Thoreau lived in complete isolation for 2 years in a cabin made of wood.
On this very nice lake, I stupdily tried to run on the ice and fell badly, hitting my jaw and cheek on the hard ice. Little cut, big bump... no permanent consequences. Maybe I should consider a health insurance?
Bernie's brain backup for December 2007 ¶
See you on next year's JanuaryBlog
Sat 15th ¶
How many hackers does it take to make the bloody sound work? ¶
DavidWoodhouse was kind enough to take a picture of Ivan, Michael and myself half an hour into our failed effort at fixing the amplifier at Michael's place.
Also check out our featured video:
Sun 2nd ¶
Snow! ¶
Yesterday the temperature dropped considerably: -9°C in the night. I'm well equipped, but it's still quite chilly.
Today fell the first snow of the year... And more is forecasted over the next two days.
(stock photo)
Sat 1nd ¶
First OLPC deployment: now it’s real ¶
See: first-deployment
The guy in the picture is my colleague Ivan, the designer of our security system.
The story continues at DecemberBlog
Bernie's brain backup for November 2007 ¶
Thu 22nd ¶
Thanksgiving ¶
My friend and colleague DjbClark invited me at his parents' house for thanksgiving. It was a new, pleasing experience for me.
My impression is that it is a family reunion very much like a second Christmas, but without the inconvenience of presents :-)
(stock photo)
Sat 17th ¶
Yummy photos ¶
DaSnake uploaded some pictures of the places we visited together on Flickr:
- BostonCity: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dasnake/sets/72157603205244949/
- NewYorkCity: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dasnake/sets/72157603203628915/
- ChicagoCity: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dasnake/sets/72157603198958510/
- OneLaptopPerChild: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dasnake/sets/72157603203191269/
Wed 14th to Thu 15th ¶
Back to Boston ¶
I'm back in Boston with DaSnake. He's been my guest for just one day. Then he had to be back in FNAL for the shifts.
I really had urgent business at work, so I left my friend alone sightseeing Boston for the day.
(stock photo)
Mon 12th to Tue 13th ¶
Back to NYC ¶
Flought Went to NewYorkCity with DaSnake. Finally got to visit the AmericanMuseumOfNaturalHistory. Pretty impressive!
(stock photo)
(stock photo)
Fri 9th to Sun 11th ¶
An old friend ¶
A few days ago, my old friend DaSnake appeared on IRC and told me he's was an intern at FermiLab National Accelerator, near ChicagoCity. I told him I was at OneLaptopPerChild, in CambridgeCity.
So we decided we were "close enough" to visit each other's workplace and do some tourism together. So, on Friday morning, I took a cheap UsAirways plane to ChicagoOHare through Philadelphia.
Trip To Fermilab ¶
Refer to the Fermilab map. My friend lives in a coed apartment in the Fermilab village, which is surrounded by several little lakes with gooses, buffalo and various other animals. Indeed, a very pretty natural park.
(stock photo)
On Saturday, I took a bike and rode on the bike path to the main laboratory buildings. I took a guided site tour, starting from the museum. They have lots of real-scale models of the accelerator parts and really working equipment such as scintillators and Geiger's counters.
Then we visited the Wilson Hall, a 16 floors building shaped like Goldrake's and Mazinger's atomic base.
(stock photo)
Q: ma cos'è tutta questa neve:è una cartolina? E tutti questi uccelli?
A: e' una foto presa a caso dagli archivi del FNAL :-)
Then... WAH! They guided us inside the Linac! The Linac is the LINear ACcelerator facility, the first stage of acceleration that produces protons for the MainInjector. It was like entering an old science fiction movie. You know, like Frankenstein or Buck Rogers: with giant Tesla generators, panels with flashing lights and indicators...Buck Rogers The continuous buzz reminded us that the proton beam was shooting through this long corridor next to me.
(stock photo)
Finally, we visited the MainControlRoom, from which they run the whole thing. The room looks like the bridge of an old starship, surrounded by monitors, with a bigger chair in the middle for the captain.
FermiLab is no doubt the most amazing place in the world:
To beat this place, next time I shall visit the NCC-1701A!
Chicago By Night ¶
Yesterday we went to ChicagoCity's downtown. Wow... I was told the skyline was really magnificent, but the real thing exceeded all my expectations.
images-chicago-2005-chicago-by-night-2-700x700
(stock photo)
We walked around a little, then went up the John Hancock Center, the third tallest skyscraper, for a breathtaking view of the whole city by night.
Bernie's brain backup for October 2007 ¶
The story continues in NovemberBlog, of course.
Thursday, the 25th ¶
It seems that FlorenceCity, where I come from, decided to help our project. Tomorrow my friend Torello will discuss the details with MattKeller, the OLPC director for Europe.
Monday, the 22nd ¶
Yesterday we had a good dinner at RodDee, a Thai takeaway in Brookline. Despite the look and feel, the food is awesome. Highly recommended unless you're on diet.
Tuesday, the 2nd ¶
Pics from New York ¶
Our good old friend SamDean sent us his photos from our trip together to NewYorkCity a few months ago:
Monday, the 1st ¶
Bike! ¶
Our president Walter comes to OneCambridgeCenter every day riding a bike. So I asked him if he new a bike shop where I could buy a cheap one for myself.
And, guess what? Instrad of just telling me, he just got me a blue Huffy he had at home!
The bike is identical to the picture. It had not been used for some time, so it had both tires flat. But Walter pumped them on and they seem to be holding. The chain also clanks a little, but I'm sure a drop of oil will fix that too.
Wow! I can now cut half of the time on my way to the office by getting directly to the JFK/U-Mass red line station on the bike!
Or maybe I could even attempt going all the way to the office... It won't be faster, but it's good exercise and could help me loose some more weight. Yes, I'm stuck at 146 pounds and I don't seem to be able to loose any more by just eating veggie food and replacing sugar with sweateners.
CategoryBlog
Brain backup for September 2007 ¶
The story continues at OctoberBlog
Sat, Sep 22nd ¶
Compassion for Microsoft? ¶
Today Rafael and I went through MIT to have lunch at the StattonBuilding.
Along the InfiniteCorridor, we've seen an ad inviting to a Microsoft conference on development tools. Scheduled for today and started a few minutes earlier in room 6-120. The ad said silly slogans such as "smart tools for smart people!" and "let's talk with Microsoft!" Clearly, they were trying to hire MIT grads!
So we went to see what this was about. The room was not exactly crowded: only a young man eating pizza and a woman wearing a Microsoft T-Shirt. We asked if the conference was still planned, and the woman told us: "yes, I've just started introducing XAML, the new lingua franca for user interface description".
So we got sited and watched a presentation which basically said they're still busy reinventing XUL and Glade... So they can deliver SilverLight, a Flash clone that depends on the .NET runtime.
"Questions?". There weren't any. She offered us a free DVD with developer tools. Me and Rafael each took a copy to be polite. The other guy didn't bother. I had never realized how pathetic Microsoft has become. These days, very few people are interested in what they do and what they say. Unexpectedly, today I felt some compassion for them... or at least for their employees.
Tue, Sep 11th ¶
Compatibility ¶
I've also been helping to enhance compatibility with BadVista.
Ethiopian ¶
I'm currently adding support for the EthiopianLocale, which isn't as easy as you would expect.
Sun, Sep 9th ¶
Some big updates to GeekiGeeki, the software that runs this wiki. Notabily, authentication is now supported. Log in as AnonymousCoward if you don't have an account on DevelerCompany's servers.
Mon, Sep 3rd ¶
Trip to MontReal, day 3 ¶
Boring day. We visited the SaintJosephsOratory, then we quickly headed back to Boston. We spent a lot of time at the border and in the traffic.
We arrived at night... everyone was quite tired.
Sun, Sep 2nd ¶
Trip to MontReal, day 2 ¶
Day two of the trip to MontReal. They woke us up at 6 in the morning (groan) and we left for QuebecCity with no breakfast. This place's better be wonderful!
Yes, QuebecCity was rather cool, but they gave us little time to visit it properly.
Except for the old citadel, where we've seen the changing of the guard. Really a ridicolous cerimony: the soldiers wear a furry cap and a guy shouts orders in french. They have a live goat as a mascotte and they walk her around the plaza.
