July 2006 Archives

It's time to have some fun!!! Come and visit me and some friends of mine at the San Giacomo festival in Maniago, PN on July 22 and 23, 2006. You'll find a lot of beer to drink and several good things to eat, such as grilled pitina.

We'll also feature the best entertainment in town. Our set list includes country music and dance, computer science conferences, and the fabulous Rocco "Trip" Siffredi on Saturday evening. For the "Trip" show, booking is strongly recommended.

Our sponsors are: Pizzeria Al Caminetto; Italpro di Michele Beltrame; Alkadia di Alberto Dal Mas; S. Pontello Auto; Panificio Coassin; MAC Coltellerie; Noè Antonini butcher's shop.

How to get here:

- From Pordenone: head north from the city center and look for signs indicating Maniago. When you get here, prepare to live through some pain while looking for a place to park your car: many streets are closed for works, please blame the major for any inconvenience this might cause you. There are also trains and buses, check at the station.

- From Venice: If coming by train or bus, ask at the station (I'm not a tour operator, sorry). If you want to drive, Mestre will probably make you change your mind. If you still want to drive, jump into the motorway following the green signs for Udine of Trieste; hop off in Portogruaro and stay in the new motorway until you get at the Pordenone exit. At that time, follow the instructions reported above.

- From London, UK: take a low-cost RyanAir flight, which will land in the desolate and discouraging Treviso airfield. Rent a car (or you'll lose the whole day while trying to figure out how to local transportation works) and find the motorway (green signs). Head then for Belluno, but jump off the motorway in Conegliano. You'll find yourself in one of Europe busiest streets, so calm down and follow the signs for Pordenone. At that point, read the instructions above.

- From the rest of the world: your flight will probably land in Venice airport (VCE), so follow the instructions I wrote above.

Roger "Syd" Barrett died today in Cambridgeshire, just a few miles far from where he was born in 1946. He was one of the founders and the first singer and lead guitarist of Pink Floyd (even though most Pink Floyd listeners don't know of the existence of Barret's era ones). His work had a huge influence on rock music.

If you think Pink Floyd are great and you know nothing about this man, get the Piper at the gates of dawn album and listen to it.

This is from The Guardian: "All of us who were ever deeply touched by his unique gifts and his tragic life story should bow our heads and offer up a minute's silence to this remarkable individual for the way he enriched our lives. And pray that he is finally fully at peace".

Rest in peace, Syd!

I recently stumbled on the Making Wrong Code Look Wrong article, which reminded me about the Pascal coding I was doing with my friends on MS-DOS and Windows 3.x back in 1993. At that time we were using Hungarian notation widely, partly because of studying on the mythical Programming Windows book by Charles Petzold; now, reading this article, I finally understand that the notation we were using was not the one meant by Microsoft's programmer Charles Simonyi (who invented it), but a far less useful variation of it used by many coders, including Petzold. We were having a lot of fun, anyway!

Now Hungarian notation is not used anymore, as it's even discouraged by Microsoft. However, reading this article is a must-do for every coder, especially for the nostalgic ones. ;-)

Hello folks!

Partly because of some technical problems and partly because sometimes I'm too lame, 5 comments (appearing in the Fifa World Cup and English plurals stories) are now lost. Well, 3 of them were mine, so no problem. I apologize with the authors of the remaining 2!