Esha Tizafy gets born in Madagascar. She leaves her island when she's only seven years old with her parents, who arrive in Sicily, in Palermo, where she still lives.

Author, composer and singer, she follows a musical path that helps drawing a bridge across cultures.
Her research grows from tradition and modernity at the same time.

I had heard her in 2007 in a previous concert in Rome and she had found on Flickr the pictures I took in that occasion. Therefore she asked if I could take some new pictures next time she would hold a concert in my area. This occasion has been on the 9th of August, in Rome.

I hope that her record will be ready soon, because she really deserves to be heard! I also suggested she registers on last.fm and share something there. For now you can contact her on MySpace.

I have been talking to Ariel last month, asking for a Microspotting T-Shirt since I had mentioned her earlier on my blog.

I have been on holiday in the meantime… but the T-Shirt had arrived and was waiting for me in my letterbox in the office !! How cool is that???

So today I am walking around the Rome office in it… and I am looking at people’s faces: you need to understand that Italian dress code is more or less the opposite of how people usually dress in Redmond… Italy is historically more formal, and it would be the norm to dress fancy… one would definitely look BAD here if he would show up in sandals in the office… and VERY bad going on sandals to a customer…

I am not sure about why I went to sicily on holiday: it might be because my ancestors came from that land; it might be because in Holland I felt like Dorothy at the beginning of "the wizard of Oz" every time there was a thunderstorm ( = I was afraid the house would fly away); it might be because I have a physical need for a "Granita di Mandorla" every so much time.

Whatever the reason, Holiday is over and tomorrow I'll be back at work for a new busy year.

Every year proud Romans celebrate the birth of the Eternal City (21 April), founded by Romulus in 753BC, with a series of events at venues throughout Rome, including the Roman Forum and the Campidoglio.

Celebrations include parades, gladiator shows, traditional Roman banquets and public speeches galore from local historical societies.

See the complete set of picture I took this time.

Canon - The Assignment - My Submission, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

I have decided to try and partecipate in the photographic contest "the assignment", sponsored by Canon.
Even if I have shot technically better portraits, I thought that this one was one of the most spontaneous, plus it suited the theme well:

"[...] Are you able to capture pure emotion in a single shot? Can you portray a person's life-story with one photograph? [...]"

The other I considered, the picture of the Arrotino would have been a person's life story… but that was shot with an old film camera, a Pentax…. I thought it might not be seen that well in a Canon contest…

But this picture - it is about emotions.
It is about having fun no matter your age.
Who says when we grow up we must be serious ?
So I called it "Youth is a State of Mind".

Anyway, the picture is posted here:

ta.canon-europe.com//?pg=gallery&cc=it&lc=it&…

If you like it, please vote for it - after the 5th of May when the votes will be actually open.

"I have not posted in a while" …well you certainly will have read tons of posts beginning this way, right?
But that's the truth. One of the reasons is that you can follow very well a lot of what I do and write elsewhere on the Internet by using my lifestream RSS feed, which includes much more than just what I post on this blog. Our minds are not stuck on one subject matter only, but our thoughs just go around in many different directions. I mentioned the integrated feed/lifestream in a previous post, but I found that the concept gets explained very well by Yongfook in this post:

"[...] We interact with various websites and create content on them - why should I then have to come to my own website and reconstruct, repost or repackage the same content? It already exists out there on the internet, and it’s grabbable and usable. This is not to say I think conventional blogging is dead. I do however think it is evolving. The pace at which we consume and create content - photos, videos, links etc - is getting faster, more frequent. If we wanted to republish everything manually on our blogs, we’d just run out of time. [...]"

So at least even if this SITE does not get updated often you can see I have quite a busy digital public life on the web.

Very interesting to also read this post by Scott Hanselman on the subject. He rather just focuses on twitter/microblogging as an evolved form of blogging which was getting boring and time-consuming to people:

"[...] The rise of blogs brought conversations on the 'net more out in the open. Blogging enabled conversation via essay, but as blogs have matured, posts have gotten longer and longer and threads more difficult to follow. Now, most posts are jumping off points for the more interesting conversations that inevitably move to the comments. [...]"