On the way back to Montreal, we stopped at the MontmorencyFalls... nice place, but I almost got lost there! I wasn't paying attention when the guide said the bus would have moved to pick us back on the top of the falls, so I walked back to the lower parking lot. Luckly, Juliette convinced the bus driver to come and see if I was there.
We had dinner again in the same chinese restourant. This time, the guide had silently arranged vegetarian food without me asking. Very kind of her. Unfortunately, Juliette found a black hair in her soup, and a few people left the table, disgusted.
Sat, Sep 1st ¶
Trip to MontReal, day 1 ¶
On Monday, it will be labor day, so Juliette and Peter took advantage of this extended week-end to take a three day guided tour to MontReal:
So this was the last chance to visit French Canada with Juliette as a guide, as she'll be leaving for Saudi Arabia in a few days and we'll probably not see her for some time. I was lucky enough to join at the very last minute.
As usual, the bus departed from Boston's ChinaTown, but this time the cheap bus company of choice was SunshineTouring. The guide barely speaks English and is also not an expert of Canadian history and culture.
Along the way, we did two stops:
- A cruise with the MinneHaHa on LakeGeorge.
- For water rafting in an impressive canyon (but the water flow was very calm: boring!)
MontReal is as enchanting as they say. Approaching from the highway, you see the notorious bunch of skyscrapers in the distance, beautifully lit with colorful lights. Makes me think of U2's "The City of Blinding Lights".
We had dinner in a crappy chinese restourant. Fixed menu, no vegetarian food for me except for white rice. Anyway, all the food looked crappy so I don't think I've lost too much.
The hotel, at least, was ok. I shared my room with a retired man called Mr Chan. He's originally from HongKong, and moved to the USA before his city was given back to China. At that time, many people feared that communism would have taken over. Mr Chen arrived in the UnitedStates alone, and didn't speak English at all. He worked very hard for 15 years so he could retire at a reasonable age. His story makes me hope for the better.
CategoryBlog
Keep reading on SeptemberBlog.
July 2007 ¶
Fri, 20th ¶
In Wales ¶
Araf! I'm currently host of my good friend Cristina and her husband, in the small town of Llanon, near the city of Aberystwyth.
I asked for directions outside Birmingham: "I'm going to a place whose name I can't even pronounce". "Sounds like Wales, then" said the man I had stopped.
Anyway, the place is nice. It would be much nicer if it stopped damn raining, but, you know, this is the United Kingdom after all.
This reminds me of a funny story: as usual, yesterday I drove out of the parking without looking in the wrong direction. This time, a car passed by cursing me with its horn. So I finished my manover, of course going to on the right lane by force of habit.
At this point, the car in front of me stopped, and I noticed it was strangely colored with yellow and orange stickers. A uniform came out and at this point I realized it was a policeman.
He walked to my window, bearing a very serious face. Finally, he told me: "don't you know how to drive? You're supposed to stay on the *left*!"
Promptly, I replied: "Err... Sorry... I'm used to drive on the right, you know? It's my first time in *England*!"
And the policeman, even more serious: "You mean in Wales, don't you?". He'd probably close an eye for driving on the left, but not for calling his homeland England!!! :-)
Well, driving on the left is a pleasant experience. And it's not even as hard as I thought: anybody not too much attached to their lives should give it a try!
Sun, 8th ¶
Trip to Europe ¶
I booked a round-trip flight to London. Departure on July 14th, return on August 7th.
I'll stay in England for a few days to attend to the GuadecConference in Birmingham and visit my friend Cristina in Aberystwyth, Wales.
I'm looking fwd to see all my Italian friends soon! I've not yet booked a flight to Italy, but I've got an appointment at the US Consulate in Florence for July the 26th for a B1 (non immigrant business visitor visa). This will hopefully extend my permanence another 6 months.
Bender KO ¶
Ok, bender has been down again for some time. Someone must have fixed (e.g. rebooted) it during the weekend. Thanks.
But I'm very curious what's wrong with it. Last time, mostro reported that dhclient had lost the IP. Is it dhclient, then? Or the dhcp server in the dlink modem?
Sat, 7th ¶
Shakers ¶
Today we went to NewHampshire for a trip. The original plan was to camp somewhere, but the weather sucked, so instead we went to see the village of the Shakers:
Pretty interesting.
Sun, 1st ¶
GUADEC 2007 ¶
Since I'm basically forced out of the UnitedStates, I guess I could go here:
I've never been a strong Gnome supporter. Actually, I've not even been a Gnome user until lately.
Then why? Well, one reason is that it's in Birmingham, next to where my friend Cristina lives. She invited me so many times to visit her in England, and I really wanted to, but I never had the opportunity to do it in so many years.
Another good reason is that some of the OLPC people will be there. And I'll be able to meet many other non-OLPC hackers too.
If you want to come over, please contact me.
Body mass ¶
My body mass increased to 154 pounds. Or the gravity of earth increased just too fool me.
GPLv3 ¶
I've updated the license of PikiPlus to GPLv3, and I invite you to do the same with your programs and with any programs distributed under the GPLv2 with the "or later version" clause.
June 2007 ¶
The story continues in the July 2007 blog.
Sat, 30th ¶
Italian profanity ¶
I just found out that "A Cappella" is how Italians say "in the style of the church". It's used for music played by human voice instead of instruments. Yes, indeed. Nobody could understand why I was grinning :-)
Random Birthday Paradox ¶
I'm writing you this from ChrisBalls's house. cjb for IRC friends. Yesterday was his wife's birthday. And also the birthday of somebody else too. That's where the title came from: Birthday paradox .
We're having a lot of fun and getting drunk very quickly. Someone came with a box of Avocados with a picture of Avogardo saying: "let's Party. arriba." It's the things like these that will make it very sad for me to leave this nation.
Food is vegan, and incredibly tasty if you ask me. There are people from the office as well as other nerds from other places. One guy showed up with a tee saying: "shut the fuck up and write some code!". We're listening to TheSoundOfSilence from Xyzzy's (*) mp3 player. That's one of my favourite songs, but I thought it was from the Beatles :-)
(*) We'll call her Xyzzy 'cause she doesn't want her name to end up on Internet.
Xyzzy: remember...all is not as it appears to be and the best place to hide something is in plain sight
Bernie: hmmm... then I guess I'll hide at OLPC and the USCIS won't find me :-)
Tue, 26th ¶
Long time, no C++ ¶
The title was inteded to be a joke on "long time, no see", because I've not been updating the blog for some time.
But this reminds me that, yes, indeed I've not been doing any C++ for a few months now. That's probably irrelevant to most of you... but this is my blog and I get to decide what goes in. Except when *you* edit it. Damn WikiWikiWeb!
The reason we don't have any C++ in the OLPC is that, in the Linux world, C++ never flied that much. The kernel hackers say it's not well suited for kernel programming, and I partially agree. Of course, C++ can't be used for glibc and POSIX system libraries. Even MicrosoftCompany uses C for those.
This leaves us with three more layers to exclude: windowing server, desktop and applications.
X11 is written in C for historical reasons. Since its internals mostly deal with interfaces and specialization of interfaces, C++ would have been very beneficial.
Gnome also uses C, for no good reason. KDE is older than Gnome and was entirely written in C++, although I clearly remember g++ 2.7.2 being quite a painful experience. The GObject crap in glib and GTK is expecially ugly, hard to use and error prone due to lack of good OOP support in the language.
And applications? Well, applications in the OLPC are written in Python anyway, like many higher level applications in regular Linux distros.
There's a few exceptions: Mozilla is written in C++ and eToys is written in SmallTalk. I don't know about TamTam.
rasky: in fact, with the raise of scripting languages and fully-featured platforms (like Java's), using C++ for doing almost *anything* is the wrong choice. As you said, system programming wants C for several good reasons, and almost anything else can be done in scripting language. I think one last thing that C++ is still good today at is high-performance libraries (eg: math libraries), where you don't want to use C and you need a lot of performance. But C++ is feeling more and more like a dead horse...
marco: About writing kernels in C++: toy OS
Wed, 13th ¶
Under pressure ¶
Miletstone B4 was expected to ship today. I don't care because my work is for due for Trial2. But many of my colleagues were extremely under pressure.
There is one last bug with some laptops not coming out of resume. And it's still not fixed at 21:00. Kernel hackers are scraping their heads.
