musc@> $daniele.rant | Out-Blog

Paolo Coelho has written in his last book, "The Zahir":
"[...] One day, I am going to write a travel guide containing only maps, addresses of hotels, and with the rest of the pages blank. That way people will have to make their own itinerary, to discover for themselves restaurants, monuments, and all the magnificent things that every city has, but which are never mentioned because 'the history we have been taught' does not include them under the heading 'Things you must see'. I have been to Zagreb before. And this fountain does not appear in any of the local tourist guides, but it is far more important to me than anything else I saw here - because it is pretty, because I discovered it by chance, and because it is linked to a story in my life [...]".

When reading this last night I have been thinking that he does not need to write such a guide: this is already happening on the web these days. Right now. You don't just buy a tourist guide anymore. The Internet can act as a guide. Other people's comment about places, and their stories, can guide you.
It's not anymore just buying a guide from some publisher, it is being part of the publication as well. And contributing back what you discover.

This is what happens on 43places, for example. See what the are saying over there: http://www.43places.com/entries/view/1239344 - "These are YOUR places" - "If you’re new to 43 Places you may not realize that all the places on this website have been added by users. Once upon a time, all we had were country names and a few major cities. 43 Places is a community effort where users are actively filling up the site with their favorite spots and the places they want to visit.

Along these lines all of us users can also correct and enhance data on 43 Places [...]"

43Places fits perfectly with the example of the tourist guide. But there is more than just a tourist guide. The great news is that the web is becoming an immense platform for sharing stories, experiences, feelings.

Hugh MacLeod describes this aspect (that is: the evolution of the web in the way it lets people and companies interact) on his famous blog: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003358.html
"[...] Dotcom basically built glorified Yellow Pages. You go, you get the info you need, hopefully you buy something en route. The relationship between the user and the website is impersonal, not unlike the realtionship between the Yellow Pages and its readers. They show, you select. They give, you take.

The architecture of Web 2.0, however, is about people giving away their stuff i.e. "sharing". Whether its a well-written blog post, or photos uploaded onto Flickr, or videos uploaded onto YouTube, the act of you giving is every bit as important as people other people receiving. This is why the number of blog readers isn't that much larger than the number of blog writers. Writing is as important as reading. Giving is as important as taking.

Suddenly for the first time in history, the world's most powerful form of media is about giving, not taking. The implications are vast.[...]"

Ravi and his son, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Ravi has been living in Italy for not such a long time: not even two years.
He works as a manager for a hi-tech factory, in Italy, so that's why he moved here.
He already knows he won't stay here forever, but he's enjoying his stay so far.
It's good to see how hard working people actually CAN be successful here.
Even when they move from another country.

So far he doesn't know many italian people, and hangs up mostly with the other indian people he has met here. Which is something I definitely can understand, as I also met all the italians in town when I was living in Holland, and I know it isn't extremely easy to get along with the local population, for how friendly they can treat you on the surface (even tough I bet that italians are much *warmer* than dutch people in their "welcomes").

His kids had loads of fun playing with mine, today, and we (the grown-ups) enjoyed the conversation and the food very much.

I am one of those people that loves living in a globalized world (despite all its weirdness and the bad consequences globalization also brings): at least for this fact that you get to know people from everywhere on the globe, and exchange different ideas and experiences.
People have all sort of stories to tell, and we all have to learn from each other.

'mot je ?, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Have you seen how pretty has she become ?
This is the same cat I found - little and sick - here:
www.muscetta.com/2006/07/21/find-me-a-name/

Amma @ Heathrow airport, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

A coincindence meeting?

I don't know, but I'll tell you a story:
I have been in england all week for a training: I left on monday and I came back yesterday (friday).
When I booked my flight to go to england I should have come back with the flight that takes off at 8:00pm. It would have been late (coming back home to midnight) but there was no place in the earlier one (4:40pm). Then my ticket was disappeared. Not "physically", because it was an electronic ticket. Just its presence in the computer system of Alitalia was vanished. The booking on my name appeared strangely "cancelled", and both Alitalia and the American Express agency that had booked that for me could not explain me WHAT actually went wrong with my ticket.
It looked like it had been requested, but the process stopped half-way through and never ended, it never spat out my ticket (don't remind me of the concept of TRANSACTION, please).

So, at the last minute, in order to leave on monday (I *really* wanted to attend this training, and furthermore the hotel WAS booked and I could not cancel it anymore without paying a penalty), I had to buy another ticket at the airport. But at that point there was not place anymore on the evening flight for the return. So I had to take place in the 4:40pm one (hey, wait a minute: wasn't THAT FULL as well, when I tried to book it myself, earlier ??).

So when I came back, look who's at the airport.
I was not even sure it was Her, and I did not really dare come much closer. Both because I was afraid I could disturb, and also because I was scared of airport security (you are not supposed to take pictures in airports, I have already been told off other times, and with the current paranoia in London I really did not want to take the chance…).
She was about to travel, and was writing down the text of some bhajan with her followers and her singers and all the other people who travel with Her.
Also a woman, who was working in a shop just in front of this scene, not having any customer in at that moment, was looking at the scene with curiosity but (or at least I thought I could read that in her eyes) without prejudice.
Nice surprise.

PS - If you don't know who Amma is, please visit www.amma.org or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mata_Amritanandamayi

Yahoo has done it again. Yet another cool photographic site: Time Capsule.
They show every day that they really GET the community thing. Thumbs up for them.

On a side note, I honestly ignore why do you need to UPLOAD photos there and you can't just LINK or REFERENCE photos you've already uploaded on Flickr (isn't it a site they bought ?). So I don't see the effort in any INTEGRATION here. I don't get why. If I had a photo platform like Flickr I would use its Web API to let registered users just "PASS OVER" some pictures from one site to the other.

