Photos

self-explanatory...well, in italian anyway...
*****

There are these...ads(?) in the Metro stations...

...that aren't actually ads for anything...

...they're just serene photos of places far, far away,
180° from where you're at while yr looking at them.

Whose idea is this'? I can't just dismiss them as unsold advertising space placeholders, because i can't believe that these prime ad spots are going unleased, first off. Oh, actually i hope i never discover the story behind it.
*****

Doug Fieger

Last night, my friend since childhood Dave wrote my to tell me that Doug Fieger, lead singer and co-founder of The Knack died. Hmmm. 57 years old. From cancer (unspecified).

I still have the ticket stubs from their concert in 1979 at Masonic Temple in Detroit.

Edit (2010.02.28): Fieger was afflicted with and ultimately died from lung cancer.

My new favorite album cover

Book Club 2009

Last year i resolved to start reading the books that i probably should have years ago but, for one reason or another, didn't.

2009’s Book List (in no particular order):

1. Asimov, Isaac; Foundation and Empire
2. Austen, Jane; Pride and Prejudice
3. Gibson, William; Mona Lisa Overdrive
4. Lee, Harper; To Kill A Mockingbird
5. Melville, Herman; Moby Dick*
6. Clarke, Arthur C.; 2001: A Space Odyssey

Moby Dick i must admit i only made through halfway. Tough read. Yeah, i’m a pinhead. And Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is still waiting.

Why only five and a half books in a year? I usually read in bed and, well, on a good night i make it through five to ten pages before sleep takes over.

But, already devoured in 2010 was Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Next up, Massimo Carlotto’s latest (i love Carlotto): L’amore del bandito.

Edit (2010.02.07): I just remembered i'd also read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. So that’s a whole six-and-a-half books for 2009! Nyaaahh!

Back In The UE/IT

Lufthansa LH 3841
Rome Fiumicino (FCO) - Frankfurt International (FRA)
Partenza: 10:10 lun 21 dic 2009 / Arrivo: 12:10 lun 21 dic 2009
Was informed i would be issued my seat for the second part of my journey at the gate in Frankfurt. Hmmm.

Lufthansa LH 0442
Frankfurt International (FRA) - Detroit Wayne County (DTW)
Partenza: 13:40 lun 21 dic 2009 / Arrivo: 17:00 lun 21 dic 2009
Departure delayed
Landed in Frankfurt to discover a near-riot scene at the Lufthansa gate. Apparently the flight from the day before was cancelled (apparently after waiting six hours on the runway) and a lot of people were looking to be reassigned seating. After asking if this was the line for the Detroit flight, i let slip “all these people actually want to go to Detroit?” Whilst watching a situation between some Turkish passengers and a Lufthansa representative, i was issued my seat by another agent. I don’t recall how long the departure was delayed but with the tailwind we arrived in Detroit with only a 20-30 minute delay.

Luggage lost (i forget their euphemism).
At my insistence for some assumption of responsibilty on their part (“Where are all my Christmas gifts? What am i going to wear tomorrow?”) i was issued a US$100 travellers’ check for clothes/expenses.

Heard about the “death or glory” Nigerian who set inadvertantly himself on fire on the Amsterdam-Detroit (i guess he wanted to go to Detroit too). The US embassy was alerted weeks before by the man’s father. US Intelligence’s reaction: too vague a warning. And now the elephant is again frightened by a mouse.

Luggage recovered and delivered on 23 December at circa 5:30am EST.

Lufthansa LH 0443
Detroit Wayne County (DTW) - Frankfurt International (FRA)
Partenza: 18:59 mar 5 gen 2010 / Arrivo: 09:05 mer 6 gen 2010 (il giorno successivo)
Flight cancelled due to “computer problems”
What does that mean, “computer problems?” At 22:00 we were informed that the flight was cancelled, we were issued vouchers for hotel and/or taxis and instructed to call the Lufthansa 800 number for information the following morning.

The following morning, i did as instructed and called the 800 number. I gave the representative my name and flight number and asked what my situation was. She shortly afterward informed me that my itinerary for tomorrow would be Detroit-Zurich-Frankfort-Rome. I said calmly but firmly that was unacceptable. I would not take a tour of Europe to accomodate them. After a longer wait on hold the woman, obviously flustered (i seriously have no idea why) told me that my itinerary was to be Detroit-Frankfort-Rome, basically the same except with a 24-hour delay. I even asked the woman why she was angry when it should be me the angry one, to which she replied in a frigid tone, teeth clenched i swear, “I'm not angry, sir.”

Just to verify this was so, i called again a few hours later and found my flight was confirmed as stated. By another representative.

Lufthansa LH 0443
Detroit Wayne County (DTW) - Frankfurt International (FRA)
Partenza: 18:59 mer 6 gen 2010 / Arrivo: 09:05 gio 7 gen 2010 (il giorno successivo)
Departure delayed circa one hour
The delayed take-off made my connecting flight impossible to catch. Does Lufthansa care? This has become just sloppy. A second-rate airline. The Lufthansa rep at the gate just couldn’t care less.

Lufthansa LH 3844
Frankfurt International (FRA) - Rome Fiumicino (FCO)
Partenza: 12:25 gio 7 gen 2010 / Arrivo: ? gio 7 gen 2010
Departure delayed circa 45 minutes
The gentleman at the new gate couldn't tell me when the flight would arrive, hence the question mark.

Lufthansa, never again.

Reversal of fortune

I was not watching the TV, as usual, when a promo came on for Reversal of fortune...with Yello’s Liquid Lies as the background music...!

Who's responsible for that? Is it the same person who did the “Buone Feste” promo: three love story movies with Janis Joplin’s Piece of my heart?

Meanwhile in Milano…

Last night in Milan, the italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was hit in the face with a souvenir of Milan’s Duomo (irony of ironies), suffering lesions to the face and a broken nose, by a man with a history of psychological problems.

