PlanetOCRACY

Friendly reminder: the days left to vote to select foundation board members are running down!

Make it happen here: http://foundation.gnome.org/vote/vote.php?id=13

Photo (cc) by caribb: a typical sight during elections in Montréal, Québec.

It is my first participation in a such an online election, non national election.  Of course I am exited to be part of it.  Unfortunately, electronic voting makes a quite boring “Election’s night”.   I am used to the 3 or 4 hours of febrile waiting before the people’s choices are announced.  Where are the exit polls?

In the last weeks I have been asked several times to modify some components I’m working on to add the ability to split a full name in its components (first name, family name, etc.).
It looks like most people have great expectations about this working correctly but they get annoyed when it fails, and you can be sure it will fail. It will fail because it’s impossible to parse a name correctly, for instance:

How can you do this automatically?

This becomes particularly silly if you cannot be sure that the string you are going to parse is actually a full name, for instance don’t try to parse a chat nickname. It’s true that gmail/gtalk uses your full name by default, but this is only a default and it’s true only for gmail.

To cut a long story short, please please please don’t try to parse names. You can see by yourself how hard it is, even if I’m just considering western-style names.
If you still don’t trust me here’s a quote from e-name-western.c, i.e. the file that does name parsing in libebook :

* <Nat> Jamie, do you know anything about name parsing?
* <jwz> Are you going down that rat hole? Bring a flashlight.

On a side note when you are trying to understand why some code is broken you can find some funny commits, like the great EDS purge

Update: I found this “serious” bug in e_name_western_parse .

Last January, I announced Geolocation in Empathy.  All pending branches have now been merged and released in Empathy 2.27.3.

It took quite a lot of time to finalize it because we were quite busy and quite frankly while this is sexy, it isn’t a very important feature in Empathy :-).  In the following screenshots, you’ll discover that things have changed a lot since the original announcement.

First of all, the markers now include more information about the contact.  This uses the new markers in libchamplain.  It works nice for now (as I only have 3 or 4 contacts publishing their location), we’ll see with usage if the markers are just too big.

The map is now interactive: right clicking on a contact will bring up the same context menu you get on the contact list.

The Preferences UI was reworked to be simpler.  The previous UI left space for an hypothetical Manual address mode which was dropped.  The rationale is that Empathy shouldn’t have to care about addresses.  If you want to change the address, change it in Geoclue.

This is new since January: the tool tip now include your contact’s geolocation information.  This is the only part of all the geolocation changes that are present even if you don’t build with Geoclue or libchamplain.  It was impossible to display a map there as ClutterGtk doesn’t seem to like such windows hehe. We already know it is partly ugly and contains duplicate information It will be improved before final release.

Finally, the contact information dialog now displays a map and the detailed information about the contact’s location.

Don’t miss the FAQ that I populated with questions I was often asked during development.  Report bugs on the Geolocation component of Empathy (you can also see that we have work left to do).

I am not the only one who worked on this exiting feature, here are the details:

• Alban Crequy worked on the XMPP support and reviews;
• Dafydd Harries did the early work on the XMPP support;
• Guillaume Desmottes wrote the XMPP PEP code (the same used for OLPC) and reviewed the code;
• Pierre-Luc Beaudoin did the UIs, the libchamplain and geoclue integration and pursued the XMPP support;
• Xavier Claessens reviewed many times.

I can’t wait to see more people using this and show up on my map!

While deploying Geoclue with friends, I came to the conclusion that we need a GUI tool for end users to setup Geoclue.  Geoclue-properties was born.  gstreamer-properties was an inspiration (for the name, and part of the visual aspect).

I started the project only last Monday night, but you can already do this with it:

• See your current address and postion according to Geoclue
• List installed providers and their provided services
• Set an address on the Manual provider
• Set the address for the current network on the Localnet provider
• List previously configured addresses in the Localnet provider

Just the last items save the user of having to use dbus-send incantations.   For the screenshot lovers, here’s your dose.

The project is still quite embryonic.  It is my first attempt at using Python for such a task and I lack knowledge (and quite frankly time) on how to create the project’s infrastructure (almost as if I am missing autotools — scary!).  If someone is willing to contribute that or point me the doc I’d appreciate!

Try it!

MIT: il global warming sarà peggiore del previsto

I’d like to make people aware of something my colleague Daf pointed out to me: one cannot use Python’s SSL code (this also applies to other Python projects such as M2Crypto) in a GPL licensed application because it uses OpenSSL.

The problem resides in OpenSSL’s license which requires :

3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
must display the following acknowledgement:
“This product includes cryptographic software written by
Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com)”
The word ‘cryptographic’ can be left out if the routines from the library
being used are not cryptographic related :-).

and (because of its dual license)

3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
software must display the following acknowledgment:
“This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project
for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit. (http://www.openssl.org/)”

This requirement as been marked as GPL incompatible.  Therefore, any GPL application using it is in license violation. While the OpenSSL FAQ stipulates that you can use it with GPL applications, this opinion is not shared by everyone. This is a quite big unadvertised licensing problem.