He then goes into more detailed/structured analysis of what you can or could do with Twitter. While his analysis is pretty good about the many ways you could use Twitter as a broadcasting tool (and in fact loads of companies do already), I rather use it as public instant messaging. Or maybe not just. I don't actually know and to be honest I am not too much into classifying things, really. For example, if classifying what this blog is… I really am not sure I know myself what this blog is. It has been very funny when other people have tried to classify it… one said it was about "programming" (that would be nice, if I really was a better developer!), other people said it was "personal", other thought it was just about "IT" in general… Heck, there is no classification possible I am afraid. Therefore, not knowing what this blog is, I at least think that I know what this blog is NOT:

• it isn't a marketing blog
• I am not here trying to sell anything
• I am not promoting anything, anyone, or any brand
• It isn't just focused on one subject, on one area of interest

…and so are all my other "expressions" on the Net. Just me. Sprinkles of me all around. No special industrial plan for it. Just be myself. You might like me sometimes. You might hate me. You might not care at all. It's all good, anyway. Sorry for wasting your time.

Simply Works, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

I don't know about other people, but I do get a lot to think when the end of the year approaches: all that I've done, what I have not yet done, what I would like to do, and so on…

And it is a period when memories surface.

I found the two old CD-ROMs you can see in the picture. And those are memories.
missioncritical software was the company that invented a lot of stuff that became Microsoft's products: for example ADMT and Operations Manager.

The black CD contains SeNTry, the "enterprise event manager", what later became Operations Manager.
On the back of the CD, the company motto at the time: "software that works simply and simply works".
So true. I might digress on this concept, but I won't do that right now.

I have already explained in my other blog what I do for work. Well, that was a couple of years ago anyway. Several things have changed, and we are moving towards offering services that are more measurable and professional. So, since it happens that in a certain job you need to be an "expert" and "specialize" in order to be "seen" or "noticed".
You know I don't really believe in specialization. I have written it all over the place. But you need to make other people happy as well and let them believe what they want, so when you "specialize" they are happier. No, really, it might make a difference in your carrer

In this regard, I did also mention my "meeting again" with Operations Manager.
That's where Operations manager helped me: it let me "specialize" in systems and applications management… a field where you need to know a bit of everything anyway: infrastructure, security, logging, scripting, databases, and so on…
This way, everyone wins.

Don't misunderstand me, this does not mean I want to know everything. One cannot possibly know everything, and the more I learn the more I believe I know nothing at all, to be honest. I don't know everything, so please don't ask me everything - I work with mainframes
While that can be a great excuse to avoid neighbours and relatives annoyances with their PCs though, on the serious side I still believe that any intelligent individual cannot be locked into doing a narrow thing and know only that one bit just because it is common thought that you have to act that way.

If I would stop where I have to stop I would be the standard "IT Pro". I would be fine, sure, but I would get bored soon. I would not learn anything. But I don't feel I am the standard "IT Pro". In fact, funnily enough, on some other blogs out there I have been referenced as a "Dev" (find it on your own, look at their blogrolls :-)). But I am not a Dev either then… I don't write code for work. I would love to, but I rarely actually do, other than some scripts. Anyway, I tend to escape the definition of the usual "expert" on something… mostly because I want to escape it. I don't see myself represented by those generalization.

As Phil puts it, when asked "Are software developers - engineers or artists?":

"[...] Don’t take this as a copout, but a little of both. I see it more as craftsmanship. Engineering relies on a lot of science. Much of it is demonstrably empirical and constrained by the laws of physics. Software is less constrained by physics as it is by the limits of the mind. [...]"

Craftmanship. Not science.
And stop calling me an "engineer". I am not an engineer. I was even crap in math, in school!

Anyway, what does this all mean? In practical terms, it means that in the end, wether I want it or not, I do get considered an "expert" on MOM and OpsMgr… and that I will mostly work on those products for the next year too. But that is not bad, because, as I said, working on that product means working on many more things too. Also, I can point to different audiences: those believing in "experts" and those going beyond schemes. It also means that I will have to continue teaching a couple of scripting classes (both VBScript and PowerShell) that nobody else seems to be willing to do (because they are all *expert* in something narrow), and that I will still be hacking together my other stuff (my facebook apps, my wordpress theme and plugins, my server, etc) and even continue to have strong opinions in those other fields that I find interesting and where I am not considered an *expert*

Well, I suppose I've been ranting enough for today…and for this year
I really want to wish everybody again a great beginning of 2008!!! What are you going to be busy with, in 2008 ?