But, hey…. regardless…..it looks really COOL. It really does. More cool than actually USEFUL (it reminds me of Intrusion Detection Systems… but I digress), but that's how this amount of community things are. It's not useful for your business, but it is good for your heart.

Now I pretty much liked GMail and Google in general. But this time they REALLY pissed me off! I will tell you that I am not a google-hater even if I work for a competing company. Of course not everything that Google does is wonderful, but some of their services are really cool and useful and I have never denied to say they rocked when I felt they did.
In general, people seem to love them, and their stock value shows it (with the launch of "Code Search" this week they made a lot of people scream "how cool is this" so that they got back from just under 400 dollars to 417!). But that's not the issue. That is cool, that works. It's ok they make money if they make cool tools. It's fine for me.

In fact i consider GMail as being one of the best interface for reading mail that exist out there - I love "tagging" (oops: it's called "labelling" in their syntax), speed of search through messages (even tough Outlook 2007 is faster on indexed content, but still you have to buy it and install it on your PC)… I also especially love the way it shows THREADING… so that I moved pretty much EVERY mailing list I read on their account:

(ok, they could do better with the localized version of "Re:" in replies…. in Italian a lot of broken MUA's translate that into "R:" and that isn't understood by GMail and will make it think it is another thread…. but that's a minor issue, and also one that every MUA handling threading has - including "mutt" - the real problem is the broken MUAs sending the "R:" in the first place. But I digress too much….).

I also keep GMail continuosly opened in a browser during the day because a lot of informative mail and that sent by friends goes there. This to say that I do get a lot of their ads (that is - the point of having such an application, for them…). On the contrary, Windows Live Mail reduced its ads to show only one… not to annoy you too much.
But the ads in GMail were not *really* a problem (I don't read them anyway, I just plain IGNORE THEM).

But this week they REALLY pissed me off. They REALLY have. And here is the reason:
I have been using a script for MONTHS to backup my database (the one powering THIS blog) and send it "off-site" to my GMail mailbox. Pretty much something like a lot of other people do, described in various articles and blog posts. Then I was labelling them with a rule, so that I could access my backups easily in case I needed them.

Now I don't know if this violates their terms of use in any way… because I am not really using it as storage with those programs that circulated at one stage that had "reverse engineered" it. Those were bypassing the web interface altogether so people did use it as storage with a program without having to see their ads. That was the issue, I think. In my case, I am just sending MAILS to myself. One per day. I also delete the old ones every now and then, and they are not even huge in sized (attachments of 40 to 50KB so far!!)… anyway, I know a lot of people that store documents and all sort of stuff even in their corporate mailboxes in Outlook (then maybe index them with Windows Desktop Search of Google Desktop to find it back)… I was only doing the same with GMail. I don't see the big issue here….. they might think otherwise…. but from what happens I don't think that's the issue.

Anyway, now it's been three or four days that my backup mail gets rejected. My SMTP Server gets told:

host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[66.249.83.27] said:
550-5.7.1 Our system has detected an unusual amount of unsolicited
550-5.7.1 mail originating from your IP address. To protect our
550-5.7.1 users from spam, mail sent from your IP address has been
550-5.7.1 rejected. Please visit
550-5.7.1 http://www.google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.html to review
550 5.7.1 our Bulk Email Senders Guidelines.

Now for fuck's sake. You know how much I hate SPAMMERS and what I would like to do with them. But I also know that it does happen to end up in RBLs and such sometimes. Fine. But GIVE ME a way to tell you that I am NOT one! If you go to the link above, all you find is a form where you can specify that mail that ended up in your "junk" folder actually wasn't spam. Yeah, right. In my case it does not even go into my "junk" folder! How am I supposed to give me the original header that arrived to THEM if I only have the one sent by my mailserver ? They just blacklisted my mail server's IP Address! As they say, I even have an SPF record, I always use the same address, etc….
So I tried to fill in the form, the day after I also tried to contact their abuse@google.com and abuse@gmail.com addresses.
Still nothing.
They even tell you (in the automated reply when you contact "abuse":
"[...] For privacy and security reasons, we may not reveal the final outcome of an abuse case to the person who reported it. [...]".
How great. How am I supposed to know if they even READ my complaint ?

You anti-spam people at GMail: "I am NOT a fucking spammer!!!!!". I 'haven't found a better way to tell ya this, you know, than writing it on my blog… this is just RIDICULOUS!

But to date my mails still get dropped. I'll probably have to send my backups somewhere else. At this point they pissed me off so much that I am also seriously considering getting back to use my own mailserver also for receiving and reading my mailing lists. Then I won't get ads there.
Afzetterij!
(I hope you have some dutch guy on board at Google, as "Google Translate" does not translate from/to dutch yet…. )

Edited on October, 8th - While GMail REJECTS those mails (it SAYS it is not accepting them), Hotmail simply DROPS them (that is: it does not even SAY it is not accepting them):

to=, relay=mx4.hotmail.com[65.54.245.104], delay=3, status=sent (250 <20061008061010.GA19807@muscetta.com> Queued mail for delivery)

This way you THINK it is going to be delivered, but it NEVER shows up in your inbox. I don't know who's behaving the worst…

I've bought a present for myself: a negative scanner. Now I only need to have the time to scan those 2 or 3 kilos of old negatives that popped out of that old drawer….

Anyway, it's wonderful to run through old memories!

This one photo of me and Joshua was taken by Jyothi in 2000.

My dad has had a hearth attack last week, and has been kept at the hopital, in intensive care.
He will have to quit smoking, and drinking, adn being so "busy" as he usually is.
Now he's still at the hospital, but out of intensive care.
The worse part is over.