Blog restarted

First, an update. Since my last post I finished high school and moved to York, UK, where I study Electronics Engineering.

I recently stared rereading old posts, and realized that I had forgot a lot of stuff. Also, reading my old writings is extremely sobering, which I believe to be a good thing. I thus decided to restart this blog, along with my Italian one. Henceforth, I shall focus on cooking, cycling (as my motorbike is still back home) and a bit of travel reports. Furthermore, if I happen to do something that might be deemed technically interesting, like my old post about triple booting my Mac, I'll give a shot at writing it down.

In conclusion, a declaration of intent: this blog will be written mainly to exercise my writing, then to keep a record of what I do and lastly with the hope that it might be useful. Somehow. To somebody. Somewhere.

New Movies and Puppies

This summer I shot 2 movies, called The End and Torta al cioccolato (Chocolate Cake). They're now available on youtube, just follow the links.

I also have big news: my dog Penny is pregnant with 6 puppies!

Summer Holidays 2008

I got back from my holidays yesterday.
This summer I've been to Paris, where I presented my acoustics article (check youtube channel soon for a video of my presentation), to Valencia for a couple of days. I spent most of the remaining time in Campomoro, and the whole August in Folgarida.
I did lots of walks and biking in both places, with more walks having place in Folgarida due to the cooler weather.
I took relatively few pictures, but I shot two short films, which you can see on my youtube channel. I also tried downhill bicycling, which is real fun, especially considering that a modern downhill bicycle has much better suspension and brakes than my old motorbikes.

This allowed me to go much faster with little risk, leaving my brother and dad to bite dust behind me.

ASUS EEE GPRS connection - simple mode

How to configure a GPRS connection on your Asus EEE. Tried with various Motorola V360 phones connected with an USB cable in data mode.
A quicker and simpler way to achieve the same result as the previous post.
Just create a standard dial-up connection and try it. If it doesn't work,install wvdial.

sudo apt-get install wvdial

Then run wvdialconf and wvdial. They'll configure and try to run you connection. If the second one fails after getting the carrier, start the connection from the network settings and it will work.

Asus EEE connection

I just managed to set up once again the connection on my asus eee. As I had completely forgot how it was done, I'm going to store all the data here, for future reference.
The settings are for Wind, you probably have to change "internet.wind" with the APN of your provider.
1. Create a dialup connection profile for your mobile.

2. Edit /etc/ppp/peers/dialup1 so as to obtain this code:

#
# This file was generated by xandrosncs tools.
#
ipparam "dialup1"
name "pjkoij"
remotename "dialup1_XANDROS_NCS_REFERENCE"

connect "/opt/xandros/lib/libxandrosncs/bin/xandrosncs-pppconnect-chat dialup1"

noauth
hide-password
noipdefault
usepeerdns

modem /dev/ttyACM0
460800

/dev/ttyACM0

3. Edit /etc/chatscripts/dialup1 thus:

#
# This file was generated by xandrosncs tools.
#
ABORT VOICE
ABORT BUSY
ABORT "NO CARRIER"
ABORT "NO DIALTONE"
ABORT "NO DIAL TONE"
TIMEOUT 120
"" ATZ
OK ATV1E0
OK AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet.wind"
OK ATD*99#
CONNECT \c

