FCHouse

Her Shoes

Posted by Carlo - 30/03/08 at 10:03:13 pm

These are Fabiana’s new shoes.
It has been a hard task to find the right color, the right heels and so on, but in the end she loves them, and I love them too: they are great on her feet!

Best Commercial Ever!!!!

Posted by Carlo - 27/03/08 at 11:03:41 pm

Unexpected March Snow and something more…

Posted by Carlo - 27/03/08 at 06:03:51 pm

We definitely did not expect to find snow in Italy during our Easter break, but we did! I liked the photo to be Black and White, but the red of the car behind Fwbiana was too good to be missed.
I have tried this mixture of B/W and color some times, and I need to admit that I like the result!

iPhone and the glass crack

Posted by Carlo - 17/03/08 at 10:03:22 am

Yesterday morning I woke up and, amongst other things I normally do in the morning, I checked my phone. Everything was fine. I put the phone on a table and I got ready for the second day of the BarCampBrighton2. When I took up my iPhone again I noted a line of dirt on its glass. I tried to clean it, but the line was stubborn. This was my thought as long as I realize, with a little bit of horror, that the line of dirt was something worst: there was a crack on the glass of my iPhone.

I have to admit that I was quite shocked and, to be honest, quite angry. How can something like the iPhone have a crack like that one without any hit? And more important: there will be ANY technological device capable of resisting me?

For other reasons I had to run back in London quite early, loosing part of the BarCamp. On the train I decided to check if I could have popped into the Apple Store to understand if the damage would have been covered by the warranty, and luckily I found an opening.

The Apple Genius told me that the damage was covered by the warranty(there were no scratches and no sign of any hit). Later on he told me “It can happens. I have seen some cases like this… not many to be honest, but in these months we have been instructed to exchange the phone, because it simply can happens!”

Now, I am really grateful that the iPhone was exchanged for free,  but can I ask WHY in these months every single Apple representative are telling me that the problems I had are “Rare“? There are to solutions: they are lying to me OR I am quite unlucky.

For now I will not mind to answer!

BarCampBrighton2: RDF presentation

Posted by Carlo - 15/03/08 at 02:03:59 pm

I am following a VERY interesting presentation from Tom Morris about RDF. I had underestimated the potentiality until now. Still the syntax is NOT as easy as it should be (a little too geeky), but the Semantic Web is something getting nearer and nearer!

My mind is already running fast to catch some details and get it working in a real example…

BarCampBrighton2: listening to the first presentation

Posted by Carlo - 15/03/08 at 01:03:47 pm

I am following the first presentation at BarCampBrighton2. It is about Android, the new Free* mobile phone OS. I still do not know why the asterisk :)

The first minutes were lost because the projector was not interested in coupling with the Windows computer of the presenter. I was so mean to suggest to use a Mac :) In the end we are watching the presentation from a Asus EEE PC: very nice indeed!

UPDATE: The presentation was quite nice. In the end I think Android is targeted to a small market niche of “Geeks” while the iPhone is more for “Design Lovers“

Now it is the time for Android!

Posted by Carlo - 12/03/08 at 05:03:13 pm

After the great iPhone SDK announcement, after a hundred thousands download, right now it is the time for Android to show something… Different!

It is the time to distribute open applications, not linked to a Big Brother that defines what is right, what is wrong and who gets the money. It is time to think about how simple is the iPhone interface and how complex is to handle Apple.

Yesterday i was talking to a friend, and we were discussing about iPhone applications. In the end my point was that to create some innovative, mobile delivered service, you do not need the iPhone. You do not need it because tomorrow there will be another iPhone, and the day after a new Nokia, and than an Android. Mobile phones are like computers: they pass. The era of the death of software is here: Google, SalesForce.com and many others are teaching it. The fact that the SDK is finally out is tiring, because the iPhone hype is now something “cool“, but the market is much more than the simple iPhone.

So I will warmly welcome Android, I will welcome something different, something capable of destroying the iPhone. Our society is constantly evolving (or it should be), so everything is destined to be forgotten, and the Apple first phone will be no different.

I am quite tired of loving and hating Apple. Lately it seems to me that the Cupertino company is going nuts, playing the role of God more than ever in their little domain. Do they understand that they seem no “different” any longer. Do they realise that they are becoming the same as IBM thirty years ago (do you remember 1984, don’t you)?

Welcome, Android, whenever you will be here (soon, I hope)!

Think Different!

AirPort Extreme: one of the WORST Apple Product!

Posted by Carlo - 11/03/08 at 10:03:03 am

I have tried, I have waited, I have tried again, and again and again, but in the end I have to admit it: the AirPort Extreme is one of the WORST Apple Products.

I can start telling you that the features that are advertised do not work. The “AirDisk” feature, that allows you to share a USB drive on the network, is completely unreliable. Initially it was a problem of the Hard Drive (sold in the Apple Store near to the AirPort BTW), then it become a problem of Firmware, then it was related to Leopard. Since September, when I bought the AirPort, the AirDisk has never worked well, unplugging the disk randomly. Simply an Unusable Feature!

This should have been enough to abandon that specific hardware, but I decided to give Apple another chance.

The problem is that the problems did not end there. If we want to talk about reliability, then maybe I should not mention the Wireless signal. Yes, because the super-fast 802.11 “n” signal plays nicely… until is suddenly disappear. The network is not available any longer or, worst than ever, it shown up in the available wireless networks, but does not work. And I mean it… the security key does not work, you cannot connect to the wireless and all these useless problems. These lost of signal can be temporary (the network start working again after few seconds/minutes) or definitive (you have to unplug the AirPort.

Now, I expect something better from a £120 wireless Access Point. I expect reliability, I expect something I can USE; because in the end I cannot use the AirPort Extreme.

The shame is that Apple does not answer to complain, does not care about the problems (there are Many Many threads of their forum) and does not release any patch. They are releasing new products, they are investing time and money on new SDKs and other toys… BUT WHERE IS THE CUSTOMER SUPPORT??????

I am losing confidence in Apple, I am watching a company I loved become the new Microsoft.

When you manage a server: DO and DON’Ts

Posted by Carlo - 10/03/08 at 12:03:42 pm

Yesterday (Sunday) someone in my office decided that the production server needed a refresh. Just “few” things, including Apache, MySQL and PHP. Not everything went smooth as planned (?).

Let me write down some DO and DON’T…

 

• DO Prepare yourself. Before starting check that you have everything you need.
• DON’T start if you do not have EVERY password you need.
• DO Test your upgrade on a staging server
• DON’T install anything on the production server without testing it before in staging
• DO warn everyone involved: they may be using the server
• DON’T hit and run, calling everyone because the server is not working
• DO plan the upgrade in advance, being sure that if you need help someone can be there for you
• DON’T upgrade on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays, unless everyone is working for that upgrade
• DO backup first

 

In the end, yesterday downtime was limited, and everything is working perfectly again… but from this point of view Fabiana is right when she says I am a little “Control Freak“:

If you want to do something, do it well!

When you will have years of experience, when you will have done many many mistakes, when you will have erased server hard drives without backing up data… you will avoid the DON’Ts without much hassle.

But sometimes it will happen. Sometimes you will forgot and someone else will hate you a lot for at least five minutes! :D

Nice Website icon, DHL!

Posted by Carlo - 10/03/08 at 11:03:01 am

Today I was tracking a package I am expecting through DHL. Their site is not the best example of good design or usability, but let me say that it works, and this is enough.
One thing that I noticed is that the icon they use on their website is not “exactly” the one you would expect…

…what is the Netscape icon doing there? :D

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Carlo Nicora is at home in London.