Good Morning NATLAB!!!

Dith Pran was one of the survivors of Pol Pot's killing fields, the deadly cambodian concentration camps that during the '70s spread terror and death all over Cambodia. Dith Pran managed to escape from them many years ago, but recently he couldn't manage to beat the black cloacked lady. He died on March 30 2008. Here you can hear his last words.

ANdrea

Goodbye Massimino, you have been a great man. You didn't deserve to die that way, so far away from home, from your wife, your kids. You were so full of life, optimism, kindness, beliefe in people's good, in God. You were an example to follow. I can't recall just a time you weren't happy, cheerful, prompt to help. We miss a great guy. An outstanding man, a unique friend.

During the mass the priest stated that sometimes God's plans are quite unforecastable, unpredictable. How true that sounded. Because I can't still understand why, among so many people, it was decided that you had to pass away. The hardest part is that we can only accept so without a final answer, but that doesn't make us less upset.

We'll miss you very much. Addio caro amico.
  ANdrea

P.S. I write on All Fool's Day, but unfortunately it's not a joke.

And here you can read more about our "italian Michale Moore". By the New Yorker!!!

ANdrea

New article by the authoritative Times upon Italy's unsolvable problems. Lines seem to be undenieably true and fitting extremely well my foggy perception of living in Italy today. My sincere congratulations to the author.

ANdrea

More and more words have been expressed to report Beppe Grillo's activity of information and fighting against political situaztion in Italy nowdays. In addition to last article been posted by the IHT (see my previous post), the New York Times too decide to write something about the same subject. However, although the contents of the two article resemble quite a lot (and indeed the pieces authors seem to be the same), NYT give you also the possibility to watch a very interesting video, whose play can be found here. The video basically touches Grillo's condemnation about parliament corruption in its very core, which found expression in a pubblic protest show on Sep 8th at Bologna. That day will be remembered for good as the V-day.

Anyway, if the video and V-day proposal cheered you up, I can tell you in advance that on Apr 25th Grillo is going to propose a 2nd V-day, this time criticisizing the italian informative system as run by italian media and press.

May the V-Force be with you,
  ANdrea

P.S. Giuliano Amato decided to send his response to the NYT's article. If willing you can find his lines here.

I discovered him by chance, but got amazed immediately. Watch this video and you will remain with no words too!!

ANdrea

P.S.
Jason's official homepage resides here.

And here is the trailer. You come with me to the cinema?

ANdrea

Match after match Manuela Manetta seems to be unstopable. As for today she reached the 27th worldwide positions in the international women squash federation ranking, one of her best results ever.

Let's hope she can do even better than she managed so far. C'mon Manu!!!

ANdrea

Every day spent I'm more and more convinced that the Web is an unbelievable means to reach increadible milestones and targets. Because the power of the Web is made by itself, namely the people. No more than a laptop and an ADSL connection and you have open a window facing to the world. And the world is huge, vast, borderless, but yet reacheable. So if you have a problem of whatever magnitude, the Web can be your shortcut to the right solution. Because it's made by people, and sometimes I like to think it's made for the people too.

Beppe Grillo, the most famous italian comedian very known worldwide as well during last years, is also convinced very much the Web can be a revolutionary tool for people to regain their own freedom from corrupted politicians, from mafiosi, from inefficients public deputies, from unqualified academic professors, from squeezing and killing telecom providers, and more. From the pages of his blog, Grillo shotguns critics and offences against everyone and everything representing the decading personification of what is out of date, static, conventional, unmovable. On the opposite, Grillo strongly thinks that the Web is a gate through which new opportunities occured so that everyone can realize that things are not necessarily the way they were so far.

An examples, that also happened to me to get witnessed through the lines of an online italian newspaper, is represented by the microcredit theory and Zopa UK group. Microcredit, in the way it is desbribed by Nobel prized Muhammad Yunus, is an unconventional way to get loans even if your economical situation is disastrous. Based on a similar principle, Zopa UK decided a few years past to set up a site where people become main players in lending money to other people so that banks and other similar lending institutions can get bypassed. And that, in a way, is the beauty of the whole game because this should allow to avoid money waste and make operative lending time shorter.

So that's the power of the Web, a digital universe where you can have the most honorable and terrific idea such as Wikipedia and donate a wonderful present to mankind, as well as the most  dumb and  smartes idea at the same time such as TheMilinionDollarHomepage.com and leave a huge bunch of crapy and lousy pixels to the world, but gathered so much money you can settle down fantasticaly for the rest of your life. Isn't that magic?

ANdrea

 

 

Elena (try to guess who she is in the picture) was a colleague of mine and one of the amazing friends of the great "International Family" the time I spent in the NL working for Philips. If today I'm here to dedicate her my post is to recognize the strength she had when dealing with difficult moments occured in her life. Examples of might against overwhelming situations that never blocked her to see ahead, not to give up, not to abandon ship. She had to face situations in life that made her to decide to transform herself and her professional path radically, from engineer to international helper. So that's why she decided, two years ago, to leave Europe and fly to Ghana.

At this moment in time she should still be in Piela, a town in the est region of Burkina Faso, trying to succeed to develop her institutional projects for setting up better life levels in the local community. As far as I know she should have a project accomplishment period of two years in total. After such a deadline we don't know what she decides. For sure we can expect it will be something important and amazing yet.

All the best Campionessa,
  ANdrea

P.S.
Of course she has a blog too. So if you wanna read her adventures and updates, just click here.