The last few months have been very busy with work. As much as I enjoyed them anyway, and learned a lot in the process and from the people I worked with, I now really want to enjoy these few coming days of Christmas holidays and RELAX and spend some quality time with my family and friends.

So I wish the same for all of you: that you may spend a Merry, relaxing Christmas, and have a great start for a grand, brilliant new year!

As a side note, having been very busy I have blogged a lot less. Blogging implies that I already have a sort-of-well-formed thought, that should span a few lines or paragraphs, otherwise I don't find it worth it. That does not mean I don't have small ideas or other things I like to share when I come up with them. That is why I am using microblogging and Social Networking a lot lately, so I remind you that even if this blog's builtin feed only includes the REAL FEW blog posts, then I also have another (very "chatty") feed that you can use to "follow me" and that one includes all of the following combined feeds: my status messages from Facebook, my Twitter messages, my pictures on Flickr, the stuff I read somewhere else and then share on Facebook, the places I visit and mark on 43Places and the goals I achieve, want to achieve, or I simply talk about on 43Things, as well as the REAL posts on this blog. It is my implementation of what has been called a "lifestream" by other bloggers.

Doha, Qatar | Commercial Road, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Last week I have been to Doha, Qatar, visiting a customer site and learning from a colleague how to deliver my first "official" MOM Health Check. I have spent most of my time working on Microsoft Operations Manager, of course, but I also did manage to walk around a bit on my late afternoons and evenings and see some stuff. So, as I usually do in these cases, I took a ton of pictures.

I found an interesting place, filled with contrasts between old and new, tradition and competition, ancient and modern.
It's a living place that is certainly working hard to get over the oil business model and attract richness in different ways.

John Lockerbie spotted my photos on Flickrs and asked me permission to use some of the, so they have been now republished on his very interesting page about Islamic Urban design and architeture and the one about islamic society.
They both are an interesting read, and most of his site is.

Role Playing | Technology, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

I had not been playing Role Playing Games anymore for nearly 15 years. My wife recently thought that Joshua would be big enough to try, so I am trying to introduce him to the world of RPGs. This, as you can imagine, after all of that time, took back memories, ideas, and also made me think of how much the technology changed this all.

I am not at all referring to VIDEO or ONLINE games, even those that are marketed as being RPGs: most of them are not "real" RPGs anyway, they merely borrow some rules. I am saying that technology changed the way people ORGANIZE and prepare their role playing gaming experience (=the one played with real RPGs where you have to ACT a character), and how they interact with each other, and how the "knowledge" spreads.

When I was playing RPG a lot, in the 80's and early 90's, everything was paper-based, no Internet and technology in sight. For example, we photocopied a lot of stuff back then, as opposed to today when I just downloaded and printed a character sheet. But it was not just printed material that was being photocopied: in those years I remember myself handwriting my own extended set of rules, manuals, scenarios, description of places (I even kept and found back some of those!). Everything was handwritten: text, drawings, maps. A lot of work, very hard to mantain. But passion was driving me (and my friends at that time too). That has also been a big enabler in how I taught myself to read and write english: by translating handbooks that nobody had translated in italian. But I digress.

We use to go to a couple of highly specialized shops that were able to import and resell one or two copies of some rare handbooks of a strange game that would otherwise not sell at all. Sometimes even the specialized shops did not manage to get the originals of some of those rare books. Therefore, some of the expansions were sold as photocopies.
Some other times there had been some guy somewhere who did have one copy bought in the US and he took the effort to make an UNofficial translation and TYPEWRITE it in italian. Photocopies of this "product" was all that was circulating.

I am not talking or caring of copyright or "pirate" issues here. We were not "avoiding" the original stuff: if anybody would have told us that the stuff we wanted was actually available in its original format, we would have bought it. But it just wasn't available at all, and we wanted it. This kind of material was really close to impossible to get, with high costs, and all that us busy kids wanted was books with descriptions of imaginary fantasy worlds to place our characters in, and improvise and narrate our stories and saga's…

Also, all in paper format, what was circulating was a certain number of fanzines, also photocopies of an original, wonderful, "master copy" that someone had made with a typewriter and sticking pictures with glue on the paper. Desktop publishing was not that common nor easy yet. But the layout is not really what interested me, it was the CONTENT that was hard to spread.

