This release uses the new feedproxy.google.com feed (thanks to Casey).
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It passes
My posts, unless otherwise expressly stated, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Italy License.
dkdil 0.6 is out
July 9, 2008 – 9:12 am
This release uses the new feedproxy.google.com feed (thanks to Casey).
Darker Than the Deepest Sea
July 7, 2008 – 8:32 am
The average reader of Darker Than the Deepest Sea is not someone who bought it choosing at random in a bookshop, knowing nothing about the life and the work of Nick Drake: their involvement ranges from mild fanatism to strong obsession… even though reading a book requires that the readers are able to move eyes and hands, so they aren’t in the deepest sea (and you know what I mean).
I enjoyed this book and the first words that came to my mind to describe it were: sober, calm, clear… very English (its rhythm increases just from Part 3). It provides many details and a deep analysis but author’s opinions are never exaggerated or naive: Trevor Dann is a former Head of BBC Music Entertainment and his professional skills are shown clearly.
An evident example of the deep work he has done is on page 69, where he describes the letter that Rodney Drake wrote to the tutor of Nick in Cambridge; Dann noticed that
There is a change in the shade of ink in the final paragraphs which suggest that they were added later (…)
I suppose that finding this old letter was not easy and observing “a change in the shade of ink” shows great attention and a very sharp eye.
As I’ve just written, Mr. Dann’s prose is calm and placid but here and there you can find some fun: the most unbelievable and amusing story he reports is the adventure in Morocco (beginning at page 124) that alone is worth the price of the book! 
On page 243, Dann proves once again his professionalism with a bad assessment for the song “Sunday”: a book about Drake is not a good reason to avoid negative notes.
Funnily, on page 258 he remembers that
bootlegs (…) illegally distributed
but just a few lines following, on the very next page, he starts to describe one by one most of the songs you can find on them.
My last note is that the website La Luna Rosa is written in Spanish: it’s not Italian as stated, although “La Luna Rosa” (”The pink moon” in English) is a valid name with the same meaning in both Spanish and Italian.
I didn’t write everything, of course: the book contains many interesting things I didn’t mention here. I suggest you buy the book and express your appreciation to Trevor Dann.
Aurelio Peccei
July 4, 2008 – 9:25 am
In some way, a century after his birth, Aurelio Peccei is still standing.
Ricerche bizzarre (2)
July 3, 2008 – 9:02 am
Ho nuovamente accumulato una quantità tale di falsi positivi dai motori di ricerca che posso permettermi di spendere due parole sui più bizzarri.
In ordine rigorosamente sparso, ecco i migliori: ognuno è seguito da un mio commento.
- numero giusto di partner sessuali: certo, come no… già vedo orde di single pronti a fermarsi raggiunto il numero giusto, nevvero?
- non voglio crescere con la nuova base americana: non so dirti se crescerai con la base americana… sicuramente invecchiando ne vedrai meno di oggi.
- per quanti anni deve studiare un seminarista: mah… questo è veramente un falso positivo.
- come iscriversi a sinistra critica: come cambia il mondo… un tempo esistevano le sedi di partito (di tutti i partiti) oggi si cerca su internet come iscriversi… va beh…
- come far capire che il tuo sito non è una sola: ecco, qui si potrebbero dire molte cose ma lo spazio è tiranno.
- mi dai altri siti porno oltre a {nome_sito}? ci sono persone che si rivolgono ai motori di ricerca come se si parlasse a un barista.
- pagato per vedere siti porno: un’idea di business impegnativa, direi.
- come inserire l’informatica nel nucleare: a parte il fatto che di informatica in una (presumo si parli di) centrale nucleare se ne trova parecchia… questa ricerca mi puzza parecchio di “saltiamo sul (presunto) carro energetico del centro-destra… before it’s too late!”. Che tristezza.
- siti porno con accesso con codice fiscale: un’altra grande idea di business! Chi di noi, guardando un sito porno, non ha sentito un irrefrenabile desiderio di comunicare il proprio codice fiscale? Fantastica!
- come posso trovare la posta elettronica inviatami: nel tuo caso, direi nel cestino.