Now, I am not a lawyer but I can point to some existing solutions to this problem:

1. Fix Python to not use such a poisonous (to GPL) licensed library.
2. Do not use Python’s SSL code and use other implementations such as python-gnutls.  This solution less appealing as replacement libraries often don’t completely cover python’s API.
3. Relicense your GPL application to “GNU GPL  with the OpenSSL special
   exemption.” (as wget did) and add mentions to OpenSSL in your advertising materials. This solution is sometimes hard to implement as you have to contact all past contributors.

Ingredienti:

• 25 asparagi circa
• 100 g di stracchino
• 4 uova
• 4 cucchiai di panna
• parmigiano reggiano
• sale
• pepe

Dose per 4 persone

Lavate gli asparagi, rimuovete la parte bianca e dura e cuocete in acqua bollente per 10 minuti. Scolate gli asparagi e tagliateli a pezzetti tenendo da parte qualche punta per la decorazione.
Distribuite sul fondo di 4 stampini monoporzione da soufflé (chiamati ramequin o ramekin) gli asparagi e lo stracchino tagliato a pezzetti. Aggiungete un pizzico di sale.
Rompete per uovo in ogni ramequin facendo attenzione a non rompere il rosso. Aggiungete un cucchiaio di panna, un poco di parmigiano reggiano, sale e pepe.
Mettete gli stampini in una pirofila e riempite la pirofila d’acqua bollente fino a raggiungere metà dell’altezza degli stampini. Cuocete in forno preriscaldato a 180˚ C per 15 minuti, le uova devono essere cotte ma il rosso deve rimanere morbido. Rimuovete i ramequin dalla pirofila, asciugate, decorate con le punte d’asparago tenute da parte e servite in tavola.

I am proud to announce the release of libchamplain 0.3, the first development release toward 0.4.  libchamplain is a map widget.  It is the work of many months (as far as November) and many contributors since FOSDEM.  Here is a short list of what you get:

• Support for proxies
• Support for custom map sources
• A way to list the available map sources
• Support for 2 new built-in map sources: Cycle Map and Osmarender
• A bunch of new function to allow more control on the UI
• A nicer, more flexible Marker API
• Nicer default markers: they are now grey, have rounded corners and cast a shadow!
• Notification when the view is loading content and when it’s done
• Support for locking down available zoom levels
• A more intelligent cache that can be purged
• Bindings (in the works): Perl, Python, C# and C++

Of course being a development release, the API isn’t entirely stable yet.  For instance, the code surrounding the ChamplainMapSourceDesc introduced this weekend is subject to be reviewed in the next weeks.

Yet, this release is a big step forward introducing a lot of the desired features while leaving some for an upcoming release (such as the ability to draw lines on the map).

You can grab the tarball or clone the source code.  You can read the NEWS or read about the API.

On a side note, libchamplain as been officially proposed as an external dependency for GNOME 2.28.

I’ve got to share what I just found about gtk-doc.  I’ve been using it for months now to document libchamplain’s API.  It was complex to setup but the result is worth it.  Here is my experience about how to get your properties and signals to show up:

• Is my_object_get_type listing in the .types file?
• Is the section correctly identified in your doc and -docs.sgml?
• And today’s discovery: is your object struct declared as a typedef?

To make that last point explicit:

typedef struct
{
  GObject parent;
} MyObject;

will produce minimalistic documentation while

typedef struct _MyObject MyObject;

struct _MyObject
{
  GObject parent;
};

will produce complete documentation with properties, signals and object hierarchy.

Consider yourself warned!

Ingredienti:

• 160 g di riso da minestrone
• 1 uovo
• 1 cucchiaio di farina
• 500 g di yogurt greco
• 40 g di burro
• 1 cucchiaio di menta essiccata
• sale
• pepe

Dose per 4 persone

L’anno scorso sono stato in Turchia per “lavoro”, quindi nell’ultimo anno ho deciso di sperimentare diversi piatti turchi. Questa zuppa, chiamata Yayla Çorbası, è un po’ strana ma molto buona.

Preparate la zuppa. Portate a ebollizione 450 g di acqua (o se preferite metà brodo e metà acqua), quando bolle aggiungete il riso e cuocete a fuoco basso per 20 minuti.
Nel frattempo amalgamate in una pentola l’uovo con la farina. Aggiungete lo yogurt e 150 g di acqua.
Quando il riso è cotto unitelo con la sua acqua di cottura alla mistura di yogurt. L’aggiunta del riso e acqua calda allo yogurt deve essere lenta e dovete mescolare di continuo per non fare formare grumi causati dal calore.
Mettete la pentola sul fuoco e portate lentamente a ebollizione mescolando di frequente. Lasciate sobbollire per 15 minuti mescolando frequentemente. Quando la zuppa è cotta e densa spegnete il fuoco e regolate di sale e pepe.
Fate sciogliere il burro in un piccolo pentolino. Quando è sciolto aggiungete la menta essiccata e cuocete fino a quando il burro inizia a sfrigolare. Unite metà del burro fuso alla zuppa.
Versate la zuppa in ciotole o piatti fondi e versate sulla zuppa il rimanente burro fuso.

