Science Cafes

Science Cafès!. People started setting up Cafès where people can listen to a scientific lecture while sipping lattes. I am hoping to check them out one of these days.

Falafel Drive In

_DSC8103.jpg, originally uploaded by xela70.

If you like Falafel, this is the best one in San Jose:
Falafel Drive In
2301 Stevens Creek Blvd
San Jose, CA 95128
(408) 294-7886

Best Espresso Ever!

_DSC7956.jpg, originally uploaded by xela70.

Being Italian in Silicon Valley is not easy, especially if you have to drink what passes for coffe here. Fortunately there is a great espresso bar in downtown Palo Alto: the "Caffe` del Doge". The best italian-style espresso I ever enjoyed outside Italy. Try it!:
The address is:
419 University Avenue
Palo Alto, California 94301
tel +1 650-323-3600

Iseo!

_DSC6683.jpg, originally uploaded by xela70.

Back from Italy! It was nice to be back in the old country, enjoying the weather, the food and the people.

Feeling purple...

It is the second week at my new job. So far I like it. The cafeteria is a definite improvement, and so it is the free coffee...
I also like the people and the problem. We shall see.

Last day at IBM

Well, May 11th was my last day of work at IBM Almaden, 8 years and one day exactly since I joined the company. Sad to go, but excited about my new job at Yahoo!
I meet so many extraordinary people at IBM and I will be always thankful for the great opportunity they gave me to work on so many exciting research projects. Goodbye Almaden.

Powerset party

Saturday night I was at the Powerset party in San Francisco, at the Frisson. Cool crowd and very interesting technology. They have a quite ambitious project of taking on the search problem using natural language processing. Given the team and the technology they might very well be able to pull it off.

O'Reilly Radar > lca: Andrae Muys on RDF

Cool, news about mulgara seems finally to be spreading. I have been playing around with mulgara and I must say that I have been very impressed by it. See:
O'Reilly Radar > lca: Andrae Muys on RDF

L'avvelenata, Guccini e Bertoncelli

Mi sono spesso chiesto chi fosse il Bertoncelli dell'Avvelenata di Guccini. Dopo un po' di ricerca ho trovato questo articolo

Rational Application Developer 7 on Kubuntu/ubuntu Edgy Eft

After struggling to install RAD7 on kubuntu (it fails at the installation of the websphere 6.1 runtime), a collegue of mine found this posting:

WebSphere Portal 6 on Ubuntu (continued) - Exception: null

So, if you are struggling to get RAD7 installed on your kubuntu/ubuntu machine here is the procedure:
1) make /bin/sh point at bash: cd /bin; sudo ln -sf bash sh
2) install RAD7
3) replace the shell in the scripts: sudo perl -p -i -e "s/\/sh$/\/bash/" /opt/IBM/SDP70/runtimes/base_v61/bin/*.sh
4) replace the shell in the script for the profile management: sudo perl -p -i -e "s/\/sh$/\/bash/" /opt/IBM/SDP70/runtimes/base_v61/bin/ProfileManagement/*.sh
5) enable write access to the profile, so that you can develop using your user account: sudo chmod -R a+w /opt/IBM/SDP70/runtimes/base_v61/profiles/AppSrv01
6) restore the original link: cd /bin; sudo ln -sf dash sh

and then enjoy RAD7 running under ubuntu!

An alternative to step 1-3, contribuited by Joshua Purcell (see comments to this post), is to run:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash

Choose 'no' when it asks if you want to make sh symbolically link to dash. The same command can be used in place of step 6 if you ever want to switch back to dash.

Thanks Joshua!

PS: ubuntu and kubuntu are not officialy supported by IBM/Rational, so use at your own risk.