In english (BBC)…
In italian (La Repubblica)
...and pictures too!

Yesterday afternoon (almost anticipating that evening’s events) on Sky Cinema X they ran The Boondock Saints. For those of you not familiar with the film, it’s about two brothers, deeply devout catholics, out to rid Boston (you gotta start somewhere) of all evil, evildoers included. In the end, it’s a philosophical question of “the ends justifying the means” and vigilantism.

My point is regardless of where you stand politically, or what your opinion is of Mr. Berlusconi, violence is never the solution.

I repeat: violence is never the solution.

That said…it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Subvertising

I just heard from the other room the latest TV spot from Calvé (no link, find it yrselves). It ends with the tagline…

Che Natale è senza Calvé?
(What kind of Christmas is it without Calvé?)

…because, God knows, the first thing i think of when i think of Christmas is mayonnaise.

Happy Birthday, Louie!

You'da been ninety-eight wild years old today!

(Edit 2010.08.24: The original YouTube video was removed.)

Baby Parking?

Subway ad for the upcoming MoaCasa interior design show...


Yeah, yeah, nothing really to see here. It's just...well, let's take a closer look at the information block at the bottom left...


Baby parking??? What's that all about? With activities (con animazione)?! Okay, so it's basically a "kids' area" where parents can leave their children to play while they peruse the furniture. It's just the choice of wording that is so...blunt. No euphemisms here. And in english too. Or maybe that's just enough to make "parcheggio bambini" sound euphemistic. It's just that i'd imagined hundreds of toddlers with bits subsituting pacifiers tethered like horses all aligned like so many cars in the Ikea parking lot.

Girls, girls, girls

I'm been on assignment in Trastevere and during lunch i like to walk around the area. The sun's out, it's still not cold out and i've always liked that neighborhood.

Two days ago, i ran into an former AE student of mine, Marta. She was walking her dog (i'm assuming it was her German Shepard). She's a very pretty girl and seems to have become even prettier since i'd last seen her last year. The girl told me on the last day of classes last year she thought i didn't like her, that i have something against her. Which is completely untrue. In fact i was taken aback by her comment and to this day i have no idea why she thinks/thought that. I even remember complimenting her on her work. She actually showed a bit of talent.

She says she and Ilaria (another former student of mine) are taking a regione-sponsored class in "open-source graphics." "Open source? Like GIMP and Blender," i asked. I asked because italians are famous for adopting english words or phrases and tacking on a different definition. But she confirmed it was exactly what i thought. I asked how she was getting along with The GIMP and she politely answered just fine. I confessed i've never gotten along with The GIMP (for production purposes). We then said our goodbyes, quite stiffly.

Yesterday, while taking my lunchtime stroll, i ran into Marianna, a girl i'd met last year while she was working for the same Trasteverian production house i'm freelancing for these days. She used to speak english with me and spoke very well, sometimes not even revealing an italian accent. And she didn't speak to show off, which is a common defect here. She was always very sweet and was just as same yesterday. So, that was very pleasant! She was with two colleagues of hers; she's working at an advertising agency somewhere around there. Of course i didn't think to ask the name or where exactly it was. Typical of me.

Today on the bus, i saw Mo Tucker. No, it wasn't actually her, it was the girlfriend of a friend i haven't seen in a few years. In fact, the girlfriend's the reason i haven't seen this person in years. I'd just had enough. From then on it seemed as if the day was filled with unmade-up women with undyed hair wearing flat comfortable shoes (thank you, Annalisa: sometimes i am just blind to certain things). No familiar faces during my lunchtime stroll -- a nigerian selling socks accosted me following me around for meters -- but later that day, who should show up at the office but Franci and Laura with their new puppy.

I go back tomorrow to finish the assignment.

Flatwounds are for pussies

I was stinkin' about some of my favorite guitar sounds...

Well, there's Ronnie Wood's Dan Armstrong through his Ampeg 4x10 (what is that, a Rat pedal?)...

Then, there's always John armed with his Casino through a Fender Twin...

Peace.

Where is my mind?

Jesus, it's been a while! What's been happening since i last reported in? Well, not much!

I played bartender for about a month. No, wait...that was in July....

Feex came and went. No, that was July/August...hmmmm.

Ah! I did The Perfect Bun's website.

I'm thinking of opening something. Something not graphic/design-related.

I worked on video for RAI Sport, BNL, Caccia e pesca, and Studio Universal.

And now i'm cleaning up and out my font collection of over ten years. And what timing, as i read that OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard is having major problems (as of this writing) with legacy PS Type1 fonts. That, plus the fact that the rewritten-from-scratch QuickTime X is as of yet little more than a movie player, guarantees that this time around i'll let the others be the penguins closest to the water.

And in more Macintosh news, i (certainly one of thousands) am trying to learn all there is about the iTunes LP format (.itlp). Effectively, it's just a HTML4 and javascript bundle, but it's heavy-duty javascript with calls to the iTunes app itself. Interesting. Hope it's not too out of my league.

Next week, i'll be working on Boing!

And now i'll leave you all with a photograph by Phoenix Sky Di Mauro...

Creative usage of fat

500 lb (226,8 Kg) inmate hides a gun between his rolls of fat.

Yes, it was on the AP wire. Has the Harris County Jail in Houston, Texas ever heard of metal detectors? Have the guards there ever conducted a frisk before? You have to wonder.

And just to press the point about the intelligence level in that part of the world, what the hell kind of title is Obese Texas inmate hides gun in his flabs of fat?


What are flabs anyway? Maybe not only are metal detectors unknown in Texas but also copy editors?

Thanks, Feex!

Les Paul

Les Paul dead at 94.

Still here

After missing opportunities these past weeks on various polemics on The Beatles' Rock Band game, how the late Farrah Fawcett is the Groucho Marx of her time, and others topics, i'm finally back. Didja miss me? Let's go with a Reuters link today...

