Sep
A Dream of Venice, with Claude as Editor
My children can read Italian. Most of their classmates can't.
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2026
2025
Oct
Event: Hayden Thorpe live in Pordenone
I went to see Hayden Thorpe for the first time the other night at Pordenone's Ex-Convento Live venue (Italy).
Mar
Event: Installation at Sydney Data Arena
My piece, "Dreamy Pianos - Study No 1 in C Minor," is part of a new sonic installation by Simon Porter, currently showcased at the University of Technology Sydney.
2023
Jul
Book Summary: Deep Work (2016)
I finally got round to reading Deep Work by Cal Newport (2016).
Jun
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
Arthur C Clarke once commented that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
Jan
Paperpile: a PDF manager with Google Drive backend
Paperpile is an online PDF manager that stores your personal data in your Google Drive folder.
2016
Apr
SpotiSci: finding science concepts on Spotify
Ever wondered how many musical albums focus on topics like the moon landing, artificial intelligence, or DNA replication?
2015
Nov
Accessing OS X dictionary with Python
Here's a little script that allows you to access the OS X Dictionary app using Python.
Feb
Tribute to Alice in Chains (sort of)
I'm not sure how much this qualifies as a tribute video to Alice in Chains, but hey - who's to judge anyway?
Jan
Take control of your digital annotations with ResQuotes.com
Over the last few weeks, I had a chance to complete a personal project I've been working on for a while: www.resquotes.com.
2013
Dec
Annotating the web with Scrible
Scrible is an online tool that allows one to add layers of annotations to webpages, save them in the cloud and share them with others.
Apr
Annual Bliss Classification Association Lecture: using faceted browsers in the DH
The Bliss Bibliographic Classification is a fully faceted classification scheme that provides detailed classification for use in libraries and information services of all kinds, with a broad and detailed structure and order.
Feb
Agile vs Waterfall… a few misconceptions revealed
Here's a list of interesting concepts in software development.
Jan
2012: a look back (for this blog)
With the end of the year comes the time for reviewing the progress made, and with this blog, I can't really complain!
2012
Oct
Teaching programming concepts visually with the Online Python Tutor
The Online Python Tutor is a web-based program visualization tool for CS education, developed in collaboration with Google.
2011
Sep
Getting lost in the world of Laputa
I'm certainly not an anime expert, but after spending a couple of months in Japan last year, I started developing an appreciation for this form of art.
Jul
Event: Livecoding 'Fjords' in Paris & Strasbourg
New song called 'Fjords': ambient electronica scales on a rollercoaster.
Jun
Bjork redefines the musician's product with 'Biophilia' album/app
I've been reading online that Icelandic artist Björk is once again pushing the boundaries of experimental music by releasing a new album, Biophilia, which will be composed of both music and interactive media in the form of an iPad app:
Apr
I went to SouthBank for the Ether festival the other night and caught two very inspiring performances by Anna Meredith and James Blake (among others).
Apr
A Space Odyssey Live with Philharmonia Orchestra
I went to the SouthBank Centre the other night to see Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey performed live with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Jan
The Digital Story of Nativity and other inspiring stuff
Here are a few inspiring things I came across recently.
Jan
Working toward meritocracy in Italy
It's no news that thousands of Italian researchers have left their home country in order to pursue their careers; what is news, however, is that we now have a scientific study shedding light on this phenomenon.
2010
Oct
Ozric Tentacles live @ Islington Academy, London
The lineup featured Ed Wynne (guitar, synths), Ed's wife Brandi Wynne (bass, keyboards), Silas Wynne (synths, keyboards - Ed's son) and Oliver Seagle (drums, percussion).
Oct
Jeff Beck live at the Royal Albert Hall
Quite an amazing evening with Beck rocking the RAH out the other night; the man is well over 60 (born 24 June 1944) but still performs with great confidence and inventiveness.
Oct
This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers
"This tube is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless world....." I've never watched this 1976 classic - The Network - but after listening to the short clip below it's now high on my priority list.