At one stage, the thing improved slightly: I finally managed to convince my parents that I was allowed to get a modem, so I started using it to connect to various BBS. A couple of those BBS of the time were related to RPGs or had a related discussion area. I was interested in technology and in knowing how it was doing its magic, but most of all I was also pretty excited at the possibilities I saw for the technology as an enabler in connecting people. Just like I am now.
I have met some good friends on BBS's at that time. I'm still in contact with some of them, I've lost some other ones, like it happens in life anyway. But the possibility was showing quite clearly: those BBS were mostly text-based, with high connection costs (in italy were you pay every call, also local ones, per minute)… even in those circumstances they were managing to aggregate some people and were used as vehicles to spread the knowledge.
In Italy, thought, they were mostly local. International calls were prohibitively expensive. Of course we did hear of what happened to similar BBS in the US.

In fact, after pencil and paper, through a typewriter, the revolution started there: being able to type stuff on a computer and pass your file over to someone else made it easier for it to spread. But again, I am not talking about copyrighted material. I am mostly talking about self-produced material. I still remember I had troubles with digitalizing maps because I did not own a scanner… on some of the BBS people were sharing their works, and you could find good adventures and extra stuff on them. I also got to publish somewhere a couple of those I had written, and they even made it on a fanzine first, and then on a real magazine.

At one stage, though, I really got distracted. I probably thought I was "big enough", or I got too interested in the "serious" computing business, or I was too busy with other stuff. Probably a combination of many factors. So I sort of abandoned playing for a long time.

Now, looking back at that world, more than a decade later, I can see how it all changed: you go to the Internet, use any search engine and find dozen if not hundred of sites with forums, people playing online using Live Messenger, people sharing their adventures or their stories of the adventures they have played, other sites that collect all of the covers and information about all the booklets and manuals ever existed for any possible version of any game. Even the vendors are giving out stuff to play for free.

PCs and the Internet DID change the world, if anyone was still doubting. And yes, Role Playing Games and computing ARE related interests.

The world changed, yet it stayed the same: you still play those games with people, with the help of your imagination. It's the resources that are now at your fingertips.

Praktica!, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

My backward walks in technology.
The old Pentax still makes nice pictures, but it is gradually falling apart. So I found this one for a very low price. During the weekend I am determined to test it, let's see how it behaves…

[...] The phrase surprised the marquess, because it was the same thing that he had thought when four o'clock had passed. To the bishop it looked like it was a natural coincidence. “The ideas are nobody's” - he said. It drew in air with his finger a series of continuous circles, and concluded: “They fly there in circles, like angels” [...]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "Of Love and Other Demons"

5° Festival Romano di Giocoleria, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

This weekend we have been at the 5th roman festival of juggling, organized by the "C.S.A. La Torre".
You will find a bunch more photos here.

Cum grano salis, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

I like salt. I don't usually cook with a lot of it, and I don't particularly like very salty food. But I really like salt on its own.
When I was a child, I used to go to the kitchen, at my granny's home, and steal a grasp of salt from its jar, and I went hiding under a bed. Once hidden, I ate my trasure.
An homeopaths once asked me (among the whole lot of strange question they ask you) if I did, indeed, eat raw, uncooked salt, just like I told you I did as a kid. At that time I got impressed and surprised by the thing.
Now I realize he was trying to figure out if I was a person of the NATRUM MURIATICUM type.
I am not sure I am one of that kind, maybe partially. Actually I am more towards the SILICEA type.
At least, that remedy (silicea) has worked with me a bunch of times.
Probably, even in homeopathy, I don't fit exactly in one classification.
Salt was also used in the ancient times as money.
The modern term "salary" (wage, payment) comes from this use that was done of it, from its value back then.

I Wish, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Tomorrow the new school year will begin for Joshua and Luca (and for all the other kids in Italy).

For me and for my kids, after having moved to another city, this is a more important event than the *real* new years eve that will come in december: september, after the holidays (even tough we have not really been on vacation) is the real moment when the "year" starts in Italy.
Even my company ends its "fiscal years" in June, and the real work starts back in september…

I do hope this school year goes well for my kids and that they can find a bunch of new nice friends in the new school. It is so important for them. I am sorry I had them move, furthermore for the second time (first time having been when moving from holland to Italy, in 2004) but it was the only place we could afford to buy a house in, while still being relatively close to Rome. Having to pay an ever-increasing rent and having no security was not really helping us.
So we moved to Velletri in June, leaving Castel Gandolfo.
With Velletri being a bigger town compared to the village we were living in earlier, everything should be better organized when for they grow - there is more to do, more schools, more shops, more life, more opportunities. This time we live very close to the school, so they can walk to it, instead than being taken by car. This also means that their new friends are going to be the kids living around us. Which makes for more opportunities to play and study together.
It's gonna be tough at the beginning, but in the long run they should be fine.