We had pizza together and, seeing so many tired faces, I casually asked: "when do we close for summer?".
People look at me puzzled: "What do you mean exactly by close?".
"Err... companies don't close for summer here in the States?".
They look at each other, trying to guess if it's some kind of joke: "Why would companies ever close? They're not schools."
I quickly added: "Oh, I'm asking because, you know, most companies in Italy do close a few weeks for summer".
At this point everybody laughed like if companies closing was an extremely funny idea.
This is one reason why we have a strong economy here: people are extremely committed at work. Will I ever catch up? Hope so.
Tue, 12th ¶
Eutelia Voip ¶
I have a new public phone number: .
It's Eutelia's VOIP service, formerly Skypho. People told me that the quality is good. All the previous phone numbers remain valid.
I've also switched from Ekiga to a SIP client that doesn't totally suck:
Actually, the user interface is horrible. But if you close your eyes, it works beautifully.
Mon, 11th ¶
Sleeping At The Office ¶
We have a futon here. And it's quite comfortable. Sleeping at the office has its pros and cons, hereby listed by Dillinger:
Bender Down ¶
There has been a longstanding outage of our wiki server since yesterday. Today, my sister finally fixed the problem by rebooting both the modem and the computer.
I'm planning to move bender here one day, so I can properly maintain it, but first I need to consolidate my visa position.
Fri, 8th ¶
More laptop news ¶
Available here: index
Some links to videos in the end. There's not much about me, mostly because I've not done much this week besides chasing bugs.
Father and son private business ¶
E' una settimana che non scrivi. Dove sei sparito? — Babbo
Avevo problemi di ADSL piuttosto gravi su questo server... ora e' a posto, ma oggi ho da finire delle cose urgenti. Vedo di scrivere due righe nel w/e, scusate tanto — bernie
Sat 2nd ¶
Food FUD ¶
Two days ago I went to the local pub for the HappyHour... the HungryHour actually. And I ordered this tasty dish of Cheese Bacon Fries! Yummy yum!
Ok, it's a disgusting blob of pure fat. And the infamous Cheddar cheese, also known as "solid cholesterol":
If you're looking for something healthy, you can always try a salad. Just make sure you don't get a Caesar salad with its ultra-fat dressing sauce:
You may also want to avoid hot dogs drowned in chili sauce:
American pizza is edible and even good... But I recently discovered that Pepperoni aren't vegetables, but a kind of hot salami:
And, finally, beware of food franchises pretending to be Italian. There are many:
Fri 1st ¶
Bernie is going to write something here soon ¶
Yes. Definitely.
The story continues in April2008Blog.
May 2007 ¶
Thu, 31th ¶
News Feed ¶
Today Rasky suggested that we could use an RSS feed to notify about new articles in the blog.
I wanted to fulfill the same purpose, but with a totally different approach: use git-send-email to notify a mailing-list and tell people: "hey, just subscribe to the list!".
My version is surely too complicated because it employs a chain of 4 different programs (pikiwiki -> git -> git-mail -> mailman). But I like that it can be done without even touching the wiki engine.
A middle-ground solution could be using gitweb's own RSS feed:
But as Rasky notes, this would send notifications also for minor edits: real blog apps would only bother you for new articles.
So, maybe we should filter only changesets that contain a new level 3 header... Hmmm... This can't be done with gitweb, I'm afraid.
We live in an era where we can make very cool things with very little effort. I could hack this versioned wiki engine in just 2-3 days because I could pick the existing PikiPiki and combine it with the existing Git versioning system.
This brings me to the point: the really hard thing in software design is choosing the right ingredients for your sausage. Because there are many ways to bake a pizza, but only a few of them have the quality of being tasty, healty, dietetic, cheap or whatever. And usually, even a good design... err... receipe requires you to choose a few of these qualities you care more.
Q: What do you think is the most elegant way to obtain useful notification from this blog?
You can choose whatever technology to deliver some kind of "notification". You can also use any sensible definition of the words "useful" and "elegant".
Hop hop! ¶
Today I typed cvs up -dP to update Gnash from CVS. And I got the prompt back in less than 1s.
"Something must be broken!", I thought! In fact, it's blazingly fast because we're just 2ms away from Savannah:
PING cvs.savannah.gnu.org (199.232.41.69) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from cvs.savannah.gnu.org (199.232.41.69): icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=2.31 ms 64 bytes from cvs.savannah.gnu.org (199.232.41.69): icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=2.21 ms 64 bytes from cvs.savannah.gnu.org (199.232.41.69): icmp_seq=3 ttl=58 time=2.00 ms
And it's not even in MIT:
traceroute to cvs.savannah.gnu.org (199.232.41.69), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 passport-9-16.media.mit.edu (18.85.46.1) 1.756 ms 1.695 ms 1.845 ms 2 amtgw.media.mit.edu (18.85.0.1) 2.230 ms 1.248 ms 1.150 ms 3 EXTERNAL-RTR-1-BACKBONE.MIT.EDU (18.168.0.18) 1.409 ms 1.435 ms 1.374 ms 4 EXTERNAL-RTR-2-BACKBONE.MIT.EDU (18.168.0.27) 1.391 ms 1.389 ms 1.426 ms 5 207.210.143.109 (207.210.143.109) 1.428 ms 1.505 ms 1.414 ms 6 207.210.143.138 (207.210.143.138) 12.756 ms 2.162 ms 1.998 ms 7 ge-2-1-0-000.ar1.qcy1.ma.gnaps.NET (199.232.44.142) 4.879 ms 2.592 ms 2.485 ms 8 cvs.savannah.gnu.org (199.232.41.69) 2.713 ms 7.476 ms 13.328 ms
Boston sure has a very fast WAN backbone!
Wed, 30th ¶
Ciao Berni!!! Te tu sei un grande, qui dalla OTE ti si saluta con affetto!!!
Grazie ragazzi! Il sentimento e' reciproco! Uno di questi giorni dovete proprio venire a bere una birra qua a Boston!
More Graphics Headaches ¶
Hehe, more graphics problems keep sprinkling: XorgGraphicsCorruption. CosmicPenguin was kind enough to offload me of the graphics related bugs.
Tue, 29th ¶
Tracking ¶
And if you really have too much time on your hands, try helping me out on some of these tasks:
- XorgOlpcTasks
- query?status=new&status=assigned&status=reopened&status=closed&owner=bernie&order=priority
Weekly OLPC Reports ¶
If you're interested in our progess at the OLPC lab, we publish weekly executive summaries here:
This is the report that mentions me volunteering for the project:
Fri, 25th ¶
60 Minutes ¶
In this episode of the popular American show SixtyMinutes, our founder NicholasNegroponte reveals a lot of details about the humanitarian role of the OneLaptopPerChild project:
The part about us starts approximately at 1/3 of the show.
You may also find the last part interesting as it specifically addresses the controversial problem of private medical centers trying to save on assistance to homeless people. Marco, you should see it!
GreenishBitmaps ¶
Warning: This article is rated PG0xF00F, parents discretion *not* advised.
I've been struggling for the last few days on a the damn X server.
In the RedHat builds, we're still using a pre-release of 1.2, labelled 1.1.99. Now, we need to leverage some upstream work for input rotation that is landing on the Xorg tree right now.
Backporting is not an option, and we want to stay up to date anyway. We'll soon be moving to Fedora 7 anyway. But even the just-released 1.3 that will be in Fedora 7 is not enough, because it has been branched some time ago, we must work from the tip of the git tree, which of course has become very unstable recently.
I've been fighting all the week against all sort of bugs and build problems and, believe me, it's a very energy consuming exercise.
The funniest thing I'm still trying to track are these GreenishBitmaps that nobody else except me is seeing.
It's probably a miscompilation of some kind, but I've long ago ran out of obvious and less obvious ideas to try and I'm now far in the land of impossible things.
All this time I've been in contact with a few X hackers on IRC, including the author of the AMD driver, but even them couldn't come up with a magical solution.
Chat Line ¶
Bernie, I'm Easy...
Bernie: Hello Easy!!! It's good to be chatting here in the blog!
I saw this two photo some row below...
But all those OLPC at the roof, what doing?? Only for furnishing or for specific utility?? :)
Bernie: Hehe... they're part of the WirelessMesh, for testing purposes. An hispanic guy called Miguel (not the same of De Icaza) sometimes fiddles with them. He's lucky because he's very tall. I'd need a ladder :-)
The office is very beautiful and the Apple Cinema Display is really very big...