Ex-GM CEO Wagoner retires with only US$8.6 million.

See previous post on the subject here.

That's all...for today. Feex minus 13 days.

Happy Birthday, Feex!

Oh my God...it's Feex's birthday!

Happy Birthday, beautiful...now go and do great things! XOXOXOXOXOX

(It's still her birthday in her time zone so this post still counts! :^P )

Delusions of persecution

21 april 2009: Giovanni told us that earlier that morning he'd seen a RAI mobile unit outside with the beloved "farfalla" logo decal mounted in such a way that he couldn't even describe. All he knew was that it was wrong.

Later that day, heading back to the office, on via Alessandro Farnese at viale Giulio Cesare, right there...

No...take a good look...
It's...er, upside-down! An Italian state television mobile unit van tooling around with an upside-down logo.

But, wait!

23 april 2009: i'm in the "Rome office" and (like all creatives and windows) i'm looking out the window, and what do i see parked out front across the street...?

GAAAAAAAAAHHH!!! It can't be! Zoom in!

It's the RAI upside-down logo mobile unit van! What do they want from me???

Okay, paranoid fit over. Actually the more observant of you will notice that we're looking at (what's considered in Italy) the driver's side of the van. The van shot on the 21st is taken from the passenger side. In fact, this van is larger than the van photographed on the 21st.

This means that the RAI has more than one MU with RAI butterflies mounted upside-down.

Interesting

Interview (supposed) with a Somali pirate (BBC).

And in unrelated news: sigla "Divieto d'accesso".

Waterboarding

Waterboarding.

Sept. 11 planner Khalid Sheik Mohammed "waterboarded" by CIA interrogators 183 times (Reuters).

As of 25 January 2009, the United States of America has classified "waterboarding" as torture. Because, you know, before...well, it wasn't.

And regarding whom it was performed, i can hear some of you rationalizing.

EARTHQUAKE!

At 3:30 am today, the cat, her ears standing up and her tail puffed out, woke up Roberta who in turn woke me up to discover the entire apartment swaying! I'd say roughly an oscillation per second judging by the one sliding door banging against the hanging brass oriental bowl. Ro immediately led us under the apartment's main archway and we stood there embraced for what seemed minutes but probably only lasted 30 seconds or so, certainly under a minute.

Afterwards, Ro insisted on seeing if the news was saying anything about it, and about five to ten minutes later the scroll on Sky TG24 was carrying news about the quake in L'Aquila, reaching 6.7 on the Richter scale.

L'Aquila is roughly 100Km from the center of Rome and the entire building shook. Frightening. Serious damage has been done there, with as of this writing more than 90 dead. My condolensces.

It took me an hour or so before i could fall back asleep, reading To Kill A Mockingbird. Today i'm perceiving other small tremors but they could be psychosomatic.

(Some of) The Men Who Sold (Out) The World, Post Scriptum

Now that i think about it, isn't a broker's fee around 20%, possibly more. Then Mr Cassano's $300,000,000 seems awfully low, somewhere around 5%...?

Venezuela's GuantanaMANIA

Yesterday's Venezuelan love affair with Guantanamo Bay. This was #8 in the BBC's round-up "10 stories that could be April Fools' jokes but aren't."

Today, Venezuela's amour for the Guantanamo detainees.

(Some of) The Men Who Sold (Out) The World

Ex General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner goes home with a $20,000,000 pension package. High Five! But if GM does go under, he may only see $1,000,000. Tough break, Rick.

From the same ABC website, AIG executive Joseph Cassano "made more than $300,000,000 at the insurance firm he virtually bankrupted." Way to go, Joe!

Just wanted to remember these names.

Cheapy "vintage" guitars

My brother's first guitar was a Gibson ES-125TDC.

My first bass guitar was a used Danelectro-made Sears Silvertone. $20.

This is the same model as mine, found on eBay.
Many thanks to the original photographer and BCR.

It had a neck that only Paul Bunyan could love. I can't even say i liked its lipstick pickups so beloved by Danelectro fans, but i believe this was an isolated case as i do generally like lipstick pickups. It was a crap guitar.

I later found at the flea market a Vox Bill Wyman bass with its original body replaced with a Phantom-esque slab of clear lucite. $10. No photo, sorry. Now this bass i fell in love with. Short scale neck, crappy Italian single-coils, exposed wiring, Bill Wyman's name on the teardrop headstock (apparently Bill had next to nothing to do this model! HA!). But i'm the first to admit that it was also a crap guitar.

Many years later, i found this exact Teisco Del Rey EV2T at the defunct Guitar and Drum Center in St Clair Shores. $200 (i probably paid $150 too much for it).

This is the same model as mine, found on the Squinternet.
Many thanks to the original photographer.

I just loved it for its body, not its mind. I can be so superficial. Cheap Japanese single-coils, Vox Phantom rip-off design, knobs, switches and a whammy bar...what's not to love? I've even recorded with it! Eventually i had replaced the tuners, bridge saddles and had the pickups potted (they made Rema-Rema or Sonic Youth sound controlled). Say what you will, but yet another crap guitar.

Which brings me to this recent eBay auction...


Buy It Now: US$890?!? Are they kidding??? Nostalgia and "vintage" aside, it's a crap guitar!!! We're not talking non-uniform Quality Control; all these Teiscos, strangely enough, were uniformly crappy! Let's call it for what it is: a knockoff guitar just this side of a toy that because of demand created by the 1960s "British Invasion" were mass-produced very cheaply in Japan, then today's equivalent of the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut, because they couldn't produce them fast enough or cheaply enough in Italy (the original source for cheap imported guitars into the American market).

A conversation between me and my brother about this very guitar up for auction had me wagering that the highest bid for that guitar would be around $300, $350 max but that's because the seller had found his patsy. Well, ever optimistic, i never thought that someone would offer almost half of the Buy It Now price.

