Archive for the 'personal' Category

Nikon D60 kit up for grabs

Published on March 6, 2010 in personal and photography. 3 Comments

Update: The D60 has now been sold, and the 55-200mm will be sold soon.

I am breaking a long silence on this blog for a short announcement. Activity on the blog will resume as soon as I have made up my mind about the direction it should go. I am considering abandoning all geeky topics and turning it into a photo blog or portfolio site, but I have more pressing things to do at the moment.

In the meantime, due to my recent upgrade to a D90, I am selling my old D60 kit, with accessories.

This camera was bought in May, 2008 and is in near-perfect conditions. It has taken less than 10,000 photos, including most of those in my photostream.

It comes with the AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR kit lens, which is in near-perfect conditions as well.

I have the original packaging and all of the original accessories (battery, battery charger, lens caps, strap holder, cables, manuals, software, etc.).

I am adding the following bonus accessories to the pack:

1 extra, original Nikon EL-EN9 battery
1 2GB SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card
1 Nikon ML-L3 remote
1 Tiffen 52mm clear UV filter
1 Hama shoulder bag
1 mini tripod

The product is sold AS IS, with no warranties.

The price I am asking for the whole package is 350€/300£/450$ plus shipping. Payment via PayPal is appreciated.

In case anyone is interested, I might add a Nikkor AF-S DX VR 55-200mm f/4-5.6 G ED lens to the package.

Mail me if you need more information. More pictures here

Sourcesense Day 2008

Published on November 1, 2008 in opensource and personal. 0 Comments

The last two days have been the most rewarding, fun, and tiresome days since I’ve joined Sourcesense almost three years ago. We had our first company-wide meeting in Milan, which, seeing as we are more than forty people now, was something that was really needed for a company that, while still comparatively small, has offices in three cities (Milan, Rome and Amsterdam).

Thus we managed to see some new faces and refresh the memory of old ones. These two days were also filled with enthusiasm, friendship, and community spirit. Overall a very positive balance, as you can see from the number of stickers that were put on the “glad” side of the “Mad, Sad, Glad” wall we put up at the end. Most of the “sad” and “mad” cards actually had to do with the weather and general lack of time for doing all the things we wanted to do tigether. So we all agreed that we should probably repeat this event soon, like maybe six months from now, in Amsterdam.

Lowepro SlingShot 200 AW

Published on February 29, 2008 in personal and photography. 1 Comment

Lowepro SlingShot 200 AW

Originally uploaded by Ugo Cei.

I just received my new Lowepro Slingshot 200 AW camera bag. It’s a great bag for photo gear, though it deserves to be filled with better content than what I can provide at the moment. In any case I’m sure it will come in handy during our upcoming trip to Morocco, where I plan to carry at the very least my Panasonic Lumix and a small point&shoot as a backup, and a video camera.

Boston!

Published on December 1, 2007 in personal. 2 Comments

Just arrived safely in Boston for the 2007 XML Conference, which starts Monday, so I have time to take part in the Christmas shopping madness before then.

First impression: Marriott Copley Place hotel sucks. Room Internet access is for-pay, wired only and awfully slow. Couldn’t even connect to any of the open WiFi networks listed, for some reason.

It’s also as cold as hell here, like -1°C at 3PM, but I expected it so I was prepared.

Autumn colors

Published on November 4, 2007 in personal and photography. 1 Comment

What best way to spend a november Saturday than taking a trip to the Lake of Como under a beautiful sun and having lunch out in the open right by the lakeside?

If you happen to go by there, take one of the boats that leaves from Como and stops in Tavernola, Cernobbio, Moltrasio and Torno. They leave every 30 minutes from one of the main piers in Como’s central Piazza Cavour. Disembark in Torno and go eating at Hotel Belvedere, which is on the southern side of the small square where boat pier is. It’s a quite inconspicuous 1-star hotel but it’s got pretty good dishes prepared from typical lake fish, like lavarello, agone and a variety of perch. You won’t find these anywhere else but around lakes.

The beautiful colors of the autumn leaves prompted me to shoot a fair number of pictures that I’ll be sorting in the coming days and posting to this set.

Conferencing, Fall 2007 Edition

Published on October 2, 2007 in devel, opensource and personal. 0 Comments

As previously mentioned, I’ll be leaving tomorrow for Rome, as I am going to attend (and even bore the audience to death with a talk) the 6th Cocoon GetTogether.

Exactly two months from then I’ll deliver more boredom upon an unsuspecting audience at the XML 2007 Conference in Boston.

Whichever side of the pond you happen to be, you’re welcome to come see me. Bring your own choice of rotten tomatoes and other vegetables

What did I do on vacation?

Published on January 8, 2007 in personal. 0 Comments

Skied, quite a lot. Snow wasn’t exactly abundant but good enough.

Read a couple of good books, of which I plan to write a review shortly:

For these books, and a couple more I haven’t read yet, I wish to thank one of our customers, who very kindly gave all their collaborators an Amazon gift certificate as a Christmas present. It was very much appreciated, thanks!