Bernie: Yeah, that's the personal screen of my boss/team-leader ChrisBall. It's 30". One day or another I'll bring here my 24" wide-screen from home.
Do you have some new news about your new work??
Bernie: Sorry for not updating the blog... I've been *extremely* busy. I will do it shortly... Promised.
Sat, 19th ¶
Trip to work ¶
I still couldn't solve the problem of getting to work quickly. I can't afford to waste over 2 hours every day like this.
By now, I've tried any possible solution:
- Car: the office doesn't have a parking lot and there's
no way to park within one mile from KendalSquare for less
than $18/day. Monthly fees start from $250.
- Bus: I need to commute in Dudley and take line no. 1 to
MassachusettsAvenue, then walk 15 minutes to KendalSquare.
- Bus + subway combo: The red line would get me directly
to KendalSquare, and there are several routes to get there,
but all of them require commuting at least twice. The
monthly link pass costs $75.
- Car + subway combo: there are some cheap parkings next
to the terminal subway stations where you can leave your
car for $5/day. Unfortunately, to get there I must
travel in the opposite direction. And the whole thing
will cost $75 + $5*30, about the same of the monthly
parking fee.
- Taxi: Costs $11-$14 * 2 every day, which makes the
monthly parking cheap in comparison.
And even worse, the red line stops running at midnight and bus no 1 at 1AM. Which forces me to leave from the office very early (for my standards).
If you want to play with the possibilities, I just discovered that the transportation company has a very cool web service that would have saved me a lot of time:
http://www.mbta.com/rider_tools/trip_planner/default.asp From: 66 Maywood st., Roxbury MA To: Kendall/mit Station, Cambridge
At the end of the day, the ultimate solution is moving closer to the office or at least close to the red line. Maybe I could afford to spend $600 for a room, but I don't feel like moving right now. I already have enough things on my hands.
Have you considered to put a bicycle in your combo? You may replace a 10 km walk with it and open up new combinations (and ways to get wet...) — PiroPiro
Awful Weather ¶
Today it's raining lightly. Yesterday I took an extra shower in the evening :-(
The WikiPedia was definitely right: weather in Boston can change very rapidly. Must remember to buy a raincoat like RichardStallman's and keep it in my backpack.
What Next? ¶
1. Get employed at OLPC 2. ??? 3. World domination!
Just joking, but the truth is that I still need to face a lot of new challenges now.
My next problem will be improving my communication skills. After one month of full immersion, I can still barely understand people talking quickly to each and I clearly express myself using an inadequately poor vocabulary and too slowly in some cases.
These things will improve over time, while my strong Italian inflection is likely to remain forever. If only I could find one, I'd attend to a course to correct my diction now. Actors do them.
Another crucial problem I need to solve quickly is getting a visa that allows me to work here permanently. There are many possibilities, but none guaranteed to succeed. For now, I'm not thinking about it: my employer knows better than me and will help as much as possible.
Last but not least, my job is not easy and requires a good amount of commitment. All my colleagues are extremely smart and more experienced than I am. So I need to work twice as hard to keep up with them.
A very nice workplace and very interesting assignments helps. And, most importantly, I know that what we're doing here is going to have a huge impact on the world.
Andrea Grandi: Your words give me no hopes for my future :(
Bernie: Are you planning to come here? Cool! :D
> All my colleagues are extremely smart and more experienced than I am
More than you? It's not a place for me then :D
Bernie: It's worth trying even if you currently think you're not up to the job. It's a very valuable experience even if you end up returning to your home country for some reason.
Rasky: But can you get a perm visa even without an university degree? I thought that was absolutely out of question... I knew that people without a degree could just get some 1-year temp visa.
Thu, 17th ¶
More Pics ¶
Here are some more pics of MyOlpcDesk.
Wed, 16th ¶
Office Space ¶
Here are a few pictures of the OlpcOffice!
Hack Hack Hack ¶
I've been assigned a problem with an invalid serial port baud rate after resume from software suspend.
I started investigating the hard way, until ChrisBall pointed me on IRC to talk with the KernelHacker DavidWoodhouse, who obviously had a solution in a few seconds. Unfortunately, it didn't work as we expected and MitchBradley of OpenFirmware joined the conversation to help.
Having all the subsystem gurus available to fix your bugs makes things a lot easier... Hehe, I think I like it ;-)
And so tomorrow I'll get back to work on a MandelBug with the Xorg's driver for the AMD chipset. When XVIDEO is enabled and you rotate the display with XRANDR, sometimes the X server crashes, sometimes it just hangs and sometimes it survives with a corrupted display. And the bad news is that gdb also hangs.
How will I fix this? Easy: I'll go looking for the driver authors first thing tomorrow and beg them to send me a fix :-)
By the way, lately I've been hanging regularly in #olpc on FreeNode. My nick is _bernie. Come over to see what's going on!
Mon, 14th ¶
All Night Long ¶
At 9PM, I'm still here and plan to stay as long as I can :-)
<please link to the song "All Night Long" here>
Buried In Work Already ¶
WARNING: Technical AbraCadabra ahead!
Today I met most of the team members and bothered a few of them, starting from DanWilliams who helped me debug a problem with a simple mesh networking scenario involving three laptops.
Today I've also been assigned some work from ChrisBall, who also helped me out with many small things such as a dead battery, accessing the serial console, etc. I'm currently adding a KernelDebugger command to display the ModelSpecificRegister's of the AmdGeodeCpu.
But it seems like I will also refer to RedHat's ChrisBlizzard to be assigned more work. We talked about optimizing the video driver for the AmdGeodeCpu, getting the resistive tablet to work and maybe adding "tapping" support to the capacitive touchpad.
As you know, I like it even more when I'm allowed to ramble through a zillion different things like this!
Sneaky Preview ¶
I'm writing this from within the OLPC headquarters. I came today for a second interview and to get a few tasks assigned to me :-)
I have no time to be more specific. Will tell you the details a little later.
Sun, 13th ¶
TODO: will tell you later
Sat, 12th ¶
TODO: will tell you later
Fri, 11th ¶
>MUM< creepy mummy virus it's taking control here.... :-) WRITE SOON OR IT/SHE WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING!
Quite a Trip ¶
Today I'm leaving the safe and familiar BostonCity to boldly go where I've never been before.
The current plan is to drive south to ProvidenceCity, BrdigeportCity, NewYorkCity, PhiladelphiaCity, BaltimoreCity and, finally, WashingtonCity. Maybe I'll even push myself down in FloridaState to go see the SpaceShuttle!
I could use a GPS. I've seen a few TomTom's, but $299 seems way too much to me for a talking map. Maybe I'll buy a traditional map for $10.
Ah, and I will sleep frugally, of course. Hostels and motels when I find them. So, over the next few days I'll be lucky if I have intermittent Internet access and, consequently, I won't probably be able to sync the BrainDump.
Thu, 10th ¶
Babbo: Ma fino ad oggi con quali danari hai vissuto dato che sei partito con 10€ liquidi?
Bernie: Ho prelevato i soldi dall'ATM... con il bancomat delle poste! E vedo dai movimenti sul conto che hanno applicato un buon cambio e nessuna penale strana.
Car Rental ¶
Today I finally rent a car. It's a SaturnIon, a brand and model I never heard of before.
I felt very comfortable driving all over Europe: Italy, Swiss, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, and even Greece... But, for some reason, I was quite afraid of driving a car here in the States.
Maybe it's because the road signs are somewhat different and there are a few subtly different rules, such as turning right on red, not parking in front of hydrants, etc. Most probably, it's because I've seen way too many movies where people get stopped by police and thrown in jail quite easily!
Well, so far everything went very well. I mean, except for parking. Parking in downtown is easy if you're willing to pay $10-12 for a few hours. It's a big pain in the ass otherwise... The best way I've found so far is to park near a minor T station and then get the T to downtown :-(
And, of course, the car has AutomaticTransmission, which I managed to learn quickly: the trouble comes when you switch the other way around ;-)
Ok, today I've driven all around Boston just to get used to it. Tomorrow I'll probably dare getting on the highway to see around.
