30 May 2008

this ain't the Boss, but...

posted by GiacomoL @ 10:30 AM   0 comments links to this post

29 May 2008

Don't worry, darlin'...

Reviewing a Springsteen gig is something no honest man can do.

How can you describe a three-hours-long rock'n'roll session delivered by 50-year-olds jumping around like they're 15? How can you write about the spirit, the energy, the *faith*? 50.000 people swarmed on Old Trafford under the gray Manchester rain, jumping and singing and clapping and crying until the weather didn't matter anymore, BRUCE AND THE E-STREET-BAND were there, everything would be alright.

The mix of old and new songs was unbelievable. I had never heard "Living in the future" before, and I was singing along after the first chorus. I had never heard "Long Walk Home" before, but I was crying while shouting it, a song so simple and so politically deep, a new "Born In The U.S.A.".

Not even a bad soundcheck could compromise this gig, because this was not a gig. This was a mass to the God of Rock'n'Roll. This was an American Celebration broadcast on Radio Nowhere. This was the Messiah of Rock announcing the Rising of November, when The Dream (battered and killed by eight years of fascism) will be reborn.

If you have the Faith, meet the Lord at Bruce's Place, you're gonna have a party.

P.S. Poor Dan Federici is gone, Patti Scialfa probably won't come to Europe anymore and "Big Man" Clemons clearly had trouble walking; go meet the Apostles of Soul while you can.

Labels: music, personal, springsteen

posted by GiacomoL @ 3:52 PM   2 comments links to this post

28 May 2008

tonight, the old man is in town...

Labels: music, personal, springsteen

posted by GiacomoL @ 12:33 PM   0 comments links to this post

Weezer Wins Teh Internet Tubes

Labels: GeekDiary, music, personal, weezer

posted by GiacomoL @ 12:23 PM   0 comments links to this post

16 May 2008

for everything else...

• Do you need to convert WMA files to MP3?
  Just use the free PyMedia library.
• Do you need to upload these files to an FTP?
  The ftplib module is included in the standard Python library.
• Do you need to schedule this upload?
  The standard Python library gives you the sched module.
• Do you need to persuade some people to pay you a (minimal) amount of money for the (minimal) effort of writing the script?
  I'm afraid you'll have to do that yourself...

There are things a computer cannot do.
For everything else, there's Python

Labels: foreverythingelsetherespython, ftplib, GeekDiary, pymedia, python, sched

posted by GiacomoL @ 11:18 AM   2 comments links to this post

14 May 2008

Shortsighted TLD policies

Old mindsets are hard to die.

Look at the policies for national TLDs; most of the time, you will not be able to register a domain with a TLD belonging to a foreign country, because "you need a contact based in the country". This old, national-State mindset is typical of the 20th century, and the soon it goes away, the better. For example, Italy had a fantastic opportunity to monetize its TLD: how many "Information Technology" companies would love to have a domain ".IT" rather than a bland ".com"? But no, can't have that, it would be way too profitable for a country that, as everyone knows, never had economic problems in the last 20 years </snark>.
Now look at Paraguay; its ".py" is perfect for python-related websites, but I can't register it either, because clearly Paraguay doesn't need my money.

Meanwhile, little Tuvalu makes loads of money from television producers desperate to get their own ".tv" corner of the Internet, and ICANN is pushing for "themed" TLD anyway (.biz, .aero etc)...

Partitioning cyberspace on geographical terms makes sense only from an administrative perspective (to make clear who is responsible for maintaining what); once that is established, every country should try to maximize the potential of its little corner of the Internet.

Labels: domains, GeekDiary, icann, internet, tld

posted by GiacomoL @ 4:15 PM   0 comments links to this post

13 May 2008

KDelicious 3.2.1 is out

KDelicious 3.2.1 is a minor update, released in order to distribute the translations kindly provided by users (German, Spanish and Dutch, plus the original Italian and English). And obviously, the day after I released, a new translation (French) was sent... I'll probably push it out next month, I'd rather not release every other week if I'm not going to add new features.

It's worth mentioning that about half the downloads are for the debian package now, and the total downloads have increased since last time. I wonder how hard it would be to package for SuSE (the most popular KDE distribution), maybe that would give it a little boost as well.

Labels: Debian, GeekDiary, kdelicious, SuSE

posted by GiacomoL @ 3:17 PM   0 comments links to this post