Believe me, i understand that whole "look" thang, hence my ongoing infatuation with 1960s "fetish" guitars. But for my money, that same $405 could get you a MIM Telecaster or Stratocaster or maybe a Gretsch 5235 Pro Jet. Cheap guitars but with a whole other level of quality.

Peanuts

$165,000,000 in contractual bonuses is to be subtracted from the $30,000,000,000 of a total $180,000,000,000 to be loaned to AIG by the U.S. Federal Government.

Let's lose some zeroes, shall we?

$300.00
- $1.65
_________
$298.35

In the big picture, that's chump change. Peanuts, really. It's more about the perception of rewarding the people who put, not only the United States, but the entire world in the economic climate we're in now.

You can add the zeroes back now, for that added sting. Owwch...

But, but, but

Last post i'd said that Watchmen was the graphic novel that'd made me stop reading comic books. That's not exactly true. Let's say "made me stop reading contemporary American comic books," from 1987 onward. But much as i love them, i can no longer read those beloved golden- and silver-age classics in the same light or with that same innocence anymore. Alan Moore's work is always a pleasure, though. And i'm still reading italian comics, but except pretty much for Carlo Ambrosini's work, that's purely to pass the time on the bus, per se. Ambrosini's Napoleone was the absolute best Italian mainstream fumetto and his newest, Jan Dix, is high quality as well.

Watchmen

Saw the Watchmen movie on opening day (something i haven't done in time immemorable) with Marina. Being how she'd read it semi-recently (within a year or so, i believe), we spent most of the movie congratulating Zack Snyder on how many details he'd gotten right with quick glances and knowing smiles at each other the entire film.

Yeah, i'd say that i liked the film. I'd say i liked it lots. But i'm biased: i loved the comic book.

I'm almost wondering if Snyder wasn't pandering to the book's hardcore following, myself being one of them. I mean, Watchmen was the comic book...ermm, graphic novel, that made me stop reading comic books. Afterwards, everything else just seemed so...silly. Snyder, in my opinion, translated quite successfully the densely detailed comic book into film. No mean feat: how many times have you heard the old chestnut, "the film wasn't as good as the book"? Hard to say, in this case. Yes, one of the things that the film has going for it, from a fan's point of view, is that it almost uses the book as its storyboard as well as, to a slightly lesser degree, its script. Nevertheless, the chasm between media has been traversed.

Even so, i can't help but wonder if the impact or level of success would be the same for someone who hadn't read the book before going to see the movie. For all i know, as i'd said later that night at dinner with friends, it could just have been close to three hours of self-congratulatory pippa-fest.

My only other lament is that i went into the cinema already knowing the joke and that's sad for me. Most of my favorite movies are those that trick you: Fight Club or Psycho, for example. Watchmen falls into this category but the joke was already ruined for me.

If anything, i can finally say there's a movie based on a work written by the great Alan Moore that...well, doesn't suck!

Hair on fire?

Accuse me of being polemic, but i just read this headline and article on the Reuters RSS feed...

SEC chief says agency to act like "hair is on fire"

I ask you: what is that supposed to mean?! Is the SEC is now going to run around aimlessly, shrieking in a blind panic?! “Somebody put it out! SOMEBODY PUT IT OUT!”

eBay.it Eko

I have a...“thing” for eBay. Guitars, specifically. I like to watch 'em come and go on eBay. I don't actually buy them (well, just once i did). Does that make me an eBay voyeur?

Never buy a guitar you can't touch first.

I also have a thing for “guitar boom” guitars: guitars produced during the 1960s, when American guitar makers couldn't keep up with demand created by the Beatles after the first Ed Sullivan appearance. I've always had (much to Joey's chagrin) a thing for cheesy guitars. I personally was too young to experience that first wave of British Invasion (i grew up during Kiss', Alice Cooper's and Donny Osmond's respective musical reigns and the beginning of punk) so i'm not sure where this fetish came from. Everyone was pretty much playing (not unlike today) Stratocasters and sunburst Les Pauls. Maybe it's just the aesthetic? Or as i discovered later on, that unmistakable single-coil sound? Probably the aesthetic.

During my daily eBay hunts for old...errm, vintage Ekos, Hagströms and Kliras, i come across this...






Chitarra EKO Ancient Vintage Guitar |No Hofner - Framus

...and i mark it to be “watched”. And i'm lookin’ at it...and lookin’ at it. And my fifth-and-a-half sense is itching. It doesn't look like any Eko i've ever seen, not like i'm some great expert. Look at these other photos...

The above photos link to the Auctiva-hosted large size photos, and may not be available in the near future.

I've never seen a logo nor pickups like that on an Eko. And if i'm not mistaken, Eko didn't offer a natural finish at that point in time (1960s). And isn't that a Hagström vibrato? Again, i'm no expert.

So let's go to the experts, www.fetishguitars.it! What a site! I always have to have a roll of paper towels with me when i visit...just kidding. Anyway, after a much-shorter-than-expected search of this vast site, i found this page. The page's title says it all.

So, there's one born every minute, so the saying goes. As the above graphic shows, it sold for €200,05. Maybe the new owner just liked it, actual pedigree be damned...?

Remember, kids: never buy a guitar you can't touch first!

Lux Interior, R.I.P.

Most every day i peruse the BBC and Reuters RSS feeds (to assure my day doesn't start out too brightly) and amidst all the usual signs pointing to the end of the world (i jest), nowhere was there anything pointing to Lux Interior passing away last Wednesday, which i inadvertently discovered from Allmusic.com. After a search of the both sites, i found their articles...

Lux obituary from Reuters

Lux obituary from BBC

Call me exaggerated but how was this not “first page” material? Seriously! Or did i simply miss it?

My condolences to the surviving family. Thanks, Lux, for all the madness and laughs.

Ogni maledetto sabato...