Business Visa? ¶
Today I've re-read detailed information on the available US visa options:
Looks like a B-1 Business Visa would do. To get one, I should go to a US ambassy, and ambassys are usually located abroad. Instead of returning to Italy, maybe I could get an appointment in MontrealCity, which is near to the border and also an interesting place to see.
Wed, 9th ¶
Zip Car ¶
Yesterday I applied for this great service: http://www.zipcar.com/ . Isn't it a good idea? Costs less than renting a car and is almost as versatile.
<rasky> http://www.carsharingfirenze.it/ :)
Today I walked to their offices to give them my documents and get the magnetic card. They said they will enable it first thing tomorrow *if* the "insurance risk declaration" I got from Italy suffices.
Simple shopping ¶
Consumers must be very simple minded here. First, most shop names are simply dumb: Pay Less, Save-A-Lot, Big Deal, and so on.
Sounds very meno tasse per tutti to me... — PiroPiro
Second, they try to subtle deceptions such as: "take 2 for $24.xx", and, next to it: "take 3 for $21.xx", Which of course is impossible. It's a trap! The little figures placed exactly where you would expect to see the cents, are indeed a small notice: EACH.
Today I bought a dozen of razor blades ($1.50), a bottle of shampoo ($1.50) and shower gel ($1.50). But I spent $12 for adjusting the two pair of trousers I had bought a few days ago in the mall! $12 EACH, I mean.
Bad Neighborhood ¶
Walking home alone in the night, I may encounter some bad guys:
Better be careful :-)
Tue, 8th ¶
Veni, Vidi, ???? ¶
This morning I shown up at OneLaptopPerChild's headquarters. It's again next to KendallSquare, in OneCambridgeCenter.
JimGettys was very kind: he took me to LegalSeaFood for lunch, repaired my ExOh's keyboard (two keys were dead) and introduced me to the team members.
They left me with the usual Hollywood formula: "don't call us, we'll call you". But in this particular case, I felt they were sincere :-)
I hope to be soon a member of the OLPC core team!
Mon, 7th ¶
Alea Iacta Est ¶
As promised... Yes, indeed. Everybody please cross their fingers.
Babbo:Pregherò perchè tu possa ottenere quello che cerchi.
Camy: Mannaggia a voi due ( Bernie e Alberto ) siete cosi..."teneri". Come ho già detto tante volte a Bernie, è fortunato ad avere un babbo cosi! Lo so, lo so che non c'entra nulla con lo stile di questo blog, ma io sono cosi, impulsiva e Bernie lo sa e mi perdonerà. A dire il vero anch'io sto in ansia per lui :-) speriamo bene...
Bernie: Via, non fatemi venire il magone voi due :-)
Sun, 6th ¶
International Dinner ¶
FedericoLucifredi and his wife Irena were so kind to invite me at their place for a fine dinner with appetizers, SirloinSteak (see pic below), several side dishes and... Even a PinotNoir!
There were also Mauro — Federico's colleague at Ximian — and Irena's friend who's a physics professor from Providence and could speak perfect French and, surprisingly, even Italian!
What can I say? I think I got a pound or two that night, but it was worth it! :-)
Sat, 5th ¶
Cinema ¶
There's a cinema in building 26 @ EmAiTee, and it's cheap. I'm going tonight.
Cursious? ¶
If you're curious, my room rent is $500 per month. Utilities,
forniture and DSL Internet access are included.
It's not cheap, but it's also not too expensive for Boston. They told me that only Manhattan is more expensive here on the east coast.
CurriculumVitae ¶
...is almost ready. A friend told me that I'd better have also a synthetic resume of 1-2 pages for the impatient. I think he's right.
Well, I said I'd be finished by last Monday, but then I managed to slip past my own deadline visiting NewYorkCity, moving in my current room and in other frivolous ways.
Now I have no excuses: the time has come. Next Monday I will write my proposal. Seriously.
Fri, 4th ¶
Exchange Rates ¶
Looks like I'd better convert all my money to dollars *now*:
What do you think about it?
Babbo:penso che $ continuerà a svalutare. Perderai soldi.
StataCenter ¶
I forgot to tell you about the kewlest building in EmAiTee:
See also: stata-link
Fast night ¶
After a long time, I finally get to (ab)use MIT's wi-fi and barf my short-term brain buffer into my BrainDump.
Tonight we went to an Irish pub next to Kendall, where I got to know a few more Ximian employees. I got rumors that the famous kernel hacker RobertLove would be there, so after a while I turned to the guy next to me and asked: "Is RobertLove really going to come?". And he replied: "Speaking."
Another guy told me: "Hi, I'm BAHB". "Pardon?". "BAHB!". "What???". Federico promptly helped me out: "Ha detto che si chiama BOB :-)"
The beer was good. I discovered that a BlueMoon is the nearest approximation of a WeisseBeer I can find here, and I'm not at all displeased by its taste.
Slow day ¶
My landlord has recently switched DSL provider and Internet doesn't work any more: the sync light on the modem flashes. It seems that crappy ISPs are a common disease in the States as well.
Yesterday, he called for service and, finally, they told him they would send a tech today from 8AM to 18PM. They refused to be more specific. And so I've agreed to wait here to let the guy in... I care about it for myself too!
Weight ¶
By the way, today I'm exactly 150 pounds (use GoogleCalculator to get it to SI units).
150 pounds = 68.0388555 kilograms
Thu, 3rd ¶
Roxbury ¶
They told me Roxbury is quite an infamous suburb of Boston. And my first impression confirms that: shops are uglier, parks and streets are somewhat dirtier (but not as much as in NewYorkCity!) and, most importantly, some of the neighbors look creepy. Especially in the night, streets are crowded by people with criminal faces and many homeless.
You know I'm not the type who's easily scared off by a bunch of zombies, but I'll feel much better when I'll drive a car.
Moving In ¶
I've finally settled in my room. There's no need to describe the house in detail, as it's the most typical colonial design: two floors plus basement, front and back yards, sliding windows, wooden floors everywhere. You've come to know them very well from the movies.
Today I went to the mall to gather the essentials: a blankets, a pillow case and some bath towels. The bed is comfortable and I was quite tired already, therefore I fell asleep early in the evening and kept on until 8 AM.
WARNING: TIME WARP OCCURRED
WARNING: TIME WARP IMMINENT
Fri, 4th ¶
Alberto: Attento a convertire € in $ perchè € si sta apprezzando,e quindi $ svalutando rispetto a €.
Belle le foto scovate da Massimo. Have a good stay in Btn.
Massimo: Bernie, you taught me: search?q=100+USD+in+EUR
Massimo: Since Bernie could not give us any picture, I had to use flickr: here they are!
Piro: what in the heaven is RMS doing dressed like a camp tent? :D
Wed, 2nd ¶
BankOfAmerica ¶
I went to BankOfAmerica and opened a bank account. I went there wearing a yellow T-shirt and a weary pair of jeans. In the beginning, they referred me to a young guy who quickly tried to offer me a student's saving account. When I queried for interest rates, credit cards, and dollar/euro conversion rates, they finally realized that I was going to move a bit of money.
When I've shown them my balance, they immediately switched me to a very polite girl who took all the time to explain me everything in detail until after their closing time and recommended me to open *3* different accounts to get a rate of 4.80% with no fees! I totally hate when people judge you by your wealth, dressing, or other stupid status symbols, but maybe a bank is the only exception where it makes sense to do so.
Banking appears to be far, far simpler here. I already feel like I know everything while in Italy I still can't read most of the paperwork I get from my banks.
Batt: Or maybe american bankers are so skilled that you are happy while, in truth, they have stolen your money forever :-P
Massimo: Yahr yahr! He didn't realize they already got 4.80% of his balance from his pocket with a magician move! Yahr yahr! Anyway... 4-5% rate is not absurd in the US. It has always been almost like this as far as I can remember (maybe sometimes it was even 6-7%). It's useful for someone (like bernie), but tragic for someone who does not have any money and to buy a house with those mortgages it's almost impossible. Still, the US has got a very low rate in comparison with other extra-european countries.
Tue, 1st ¶
Good News, Everyone! ¶
After a long struggling, I've finally found a room!
And I'll be moving in *today*! But I'm writing on Thursday the 3rd, actually (aren't you thinking fourth-dimentionally yet?).
