Deve’s Blog

After many devastating months I’m back on the blog… DOF has been migrated… the Integrazione DOF project is substantially over, except for the follow-up (”live” defects on the production environment), which won’t be easy at all, but which I won’t see…
And finally, holidays… Far East, China… from Beijing to Hong Kong, 3 weeks… taking off.
Yesterday and today I tasted a bit of a “normal” life… left the office around 5.30 pm… tonight I had a sort of goodbye dinner with my colleagues…
I hope this keeps up when I’m back.

But now there’s only China…

Mental state: confused.

Peculiar signs: 360° confusion.
Aggravations: variable mood.

Unsolvable doubts.
Hypothetical Hypotheses.
Some pleasant.
Unlikely.

Something good.
Something coming, not so good.
But somehow good, from another point of view.

Total uncertainties.
Maybe mental masturbation.

Rationality in trouble.
Swimming helps unwind.
But it leaves time to think.

Insane situations.
Or are they?

Desire to sleep as soon as you’re up after an 11 hours sleep.

Mental state: confused…

English maybe later…

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Italian only this time around. Don’t feel like translating this one. Ever, I think.

Non è tempo per noi
(Ligabue)

Ci han concesso solo una vita
Soddisfatti o no qua non rimborsano mai
E calendari a chiederci se
stiamo prendendo abbastanza abbastanza
Se per ogni sbaglio avessi mille lire
Che vecchiaia che passerei

Strade troppo strette e diritte
Per chi vuol cambiar rotta oppure sdraiarsi un po’
Che andare va bene però
A volte serve un motivo, un motivo
Certi giorni ci chiediamo è tutto qui?
E la risposta è sempre sì

Non è tempo per noi che non ci svegliamo mai
Abbiam sogni però troppo grandi e belli sai
Belli o brutti abbiam facce che però non cambian mai
Non è tempo per noi e forse non lo sarà mai

Se un bel giorno passi di qua
lasciati amare e poi scordati svelta di me
che quel giorno è gia’ buono per amare qualchedun’altro
qualche altro
dicono che noi ci stiamo buttando via
ma siam bravi a raccoglierci.

Non è tempo per noi che non ci adeguiamo mai
Fuorimoda, fuoriposto, insomma sempre fuori dai
Abbiam donne pazienti rassegnate ai nostri guai
Non è tempo per noi e forse non lo sarà mai

Non è tempo per noi che non vestiamo come voi
Non ridiamo, non piangiamo, non amiamo come voi
Forse ingenui o testardi
Poco furbi casomai
Non e’ tempo per noi e forse non lo sarà mai…

Finally I can get some rest from work, as the part of the project that completely drained us for the last 3 months is over, so I managed to disconnect the brain for a bit: first on Thursday night, dining with colleagues from Accenture Orientation to celebrate (why?!) 18 months of work (and the switch to open-ended job contract), and then on Friday night, going to the movies. Chosen flick: the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, that looked interesting to me since I saw the first trailers, as it reminded me of the beautiful “La Neve se ne Frega” novel by Ligabue.
And you can really tell we’ve got some respite from work ’cause I can even find the time and the will to write a short review…

The movie tells about Benjamin’s Button life, from his birth to his death; a very particular life, though, as Benjamin Button was born… old. His mother died while giving birth to him, his father abandoned him in front of a hospice for the elderly, where he gets taken care of by his foster mother Queenie, despite his difference. Benjamin, indeed, had the size and the mind of a newborn, but the body of an old man, almost blind, arthritic and apparently near death.

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Finally, today I got out of the office early! 6.15 pm!

Wait… today is Saturday…

Have you noticed anything new? So that means I did everything right…
I decided to subscribe one of the new Netsons fee-based hosting packages, the basic one (15 euros per year). You don’t get anything particularly useful compared to the free version (more space, an extra database, useless e-mail accounts etc.), except for a better-performing server, a second level domain and no fear of ad banners, which are likely to be activated sooner or later on the free hosting packages. The expense is ridiculous so I thought it a good idea to switch.