- loghi con marmotte: non è esattamente una marmotta… ma il meglio che ho potuto trovare è il logo della Prairie Dog Coalition.
- competizione mondiale di masturbazione in Danimarca: mah… devo dire che nella terra di Amleto ci sono stato più di una volta ma non ho mai avuto il piacere (come non usare questo verbo?) né di assistere né - tantomeno - di partecipare a una tale tenzone! Comunque, non mi stupirei si fosse tenuta una gara simile: nel 1969 la Danimarca fu il primo stato a legalizzare la pornografia.
Local maximus of Oil extraction
July 2, 2008 – 9:58 am
Passing peak oil, skeptical people would say:
Sooner or later, we’ll reach again the past peak… it’s just a question of time.
Strictly speaking, it’s not possible to negate this statement but, thinking about it, I’ve started to wonder about another question:
What is the longest period in history between a local peak and its next greater or equal value?
To find the answer to my question, I’ve used:
- data kindly given to me by Jean Laherrère (thanks to Prof. Ugo Bardi, too) for the 1857-1958 period.
- the BP Historical data Workbook for the 1965-2006 period;
As you notice, I wasn’t able to find data for the 1959-1964 period but fortunately it’s not a problem because the answer - according to the available data, of course - is: 14 years (therefore it’s more than the missing years). This period of 14 years is placed between 1979 and 1993.
That wouldn’t be enough for the incorrigible sceptic but it might be of some interest for anyone else.
You can download here the computed data:
- 1857-1958_1965-2006 (csv format);
- 1857-1958_1965-2006 (ods format);
- the list of peaks/next greater (text).
Astonishing result
July 1, 2008 – 3:58 pm
“very” and “unsound” are two common words but, using a search engine, I’ve just discovered that, not including “Fruit Tree”, their combined use is quite rare.
Registering directly to WordPress MU sub-blogs
June 25, 2008 – 11:37 am
There are two ways to allow people to register directly to sub-blogs of Wordpress MU:
- using the mu-plugin written by Nathan Kinkade;
- changing
wp-login.php(then calling it aswp-login.php?action=register).
The first way is cleaner, because it doesn’t hack the core: therefore it doesn’t lead you to have a patch to maintain but I wasn’t able to let it work with the last stable 1.5.1 MU version (configured for sub-blogs showed as sub-directories: I’ve just written an email to Nathan so I’m waiting for his notes).
The second choice is simple, it has the previous disadvantages but it worked (you can download here my trivial patch).
Update (2008-07-01): the new version of perBlogRegistrations works well just with a plain, unpatched WordPress MU (try to signup calling wp-signup.php).
Codice sicurezza CartaSi e Firefox
June 13, 2008 – 4:55 pm
Chi si autentica sul Portale Titolari CartaSi e vuole attivare i “Servizi Dispositivi”, deve prima autenticarsi e poi inserire - nel box in alto a destra - il codice di sicurezza della propria carta: purtroppo per chi usa Firefox l’operazione non riesce (il codice di sicurezza è di tre cifre e si riesce a inserirne solamente due). Non sono riuscito (e al momento nemmeno Massimiliano ) a individuare il problema (JavaScript?) comunque un semplice workaround c’è: basta infatti (grazie FireBug) modificare il campo di input seguente
<input type="text" onkeypress="
return eventOnKey(this,
event,
'focusField(\'attivaDispositivi\');',
CHECK_NUMERIC_INPUT );" value=""
size="4" maxlength="3" name="cvv2"/>
aumentando di uno i valori di maxlength.
Two notes on YCodaSlider
June 11, 2008 – 2:06 pm
I think that newcomers need simple notes to use YCodaSlider.
First, include the required libraries:
- jquery-1.2.6.pack.js
- jquery-easing-1.3.pack.js
- ycodaslider-2.0.js
then fire it up with a short script like this one:
YCodaSlider.Base.css('style.css');
jQuery(window).bind("load", function() {
jQuery("div.ycodaslider").ycodaslider({width : 540, sidebars : false});
jQuery("div.ycodaslider").width(540);
});