The room is nice and comes with some forniture, including a desk. It's on the second floor of a house where the landlord lives with her wife and a very friendly puppy.I like it that way: all those houses shared by students I've seen so far tend to become unmaintained and dirty quite quickly, while this one is a real house with a fully operational kitchen, bathroom and even a clean back garden!
My landlord is Armenian, but have been living here in Boston for a long time. My first impression is he's a very nice person, honest and easy going. I haven't met his wife yet — she'll be back on Sunday.
I'm afraid the house is a bit far away from MIT, in southern Boston. But that won't be a problem as soon as I buy a car. There may even be a chance to rent or buy the car readily from my landlord's son.
I don't know the address yet. I should, but I forgot the sheet on the table when I went there. And I can't call my landlord either because I've stolen his cell phone by mistake also. Yeah, I reckon I mustn't a good impression, actually :-)
Camy: the landlord lives with his wife
Do You Speak English? ¶
Some of you will be pissed off by this change, but I'm starting to make some international friends here and none of them could read Italian.
Writing in English is also what I need to improve my writing skills. For the few of you who barely know English, some more reading surely won't hurt! If you're real lazy, translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbender is your friend.
As always, I'd very much appreciate being told about any mistake I make.
Massimo: ok, let's start with those horrible contractions my poor eyes had to read: Won't and I'd. Hey Bernie! You already went back home from NYC. Ain't gonna play with ya 'nymore!
I nostri programmi riprenderanno tra breve su MayBlog.
April 2007 ¶
Mon 30th ¶
Long time, no C ¶
Sono successe un sacco di cose e non ho avuto molto tempo per scrivere... Anzi, ho scritto molto, ma non sono riuscito a trovare un accesso wi-fi stabile da cui aggiornare il wiki.
Tip: leggete bottom-up per evitare il noto fenomeno dell'inversione spazio-temporale del blog.
Update: Ho accumulato un grosso pacco di email da leggere e processare. Skippo tutte quelle che mi chiedono dove sono finito perche' tanto ormai lo sapete.
Homecoming ¶
Sono di nuovo sullo Shitty Bus per Boston. Proprio in questo momento stiamo lasciandoci alle spalle l'isola di manhattan ed i grattacieli di downtown. Attraversando il WilliamsburgBridge, vedo alla mia destra la sagoma imponente del ManhattanBridge e, subito dietro, il BrooklynBridge.
Prima o poi dovro' tornare a visitare questa magnifica citta' che non dorme mai.
Sun 29th ¶
The City That Never Sleeps ¶
Giornata di turismo.
L'EmpireStateBuilding non e' stato gran che... penso che sarebbe stato molto piu' emozionante salire in cima alle TwinTowers, ma al loro posto adesso c'e' l'impressionante area di GroundZero, che a vederla sembrerebbe solo un'enorme fossa... se non sapessimo tutti cosa vi e' accaduto.
La LibertyStatue non l'abbiamo potuta visitare perche' dal NineEleven e' vietato salirci. CentralPark e' assolutamente enorme e pieno di animaletti, sopratutto scoiattoli, ruscelli, campetti di baseball e ovviamente le stradine per il jogging con le panchine che sono staste usate e riusate da innumerevoli commedie romantiche di serie B.
TimesSquare non e' affatto una piazza, ma un crocevia. Sembra una PiccadillyCircus molto piu' grande e sfarzosa. Caldamente raccomandata di notte.
Sat 28th ¶
Big Apple, Big Mac ¶
Vi risparmio una descrizione dettagliata di NewYorkCity, perche' ovviamente l'avete gia' vista in centinaia di film, a cominciare dal mitico Ghostbusters che ne offre un'immagine molto simile a quel che ho visto.
Vi daro' invece un diff rispetto a quello che tutti si aspettano. La prima impressione e' che la citta' sia troppo degradata, sporca e puzzolente, accentuato dal fatto che siamo arrivati proprio in ChinaTown e poi in LittleItaly. Il resto di DownTown e' un po' meglio, ma comunque piuttosto zozza.
E poi e' proprio vero che i newyorkesi sono rudi. Perfino gli annunci della metro sembrano molto scortesi. E se chiedi informazioni ti rispondono come se tu fossi stupido a non saperlo gia'!
Evidentemente ai newyorkesi piace cosi': una ragazza nella subway mi ha detto che Boston non ha carattere perche' e' troppo ordinata e pulita. Sara', ma io la preferisco di gran lunga a questa cazzo di jungla!
NewYork NewYork ¶
Sono su un bus di una premiata "ditta" che ti porta direttamente dalla china town di Boston alla china town di NewYork per soli $15. Penso si chiami City Bus (ma la ragazza dei biglietti ovviamente lo pronuncia come Shitty Bus ;-).
Prima di partire, l'autista si e' mangiato una bella ciotola di alghe verdi con i suoi bastoncini. Pregate per la mia incolumita' ;-)
Fri 27th ¶
Coed Friends ¶
Ah, dimenticavo di dirvi che ieri mi hanno cambiato stanza in ostello e mi hanno detto: "it's a coed room, do you mind?". Ho chiesto: "what the heck is a coed?". "there are both men and women in the same room". "Oh, why didn't you tell me there was such an option before? ;-)"
Cosi' ho conosciuto altri due amici, di cui ancora non ho la foto. Uno e' del Wisconsin e si chiama JosephSmith e SamDean e' nato a Londra ma vive in Scozia.
Ieri sera siamo andati a bere un paio di birre in un pub in cui c'erano delle ragazze in tiro e molto socievoli, nel senso che ti si strusciano addosso con il sedere quando gli passi accanto! Poi pero' ho capito che lavoravano per il pub e che c'e' un rigido protocollo da seguire: bisogna star fermi e sopratutto tenere le mani a posto - solo loro possono toccare!
Bernardo^2 ¶
A forza di scrivere nel WikiWiki finisci per raddoppiare tutto e gia' che c'ero mi sono raddoppiato anche io.
Come da programma, venerdi' mattina mi sono fatto vivo alla FreeSoftwareFoundation e ho detto: "I'm Bernardo and I'm here to see RichardStallman". Siccome RMS non era ancora arrivato, mi hanno invitato a mangiare un taco con loro in ufficio.
Mentre mangiavamo, e' arrivato un altro visitatore e gli ho sentito dire: "I'm Bernardo and I'm here to visit the FSF".
Inizialmente ho pensato che il mio taco contenesse sostanze allucinogene, ma poi la cosa e' risultata essere reale. Il mio alter-ego si chiama BernardoParrella ed e' di origine italiana, ma vive in California da 15 anni e ha qualche anno piu' di me. Bernardo e' un giornalista di varie testate alternative e corrispondente USA della casa editrice Apogeo.
Una coincidenza incredibile se si pensa che non ci sono molti Bernardi neanche in Italia... Anche RMS si e' molto stupito: "We probably never had a Bernardo here and now two of them show up at the very same time!"
Dopo esserci fatti benedire da RMS, io e l'altro me siamo tornati al MIT. In questi giorni c'e' una serie di conferenze sulla stampa e l'informazione a cui partecipava Bernardo ed alcuni suoi amici italiani dell'universita' di Urbino.
Uno dei talk era proprio nell'edificio del MitMediaLab, cosi' ho potuto vedere l'interno che e' anche piu' bello dell'esterno. Ero a pochi metri di distanza dal mio futuro capo, ma non ho avuto la faccia tosta di andare al piano di sopra a bussare alla sua porta.
Devo avere ancora un po' di pazienza, i TempiNonSonoAncoraMaturi...
CUT HERE - CUT HERE - CUT HERE
CUT HERE - CUT HERE - CUT HERE
Sun 29th ¶
NewYorkCity ¶
Bernardo e' a NewYorkCity, famosa citta' sull'atlantico. Ha riferito di non preoccuparsi se non scrive. Incredibilmente e' sprovvisto di WirelessConnection.
Non ho molte news. E' stato telegrafico: scusa Massimo, spendo $10/min, ho bisogno che mi chiami i parenti piu' stretti e gli dici che sono a NewYorkCity e sto bene. Scrivilo nel blog.
Scusate se per questi ultimi due giorni sono io a fare un po' di BlogBlabbing. — MassimoSantoro.
Sat 28th ¶
Missing ¶
Bernardo e' attualmente missing. Cio' puo' significare, leggendo il suo blog, alcune cose:
* E' caduto in amore (FellInLove) con RichardStallman. Sono fuggiti a LasVegas con il primo volo e si sono sposati. Domani sera e' invece previsto il divorzio.