Triple Boot on my MacBook Pro

I finally managed to set up a triple boot system on my macbook pro. It would actually have been much easier if I knew that you must format your windows partition during the windows setup. If you don't, windows xp is not going to work (and don't use quick format nor convert to ntfs, they're not going to work). It is actually quite simple: you just create 2 partitions using disk utility, and yo format the windows one to fat32. You should ensure that neither your primary partition nor the partition you want to use with linux are htfs+ journaled. Linux cannot write to journaled file systems. After you made the partitions (you may need to use disk utility boot from your mac os x dvd, depending on your previous system configuration) you should install rEFIt: an open source boot loader for the EFI platform. rEFIt will detect any bootable device in your system at each startup. With rEFIt installed you can boot from the Ubuntu Live CD (or DVD) and install it. You need an external mouse to right click. During setup be careful about the keyboard layout: it tends to get it wrong on macs (you can change it at a later time, though). Install linux on the third partition (the first being EFI and the second being Mac). Windows needs to be on the last partition. You can try to install Grub directly on the correct partition (hd0,2) by changing the install location in the advanced pop-up window. However I didn't manage to boot ubuntu if I installed grub on the partition. If you let ubuntu install grub on the whole disk, windows will overwrite it during its own setup, requiring you to re-install grub on the correct partition. Once you completed the ubuntu setup check that it's bootable and install windows (remember about formatting the partition if installing xp). As you need to access both a windows and a linux (ext3) filesystem from your mac you can use ntfs for your windows drive, as you need to install MacFUSE on your Mac anyway in order to get access to ext3. Once Windows is setup you will find that rEFIt doesn't show linux as bootable anymore. To restore it you need to boot from Ubuntu Live CD, go to http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/, download Super Disk Grub and install it on your third partition foolowing Herman's instructions (available on the linked web site). Note that while the instructions show ho to set up grub on a usb stick, you need to install it to your linux disk (it is the only ext3 one). I did try to boot from the memory stick, but an error pops-up and it doesn't boot.
After re-installing grbu everything should work fine (after, of course, you install all the drivers).
While ubuntu automatically reads and writes to other disks, you need MacFUSE for enabling other disks on Mac, and MacDrive and Ext2fs for enabling them on windows.

New Software Idea

Have you ever noticed that some songs belong both to an album and to a compilation (like if you have Let it be and The Blue Album, both by the Beatles)? Noticing this I thought that next-gen music management and playback programs should treat album info as a tag, so that you can tag a song with multiple album names. In this way you could be able to find songs searching in each and all of the albums in which they were published, just like if you had the real CDs.

Various updates

First of all I finished my school's newspaper, which is now available through the pirate version of my school's site I did (here).
I'm also working on the site itself. I just finished uploading all the photos I could get from my school's server to my Picasa account, and now I'm going to embed them all into the site. I'm now working on a major redesign of the photos section, which is going to show flash slide shows from Picasa, with links to the Picasa album itself (as the flash version doesn't work with mobile phones).
I received quite a lot of feedback and suggestions for the developing of the site.
Prof. Gandolfi suggested updating the About page (which I did) and to convert to html the teacher list, including a photo of each one. Some fellow students lamented about the navigation interface, which is too much labirintic. The Oltre la didattica section was then completely removed (it was proven that it didn't contain anything). I added direct links to the Chorus and Newspaper sections in the navigation bar.
It has been suggested to put on those animated/sliding menus, that let you see directly the sub-pages of each section. For avoiding the formatting problems they have I'm thinking about using a good old mouse-over.

On the server side I'm planning to set up customized 404 error pages.

I'm also planning a new movie, but I'm waiting for the new camera to arrive. In the meanwhile I'm collecting photos from my Munich trip (my photos are on the italian blog). I need them for a DVD project, in which I want to put all the photos from the various participants to the trip, along with the video made by my friend Gabriele.

Another DVD project on which I'm working is the one that my school has to produce for the Parmaincontra concourse. We must do a DVD containing both the text of oure historical research (on Guido Picelli) and the video of the show we made on the same subject (I play Mr. Picelli in the show). I'm studying what's the best way to have a disc which has both a data section (containing the text) and a video part (so that it can play on a normal DVD player). Suggestions are always appreciated.
Merry Christmas!

Australia 2: Cooktown to Cairns

Second episode of my travel report.

Autralia Travel Report 1

I'm finally posting the first episode of my report concerning my trip to Australia (July 2007). Second episode coming really soon (about five minutes).

AES Convention Recordings

Today I finally received the recordings of my papers, which I presented at the AES 123rd Convention in New York. I'll make a video of the presentation with the original audio from the convention (I even have a film of me answering the questions) and I'll post it to youtube (and here, with the new Share feature) and to my podcast. Keep tuned in.