Since i'm writing about my students (i've been teaching a class in After Effects at Cine-TV for a couple of years now), i'm going to have to write this entry in italian, them being a paranoid lot...hee hee!

Allora, ogni sabato, invece di dormire fin tardi, devo svegliarmi presto e andare a scuola a fingere "professore" per una ventina di studenti dell'Istituto Roberto Rossellini/Cine-TV, insegnando un corso di Terza Area di After Effects. Lo faccio ormai da due anni. Quest'anno però, mi sa che la scuola ce l'ha con me perché mi hanno passato proprio il top...del bottom! E da come si comportano, la maggior parte dei miei studenti correnti la pensano come me: pure loro vorrebbero starsene al letto. La loro canzone preferita? Quella lagna di andare via una mezz'ora in anticipo. Quest'anno è come gestire una mandria di gatti! Permettete di presentarveli...

Giada: simpaticona, no? È di bassa manutensione...seeee. Se non le faccio dei complimenti ogni minuto, piange! Povero futuro marito.

Silvia: l'altra meta del cervello della prima postazione. Soffre di insonnia durante l'anno scolastico perché studia sempre (così dicono). Leggermente più simpatica della sua compagnia di banco, ma solo perché parla meno di Giada.

Alessandro: un ragazzo tranquillo con talento. Disegna e suona anche la chitarra.
È sorridente e simpatico...c'è ovviamente qualcosa che non va, povero ragazzo!

Ed ecco per voi...Alessia...no, anzi...

Ecco per voi, Alessia (qui in versione il topolino della morte)! I suoi hobby preferiti sono di nascondere qualsiasi cosa che metto giù e suonare il suo basso elettrico color salmone.

Robertina: è così dolce, potete metterla nel vostro caffè. Però ammetto che anche lei ha dei momenti di surrealismo.

Le altre scimmie mie: le ragazze sono (da sinistra) Emanuela, Ilaria e Giulia. I ragazzi sono (da sinistra) Federico, Mirco e Ilario. Strano...alcune di queste facce non mi sono nuove...?

Manca qualche scimm...ermm, studente dall'appello e spero di documentarli in un futuro momento, come fanno nella National Geographic.

Scherzo, naturalmente. Per ora, basta.

And Happy Birthday Edie and Nine! I love you both! XOXOXOXOXOXO

Inauguration Day

A song by The Ramones comes to mind...

Best of luck, Mr Obama.

New Year

Ron Asheton is dead?!? And i was there, just scant miles away when it happened (i was in Saline, MI, a suburb of Ann Arbor)...as thousands of other people were, i suppose. Still, it creeps me out a little.

My return to the Rome office from the fatherland was as always traumatic. Unlike last year, when TSA marked me as suspicious (i was stopped twice before embarking), this year it was the staff of Northwest Airlines who considered me a threat. Fuck you, Northwest Airlines. Never again will i fly with Northwest Airlines, by choice or otherwise.

Hairy Kiss Miss

Been workin' lots, ecco my excuse for not posting for a while. Not "showreel" work, "paying the bills" work.

Flying out to the motherland tomorrow to kiss the nieces.

Mr Barack Obama has won the US presidential election (maybe you've heard?) since i'd last posted. Everyone asks me "are you happy [about that]?" My reply is, "Ask me in three to six months." The elaborated answer is, "After eight years of literally running the nation into the ground, not only in financial debt but in spirit as well, just to line the already-deep pockets of 1% of the world population, yes, i'm very happy that that frontline madness has ended. I'm also glad that Mr Obama seems to have the power to inspire and hope that he at least continues such." Congratulations, Mr Obama. Please, give me a reason not to be so jaded in 2009.

More Mac bitching: so far, i've compained about OS X spawning new windows under the Dock when placed on the left side of the screen. It also seems that Finder temporarily forgets window placement on the initial opening of a folder on the Desktop. There are folders on my Desktop that when i open them via the standard double-click they launch not only under the Dock (at the left) but also at the (i suppose) default Finder-window geometry, that is shorter in width than how i have them placed. The invisible .DS_Store files are not instantly updating as they should.

Now let's talk OS X audio. Since its inception, all Macs power on with the Macintosh chime. Previously, if you'd left your headphones or external speakers plugged in but switched off, you would hear no chime, which is nice when you need to power up your Mac at 3 am. Not so with the new iMac! The only way to kill that chime is to power down with volume set at zero.

And speaking of volume at zero, in its previous incarnation, a password-locked screensaver would allow you to control the volume, convenient for someone whose colleague left iTunes plugging away while they went for a coffee. Not so with the new iMac! If it's password-protected and the screensaver has kicked in, you're fucked! Or for those who use the Mac as a stereo. If you have to lower the volume, you have to unlock the screen first.

More bitching to come! Ciao!

Finder Vs. The Dock

Pictures speak a thousand words...


...OSX Finder (10.5.5) spawns windows under the Dock. The above examples are two random examples.

Masochism, X11-style

The installation of The GIMP (2.4.5-1) and Inkscape went allright, strangely enough. But alas Scribus is the problem du jour, immediately puking on not having the correct version of cmake installed...a version that doesn't exist (latest version being 2.4.6 according to Fink), despite having the latest X11 and Fink installations. And so far, "Google is not my friend."

All this, just to use a few programs that i personally don't really even like (The GIMP, in particular).

X11 and Leopard

I'm trying to install X11 on Leopard (OSX.5.5) and gosh is it finicky this time around! I don't remember installing X11 being so hard on previous systems. I've already encountered the following roadblocks so far:

• inability to install update the packages (neither Gimp2 nor Inkscape were on the list!). Resolved by switching from configure-rsync to configure-cvs;
• having to mv /usr/local to /usr/local.moved, installing a lib that wouldn't install and then mv /usr/local.moved /usr/local (see here);
• having to symlink libXrandr.2.0.0.dylib...i'm not even going to pretend to understand that one (see here)

And at this point my terminal is scrolling data just like in the movies. Every now and then i'll glance over at it and see some non-fatal error wing by.
Let's leave it at this: if there're no more posts about this grisly subject, it means that all's well that ends well.