Now I could use the rest of this post to reflect on the year just ended and make predictions for 2007, but I won’t. I’m not good at either reflections or predictions.

I will limit myself to noting that starting today, for the first time in my life, I’m officially employed (by Sourcesense, of course) and not a free-lance anymore. Not that it changes anything, in practice, but it’s an important milestone nonetheless.

Going on vacation

Published on December 29, 2006 in personal. 2 Comments

Gressoney La Trinité Webcam In a few hours we’ll be leaving for our Winter vacations in the Alps, hoping to find good weather and plenty of snow. Any kind of online activity is going to be spotty if not completely null until after Jan. 7.

Here’s wishing a Happy New Year to all my readers.

When will it snow in the Alps?

Published on December 22, 2006 in personal. 2 Comments

Looks like quite a few people are coming here via searches for “when will it snow in the Alps”.

Of course, I have no better answer than “not soon, probably”. Luckily, it snowed a couple of weeks ago and temperatures are cold, so almost all slopes are open. If you want to come to the Alps for skiing, you shouldn’t be disappointed.

Me, I’m heading to Monterosa on the 29th and will be there until January 7th, so I sure hope there’s enough snow.

Snow on the Alps

Published on December 7, 2006 in personal. 0 Comments

After an unusually warm and dry November, snow has finally started falling on the Alps and it’s probable that lifts will begin operating this week-end, which actually starts tomorrow, a national holiday here in Italy. People from Milan are even luckier: today it’s St. Ambrose’s Day, Milan’s patron saint, and most businesses are closed as well.

Not living in Milan, but just a few kilometers away, we decided to take at least half a day off, for sympathy , and so we are leaving this afternoon for… no, not the Alps, but rather Umbria, where it will be raining, with all likeliness. Oh well, this trip had been planned some time ago, so no skiing yet this week-end. We hope temperatures won’t be so warm during next week as to melt off all the snow that will be falling, at least. Fucking global warming!

My new shower

Published on October 29, 2006 in personal. 0 Comments

My new shower looks great. It was a bit of a problem getting it, since the corner of the bathroom where it stands has a section of wall protruding out over the edge of the bottom plate, so they had to cut a portion of the glass from its standard size in order to make it fit.

They also cut it wrong once, even though they had a perfectly precise drawing. Or maybe they cut it right and then sent in the wrong piece. I don’t know, but it took two weeks more to have the right piece. Anyway, in the end the installer came and mounted the box, so we now have a brand new, shiny-steel-and-glass shower.

Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture, something’s not quite right. When cutting the curved doors to size, they evidently changed their curvature, but then forgot to adapt the curvature of the steel rim that sits on the border of the bottom plate against which the doors are supposed to snugly fit. In my case there’s a gap between the doors and the rim that goes up to about 2 cm in the middle. Grrrr.

LCD or Plasma?

Published on September 7, 2006 in personal. 0 Comments

Looks like our old 28″ CRT TV is toast. I will probably bring it in for repair, but this might be the occasion to get one of the new flat panels that would look gorgeous stuck to the wall that is now behind the defunct set.

As anyone wanting to buy a new TV set nowadays, I am confronted with the usual conundrum: LCD or Plasma?

Even after perusing the top 10 Google results for “what is better lcd or plasma”, I am still undecided, as I’ve read lots of contradictory information. However, I think it might be leaning slightly in the LCD direction, since it seems plasmas really shine over LCDs when you go over 40″ and I don’t want to go there, mainly for price reasons (we don’t watch that much TV after all, no satellite, no cable and an occasional DVD). LCDs promise to be slimmer and lighter, and consume much less, which I like. Plus, they have better resolution, which might be useful if I wanted to attach one of my Macs to it.

With all the things I have to do these days, I was really looking forward to waste some more time (not to mention the money) doing comparison shopping… NOT!

Technorati Tags: tv, plasma, lcd.

Back home, safely

Published on August 28, 2006 in personal. 1 Comment

Turkish beach Just in case you were worried: no, we weren’t touched by any of the recent bombings in Turkey and made it safely home—in perfect time even—from our vacations, where I found a ton of work, lots of meetings, conference speeches to prepare and oodles of emails waiting for me. So it’s probable that the next few days won’t see much updating of this site on my part.

You can see some photos here.

Vacations

Published on August 20, 2006 in personal. 0 Comments

Tonight we’re leaving for a much needed week of vacation in Antalya, Turkey. One week is way too short, but we couldn’t find the time to do more right now, so we’ll probably use the money saved to do one extra week in the winter or the spring.

Anyway, I’ll be offline until Monday 28, so no updates to this blog until then.

AMS -> MSP -> PDX, A Photoset on Flickr

Published on July 23, 2006 in personal and photography. 1 Comment

I managed to snap some good shots on my trip to Portland and am just now uploading them to Flickr. It’s 5 o’clock in the morning here, but due to jet lag I cannot sleep anymore, so I’m abusing of the free Internet connection offered by the hotel.