Luca | in the Wind, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

One of the best portraits I took lately.
On Flickr it has been on Explore: flickr.com/explore/interesting/2007/8/31/page12

Who said the Sigma 28-300 is crap ? You need to know how to use it

Coccoina, a piece of Italian history.

"Italy, for example, is a puzzle [...]. Family businesses, therefore, form the backbone of the Italian economy. There are businesses which grow rich by doing small things very well. [...] "Better not bigger" is their preferred route to to wealth because bigger inevitably means the eventual sharing of power with people you cannot know well enough to trust." - quote: Charles Handy - "Beyond Certainty"

The complete story of the Lemmings
www.dmadesign.org/Lem_1.htm

(read from Jeff Atwood on twitter, where I also discover that it can now be played online)

Luca on the Swing, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

We've passed the sunday visiting my grandparents in the village where I've used to spend my summers for many years.
Seeing Luca playing and having fun on the very same swings I've used as a kid showed me part of myself. As I was. Probably as I should still be.

Windows Management Instrumentation, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

If you can't see what I am referring to in this picture, try to take a look at the large picture.
Or just look at the title bar.. eeeehhhmm… at the window….
If you still don't get it, you are probably not a geek. In that case don't worry: it is not you; it's us.

What do you want?, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

More light? Less light?
More Water? Less Water ?
SPEAK!!!

Does anybody know the name of this plant ? It is greatly suffering in the new house and I can't figure out what it needs….

Living Room, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

We are removing the old wallpaper from the house we are going to live in. Then we will be painting it. Then we will start relocating.

We've done the first room today (with removing the wallpaper)..

Whoever feels like helping in removing it from the rest of the house and help painting too, is welcome.

We will also welcome anybody who wants to come with a 10mm or similar lens to actually take better/wider pictures of the rooms

Here, in my home, we are affected by a serious colorful plastic shoe addiction. They have already outnumbered us…. please help: if you know how to get de-intoxicated feel free to contact us…

Ballet, uploaded by jyothi76 on Flickr.

This is an old picture (1983) of the ballet school my wife was attending when she was a little girl. Can you figure out who she is in the pic ?

Purble Place is a new educational game that ships with Windows Vista (even with Starter and Home Basic editions) that can help teach colors, shapes, and pattern recognition.

My kid absolutely LOVES it, especially the section of the game where you have to make and decorate cakes :-).

Digital Printouts.
I often find it funny to use the old reflex camera with films, but I mostly use it as if it was a digital one: I make many shots, some are good some are bad - I don't bother printing them, I just let it develop and I scan the pictures I like from the film (several ones are even posted here this way).
I have even been talking about this with fellow flickerer's: www.flickr.com/groups/romamor/discuss/72157600009019234/p…

On the opposite, it often happens that I want to print some photos made with the digital camera. So I take them to the shop on the Compact Flash, or more often on a USB pen drive.

Today, tough, something strange happened: the machine they use to print digital photos (some very big professional system for printing on photographic paper with a proprietary application which manages it) hanged while it was trying to load this one photo which was on the USB pendrive.

The guy at the shop got panicked: he said a week earlier a guy got the machine infected with a Virus through his USB pen, and he had to stop working for three days, spend a lot of money to get the system reinstalled…

I tried to tell him to close the application but he did not even get what I was talking about. He was saying that the system was not responsive… I was pretty sure the system WAS responsive, it was just the APPLICATION which was hanging, and since it looked like an NT-based system I tried to guide him through CTRL+ALT+DEL, to start "Task Manager", kill the application (this whole procedure took several minutes, and I had to show him which keys I was talking about as he was abel to find "ALT" but he had never hear of CTRL, left alone "DEL"). It was a Windows2000 Professional… so I wondered how did he logged in if he did not know that key combination….. I asked how did he get in when he started the machine…. "it opens automatically" he said. I see. I though it must be configured for autologon then. After killing the application he asked "how do I get out of this now??" "This" being Windows Explorer… I mean, the desktop. I pulled out my USB pendrive he was afraid of, I helped him reboot. He was nervous and he said it took much longer than normal to start up (I don't believe ONE word of it, it just took much less time than my laptop with Vista takes to start up… but he was worried and that makes one anxious and makes time flow slower). He was afraid and nervous that the "thing" could have been broken somehow by trying to load a JPEG…
NOTHING made him confident about me: I tried to reassure him I am an IT Professional, that I work for Microsoft (unfortunately I did not have my business cards with me today, that would have probably helped!), that I put my hands on much more complex and "missioncritical" systems, that I would not bring him any virus whatsoever and I am paranoid about computer security…
Nothing. Nothing worked to re-assure him that there wasn't anything to worry about my pen…