The War on Hurricanes

Just checking in to see if my blog is still standing.

This morning on Uno Mattina i heard that US President George W Bush was saying something about the hurricane that hit Texas these last few days and i half expected to hear him declare war on hurricanes. After the last eight years, it doesn't sound that far-fetched, does it? And it will probably be just as successful. Alas there's no money to be made in it. On a less absurd note (when speaking of Bush and his brethren and cohorts, is there a less absurd note?), i'm seriously curious how fast and efficient aid will be for Texas, as opposed to Louisiana.

Today Richard Wright died at 65 from what's reported as a short but fatal bout with cancer. I'm left with only one thought: no matter how much cash you've got, it won't necessarily save you. My condolences to the surviving family.

And speaking of family, and signing off on a positive note, Happy Birthday, Pop!!! You're my hero!

Raising the bar of horror

I've just had the "pleasure" of reading this story about a Dayton, Ohio woman sentenced to life in prison for...wait for it...microwaving her one-month-old baby daughter to death. I believe for all the countless times i've sarcastically used the phrase i've just had the pleasure of..., this is the most sarcastic occurrence to date.

I'm still reeling. Her baby. In a microwave. And she, Ms. China Arnold, and her lawyers are still pleading her innocence. Yet from what i understand from that lone article i've read, she was in her home when it happened (the article claims that Ms. Arnold and her boyfriend Terrell Talley were quarreling). She was in the same room when it happened. From what i understand, she was there.

Oh, the horror. The desensitization bar has just been raised. No, i take that back. It'll take a lot more before i dismiss occurrences like that as mundane. I mean, i can understand heat-of-the-moment crimes of passion (and anyone who says they can't is a liar). I can understand (but not condone) murder with your bare hands or with the nearest instrument unfortunately within reach during that moment. Anything where an idea to execute violence has to be realized ("I've got a gun in the other room...I'll go and get it, come back and use it.") is already very suspect as far as i'm concerned. As they say, "your mileage may vary."

But the very idea, however convoluted the path of your arrival to the idea, of putting your one-month-old baby daughter in a microwave oven to cook her alive... How does a person even think of doing something like that, if not only in a nightmare? How does a person even consider putting their infant child in a microwave oven, much less turning the oven on? Much less closing the oven door?

This is the first i'm hearing of this ghastly story (the crime occurred in 2005) so i'm not entirely informed on the trial and its history. But nowhere in the article does it mention Mr. Terrell's hand in it. Either Ms. Arnold actually placed/tossed/threw the infant in the microwave oven and switched it on and Terrell did nothing, or a similar situation happened with the roles reversed. I'd even give Arnold the benefit of the doubt, that she couldn't remove her child from danger because Terrell impeded her. But alas, it is Arnold who has been sentenced and not Terrell. So...did Terrell even try to save his disputed daughter? No, i meant to say, did Terrell even try to save a human being from being internally boiled alive? Did Arnold impede his doing so? Or was that just not his problem?

I wonder: how long does it take to microwave to death a one-month-old infant? Seriously. 60 seconds? 90? I imagine (but do not know nor do i care to investigate the matter) at 30 seconds there is already irreparable damage. Maybe even less? Is that not enough time to react to this abominable situation and at least try to stop the microwave oven?

I'm currently reading Jared Diamond's Collapse (highly recommended) and am at the chapter regarding the recent Rwandan and Burundi genocides. Thousands of people massacred by guns and/or machetes. Thousands. We've also all heard the horror stories about (usually) teenage mothers leaving their newborns in garbage dumpsters, not always alive. Both of these unfortunately human stories are acts of violent desperation, from one end of the spectrum to the other.

But to put one's own infant daughter in a microwave oven and cook her alive...?

I'm done for today. This story has obviously shaken me.

Happy Birthday, Nina!

Today's the 30th of August, so Happy Birthday, Nina! She's getting a punk-rock birthday gift from me...i can say no more!

Other than this momentous occasion, nothing new to report. Everyone's been on holiday here so my professional life's been a little slow, although i did do some bill-paying work. Thinking i'd like to be in a band again, if only to rediscipline my guitar-playing, but this time as a bowling league/hobby and nothing more.

I'll be back when i actually have something to say. Ciao.

Keep them dogies rollin'

Ciao a tutti!

Nothing new to report other than making up for lost time these last few weeks, work-wise. Some of it bill-paying work and some of it showreel-ish, luckily most of it relatively stress-free...as much as television work can be. Got to see and work with old friends and colleagues, so all in all, life's good.

The uke's on hold, unfortunately. A casualty of working (aww, that's too bad!). But, arms akimbo, i will finish it!

Been listening to lots of Gang of Four lately. Gang of Four is one of those groups that are one of your favorite "forgotten" groups. That is, you forget how much you love them until you put something on of theirs. Hell, i'd seen Gang of Four twice, once in Ann Arbor in 1982 and once in Ypsilanti in 1983, both gigs not exactly near to me at the time. My god, a truly original band. John King and his melodica shrieking life-as-politics polemic for the dancefloor. Guernica rhythm section courtesy of Dave Allen (bass) and Hugo Burnham (drums). And i'd go as far as to say that Andy Gill is as important to modern rock guitar as, say, Jimi Hendrix or Robert Fripp or Link Wray: like the aforementioned guitarists, his is an instantly and unmistakably recognizable style and no one plays (or doesn't play!) like Andy Gill, try as some may.

But, unlike the aforementioned guitarists, i'm afraid that despite how many past, present and future rockstars cite the band as a major influence, in the long run Gang of Four may end up an underrated footnote in rock and roll history exactly because they are "your forgotten favorite group."