Oct
Gmail's labels are great for they let you organize your constantly growing mailbox in a non-final way.
Oct
Amazon's Kindle is slowly changing my life
I've been very reluctant to buy the Amazon Kindle at first, but since I got it I've realized more and more that that was the right decision, and I'll tell you why.
Oct
Book Summary: Where Mathematics Come From
"Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being" [amazon link] is a recent book by cognitive scientists George Lakoff and Rafael Nuñez, in which they argue that the origin of our mathematical ideas (even the most abstract and immaterial) is to be found in the materiality of our everyday experience.
Sep
Sometimes a picture is more eloquent than a thousand words.
Sep
The Bad Plus - each time I listen to them I can't avoid thinking they're geniuses!
Sep
I spent a couple of days in Linz, Austria, visiting for the first time the Ars Electronica centre and the related festival which is happening these days.
Aug
Jul
Bernstein's Mass at Royal Festival Hall
The other day I went to a concert at the Southbank Centre in London, as part of the Leonard Bernstein season.
Jun
Good news, mythical Ozric Tentacles [official website] are going to have a number of gigs in the UK in the coming fall.
Jun
I just watched online a number of very inspiring performances from the the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), as part of the their recent Spring Concert.
Jun
Have you ever edited a movie using the new iMovie 7 or 8?
Apr
Creativity and personal mastery
By Srikumar S. Rao, who can be found also on TED talks.
Mar
If you've heard about the 'brain in a vat' thought experiment but never had the time to read more about it, this movie is a quite pleasant dramatisation of the argument!
Mar
Tale of tales: artistic interactive games from Belgium
Tale of Tales is a games development studio, founded by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn in Belgium in 2002 (*).
Mar
I went to the National Museum of art in Osaka the other day, and saw a lot of inspiring stuff.
Mar
BBC article on interactive art at Goldsmith University (London)
An interesting BBC article about the interactive art being produced by Goldsmiths students.
Feb
Some songs, I'll never forget. They are still giving me the shivers as they did when I was a kid.
Feb
The anti-internet saga continues
Now Italy's government is trying to bog down internet providers by making them responsible for the (supposedly) illicit contents published on the web.
Jan
Jan
Livecoding night @ King's College coming up
If you happen to be around London next Thursday (14th) you might be interested in joining us for an evening of livecoding!
Jan
Links on miscellaneous topics from the last week or so:
2009
Nov
The Four Pillars of the Ethical Company
Some deeply inspiring and wise words I found in the mystical Guitar Craft's website, which is not a religious sect but one of the creations of unconventional 60's guitar hero Robert Fripp (best know for his work with King Crimson).
Oct
Among various other useful freebies, Rogue Amoeba software is giving away for free Pong Saver, a nice little screensaver that emulates this classic arcade game...
Sep
Learning iPhone development while sitting on your couch
I guess this is just part of the huge e-learning revolution happening in our century..
Aug
Aug
Satire you won't be able to listen to in Italy
I couldn't help passing this on (from BBC's Mock of the Week):
Aug
May
How to get the iPhone to stop automatic back ups
This is a problem that irritated me so many times - I'm so glad I found a solution now, thanks to this blog post.
May
Freedom of Press: is that asking too much?
An interesting study recently issued by the Freedom House (a non profit organization inspired by the ideals of democracy and freedom) positions Italy and another couple of unlucky countries at the bottom of the ladder.
Apr
Spread the word: the Italian circus goes to the EU
I think I'll start using this mostly technical blog to help in spreading the word about the incredible political situation in Italy.
Mar
Academic Earth - hours of free lectures online
Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.
Jan
Google Flags Whole Internet As Malware
Google mysteriously breaks and you can't surf the web anymore; seems like a remote scenario that you'd never take that seriously.
Jan
How to make a (Mac) screen saver that shows your uptime
Found an interesting blog post that shows how to use QuartzComposer and a few patches to create a screensaver for your mac...
Jan
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
Are we gonna say goodbye to the keyboard too?