In the race to the 0.3 development release, we are reviewing the API to see it is nice to use, bindable and most of all intuitive to g* coders.  But sometimes, it is hard to find out how to do it well: comments on this particular issue would be appreciated.

ChamplainView is the map view that displays the map.  It needs a ChamplainMapSource from which it gets the map.  There are specialised objects that inherit from ChamplainMapSource such as ChamplainNetworkMapSource and the upcoming ChamplainLocalMapSource (or what ever it will be named by the end of the SoC).

champlainNetworkMapSource* champlain_network_map_source_new_full (const gchar *name,
    const gchar *license,
    const gchar *license_uri,
    guint min_zoom,
    guint map_zoom,
    guint tile_size,
    ChamplainMapProjection projection,
    const gchar *uri_format);

As you don’t want to fill all this information each time you create a new map source, libchamplain currently provides helper constructions:

ChamplainMapSource * champlain_map_source_new_osm_mapnik (void);
ChamplainMapSource * champlain_map_source_new_osm_cyclemap (void);
ChamplainMapSource * champlain_map_source_new_osm_osmarender (void);
ChamplainMapSource * champlain_map_source_new_oam (void);
ChamplainMapSource * champlain_map_source_new_mff_relief (void);

We think it could be interesting to replace these by a Factory to which you pass an enum value to get the constructed ChamplainMapSource.  You would probably be able to add your own map source constructor (as you can implement your own map sources).  You would probably be able to get the list of available map source too.

The question is: is this overkill? the best way to do it? is there something similar in glib or gtk to get inspired from? We base most of the API decisions by looking at other Gtk+ widgets, but this particular object seems to be a different case.

We are asking for your ideas.

Ingredienti:

• 2 cipolle grosse
• 3 cucchiai d’olio evo
• 800 g di pelati a pezzi
• 4 uova
• sale
• pepe
• pane

Dose per 4 persone

Non è di certo un piatto elegante o raffinato ma sicuramente è molto gustoso e saporito. Nonostante le molte cipolle non risulta pesante da digerire o troppo forte vista la lunga cottura.

Preparate la cipollata. Sbucciate le cipolle e tagliatele a rondelle. In una pentola antiaderente scaldate l’olio, quando è caldo aggiungete le cipolle e soffriggete per 10 minuti a fuoco basso.
Aggiungete un bicchiere di acqua calda e cuocete per altri 15 minuti mescolando di tanto in tanto. Aggiungete acqua se le cipolle si asciugano troppo velocemente.
Aggiungete i pelati e cuocete a fuoco medio-basso per 20-25 minuti mescolando ogni 5 minuti, fino a quando il composto risulterà non troppo liquido. Regolate di sale e pepe.
Aggiungete le uova e amalgamatele bene lasciando cuocere 1 o 2 minuti fino a quando si saranno rapprese.
Servite in piatti fondi con abbondante pane tostato.

In this blog post, I’d like to explain how I flashed my BIOS without a floppy drive, a cd-rom or a Microsoft Windows installation so that other users can find quickly how to do it.

First, you need a USB key.

Then, you use unetbootin to flash a copy of FreeDos to your key.  You can use the built-in FreeDos distribution.

Download the BIOS flashing utility from your motherboard manufacturer and put it on the USB key.

Reboot your computer and force it to boot from the USB key.

On the FreeDos boot menu, select Live CD.

At the A:\> prompt, enter b: then Enter.

You will now have access to the files contained on your USB key.  Follow your manufaturer’s recommanded steps to flash your BIOS.

I was working listening to last.fm as every day when suddenly the music stopped and the email notification icon appeared.  “Your free trial to Last.fm Radio is about to end.” said the email.  “It is already over” though I.

Who wants to give me a one-year subscription to last.fm? It is only 27 € (if you pay in US$).  My username is  plbeaudoin.

I am also open to suggestion for a free (as in speech) service that works as well as last.fm, has content and has built-in support in apps…

Update: Thanks to Benjamin Podszun for his gift! On a site note: last.fm, while I understand that the concept of subscription is new for you, the page describing the status of your subscription is 1) very hidden, 2) lacks details.

There will be a Google Summer of Code project for libchamplain - your Clutter based Map Widget for your Clutter or Gtk+ based applications. This project will be realized by Simon Wenner.  He will be working on getting the map rendered locally (using OpenStreetMap xml data) as opposed to downloading the pre-rendered tiles as libchamplain currently does.  At the end of the summer, libchamplain will support both for best flexibility.