Ubuntu

Last week I switched to Ubuntu, which is very simply wonderful. Installation is very easy and the GUI is exemplar. Furthermore its pre-installed (with version 7.10) compiz desktop enhancer gives it functions that allow it to dwarf Mac OS X.
The integrated NTFS support and Grub allow easy multi-booth setup (an ext2/ext3 driver for windows is very easy to find and is great).
In the past week I already persuaded two guys to pass to it (and they both liked it very much, altough one of them had problems caused by his lack of an internet connection) and I'm showing it to all my friends.
I particularly like the multi-workspace feature. This evening I found out a lot of keyboard shortcuts that enable nice tricks in compiz. You can find the keyboard shortcuts here. Not listed in the linked article are Super+alt+tab and ctrl+alt+tab, which both enable window flicking between windows from all the workspaces.

iPod Trick

I recently had a connection problem with my iPod: neither the Finder nor iTunes could "see" it. Of consequence it wasn't possible to restore it using iTunes.
I discovered that resetting the iPod and pressing center button + play/pause while the screen is black (before the apple logo appears) forces the iPod in Disk Mode. Now connecting the iPod to the Mac, it is instantly recognized, and can be easily restored.

New DNS for my site

The new DNS for my website (www.adrianofarina.it)is now active. I will soon also have a new email address: adriano@adrianofarina.it. I'm now updating all the links to my site from my blogs.

New York Trip and Wndows Live Gallery embedding

I have 2 great news: first of all I just came back from my trip to NY, where I presented 2 acoustics papers. More info on that tomorrow. Furthermore I just found out how to embed my windows live photo gallery in my website. I'll embed them all tomorrow. Final news: I bought the new 8GB iPod Nano (black). It is just amazing. I really got to buy a case for it, as I'm keeping it in an old sock now (a bit like the Apple sock, but not half as goodlooking). I realized that the videos I posted to my podcast up to now aren't iPod compatible. Next issues will be fully compatible.

Cycling enterprise

This Sunday I did my first ever bicycle trip outside Parma. I went to Campomoro with my new bicycle, covering a total distance of 74 kilometers. I thought it was going to be hard, but it actually wasn't. In the photo you can see me at arrival in Campomoro. A little trick if you want to do something like that is to walk for the last kilometer or so.

Podcast Update

Todat I gave my podcast a major facelift. First of all I upgraded to a new theme, which is very minimal and mac-like (I even left the 'Made on a Mac' button). I also included (through a bit of notepad work) a navigation bar, that allows visitors to reach directly the various secions of my home page. On the content side I translated all the descriptions and released two new episodes, one of which can also be viewed on youtube.
The next episode will be either my paper's slideshow (with voiceover) or the third part of my Australia Travel Report, whichever finish first.
Since I'm on the subject of my paper, a couple of days ago the AES convention organizing committe asked my for an extended bio in consideration of my age (that doesn't sound right: why a 16 year old guy should have more to say than a 26 year old one? after all the first one has had a much shorter life!).
It also seems that my father won't be able to come to New York with me, so that I'll have to present hi srticle too.
His article is on a Volterra kernel-based non-linear convolution algorytm.

Parallels Desktop

Today I set up Parralels Desktop on my mac. It solved completely mosto of my problems: now I can open any windows file with its original window application as if it was Mac OS X software! I can switch between Mac OS and Windows as easily as pressing Alt+Enter, and I can access the Mac Dashboard by pressing F12 even when I'm in Windows mode. And, best of all, I can use Office! By the way, today I put google search in the Romagnosi clone site. While writing this post I noticed that Blogger now supports videos, I'll upload one soon to try this new function. If the system employed has a good compatibility I coul use it to host my video gallery. I'll see about that. I also want to ask my (few) readers what they think of my idea of building an RPG based on the Open Source GDR-CD, which is available from gdr-online.com. View this post in RSS/ATOM mode in order to download the included movie (Polacchia1) and to sbscribe to the multimedia content of the blog in iTunes, as if it was a podcast.

New Site

I'm working on two new sites at the moment. First of all I'm doing a new version of my home page, which will link to all my blogs and include photo album and a video gallery with my movies (requires windows media player). The other site I'm doing is the one of the "Lo Spazio e i Mercanti" project, which is an history reasearch project my class made about Parma's medieval history and topography. Both of them are linked from my original home page.

AES Article update

I finished and uploaded my acoustics article, which can be found at this address. This article will be presented on Monday the eighth of October, at 9a.m. at the AES Convention in New York. For more info or questions write me.