So I’ve moved the blog on the new domain http://www.devedeve.com, setting up a redirect on the old http://devedeve.netsons.org.

It’s not a simple redirect on the homepage (which would return an error when linking to a specific post on the old domain), but a smart use of the .htaccess file and of the mod rewrite module which is installed on Netsons’ Apache. Here’s a link for nerds interested in various redirect methods.

The next step was copying the whole Wordpress installation from the old hosting to the new one, and exporting-importing the MySql database. Finally, a few substitutions in the Wordpress database to update the old links, as is detailed in this post.

Quite painless after all.
Updatey your links and let me know if you find something wrong!

Christmas. New Year’s Eve. Time for holidays. Time to rest. But to me, most importantly, one of the two main occasions in all year, together with summer, to travel.

I like travelling. Sometimes I like the travel in itself. But in particular I like visiting new places, far places, different places.
For this reason, when I have the occasion to travel but I can’t use it as I would like to, I get really annoyed. So you’ll understand that last year, when our vacation plan was confirmed on December 19th, and more importantly when I got chicken pox and couldn’t go anywhere, I was really pissed off.

This time the vacation plan arrived in early november. Unfortunately barely two weeks, thanks to the festivities in quite favorable spots; but people on other projects get three weeks off. Thus it is.

My first attempt was for this Contiki tour: I’ve never seen Berlin, Prague, Budapest and they intrigue me, especially near Christmas; Vienna didn’t struck me as particularly interesting when I visited it, but two days there certainly don’t bother me; and a Contiki tour is fun and carefree, just what I needed.
But even if the web site kept saying “Available”, after a few days from my booking request (which in Italy must go through the CTS agencies) they replied: the December 27th departure is full, availability for the 20th or January 10th. I tried to organize, managed to get the ok for a modification to the vacation plan, and the day after I asked to reserve the December 20th departure. After a week: sorry, this one is full, too.

Will I ever manage to go on a Contiki tour again before I get 35, considering the short notice I have for holidays? Who knows…

At this point, getting close to December, I decided to look for a tried and tested alternative: GAP Adventures. By looking at interesting locations and availability, my choice fell on8 days in Cuba.
It’s only going to be a taste of it, as Cuba is larger than you’d think; but I hope tehre will be a bit of everything, in the western part of the country which is described as the more naturalistic one: valleys, caves, beaches, tobacco plantations, Havana. And a lot of relax I hope.

I’m leaving on December 27th and I’ll be back in Italy on January 5th; and as Vince would say, flagged another destination!

The times are now ripe. The “format war” has been won by the Blu Ray, to the detriment of the HD-DVD. HD TVs prices are not insanse anymore (a couple of years ago I saw a Full HD TV with a 10.000 euros price tag!). Sky finally offered its My Sky in HD version. But everything began from the old amplifier, which decided to die on us, so it was worth it to buy a new one that already supported the new HD audio formats.

And the time of the upgrade came…

Full HD 50 inches Samsung plasma TV, with little gems like the USB port to directly play DivX and MP4.

Panasonic Blu Ray player, BD Live 2.0 compatible (I think those features are BS, but it does have them anyway).

Onkyo A/V Receiver, with support for Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio (yeah, let’s break down the walls with subwoofer thuds!).

And my Sky HD decoder; it’s true that the HD channels aren’t many at the moment, but even just the basketball games or the occasional movie or documentary on National Geographic are worth it…

Needless to say, Blu Rays show off the best of this upgrade… In particular, among the first discs I bought, Die Hard 4 and Transformers are something spectacular… if the difference between VHS and DVD was huge, the one between DVD and Blu Ray looks to me even more abysmal, maybe because it wasn’t easy to think that the already solid DVD could be so clearly surpassed…

To sum it up: awesome!
(Even more so because the old 42 inches plasma TV is now wall mounted in front of my bed… )