This functionality means a lot of possibilities for libchamplain: better accessibility, smaller bandwidth needs, smaller cache footprint, more context data and finally themable maps.  These can be very useful if you are running on different platforms such as Maemo 5 or a desktop: bigger fonts, more contrast, tango colors!

(oh and by the way, this is the new default markers: more on them in a later post)

Unfortunately, another very interestant SoC idea didn’t make it to selected list: a glib based OSM data API.  That would have made it very useful to access the downloaded data.  But hey, that will be for later!  Thanks to all the students that submitted a project idea on libchamplain

Ingredienti per il disco di cioccolato:

• 100 g di cioccolato fondente
• 60 g di riso soffiato

Ingredienti per le torte:

• 175 g di burro
• 175 g di zucchero
• 3 uova
• 175 g di farina
• mezza bustina di lievito per dolci
• estratto di vaniglia

Ingredienti per la bavarese:

• 250 g latte
• 4 rossi d’uovo
• 60 g di zucchero
• 6 g di gelatina in fogli
• 300 g di nutella
• 250 g di panna da montare

Ingredienti per lo sciroppo:

• 50 g di zucchero
• 6 cucchiai di rum

Ingredienti per la copertura:

• 200 g di cioccolato fondente
• 60 g di glucosio liquido
• 4 cucchiai di acqua
• zucchero a velo

Dose per una torta di 20 cm di diametro

Preparate il disco di cioccolato. Appoggiate una tortiera a cerniera su un foglio di carta da forno e disegnate all’interno un cerchio usando una matita. Fate sciogliere il cioccolato fondente a bagnomaria. Quando sciolto aggiungete il riso soffiato e spargete sul foglio di carta da forno all’interno del cerchio che avete disegnato. Mettete in frigo a far solidifare.

Preparate la torta. Preparate le due sponge cake. Quando cotte lasciatele raffreddare su una grata.

Preparate la bavarese. Portate a ebollizione il latte. Nel frattempo lavorate con una frusta i tuorli e lo zucchero fino a ottenere un composto bianco e spumoso. Quando il latte bolle abbassate il fuoco al minimo e aggiungete il composto di uova amalgamandolo velocemente con la frusta. Lasciate sul fuoco per un paio di minuti mescolando di continuo.
Spegnete il fuoco e aggiungete la nutella. Quando questa è amalgamata aggiungete la gelatina precedentemente ammollata in acqua fredda e ben strizzata. Lasciate intiepidire per una decina di minuti.
Montate la panna e amalgamatela delicatamente alla crema con una spatola mescolando dall’alto verso il basso per non smontarla.

Preparate lo sciroppo. Mettete su fuoco basso lo zucchero con 100 g di acqua fino a quando è sciolto completamente. Aggiungete il rum e lasciate intiepidire.

Assemblate la torta Rimuovete la parte ricurva delle sponge cake con un coltello, per la torta useremo solo il fondo. Ovviamente non buttate questo “scarto”, può essere mangiato così com’è oppure può essere tagliato a strisce, messo sul fondo di alcuni coppini e coperto con un cucchiaio di bavarese alla nutella.
Richiudete una delle due tortiere ad anello e mettete un primo strato di torta sul fondo. Aiutandovi con un cucchiaio o un pennello spargete metà dello sciroppo sulla torta.
Versate metà della bavarese alla nutella sulla torta.
Staccate il disco di cioccolato e riso soffiato dalla carta da forno e mettete nella tortiera.
Versate la rimanente bavarese nella tortiera.
Coprite con l’ultimo strato di torta e bagnatelo con lo sciroppo rimasto.
Mettete in frigo a solidificare per qualche ora.

Preparate il cioccolato plastico. Preparate il cioccolato plastico e lasciatelo riposare fino a quando la torta non si sarà solidificata.

Decorate la torta. Togliete la torta dalla tortiera. Stendete il cioccolato plastico in sfoglie sottili, man mano che sono pronte disponetele sulla torta formando delle pieghe. Quando la torta è completamente ricoperta decorate con un poco di zucchero a velo passato attraverso un colino e mettete in frigo fino al momento di servirla.
Vi assicuro che il risultato della torta era molto migliore dal vivo che in foto!

Il cioccolato plastico non è altro che cioccolato reso malleabile grazie all’aggiunta di glucosio, in questo modo è possibile usarlo per creare decorazioni di vario tipo. Le dosi che ho riportato qui sono la dose base da aumentare secondo le necessità, per esempio per decorare una torta di 20 cm di diametro moltiplicatele per 4.

Il glucosio si trova in alcuni supermercati, se non riuscite a trovarlo potete sostituirlo con una quantità di miele, meglio se non troppo saporito in modo da non influenzare troppo il gusto finale. Non ho mai provato questa variante, quindi non mi assumo responsabilità in caso di fallimento

Se volete una decorazione bianca potete invece usare del cioccolato bianco ma, vista l’alta quantità di burro di cacao, risulterà un poco più difficile da lavorare.