Jan
Phenotype: any observable characteristic or trait of an organism: such as its morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, or behavior.
2008
Jul
Quotation from Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields.
Apr
Comparing programming languages
Imagine you've got to set to lowercase a string...is it shorter to write it in php or in perl?
Mar
Social Innovation Camp in London
The Social Innovation Camp aims at bringing together some of the best of the UK and Europe's web developers and designers with people at the sharp end of social problems.
Feb
Humanities Computing and web2.0
Last week I spent two interesting days in London, at the Epistemic Networks and GRID Web 2.0 for Arts and Humanities workshop.
2007
Oct
I haven't written much in the last days - been busy writing a new browser for kmi's semantic web services team, and moving on my phd thesis during the rest of the time.
Sep
Jamendo: free and quality music online
Jamendo is a new model for artists to promote, publish, and be paid for their music.
Sep
Zotero - is the browser enough to do research?
Zotero, a personal research assistant, directly into your browser.
Jun
30th International Wittgenstein Symposium
I am going to talk at the 30th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 5-11 August 2007, Kirchberg, Austria.
Jun
Article Summmary: Sketch of The Analytical Engine.
I recently read the original article of Charles Babbage - which deals with the work he and Lady Ada Augusta Countess of Lovelace did on the Analytical Engine, one of the (mechanical) predecessors of the modern computer - thanks to a blog post from David Dodds.
Jun
Conference: SASO 2007 on Self-Organizing systems
Reminds me of Maturana's ideas.... It's the First IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems, Boston, Mass., USA, July 9-11, 2007.
Jun
It's nice to see the ancient philosophy keeping up with the new technologies - shows how the soul of philosophy is immortal, and linked to men instead of publication mechanisms.
May
It's the best-looking online game I've ever seen - stunning graphics that resemble a "normal" game: it's GET THE GLASS!
May
Apr
During the last days, I almost switched from Lispworks (too many tabs, too many things in general) back to MCL (essential, fast, with a powerful meta-dot command).
Apr
I'm afraid this is just in italian, for now.
Apr
Mar
It's an interesting web-journal written by Henry Gladney, which deals with various subjects from document digitalization, encoding, semantics and in general the revolution linked to the digital world.
Mar
I'm probably one of the last ones getting there, but I decided to do my best not to use Microsoft Word for editing my phd thesis.
Mar
A really nice application to browse conceptually related egyptian artifacts, with many features: visual navigation, possibility of creating personal "libraries" of artifacts, typed entities.
Mar
Ecto : multiple blog manager and WYSIWYG editor
Read an article about the "must-have" applications for the mac on slashdot - incredible how they haven't inserted QUICKSILVER, which is a revolutionary launchbar program in my opinion..
Mar
Internet research ethics: a first journal
I'm busy writing an article these days, which sort of feels like being in a long and tiring trip to the underworld..
Mar
Jan
Jan
News for all the guitarists and music technology lovers: the Source Audio Hot Hand motion control for guitar effects.
Jan
MacFUse - Gmail-gigs on the desktop
Got this news from here :
Jan
Jan
Jan
2006
Dec
Dec
There's a class of applications that conquered a big slice of new mac users, after the appearance of OSX: the applications coming from UNIX.
Dec
A nice alternative to BBedit (which beyond being not free, takes a long time to load on my machine - too many plugins installed maybe) is Smultron.
Dec
Wow half past ten Friday night, I had a paper to finish and now I feel like my eyes are getting lost into the screen...
Nov
Free learning resources from the OU
The Open Learn project has been launched not many weeks ago:
Oct
PhD life.. it's easy to lose track of what you're looking for, and even more, of where you're coming from.
Oct
Jun
Article Summary: Automatist storyteller systems and the shifting sands of story
A few notes after reading a seminal paper (1997) by MIT researcher Glorianna Davenport on 'storyteller systems'.
Apr
I went to an interesting talk today about the future of library e-services, especially in the light of Web 2.0 technologies.
Mar
What a treat to find a hidden AI gem in your computer.
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