Category Archives: Personal

Books Personal

2011 in books

December 31, 2011 – 12:23 pm

Essays/Computer science/$work stuff

Programming Pig  Hadoop The definitive guide  Cassandra: The Definitive Guide Data Analysis with Open Source Tools

In 2011 I started my adventures in the perilous lands of bigdata, so I’ve begun harvesting literature on the subject. Extremely interesting and relatively young field. I have an almost finished review of “Data Analysis with Open Source Tools” which I hope to publish soon.

The Passionate Programmer  Longitudine

Novels

Generation A  Microserfs

My first encounter with Douglas Coupland. I particularly liked Microserfs, that somehow seemed to be speaking directly to me. Perhaps not for everybody.

A game of Thrones  A clash of Kings   A storm of Swords

Five minutes after Games of Thrones s01e01 I realized I couldn’t wait an entire week to know the rest of the story. Still entertaining, after ~3000 pages and already in the fourth book.

Reamde

I’m a hardcore Neal Stephenson fan. I also have Anathem in my stack, but I decided to read Reamde first, because it seemed less dense. It was, and also more fast-paced than usual.

La sombra del viento La donna della domenica Solomon Gursky è stato qui

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Music Hack Day Personal Programming

Music Hack Day London 2011

December 8, 2011 – 3:10 pm

Last weekend, I went to London to participate in the Music Hack Day.

This particular hackathon is growing with a very fast rhythm. Consider what follows, for example: my very first MHD was Barcelona in October 2010, and from that moment I had the opportunity to partecipate in three other editions (New York, San Francisco, and another time in Barcelona) and to be among the public during the Cannes’ edition. That, and I also managed to skip another twos. After less than three years since the entire initiative started, it has demonstrated a relentless pace in proposing new events and building a community of music hackers (more on that later).

Spotify App Store, and MXM’s hack

I think one of the main themes during this MHD was the recently announced Spotify App Store. Most appropriately, a group of Spotify developers was present at the conference, which proved to be an inestimable source of help and encouragement during the 24H sprint.

Despite some minor glitches and random problems with the development environment, I have to say that writing software that has to be deployed into the Spotify client is a pleasure. It all boils down to write one or more web pages, using Javascript to make it live, via Spotify’s API and maybe another third party service to do something interesting.

In fact – after all, I’m a musixmatcher – we spent the weekend working on a lyrics app. I think the aim of such a project is obvious, anyway here a screenshot.

Next?

I’m not sure where next MHD will be. There will be a new “proof of concept” during Midem early in 2012, and I heard about another full-fledged edition in Amsterdam soon. I have the feeling, also, that Dave Haynes, our über-organizer, is almost flooded with cities offering to host next MHDs. That’s good news.

I think the majority of the attendants are employed in companies operating in the digital music ecosystem, but I also met many “solo” developers simply attracted by the coolness of the event. More importantly, I can’t help but seeing people helping each other and collaborating even if they’re not coworkers or members of the same masterplan to conquer the music industry. In other words, a true community is growing.

I’m not sure what’s the best way to keep nourishing this community: certainly there’s no shortage of opportunities to meet, but I think more can be done on the online part. Food for thought.

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Personal

Kindle: first impressions

April 17, 2011 – 8:21 pm

I just unboxed my Kindle. I played with it for a few hours only, but I’m satisfied with the choice so far.
First of all, to the zealots that may happen to read this article and feel compelled to whine on “scent of paper” and other oddities: I’m not planning the disposal of all my “real” books, neither I’m considering buying only digital contents from now on.

I decided to buy an ebook reader because I wanted to see on my own what can be done with this technology, which I consider immature and yet to be completely exploited.  I think I am an early adopter, even if Amazon Kindle and its competitors hit the market several years ago.

Also, I think having an ebook reader is nowadays the most practical solution to the eternal problem “What books should I bring with me during the journey?”. Being able to answer “All!” is a wild dream that comes true (but I understand this can be a problem as well).

Anyway, here a few impressions from a very very beginner.