While the machine started I saw it doing AutoAdminLogon with Administrator… with a password of TWO characters.
Oh my god!
Then he wonders that he gets viruses from strangers. He runs as Administrator all the time!!!

But then I though and asked… "is there maybe a LIMIT on the SIZE of the file?". "Of course there is!".
Right.

Since the photo I wanted to print is actually a composition made of two photos pasted together, and each of the original was a 8 Megapixel photo, the resulting is a 16 Megapixel picture, a JPG file of roughly 8 megabytes in size. Well, this days it isn't much anyway. We nearly have cameras which produce files with that high resolution…
..but if THAT application has a limit… WHY on earth doesn't it CHECK for the bloody SIZE of the file BEFORE trying to load it ?

I mean, those are professional systems which - he said - cost around 150 THOUSAND of Euros… which they let run with an application which does NOT do any input checking/validation, runs the whole time as Administrator… while letting people bring in their own CD-ROMs, USB pens, flash memory cards….
and they expect it to be safe?

Now the guy was panicked and wouldn't let me plug my pen in the machine again.

Then he's keeping his shop closed in the afternoon since it is saturday, and I need that photo (and other ones) printed for tomorrow, because tomorrow it is my grandad's 91st birthday and I wanted to bring them printed for him and framed as a present!

Morale: I have to find another place to print them in the afternoon, in a rush, because some company sells print systems which are written like crap, which need to run as Administrator and won't do any input validation in their code. This is one of those situations where a design flaw matters.

The start of the new year according to the traditions of Bengal, being welcomed by bengal and indian immigrants in Rome.
Is a great opportunity for integration.
You don't really see many italians walking around, but there are some who do come and talk.

This is happening in Rome, right now, started last sunday and goes on until the end of the month.

For more information:
www.romamultietnica.it/inside.asp?id=166&idNotizia=842

April 8th 2007 it was Easter Sunday.
It was also my mum's birthday.

I had just missed the new, but I am catching up now, that Debian Etch shipped.

What a day!

Yesterday I was talking to someone and he asked me if I ever look at the mirror, if I do see a different person sometimes or would like to be one; they wondered if there was anything that I would change: "do you ever wonder what it would have been if you were born as another person, or more in general - what would you change if you could?".

I did not know what to answer.

At first, I thought it would have been very unpolite to say "no, not really, not since I was 16 years old, more or less…". Well actually that's what I was thinking, tough. Maybe he'll read this. Who cares. I don't feel like I need to make everybody happy anytime, anyway. Who are they after all ? What are they trying to sell ? I don't need to buy things because this society wants to make you think you need them. I don't need to be thinner, fatter, taller, blonder, I don't need an iPod, I don't need a TomTom, I don't need all of the crap this society pushes you to think as being necessary.

That is why I am posting this picture. I was angry back then when it was taken, I was wanting to be someone else like most teenagers who haven't found themselves yet.

What would I change of myself now ?
Nothing, not really. If something has changed, is that I DO like myself these days.