 

Last spring Corghi SpA decided to unveil publicly a new project which pretends to be as revolutionary as its most famous company tire changer Artiglio MASTER was in 2001. By means of an earlier-stage prototype, such a new project got then presented at the automotive fair Autopromotec 2007 in Bologna, May 2007. The project name: EM8470 Blue Light. To see why such an enlighting title was conceived we should enter a bit more in details about this balancing machine features, which could however result in a very bothering list of technical considerations and concepts. In any case, just not to let you totally die by curiosity, what I can tell are the main machine's characteristics such as the usage of a camera and a touchscreen monitor. In addition, optical laser triangulators are also introduced to replace old-fashion mechanical gauges as embedded on different company balancing products and many other competitor equipments.

The camera substitutes the user's eyes to access remote and less easy rim areas when data acquisition is necessary for proper balancing procedure. That is done by shotting a picture of the wheel, processing it, figuring out where the rim-wheel edge is located on image and consequently driving the front laser to light the same edge on the rim. Only at that time the laser acquires 3D information for the balancing process.

Then, after a rear laser supplies its measurements too to set proper indications concerning the wheel width, results are shown on a LCD touchscreen monitor which provides both visual and interfacing tasks. Indeed, due its touchable properties, the monitor allows the user to interact with the machine to confirm data acquisition if satisfactory, otherwise the user is still free to change the counterweight positions by indirectly selecting new plane locations through the touchscreen.

Since I've been one of the technicians and engineers that got involved in the project I must confess that so far it has been a great fun and satisfactions to implement such a machine. Of course the prototype is not ready 100% yet, but believe me we are quite close to overcome all its main technical issues so that a final and powerful product can be very likely delivered in 2008. Not so bad as a first shot, is it?

ANdrea

P.S. More press and commercial stuff can be read by clicking on the following links:

- a german article,
- a french leaflet.

It happend a Tuesday morning when I realised that Nanni tried to get in touch with me for lettin' me know he was in Viareggio with Enith and the kids. But Viareggio is also Andrea Barsanti's hometown. So, after a short round of sms's and cell calls, we all managed to meet there at least for one night. The result? A delicious dinner in a very cosy atmosphere, as sketched in the following picture.


Clockwise from bottom-left: ANdrea, Enith, Nanni, AndreaB, Alice (18 months old), Daniela, Laura.

Have very nice holidays, dear folks!!
  ANdrea

On November 2006 last James Bond's film got played at cinemas. At the beginning of the movie you can watch a very hectic and thrilling parkour sequence. In case you missed the film, you can get such a sequence by clicking on the following link.

Hope you haven't forgotten your pop corns.
  ANdrea

Today Rafael NADAL succeeded to conquer his third-in-a-row italian title at Foro Italico tournament in Rome. His final opponent, Fernando GONZALES (who managed to beat yesterday our favourite player Filippo VOLANDRI) could nothing against the overwhelming supremacy of the spaniard.

I have to confess I watched the today game after having not seen a tennis match for quite a long time, and to my surprise I must admit I got amazed of the high quality players can compete against each other nowadays. I saw very powerfull and intense rallies, great techniques and deceiving strategies, everything surrounded by great honesty and fairness during and after the game.

In that way I couldn't avoid to find many similarities with squash, that historically got spawned from tennis when played in jail by prisoners during the 18th century. Both tennis and squash, when engaged at professional levels, acquired outstanding beauty and charme. And I regret I missed to watch so many high level performances in tennis during last years, 'cause I can imagine they were worth to be followed on TV or attended on spot. So let's hope not to repeat the same mistake again in the future.

ANdrea

Almost the same day of one year ago (even if last post of him is dated two weeks later) an amazing guy named Stefano Spaggiari came back from an undescribable adventure. Indeed, that very day, he succeeded to end his trip around the whole world after 682 days. By means of any kind of public and private transportation but planes, he managed to step over any of the five populated continents. All moved by an unbearable attraction to different cultures as our ancestor travelers did before us, discovering the unknown, enjoying the stunning pleasure of leaving everything behind and getting amused by the beauty of nature and different peoples, as very intensely depicted and described in details through his own site.

Anyway, when it was just a few weeks earlier his departure, I still lived in Eindhoven. So one night I decided to wish him all the best fortune possible by email. Such an expression of esteem and admiration (and the more which followed by many other emails) helped us to get acquainted with each other so that we once stated that when he managed to accomplish his "mission" we would have celebrated somewhere in Carpi with a very tasty and refreshing beer. And last summer that moment arrived: indeed at the beginning of July I met him for the very first time at one of the most trendy pubs in our town.

I must admit that being in front of him was quite an experience. I got the impression to face someone out of commonality. Which reminded me of what I also did for five years when living in the "lagen landen". And that seemed like we were a bit extraordinary men.

  ANdrea

Manuela MANETTA is today one of our best italian squashers, if not the best one. She is ranked 33 internationally and at the very beginning of 2007 she succeeded to gain her first international prize ever in a WISPA tournament in the US: the LIBERTY BELL OPEN 2007.

Tonite I was privileged to get a 30-minute lesson from her at our squash centre in Soliera. The experience was quite unrepeatable: when we played a short game at the end of our drills, she was the one nailed to the middle of the T, while I was the one flippering all around, pretending to keep on control of the rally while in reality I was trying to survive till the end of my turn.

Folks, believe me when I state this girl is quite amazing!!!
  ANdrea