Gang of Four (all four original members: King, Gill, Allen and Burnham) had reformed in 2005 to release Return The Gift, a re-recording of their first album Entertainment with other select songs from the discography. As of recent, Gill and King have returned to touring and have released new material, a new single called Second Life. I like it...lots. It's not rehash. It's not lame. It's Gang of Four (or Gang of Two plus two) reenergized. It's sonic Jackson Pollock. "Who's gonna save you with your house on fire?"

I may even go to see them in Pescara...but being how i'd already seen them twice, i think they'll forgive me if don't make it. Rome-Pescara is a bit farther than Detroit-Ann Arbor.

Ukulele! 4: Stress Cracks

The plan (?!) was to reuse/recycle parts and pieces left from last year's guitar experiment. This mini-plank...
...was my first attempt, a proof-of-concept “guitar.” A minimalist affair, a piece of walnut strung with four lengths of fishing line, four nails act as the tailpiece, four fisheye screws for tuning pegs, a threaded bolt for a bridge, a scrap of walnut for the nut and frets pencilled in (the above photo is the back sans any of the described installed) And the ancient Greeks were right: strangely enough it worked. Not the most beautiful-sounding nor -looking guitar but nevertheless functional.

Since my plank guitar was around 20cm long, i figured i could easily get my ukulele's neck out of it. So goodbye plank, hello uke neck.

Since this was to be my 23,546th time to not think things out, i cut the 17° scarf joint and glued the head to the neck yesterday, giving it around 24 hours to set. I don't know if you can see from the above photo but, to avoid splinters while playing, i'd rounded the back sides. Cutting a scarf joint from such a rounded piece of wood leads to a peghead with...uhmm, channels. Ah, no problem, i've got a can of wood putty to fill in the recesses. In any case, being a ukulele, there's going to be minimal force exerted by the strings on the head anyway.

Everything clamped, i started to form out the neck anyway. I was making good progress, enjoying the nice weather up on the roof, wood curls whizzing around. About 80-90% there, i'd noticed a stress crack in the wood...

Apologies about the blurry photo. The Nokia doesn't handle

semi-extreme close-ups very well.

...right in the neck wood. Not the jointed head side but the neck. I was thinking, among many other things, Super Attak (cyanoacrylate) the bad boy but...i don't know. I just had to test it.

Here you can see not only the cracked headstock but the rounded back
in the scarf joint. At least i got some sun today!

It gave with minimal force applied. What to do what to do what to do? I'm analyzing the situation at this very moment. I'm “thinking” that i could probably graft on another peghead. Therefore i should just finish the neck and continue on.

And speaking of stress cracks, Happy Birthday, Mommy! Hee hee!!! That was a joke, Ma! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Ma, I love you!

Ukulele! 3: Slow But Sure...

Between the rain here in Rome and revenue earning, the ukulele project has been on the proverbial back burner...but as of today, no longer! As you can see in the photo, i've got the sides bent thanks to a two-hour window of decent weekend weather. For better or worse, the sides are comprised of two halves instead of the projected single slat; the plywood cracked at around the lower right bout while i was bending it. I'm getting a little better at not scorching the wood, which i find difficult with my setup as it's not a constant heat source.

So it's up to the roof with me to finish off and join the sides, and maybe install the kerfing...oh, hell, let's just see how far i can go today and leave it at that.

Happy Birthday, Feexy!

Feexy, yr beautiful! Hope you like yr colored pencils.

Ukulele! 2: Triumph of the Will

There's a difference between “persevering against all odds” and “not knowing when to quit.” I believe i fall into the second category.

There's no bending the sides today as yesterday i'd run out of butane for my torch and today's Sunday, meaning no hardware stores in a ten-kilometer radius are open. So how about cutting the top and back of the uke's body then? O-KAY!

I first glued the two sheets of plywood together around the edges and then cut them simultaneously. In the middle of cutting though, the coping saw blade snapped! And i swore i had spares...but to a different coping saw!

Screw it! I wasn't going to permit another setback! I took the spare wrong coping saw blade, attached it to the saw and finished the rough cut.

Ha! The ukulele project marches forward!

Ukulele!

Okay, it's officially beautiful out here in Rome! Time to head back up to the roof and retry my hand at weekend lutherie. Inspired by YouTube star GUGUG (check out, among others, his rendition of Link Wray's Jack The Ripper), this time i'm trying to build a ukulele. I found actual plans by Jan van Cappelle at the MIMF site's library. I figured a ukulele shouldn't take me an entire summer to create. Well, let's hope not. In fact i figured i could have at least the sides bent today!

Here's my big-time luthier setup...

My hand-made bending tube station

...and here's as far as i got before the torch ran out of butane(!)...

You'd think here in one of the world's major metropolises, in the very heart of the city, a hardware store would obviously be open. Where i live there are no less than three in walking distance. Roberta just laughed. “You know there are no hardware stores open on Saturday afternoon,” she chided. But i couldn't believe that. So off i went to one, two, three hardware stores...all closed at 4:30pm on a Saturday afternoon.

So, i got as far as you see above, and Roberta got ice cream and the right to dance around and laugh and say “i told you so.”

$832 million

That's a lot of cash. That's a lot of net cash. That's taking one hundred thousand people and giving them each US$8,320 (as of today, €5,263.32; UK£4,227.54; CHƒ8,619.52; CAN$8,427.74; etc.).

That's net profit. That's after bills and expenses. That's an enormous chunk of change that goes in the figurative pocket of just one multinational corporation. Just one.

That's pharoah money. That's emperor money. Is that unfathomable or do i just not think big enough?

That's taking eight hundred and thirty-two of yr closest friends and family and giving them each one million dollars.

I remember when i was little, Mr Joseph Arco, god rest his soul, telling me that you could bank $1,000,000 and live off the interest for the rest of your life. I wonder if that's still true. I'm pretty sure it hasn't changed much even if we are talking 35 years later.