Preparate il cioccolato plastico. Sciogliete il cioccolato a bagno maria. Aggiungete il glucosio e un cucchiaio d’acqua, amalgamate bene e lasciate risolidificare a temeparatura ambiente per due ore.

Impastate il cioccolato con le mani su un piano leggeremente cosparso di zucchero a velo fino a renderlo malleabile. Non preoccupatevi se all’inizio sarà duro e si sgretolerà, con il leggero calore delle mani e con la lavorazione assumerà la consistenza di un normale impasto.
Stendete il cioccolato in sfoglie sottili con un mattarello o con una macchina per fare la pasta, usando lo zucchero a velo per non fare attaccare l’impasto alla macchina o al matterello.

Una volta steso potete utilizzare il cioccolato per fare ad esempio delle rose, come ad esempio spiegato su Note di cioccolato. Se, invece, volete decorare una torta stendete semplicemente il cioccolato in sottili sfoglie e appoggiatele sulla torta formando delle pieghe.

But now a great thing in the street
Seems any human nod,
Where shift in strange democracy
The million masks of God.
— GOLD LEAVES, The Wild Knight and Other Poems, Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1900

Ingredienti:

• 175 g di burro
• 175 g di zucchero
• 3 uova
• 175 g di farina
• mezza bustina di lievito per dolci
• buccia di limone grattugiata o vaniglia (facoltativo)

Dose per 2 torte da 20 centimetri di diametro

La sponge cake è l’equivalente nel mondo anglosassone del nostro pan di Spagna, ma leggermente più veloce e semplice da preparare. Normalmente vengono preparate due torte separate di diametro non troppo grosso e vengono impilate una sopra l’altra con in mezzo varie farciture. La farcitura più tipica è semplicemente marmellata di fragole (o fragole fresche in stagione) e panna montata, dando così origine alla torta Victoria. Visto che questo tipo di torta rimane più umido di un normale pan di Spagna è anche ottima senza nessuna farcitura.

Se volete fare due torte di 24 cm di diametro usate queste dosi: 250 g ciascuno di farina, burro e zucchero, 4 uova grandi e tre quarti di bustina di lievito.

Preparate la torta. Lasciate ammorbidire il burro a temperatura ambiente o per qualche istante nel forno a microonde, senza però scioglierlo. Lavorate energicamente il burro e lo zucchero fino a quando otterrete un composto omogeneo e spumoso. Aggiungete la buccia di limone grattugiata o la vaniglia se li volete usare. Aggiungete le uova una a una. Aggiungete il lievito e la farina setacciati mescolando in continuazione.

Versate il composto in due tortiere da 20 cm imburrate e infarinate. Cuocete in forno preriscaldato a 180˚ C per 20 minuti. Togliete dal forno e lasciate intiepidire nelle tortiere. Quando le torte sono tiepide rimuovete dalle tortiere a lasciare raffreddare completamente su una griglia.

Se invece usate tortiere da 24 cm di diametro cuocete per 25 minuti, sempre a 180˚ C.

La foto è di adactio ed è rilasciata sotto licenza Creative Commons attribution.

Ecco il risultato del primo rullino in bianco e nero scattato con una vecchia Canon AE-1 su pellicola Ilford 125 iso e sviluppato in toto da me!!!

La grana che si vede dev’essere colpa mia per aver agitato male la tank, così come tutto lo sporco e le righe visto che mi si è srotolato completamente il rullino quando al buio mentre stavo caricando la spirale e ha così toccato il comodo piano in metallo arrugginito dagli acidi e dal tempo. boh per il prossimo proverò a far di meglio

Ho terminato da poco il corso di ‘’Computer Ethics'’, un corso di dottorato del Politecnico di Torino tenuto dal professor Norberto Patrignani. Al termine era richiesto di scrivere uno short paper che sviluppasse uno degli argomenti trattati. Io ho scelto di parlare di Network Neutrality perchè è un problema che mi riguarda direttamente (visto che lavoro su tematiche analoghe) ed è un argomento molto attuale.

Abstract:The last century has faced the explosion of telecommunications systems. Telephone, radio, television and Internet are now so rooted in the daily life of millions of people that is difficult to imagine a world without them. In particular, Internet is so attractive because of its freedom. Recently network providers have started to use traffic filtering policies aiming to optimize the network performance but this has hurt the freedom of both users and content providers.
In this work is described the current scenario of the network neutrality issue looking at the forces that hold the discussion and identifying a possible route to follow in the next years based on recent developments in matter.

L’articolo completo è rilasciato con licenza Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives

Anapanasati Sutta

(Majjhima Nikaya 118)
Mindfulness of Breathing
Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
For free distribution only, as a gift of Dhamma.