* E' stato assunto al volo dalla FreeSoftwareFoundation e adesso stanno decidendo che e' meglio far tornare tutto com'era prima, quando l'OLPC era un progetto veramente FreeSoftware. Percio' hanno formato una task force e sono andati dal droghiere sotto casa a comprare un po' di bombe a mano, mitra, pistole varie per andare ad uccidere NicholasNegroponte.
* Correndo sull'HarvardBridge e ascoltando UntilTheEndOfTheWorld degli U2, ha deciso di percorrerlo avanti e indietro per 2 settimane di fila senza interruzioni mentre con l'ExOh in mano compila gli ultimi kernel 2.6.21 usciti.
Fri 27th ¶
MirrorMirror ¶
Non crederete mai a quello che sto per raccontarvi. Infatti non ve lo dico adesso perche' c'e' casino. Torno subito!
Update (17:45): Vi ricordate l'episodio di StarTrek che si intitolava MirrorMirror? In quell'episodio, il teletrasporto ha un problema per cui il capitano, il dottore e Spok vengono trasportati in un universo parallelo in cui esiste un'altra Enterprise che e' simile alla loro, ma diversa in alcuni particolari.
Spok si trova faccia a faccia con il suo alter-ego che ha la barba e che, applicando la logica vulcaniana, aveva raggiunto conclusioni opposte!!! Alla fine discutendo tra di loro i due Spok finiscono per concordare che la cosa piu' logica da fare e' far tornare tutto com'era prima.
(massimo): trinity:/ (non so come linkare meglio. Forse con il fish? :-)
Perche' vi racconto questo? Lo saprete nella prossima avvincente puntata.
mmm... ma io che sono un attento lettore ricordo che dovevi incontrare maestade RichardStallman... — PiroPiro
— OS/Toro —- ma lo sta scrivendo in lingua Klingon?
Typo fixes ¶
From the git history it appears that some good fellow at Develer is helping me out by fixing several typos I've slipped all over my CurriculumVitae. Shame on me! And thank you, AnonymousCoward!
aleph: Ehm... was me! Thanks for the ARM wizardry :-) Se lo trovi laggiu' ti devi assolutamente leggere On The Edge, il libro sulla Commodore... le gesta eroiche di chi ci ha lavorato, dal PET all'Amiga, sono somma fonte di ispirazione, mi stan facendo venire voglia di fare le valigie pure a me :-)
Thu 26th ¶
Late at night ¶
Update: Sono le 02:30 del mattino e non ne posso piu' di scrivere, quindi stacco per andare a dormire. Ho rsyncato quello che ho scritto fin'ora qua: CurriculumVitae.
Per finire mi ci vorranno un altro paio di giorni a questo ritmo. Se lo leggete, mi fareste un grosso favore a fixare gli errori che vedete e magari mandarmi un po' di feedback se vi va.
Cami: mannaggia a te...sapessi quanto ci manchi....oops se mi legge mio marito mi sa che dovresti trovarmi un posto letto anche a me :-)) Un grande abbraccio da tutti noi ( e uno speciale dal tuo amico )
Bernie: Ho ricevuto le foto... 10x a lot! Penso che ne mettero' una da qualche parte nel wiki come ricordo :)
CurriculumVitae ¶
Non ho molto da dire... oggi ho portato un po' avanti il CurriculumVitae che avevo iniziato in Italia e non avevo finito un po' per pigrizia e un po' per prolissita'.
Appena lo avro' messo online, vi prego di dargli un'occhiata ed eventualmente editarlo per fixare qualsiasi errore ortografico, grammaticale, stilistico, storico o circostanziale.
L'idea e' di farmi vivo con Jim Gettys entro Lunedi', con o senza l'appartamento.
FreeSoftwareFoundation ¶
Venerdi' mattina vado al quartier generale della FreeSoftwareFoundation a trovare niente meno che RichardStallman! Vi faro' sapere.
Wed 25th ¶
Yahweh ¶
L'ostello si trova sulla sponda opposta del Charles rispetto al MIT. Ci si arriva a piedi in pochi minuti attraversando Commonwealth Av. (la via dello struscio) e l'HarvardBridge, per arrivare in MemorialDrive (il lungarno del Charles).
Quando sono arrivato ad HarvardBridge, ho capito perche' tutti ci fanno jogging. Attraversare il bacino correndo e' un'esperienza magnifica che puo' essere ulteriormente intensificata ascoltando questa bella canzone degli U2 durante il tragitto:
I gabbiani, le barche a vela... I grattacieli di downtown su una sponda e sull'altra il campus del MIT con la grande cupola.
Raccomandato dalla Happy Hacker's Guide To The Galaxy. da alberto babbo: prova di inserimento. Credo di aver sottova- lutato il tuo romanticismo.Anche quando parli di bistecche e vino toscano (Montespertoli?)
Powerful Friends ¶
Ieri dimenticavo di raccontarvi che l'altra sera sono andato a cena con MiguelDeIcaza da LegalSeaFoods. Come molti di voi sapranno, non amo il pesce, ho ordinato una bella bisteccona con del buon vino toscano.
Gli ho raccontato dei miei piani diaboloci e Miguel mi ha dato qualche utile consiglio. Dopo cena abbiamo anche parlato degli sviluppi futuri di Mono, ma non so cosa fosse riservato e cosa no, quindi se siete curiosi leggetevi il blog di Miguel!
E' bello avere amici potenti :-)
Tue 24th ¶
Trasferta ¶
Stamattina mi sono trasferito nell'Hi Boston Hostel di Hemenway St. Spostare i bagagli e' stato un po' faticoso: alla roba che mi sono portato dall'Italia se ne e' aggiunta altra che ho comprato qua.
Rent a Car ¶
Sento sempre di piu' il bisogno di avere un'auto per spostarmi velocemente per la citta'. Per ogni appartamento che visito parte mezza giornata e questo non e' accettabile, perche' l'altra mezza giornata me la brucio per sbrigare le altre faccende.
A tal proposito, oggi sono andato a dare un'occhiata da Enterprise, che dovrebbe essere il piu' economico. Per un mese di una compact car vogliono $460. Poco rispetto ai prezzi italiani, ma sempre troppo per potermelo permettere. Penso di comprarne una usata come ha fatto Sara. Tutti mi consigliano le Toyota perche' a quanto pare le auto americane dopo 70K miglia sono gia' da buttare via. Ma il vero problema da risolvere per avere un'auto qua a Boston sembra essere il parcheggio: vedo parchimetri ovunque... a 25 cent per 30 minuti.
A conti fatti, probabilmente mi conviene rassegnarmi ad usare la T (metropolitana), ma devo ammettere che sento davvero la mancanza di una bella auto.
Mon, 23rd ¶
Shopping ¶
Vi scrivo con il mio fido ExOh dal Quincy Market, dove ho appena consumato un pasto greco.
Stamattina ho comprato un cellulare motorola usato con un prepaid da $10 della T-Mobile ed il caricatore nuovo. Tutto a $30. Un affarone, direi.
Poi ho comprato uno zaino grande, 2 polo, 5 T-shirt e un paio di Adidas per $103. Super big deal!! :)
Le brutte notizie sono che non ho ancora trovato casa. Siccome l'hotel costa, mi spostero' in un hostello oggi. In giro mi hanno detto che c'e' il graduation e quindi le camere si trovano con difficolta'.
Hi Hostel! ¶
Mi sono spostato in un ostello in Hemenway St.. Adesso spendo $33 al giorno con il wifi e la colazione inclusi. Sono anche molto piu' vicino all'EmAiTee . Se lo avessi trovato prima avreirisparmiato un sacco di tempo e soldi.
Ah, il mio nuovo # di telefono e' +1-781-244-CENSORED, ma non chiamatemi molto perche' qua i cellulari pagano anche quando ricevono!
Catch the squirrel! ¶
Adesso sono nel parco dello student center dell'EmAiTee. Mi e' appena passato davanti uno scoiattoloino con un pezzo di panino tra le mani. Mi sono girato a guardarlo soltanto io, dal che deduco che qua sonon normali come i piccioni a firenze.