How much does one person need to live comfortably? Every one has a different comfort level, you say. Well, i'm against the “lowest common denominator.” I'm for the highest common denominator.

I say per person annually three million US dollars -- last i looked, still the monetary yardstick. They're still pricing petroleum in US$. I say an annual three million dollars of net income in yr pocket after all expenses, taxes, investments and whatnot have been paid is “enough.” “Enough” to feed yr family, enough to pay all yr bills annually, “enough” to keep the Ferrari running smoothly, “enough” to burn yr fucking brains out with all the cocaine and heroin you could do...basically “enough” for anything. A personal jet? A 100-room estate in Seychelles? Well, hell, with an annual net income of $3,000,000, who'd ever decline your loan?

That's (as of today) €1,924,743.00, UK£1,524,353.92, ¥311,610,008.24, HK$23,382,599.83...you get the picture.

Is there still someone out there who doesn't agree? Is there someone who actually thinks that this “communist” line of thinking would stifle competition and research and development? After all, there's no incentive to do anything if you can't net more than three million dollars annually!

Would there actually be somebody who says that three million dollars net annually isn't enough? Would there actually be someone who would want US$3,000,001?

Bigger question: let's pretend that the $3 million ceiling is alright. What to do with the surplus money? Or more specifically, where does it go and how is it managed while it's waiting to end world hunger forever, fund teletransportation research, etc.? I'm still working on that one.

Bugs, Bugs, BUGS!!!...and Banners

HEY, I'M BACK! Yeah, yeah...

The latest trend on italian television is promo banners during programs. Everywhere in the world, i imagine, you pay for television either in the form of advertising interruptions, license fees, cable/satellite service or a combination thereof.

This is an example of any program on any TV station years ago...

Example 1: the transmitted picture and only the transmitted picture.

...exactly that: an image. A transmitted image. It probably would have been in black and white as well, but that's beside the point.

A cathode-ray tube TV screen "eats" an amount of the outer picture (anywhere up to ten percent). I say "anywhere up to ten percent" because, unlike paper with a bleed margin, no two television monitors trim the image exactly the same. Pay attention the next time you're in an appliance store with their wall of TVs. No two TVs are pixel-identical. So effectively you are seeing only this much of the transmitted image...

Example 2: normal 10% picture loss.

For some years now viewers have experienced this type of graphic called a bug on their TV screens (in the lower right corner in this example)...

Example 3: a "bug" in the lower right corner of the picture. Note that the bug
is placed INSIDE the safely trasmitted area which is known as "action safe".

This bug was invented to identify the channel being watched at a glance, among other reasons of varying degrees of legitimacy. And most bugs are relatively unobtrusive when they are semitransparent.

In the next example, you see that we are losing even more of the transmitted 4:3 picture thanks to purely stylistic uses of "letterboxing"...

Example 4: fake 16:9 letterboxing.
While i usually believe "less is more" , here "less is...LESS!"

It's honestly been a while since i've had the...opportunity...to view other countries' programming but here in Italy, normal PAL programs and commercials add letterboxes, presumably to give the product a cinematic look. I'm sorry...i personally call "bullshit". Who is gonna buy that the perfume ad you are watching was really shot in Panavision? Oh, is this pseudo-news program really in 16:9? Especially, as in the next example, when a second bug is added in the letterbox!

Example 5: Working so hard to create a cinematic look
that's fooling no one and then sticking a clown's bowtie on it.

The whole letterbox idea is to present a cinematic work of a widescreen format in television's 4:3 context without having to pan and scan, losing significant portions of the shot. If you start taking advantage of that space, you're just trying to pull a two-bit con. And you probably wear white tube socks to a formal engagement. And the above example is tame tame tame. I've seen commercials with letterboxing, product logo as a bug and even a supermarket-style burst expousing "50% off" or some other life-changing message. Or even a programming block with channel bug, block bug and program bug, sometimes even ANIMATED. A regular "cazzotto nell'occhio."

But WAIT! It gets worse! The latest trend is to interrupt the viewer with an inline promo! Example, please...


Nice, huh. This is your standard scroll taken to ludicrous lows, no matter how nice the graphic is. And it's animated. Boy, is it animated! There is no way a viewer is gonna miss that blooming and booming across the lower third of the screen during a program. As if commercial interruption wasn't enough (especially US broadcast TV but that is for another rant). As if your cable/satellite bill wasn't enough. As if the license fee isn't enough. As if the combination of those three wasn't enough to assure you a relatively tranquil viewing of a program that interests you. It's not enough that we are losing more picture content every day with cheap gimmicks like this.

It's never enough.

Television flow ≠ flow.

the REAL greytomorrow, Part II

I discovered on YouTube, there's a user who's going by the name of greytomorrow. No, it's not me. My page is here. What do i do? Do i contact this (at the time of this writing) 21-year-old male from the UK telling him that's my name and trademark since 1980? The rub is that this "greytomorrow" account was created only two months ago! My bad?

Twiddling in OS X

I've always been a Nextstep fan, which is weird because i've never actually used it. I've never been an Emacs fan because that, to me, is akin to attaching alligator clips to my genitalia. Yes, i know some people actually like that...and i realize some people actually like Emacs.

“What's yr point, big fella?”

After reading this post on Slashdot, i learned that you can “twiddle” (exchange characters) in any NS textBox field! Therefore, “teh” with the cursor after the “h”, after a deft CTRL-t, becomes “the”! Or in my case, “becuase” becomes “because”!

The reason i mention Emacs at all is that any NStext (basically any text field using the system libraries for text) can take advantage of Emacs key bindings, CTRL-t being “twiddle”.

The bad news: Firefox does not use NSText fields and guess what i'm using right now to write this post? I'm sure Safari doesn't have this problem.

Bonus points: don't forget about CTRL-F4 for switching between open windows instead of open apps. It's not as ergonomic as Command-Tab but it's nice to know and use.