Ingredienti:

• 50 g di burro
• 50 g di farina
• 180 g di latte
• 4 uova
• 50 g di zucchero
• 3 cucchiai di Grand Marnier
• la buccia grattugiata di mezza arancia
• 130 g di succo d’arancia (circa 1 arancia)

Dose per 4 - 6 persone

Per suggerimenti sulla preparazione dei soufflé leggi la ricetta del soufflé prosciutto e formaggio.

Preparate il soufflé Sciogliete il burro a fuoco bassissimo, aggiungete la farina e fate cuocere per un paio di minuti, sempre mescolando. Aggiungete lentamente il latte caldo o tiepido in modo da ottenere una specie di besciamella e fate cuocere ancora un paio di minuti, se il composto risultasse difficile da mescolare perché troppo solido aggiungete un poco di succo di arancia. Togliete il composto dal fuoco e aggiungete i tuorli uno ad uno. Aggiungete lo zucchero, il Grand Marnier, la buccia d’arancia e poi il succo molto lentamente e girando di continuo.

Montate a neve ferma gli albumi insieme a un pizzico di sale e uniteli lentamente al resto del composto, mescolando dall’alto al basso per non smontarli.

Imburrate e cospargete con dello zucchero uno stampo da soufflé da 14 o 15 cm di diametro, il composto dovrebbe rimanere qualche centimetro sotto il bordo, in modo che poi possa spuntare dal contenitore una volta cotto.

Mettete in forno preriscaldato a 180˚ per 30 minuti, senza assolutamente aprire il forno durante la cottura. Quando questo tempo è passato provate a muovere lo stampo, se il soufflé si muove come se avesse il centro ancora liquido cuocete per altri 5 minuti. Una volta cotto il soufflé va mangiato immediatamente, altrimenti scende, cioè si sgonfia.

Se li avete potete userare degli stampini monodose, in questo caso il tempo di cottura scende a 20 minuti circa.

Soyen Shaku, the first Zen teacher to come to America, said: “My heart burns like fire but my eyes are as cold as dead ashes.” He made the following rules which he practiced every day of his life:

• Retire at a regular hour. Partake of food at regular intervals. Eat with moderation and never to the point of satisfaction.
• Receive a guest with the same attitude you have when alone. When alone, maintain the same attitude you have in receiving guests.
• Watch what you say, and whatever you say, practice it.
• When an opportunity comes do not let it pass you by, yet always think twice before acting.
• Do not regret the past. Look to the future.
• Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.
• Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

LifeHacker Hive Five: Five best mind mapping applications

Ingredienti:

• 400 g di orecchiette
• 2 cucchiai di olio d’oliva
• 2 spicchi di aglio
• 20 cavoletti di Bruxelles
• 1 peperone
• 80 g di panna
• ricotta salata
• sale
• pepe

Dose per 4 persone

Pulite i cavoletti, rimuovete le foglie più esterne e tagliateli a pezzettoni. Lavate e pulite il peperone e tagliatelo a cubetti.
Fate soffriggere in una padella l’aglio nell’olio di oliva, quando inizia a imbiondire aggiungete i cavoletti di Bruxelles e il peperone e cuocete per 3 o 4 minuti mescolando di continuo.
Nel frattempo mettete le orecchiette a cuocere in acqua salata.
Aggiungete la panna e qualche cucchiaio di acqua di cottura della pasta alle verdure e cuocete per 6 o 7 minuti, aggiungendo più acqua man mano che le verdure si asciugano.
Quando le orecchiette sono cotte al dente colatele, riaccendete il fuoco sotto la padella delle verdure e buttate la pasta nel condimento. Regolate di sale tenendo presente che aggiungerete la ricotta salata. Cuocete un minuto o due e impiattate.
Grattate un po’ di ricotta salata su ogni piatto e pepate.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Vaclav Havel

Ingredienti:

• 300 g di noci sgusciate (circa 500-600 g di noci intere)
• 150 g di cioccolato fondente
• 150 g di miele

Dose per circa 45 dolcetti

Riducete a pezzi le noci con un batticarne. Unite in una terrina le noci, il miele e il cioccolato fuso a bagnomaria e lasciate raffreddare il composto in frigo per un’ora.

Staccate con un cucchiaio dei pezzi del composto e, arrotolandoli con le mani, formate delle palline grosse come una noce. Lasciate in frigo per un’ora.

libchamplain is a map widget for your application.

I’ve just tagged some bugs or enhancements with the gnome-love keyword.  If you ever wanted to contribute to libchamplain, I think these bugs should be rather simple to fix/implement.

In other news, I selected a list of bugs and features that needs to be fixed before a 0.4 release is made.   Such a release will happen before Gnome 2.28 as I plan to ask to be an external dependency (as Empathy, Eog-plugin and f-spot will have use for it).  The list of bugs is listed in on the mailling list.

Libchamplain is part of Gnome’s Google Summer of Code.  There are already some libchamplain ideas. These ideas are planned for 0.6 release, but the work need to start this summer! Students: apply!