Fa un caldo bestiale, ma nei prossimi giorni dovrebbe migliorare (nel senso che ritorna il fresco :)
Sun, 22nd ¶
Slow day ¶
Mi sono svegliato tardi... avevo davvero un sacco di sonno arretrato. Gli esperti dicono che il sonno perso non si puo' recuperare, ma l'evidenza dei fatti sembra contraddire gli esperti: dopo 11 ore di sonno mi sento davvero riposato :-)
Stamattina ho risposto alla posta e ho scritto alla FreeSoftwareFoundation chiedendo se posso fare un pellegrinaggio alla loro sede.
Sto anche browsando pigramente su http://boston.craigslist.org/ per trovare un'altra stanza da vedere oggi pomeriggio. Devo sbrigarmi a trovare casa per ridurre il "burn rate" eccessivo di questi giorni, altrimenti col cavolo che riesco a mantenermi qua!
Homeless ¶
Incidentalmente, l'episodio di SouthPark di questa settimana e' in tema con la mia attuale situazione. Si intitola Night Of The Living Homeless e potete scaricarlo da questo link di cortesia (temporaneo):
Come al solito, la visione e' sconsigliata a chiunque. Ah, "change" in inglese significa anche "spiccioli", l'ho scoperto solo qualche giorno fa.
esreveR ¶
Approposito: questo blog e' a rovescio rispetto a quelli canonici. Sto pensando di rovesciarlo... Ma anche di splittarlo in qualche modo: le pagine lunghissime non mi sono mai piaciute. Che ne dite?
lobo: beh potresti farlo stack like, diviso per mese :)
Batt: In effetti così tocca scorrerlo fino alla fine per leggerlo. Buona l'idea di rovesciarlo. Le pagine lunghe mi piacciono. Ci si può greppare dentro :-)
Bernie: avete ragione ma mi fa fatica girarlo io, qua ho una tastiera da laptop e una da bambini... e sono senza mouse. Non e' che potreste pensarci voi?
Batt: Ok, fatto, spero di non aver fatto casino :-)
Bernie: Ottimo, grazie 2^10!
Sat, 21st ¶
Last machine standing ¶
Ieri sono arrivato al MIT con labatteria della telecamera gia' a terra. a meta' giornata ho esaurito anche l'ipod. Ho chiamato un po'di numeri per cercare casa e mentre mi facevo dare l'indirizzo... e' mortoanche il cellulare!!! Ho riacceso l'iBook che era agli sgoccioli per vedere con Google Maps, ma la batteria mi ha piantato.
E ora cosa faccio? Ho tirato fuori il piccolo XO e l'ho acceso. Si e' subito registrato da solo sulla rete del MIT e mi ha permesso di vedere la mappa e l'annuncio su internet. Non essendoci ancora il power management, ho dovuto lasciarlo acceso x tutto il tempo. E la batteria era ancora quasi tutta carica! Allora ci ho attaccato l'ipod per ricaricarlo un po' e ascoltare un po' di U2 al ritorno.
L'XO e' di gran lunga il computer piu' longevo che abbia mai visto... e la versione finale consumera' anche meno!!!
Meeting in Kendall Square ¶
Vi scrivo usando l'XO dalla fermata della metro di Kendall. La rete del MIT prendebene anche qua. Sto aspettando FedericoLucifredi, un amico italiano che lavora alla NovellCompany (formerly XimianCompany). E' anche Amico di MiguelDeIcaza (ciao Torello!)...
Ieri ho visto il mio primo appartamento, ma non mi e' piaciuto molto... e' lontano e un po' squallido:
Accidenti. scrivere su questa kbd da bambini e' davvero difficile! E mi sembra anche che la gente intorno mi guardi sorridendo, ma forse e' suggestione!!!
Ramblings ¶
Federico arrivera' piu' tardi, ma non so piu' cosa raccontare...
Ieri ho anche conosciuto un agente di banca che mi ha detto di passare da loro per aprire il conto. Non so se serve un visto... e non so come valutare se le condizioni sono buone.
Voglio anche comprare un cellulare che non suxi (soxi) come il Nokia. Non ho ancora capito un accidenti, qua ci sono 10 compagnie telefoniche! Update: ho chiesto a FedericoLucifredi e adesso sono ancora piu' confuso di prima, ma penso che mi serva un cellulare GSM e una scheda prepagata. La T-something dovrebbe fare al caso mio.
Ximian Headquarters ¶
(Dedicato a Torello)
Sono andato con Federico e sua moglie negli uffici della Ximian, che sono a due passi dal MitMediaLab. L'ambiente e' davvero molto bello, Miguel non esagerava affatto quando ce ne parlo'.
Abbiamo pranz-cenato insieme in un ristorante spagnolo con le tapas... e c'era anche il mitico Somillo al Pimiento Verde, che non era buono come in spagna, ma comunque meglio della roba hyper-fritta degli ultimi giorni.
Federico e sua moglie sono davvero due persone gentili e mi hanno dato un sacco di dritte. Si sono entrambi trasferrelliti qua (10 e 15 anni fa) e adesso sembrano perfettamente integrati nel mondo del lavoro e nella citta'. Questo mi fa ben sperare.
Thu, 20th ¶
Q: Sei stato al EmAiTee? Hai rivisto il CowBoy? — PiroPiro
A1: Yeah, ti scrivo da una saletta visitatori del MIT. C'e' l'accesso libero al wifi in tutto il campus!!
A2: Con il CowBoy ho parlato in IRC l'altro giorno... ma lui e' in Colorado, non qua. Mi ha detto che la prossima settimana parte per Madrid e ci stara' un mesetto se non ho capito male. Se vuoi salutarlo, trovi spesso su FreeNode nel canale #gnash.
— bernie
Tarda mattinata ¶
Come accennavo sopra, oggi ho preso la metro da Logan e sono sceso alla fermata di Kendall/MIT. Una volta riemerso a quota periscopio, ho visto un ambiente familiare. Facce da nerd ovunque! Pratini all'inglese invasi da gente che mangia con il laptop davanti.
Ho girato un po' a caso, finche' non mi sono imbattuto per caso nell'edificio che ho riconosciuto immediatamente come il MIT Media Lab... la mia destinazione finale! Ma oggi e' troppo presto. Sono passato oltre le porte sbirciando.
Poi ho passeggiato in direzione della grande cupola, ma dei lavori in corso mi hanno bloccato la strada. Un worker mi ha detto di passare da un corridoio interno della facolta'. Corridoi lunghi pieni di clipboards. Su un annuncio leggo: "Four Dimensions Party". Che sara' mai? Incontro facce da nerd sempre piu' gravi.
Alla fine del dedalo di corridio ho trovato una hall con delle bancarelle di studenti. In una ho preso un donat ed un caffe' (beverone) per 2 dollari. Ormai il caffe' lungo inizia a piacermi. Poi ho visto le grandi colonne greche dietro le bancarelle: WOW! Per caso sono finito proprio sotto alla grande cupola!
Che la forza sia con voi!
1400 hours (EST) ¶
Al MIT un IP pubblico non si nega mai a nessuno.
Ne ho approfittato per fare un po' di stress test di ytalk con aleph, tom, mostro, wavexx... forse anche rasky. Poi ho addirittura chiamato l'interno di tom via SIP, ma a questo punto il fw del bcm43xx si e' emozionato troppo e gli e' venuto un colpo. Il driver del kernel e' rimasto li' incantato con una sfilza di "sending reset sequence... failed."
Ora sono di nuovo online, ma sia io che il portatile stiamo finendo le batterie. Spero di potervi richiamare presto.
Thu, 19th ¶
Mattina ¶
Brrr....
Pomeriggio ¶
Ho girato un po'. A parte il clima, la citta' e' bellissima, la gente e' simpatica, il cibo e' buono. L'albergo non e' il massimo, ma per i prossimi 2 giorni andra' bene.
Wed, 18th ¶
Per due giorni non ho quasi chiuso occhio. Oggi ho mangiato solo un sandwich inglese... Ho camminato per ore trascinandomi dietro la valigia, mi fanno male i piedi, ho finito i soldi, ho sete, il mio aereo ha subito un'ora di ritardo...
...eppure oggi e' stato un giorno eccezionale!!!
Update: Sull'aereo hanno servito un buon pudding con dell'ottimo vino francese. Entrambe cose incredibili per la British Airways. Dal finestrino si vede gia' la costa americana!! :-)