I guess having so many free hotspots in the city encourages hotels to offer free Internet service. This way people will maybe stay in the hotel and consume some drinks instead of going out to find the nearest free hotspot. I always thought that having guests pay for Internet at hotels is a total rip-off, given the costs of a wide-band DSL connection nowadays in most of the civilized world.

Anyway, you might want to have a look at this photoset. All the photos are from the AMS-MSP leg, since I managed to get some sleep on the MSP-PDX one, but the scenery must have been spectacular as well. We got a great view of Mt. Hood on approach to PDX, but the flight assistant had already asked that all electronic equipment be shut off and I didn’t want to risk being reprimanded. Maybe I’ll get some shots of this part of the voyage on the way back.

It’s almost sunrise now, so I think I’ll bide my time a little more, then see if I can get some breakfast and head out for a tour of Portland in the early morning, when the sun is not that hot yet. Forecast for today is a respectable 98F (about 37C), whew!

I’ll get some more pictures today and possibly more this evening, together with the other OSCON folks at the Sunday Photography Walkabout.

Technorati Tags: portland, oscon06, oscon, greenland, labrador, free wifi hotspots, traveling, nwa45.

Speaking at OSCON

Published on March 28, 2006 in opensource, personal and ruby-rails. 3 Comments

Just got this in the mail:

Congratulations! You have been accepted as a presenter for the O’Reilly Open Source Convention 2006 at the Oregon Convention Center July 24, 2006 – July 28, 2006.

The following has been accepted as a 45 minute session for the event:

“Ruby for Java Programmers”

I can’t even try do describe how excited I am. OSCON is the Open Source conference to attend if you’re into OSS — not to mention speaking at it — even if someone may consider it a bit too commercial. At the same time, I’m somewhat scared. I’ll have to prepare a kick-ass talk and double-check all my facts if I don’t want to be thoroughly grilled.

Technorati Tags: oscon, o’reilly, conferences, portland.

Windows XP Booting on Mac

Published on March 16, 2006 in apple and personal. 1 Comment

Mac Rumors: Windows XP Booting on Mac Contest Over: “According to this post the final solution will work on the 17′ iMac, 20′ iMac, Mac mini and MacBook Pro. The full solution should be posted shortly and appears it will include downloadable bootloader.”

How cool is this? I might resolve myself to buy the third Mac in my house: a Mac Mini for the daughter to add to the iMac I use for doing serious work at the home office and the MacBook Pro (substituting the aging PowerBook) for traveling (which I’m doing more and more often, incidentally).

This will allow me to throw the old Celeron she has and that is not even fast enough to play most games, out of the window. We already have mouse, keyboard and display and would get WiFi so I won’t need to run cables through the house to enable her to use the Internet.

The only doubt I have is: will the Intel Mac Mini running Windows XP be able to run some decent games? Nothing requiring extreme 3D performances, mind you, just some simple, fun, educational games.

Technorati Tags: contests, microsoft, macbook, windows xp, intel mac, booting.

MacBook Pro is coming

Published on March 15, 2006 in apple and personal. 1 Comment

I should have done it before, really, but wasn’t able to find the right people to talk to in order to upgrade the location contract of my old PowerBook to a brand new MacBook Pro, until today.

So I finally ordered a 2GHz model, with 2GB of RAM and a 100GB, 7200rpm disk. This particular configuration won’t be delivered before 15-20 days, they said. I could have got one immediately, but with a 5400rpm disk. I suspect the faster disk is going to make quite a difference in I/O intensive applications like compiling lots of source files, which I do often, thus I opted for the faster one even if it means having to wait. I expect this machine to be screaming fast.

The best thing is that by doing a “technology upgrade” of my current contract, I will be paying a monthly fee that is just a bit more of what I’m currently paying for the PowerBook.

Starting the count-down now…

Technorati Tags: macbook.

Be careful what you ask for …

Published on March 4, 2006 in personal. 0 Comments

Snow in Gressoney.png … you might just get it. Snow in this case. We’ve been begging for snow in the Alps through most of the winter and now we’re getting way too much of it. This morning it was snowing heavily, which would have not been that much of a problem, but the slopes were also covered by 20cm of fresh, wet snow. Difficult enough for me and totally impractical for my daughter, her cousin, and the other people with me, who are beginners.

Luckily, it stopped in the afternoon and we also caught some glimpses of the sun peeking through the clouds, so tomorrow might be a great day.

Edgeio

Published on February 27, 2006 in apple, personal and web. 0 Comments

Today edgeio finally launched. I was thinking of putting my PowerBook up for sale, but I have it on lease and the contract hasn’t expired already. I think it will in March, then I’ll be able to redeem it and sell it. At the moment, I only see one listing for a PowerBook, at $800. Mine is actuallly much better, at 1.25GHz, running OS X 10.4, no missing keys and an almost-new battery. I wonder if I’ll be able to sell it for $1000, but somehow I doubt it.

Technorati Tags: edgeio