Yes, you did read f-spot! Anders Mørk-Pedersen started a f-spot plug-in to display the geolocation information of your photos!  It even works with multiple selected photos.  Now the poor Anders is so busy with school that it is stuck in a demo state. Anyone interested to help should ping us about it!  libchamplain in f-spot was made possible by Stephane Delcroix’s hard work both to libchamplain’s bindings and clutter’s.

Along the python and managed bindings, perl bindings have been announced.  Emmanuel Rodriguez is writing them with support from the perl community. He’s also contributing unit tests in perl.  These have already proven to be quite useful!

Finally, I decided to give it a try and create a website and logo for libchamplain.  I quickly made the site by borrowing Cheese’s website hehe. The logo represents a jigsaw puzzle piece of a world map as libchamplain is a module to add to existing applications to add maps. I tried to tango-ify it as much my capabilities allow me, if you have a better touch here’s the svg.  Since I have so much use for The Gimp and Inkscape, I donated to the Libre Graphics Meetup!

That was a short résumé of what happened in libchamplain recently, excluding the 53 files changed, 3591 insertions and 1165 deletions.

During this week-end I finally found some time to start playing with Vala and Clutter. I would like to write a small game using them, but I’m not sure I will finish it because the more the time passes the less I seem able to write code in my free time. Now that I’m spending all the day programming I find it very hard to write code when I come back from the office and I end up spending my time doing other things, like cooking.

Speaking of cooking, in Italy it’s quite common to make your own limoncello or other similar liqueurs so I finally decided to try making a basil-based limoncello-like liqueur. This kind of liqueurs is made using some 95% (190 proof) alcohol to extract the flavour form the lemon/basil/whatever and then the result is diluted with water and sugar. In Italy bottles of grain alcohol are available in most grocery stores^[1], but here it seems impossible to find. I suspect that the only way to have access to it in the UK is to work in a lab where alcohol is used^[2].

[1] And nobody that I know of tried to just drink it or used it to make other drinks stronger, so I was quite surprised when I discovered that pure alcohol is used in the US (in the states where it’s legal) almost only to make drinks stronger.

[2] Somebody in Cambridge reading this that works in a place where 95% alcohol is used?

I think Facebook fixed their “People you may know” feature, because recently it was showing people I didn’t really know but this morning I knew the listed names and faces and among these:

(Not an actual screenshot, edited to remove non FOSS people)

Now, it is not as if I could be friend with them - after all I know their name/face because we attended the same conferences or read Planet Gnome.  I don’t want to be that excessive Facebook-friend-adder.  I personally draw the line by asking myself “Would that person know/remember who I am?”, therefore I try to only add people that I’ve talked with in real life.

Facebook chose the word Friend to identify the persons I allow to see my information.  It is a rather strong word because some of the people in my “friend” list are just acquaintances and they mix with my best friends!  Yet, they are people I’d like to keep informed about.

Thanks Facebook for forcing me to think about what defines friendship before breakfast

It has been a year since I moved to Cambridge from Italy. It feels weird, but things go well here so for now I’m not planning any other change.

Clearly I need to cook a cake for this event .

Ecco una prova di una macro con tutti obiettivi che probabilmente sono più vecchi di me: soffietto, 35-90 f3.5 macro. Ah quasi dimenticavo, è la punta di un saldatore e non è un crop

Better Than Owning

…un articolo interessante di Kevin Kelly sulla proprietà.

After this (IMHO) successful presentation at FOSDEM, people spontaneously offered their help.  Many more showed their interest into the ideas or to use it.  Let’s see what is developing from that.

For the new readers, libchamplain is a Clutter based map displaying widget.  It intends to be a light embeddable map widget for all applications with nice eye candy.  For instance, the current API concentrates on how to draw markers and display maps rather than parsing raw GPX data.

Some days before FOSDEM, work started on libchamplain 0.3.  This version will be the development version leading to libchamplain 0.4 (kind of using the same numbering schema than Clutter).  Along with all the promised features (routes, custom map sources and being bindings friendly), this version will have a better code base.  It is already much cleaner than the 0.2 series, and yet a lot of work is left to be done.  I had written a MVC version of the code and I am slowly merging this work (from the MVC branch) back into master.  Also, one of the biggest change is that libchamplain and libchamplain-gtk are now under the same git tree.  Packagers will hate us a little now, but it should provide simpler to maintain in the future.  All bindings will also be under the same tree, in the bindings directory.

There is a new demo portraying an animated marker. See demos/animated-marker.c.

Anders Mørk-Pedersen has been around before FOSDEM working on managed bindings for libchamplain.  With Stéphane Delcroix special touch, they got them running.  They are merged, and I think, ready to be tested.  Now, I am not telling you yet what those bindings are going to be used for… 

Denk Padje offered his help working on the python bindings.  While we got somethings to generate, neither of us are python specialist.  We could use some help.  The branch is bindings-python.  Once the bindings are running, examples will be written.