Sure, it would certainly help having more money. We could have a house of our own. Currently we live with my one and only wage - me, my wife, two kids and two cats - and half of this salary goes away in paying the rental of the house - so it's not exactly easy to get on; but that is just material things. We are healty, we are happy. I've even stopped feeling miserable and sorry for myself like a lot of people do. When sometimes I feel weaker and I realize that I might start getting caught in the consumistic trap (nobody's perfect) - which happens when I feel sorry and unfortunate….
to get out of it I usually read something about people in the real poor countries, people at war, people who don't have to eat, and I think what have we done to them to sustain our richness. Then I don't feel sorry for myself. I feel sorry for them, I feel thankful for what I do have. I feel like I should be doing something for them rather than for myself. I there was anything I would change is to have the courage to need even less. Because it is among the poor people, the less fortunate that you mostly discover humanity.
Rich people tend to complain, they forget to be thankful for their situation, they always want to have more.
Sure that if "successful" people, people who think of themselves as being very important, people who make a lot of money and are enterpreneurs, if those people still think they want to change something, if they get excited by stuff like "second life", if they get shaken by looking at themselves in the mirror and they expect you to be like them… if all of these things I have seen are true, then well, then my answer is NO and NO - sincerely I don't want to change anything in my life in the way they mean. There is no project for any killer application or business that I would borrow money for, there is no dotCom follow-up I would be getting rich for.

Probably for this reason, I do LIKE looking at myself in the mirror.
I even laugh like a kid making funny faces at myself, and that is all about.
I don't have to be afraid of my shadow.

Rome Calendar 2007, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

I've used these photos to publish a calendar that you can get here: www.lulu.com/content/512186

Ok, I won't get rich from it, but I thought it was funny.

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

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.

Black Tea, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Finally the first complete weekend.
After four weeks of holidays, I had pretty much got used to relax and do my stuff.
On monday 28th I started working. I worked the usual 5 days, and customers were waiting for me anxiously. I also had to work on friday night for some updates they had waited six months to do (when I was telling them "let's do this") but they could not wait anymore NOW obviously.
Then, late friday night I had weekend… sort of. Just saturday.
In fact, I had to be ready to leave early sunday morning to go to the "company meeting". Sunday and monday. Awesome. Not.
Tuesday to friday: work, work, work again.

Not THIS weekend I am doing MY stuff, actually trying to relax.
That's more my cup of tea.

Yesterday from a lot of places all over the world was possible to observe a partial lunar eclipse.

A couple of links with news and information about the event:
1) Nu.nl
2) news.com.au
3) Indianews
4) Nasa.Gov

My pic has also been published on nu.nl !

my wife: "Oh, look: they DO sell finger paint here in Italy as well"
myself: "Sure, why not?"
my wife: "Well, kids are usually not supposed to get dirty from their parents, right ?"
myself: "ROTFL :-)"

it's quite a comedy (or a tragedy). They really aren't supposed to have fun in many occation because "you get dirty". Sure. That is what washing machines have been invented for, right ? At least these days we have those….
I have seen kids at the playground that were not allowed to get in the sandpit because they would have got dirty or…. well, why did you get them to the playground then if they are not allowed to play ?
Anyway, excluding some moments when my italian genes come forward and try to take ownership of my brain, our kids ARE allowed to get dirty. At least they have fun.

You might find this book of Tim Parks to be quite amusing on this topic

Cool. Transparency in this RC1 build finally works on my laptop. I mean, even with a DECENT resolution.
Everything is much more stable than in the previous beta1 and beta2 builds.

And yes, the background image I am using is this photo of mine.

We already had a cat, but two days ago I found this kittten that had been abandoned and was sick, so I took it to the vet, and then home.
We accept suggestions for a name that suits her

Looking at the computer screen, trying to understand a complex configuration…. headache. These days I am very tired, I would like to sleep more, to work less. I need holidays….

Also, my dad started leading some turistic trips and excursions with an association of friends. If you want to visit Rome and have a great turist guide who knows what he talks about, give them a try! The association also leads some trips in the countryside, to enjoy the nature.

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It was already more than three years ago and they are still fighting.
I can remember it well, the start of this Iraq war, because they attacked on the 20th of March - that is my bday.

The photo is of the huge demonstration that was held in Amsterdam. Actually it was kept in a lot of countries, and they were all huge.
Still they did not listen, they went further, and fought this war anyway, regarless of people's will. It's always time to remember.

I get this old memories, also to say that tomorrow it is "Festa della Repubblica" in Italy, and in Rome they want to carry on this idiotic military parade they have been doing for some years now.

But there's also a counter-demonstraion of people that dislike the military forces and that want PEACE.
Guess which demonstration will be more colourful and HAPPY ?

I'll try to get there tomorrow and take some photos too. But I am not sure I'll make it…. my kid has got a basket match first that he cares about. So I'll go there, and then I'll try to go to Rome, park *somehow* *somwehere* (it will be madhouse) and catch the "Peace-Parade" that will be already started of course…..