  • The device itself looks beautiful. It’s not heavy and it seems prolongated use will not be tiring. On the other hand, I have the impression it’s not particularly sturdy. Again, this is something I can say only in a few months (or in a few hundreds kilometers).
  • I think the slogan “it’s like paper” is inaccurate.  Whatever appears on the screen seems printed, but it does not recall paper to me.  Besides that, fonts are very  crisp and readable, so Kindle hits on the spot for what is supposed to be its  main use.
  • I am positively surprised by the refresh delay. Maybe because  I expected it to be even worse, I think it’s bearable, at least for the kind  of books you read cover to cover in a sequential fashion. In other words, good for novels, articles and stuff like that; maybe not practical for manuals, documentation… in general, things you want to study, or browse randomly.
  • I suspect I will eventually feel hampered by the position of buttons on the device. Anyway, this can’t be but a speculation.
  • I’m currently at my parents’ place, and there are problems with the   Internet connection, so I couldn’t try its wifi capabilities yet.  A pity: one of the things I was more eager to try was Kindle’s use in conjunction with Instapaper.
  • Ah, the screensavers are wonderful!
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Perl Personal

Perlish plans for 2011

January 15, 2011 – 1:32 pm

[flickr id="4875422128" thumbnail="medium" align="left"]

Besides the Music Hack Day in Cannes, there are some events I will focus on in 2011:

  • The Italian Perl Workshop. This year, for a change, we will be in Turin. The conference will be held on September 8-9, with my Introductory Perl Class the day before. I’m linking the material for last year’s class, but I have slightly different ideas for the incoming version.
    I would like to go faster on basic syntax – spending a reasonable amount of time dispelling doubts about data structures, which proved to be useful – and to present Moose as “the way you should do OOP in Perl”, probably mentioning the old way as historical curiosity.
  • In the middle of August there will be YAPC::Europe, in Riga. It may seem odd to say that in January, but I’m looking forward for a climatic detour from the hot days we’re likely to have in Spain. And it will be great to meet friends and Perl hackers, as usual.
  • For the past two years I missed the London Perl Workshop. I think its single day model works very well and should be copied more avidly. And I love to spend time in London.
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Music Hack Day Personal Programming

Music Hackday Barcelona

October 2, 2010 – 9:45 pm

Today I attended the first half of the Music Hackday, in Barcelona. Here some pictures:

I should certainly spend many more words about this great event, but in short:

  • Congrats to the orgas for the smooth and enjoyable day: plenty of space to hack, nice location, and the internet connection was just working
  • There’s a lot of interesting APIs and products outside to explore, more than I expected: besides the big and very-well-known players like Last.fm, I discovered The Echo Nest, Canoris and MuseScore, just to mention a few.
  • I never tried this unconference formula before, but I think I’ll look for more: even if I didn’t hack very much (just polished some bits of my MusixMatch API Perl client), I really enjoyed the general atmosphere, and I can’t wait to see what the other attendees will present tomorrow.
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Personal

Seven facts about me

January 15, 2009 – 10:51 am

gmax challenged me to participate in this game. The rules:

  • Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
  • Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
  • Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
  • Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

And here some facts about me:

  • I was blessed by the opportunity of writing an introductory book about Perl, published in Italy by Apogeo. I wrote most of it by night, in two continents and four countries (or during flights).
  • I live in Barcelona since April 2008. I speak Italian and English, and I’m learning Spanish (now I can express things just to some extent). Other languages I’ve been exposed to are French and Portuguese.
  • I work as a programmer, and that’s more or less what I’ve always done. I have some experience as a teacher, too.
  • I’m left-handed.
  • I studied classical guitar for quite a long time. Shame on me for not keeping study.
  • I love to read. My reading pace and favourite genres vary a lot, but giving me a book is usually a simple way to make me happy.
  • While everyone calls me Stefano (and larsen on the net, usually), my parents, my sister and my relatives call me Lorenzo. That’s due to some family facts it’s boring to explain here.

I don’t believe interrupting this kind of “memes” could cause damage, severe injury or death, therefore I won’t tag anyone specifically. Everyone among my followers in Twitter can consider himself tagged.

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