Libchamplain could certainly profit from Google’s Summer of Code.  Ideas such as having map drawn locally from raw map data and supporting more map sources and map projections (at least one that doesn’t make Greenland the size of South America) will probably be added to Gnome’s pool of ideas.

Now that we have a mailing list, I think a proper web site should come next.  I would also like the project to have a neat logo.  But nothing too fancy as it is a library after all.  May be someone could come up with something like likes of Geoclue’s logo, but may be as a puzzle piece (clearly indicating that it is a library).  Also, I like the Tango colors

That’s it for Febuary.

Budello_demoreel_09_lo from Michele Bertolini on Vimeo.

My latest demoreel, (really low quality, just a quick try) enjoy!

PS:hi-quality and update soon, when I’ll have a little less work to do.

PPS: showreel breakdown soon, too. If you want to know what I’ve made on SBK08 and MotoGP08 just read the posts.

And I’m back. These have been such messy months that I couldn’t manage to write ANY post. Really. No jokes. Right now I’m in CALIFORNIA, in Los Angeles exactly, cause I’ve won a scholarship from Fondazione CRT, to attend a course at Gnomon School Of Visual Effects and now I’m applying for an internship here, in some of the best CG studios of the world. I’m quite a lucky guy, don’t you think?

But let’s come back to the title: MotoGP08, published by CAPCOM, the last game I’ve collaborated in my previous job was out from October 28…ehm, quite a while. What I’ve done on this? A complete track (Misano) that changed completely in the last season, troubleshooting as usual, many props objects for all the tracks and more!

Bye!

a questo link si possono scaricare tutte le foto in un unico zip

Maledetti voi e chi vi paga per spammare in giro! 68 commenti di spam! quanto vi odio, ora mi toccherà pure mettere un plugin apposta…. uhhh che odio!

Eccolo, dopo anni dove l’avevo proposto e nessuno mi aveva mai lasciato farlo…… il sushi piemontese!!

Composto da: verza bollita nel ruolo dell’alga nori, riso carnaroli nella parte del riso giapponese, carpaccio di carne nel ruolo del pesce in generale e special guest: bagna caoda che interpreta wasabi e salsa di soia

Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Marc spent weeks implementing NPAPI plugins support in QtWebKit, now that Qt 4.5 is available as a release candidate, you can now enjoy the work he did for Collabora. Be sure to read his post, it’s more interesting hehe.

Update: it turns out I forgot to mention that Rodney Dawes has worked on NPAPI plugins for WebKitGtk+ for months, but Marc completed the work, and ported it to Qt too.  Therefore, Rodney also deserves congratulations!

This week-end, I presented a talk at FOSDEM about how “Bringing geolocation into GNOME”.  While giving some background definitions and ideas for geolocation, it mostly covered what are technologies currently available to achieve these goals.

I have the impression that the talk was well received, it certainly boosted my interest into spending long nights infront of the screen pushing libchamplain forward much more!

All of the demonstrated code is already available.  For EOG plugin, see the EOG-plugins svn repo, a release should be available in the Gnome 2.28 timeframe.  For the Empathy Geolocation, it is available in my empathy repo, and the telepathy parts already have been released.  This feature should be merged first thing in the 2.27 development cycle, allowing a smooth testing period before 2.28.  As for Emerillion, it was the first public mention of this promizing application.  It shall be announced in a close future.

To make this presentation, I used clutter-toys/opt, a clutter based presentation tools.  The slides are defined in a xml file.  I enhanced it to support embedded maps.  So if you add the following xml code, you’ll have an interactive map of Brussels, with very usefull places marked, right into your slide! Grab the branch into my clutter-toys repo.

<map width="600" height="500" zoom-level="13" latitude="50.84" longitude="4.37">
      <marker latitude="50.842966" longitude="4.35153">Porte Noire</marker>
      <marker latitude="50.845127" longitude="4.349878">Mannequin Pis</marker>
      <marker latitude="50.848548" longitude="4.353633">Délirium Café</marker>
      <marker latitude="50.821391" longitude="4.39393">Université Libre</marker>
</map>

In galleria Vittorio Emanuele un’esibizione di ballerini/attori per festeggiare il futurismo e naturalmente visto che siamo in Italia… ecco cosa è successo
Cavolo, mi sembra di essere della Associated Press

Ah, naturalmente le foto qui sopra sono mie

When I joined Collabora last year I started to work on porting WebKit GTK to a device produced by iRex technologies based on the GNOME mobile stack and with an electonic paper display. My task was to make WebKit usable for the browser that they want to ship with the next version (with Wi-Fi connectivity) of their device, this meant adding missing features, fixing various bugs and adapting WebKit to work well with this kind of devices.

At FOSDEM I willl give a talk on what I did and I will have with me a DR 1000S, so you can play with it (I suspect that most people will follow the talk only because of the nice toy )

An iRex Digital Reader 1000S