Alex says...

The Kitchen is Done!

2010-09-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

Finally the kitchen is done:

Cabinets: Ikea abstrak gray and white
Appliances: Ikea
Backsplash: Porcelanosa Cubica blanco
Floor: Sintesi Glamour Grey

Wall color tests

2010-06-03T00:13:00.000-07:00

Some test for the walls' color:

And some more, with the help of the in-house interior designers...

New door, old door

2010-05-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

Some progress in moving the door:

No floor!

2010-05-21T00:08:00.000-07:00

Demolition continues: now the floor is gone:

Still, it does not stop me from cooking a last "Pasta alla carbonara!".

Kitchen Remodeling: A little bit of history

2010-05-20T00:02:00.000-07:00

In removing the cabinets we found the original order:

And this is what is left of the kitchen now:

Kitchen Remodeling: the beginning

2010-05-19T23:47:00.000-07:00

We decided to go for kitchen remodeling. Our house has an original 1959 kitchen: it works but it is neither functional nor very beautiful, so it has to go. In the picture is what we started with:

Hallo eBay!

2010-05-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Hallo eBay!
First day at the new company. Really excited to make an impact on eBay search.

Goodbye Yahoo!

2010-03-29T22:46:00.000-07:00

Last week was my last at Yahoo!. It has been almost 3 years, and by far the most successful, productive and exciting years of my working career. I will miss the great people at Yahoo!, and I will always be proud of my contributions to the search engine: I released several ranking functions and about 12 lines of C code that I wrote are executed every single time someone runs a query on Yahoo Search.
Goodbye Yahoo!

Slow iMac

2010-03-01T21:46:00.000-08:00

I have a late 2006 intel mac core duo, and I was a bit upset about how slow it was. After some investigation I finally narrow it down to the internal HD performance. Looking at the system monitor I found out that I was getting on average 1-2 Mb/sec transfer rate, tops. Which was really strange, since I was getting better performance even from the external hard drive connected via firewire. Running all sorts of diagnostic did not turn up anything suspicious, except the slowness. Suspecting a bad hard drive I decided to replace the internal hard drive. After following instructions on the internet (not for anybody: opening up the imac is quite a challenge) I replaced the internal drive with a 1TB hitachi, and after reinstalling everything I now get 10-20Mb/sec transfer rate. Happyness!
So, if you find your iMac particularly sluggish and you notice that the hard drive is slow, it might be due to a failing hard disk.

Anniversary!

2008-05-14T00:20:00.001-07:00

One year at Yahoo! (yodel). It has been a wild ride and I really enjoyed so far. At Yahoo! I really was able to bridge the gap from research to applications and see some of my ideas have a real impact on the search experience of millions of people. Cool stuff.

RDFa example

2008-02-04T23:43:00.000-08:00

This post is an experiment in using RDFa.

RDFa example,
created by
Alex Cozzi.

TED Talks

2008-02-04T23:39:00.000-08:00

One of the absolutely best way to spend your time on-line: TED Talks! Some of the most exciting, fascinating and insightful talks I ever seen. I subscribed my iPod to the podcast and I am totally smitten. Highly recommended.

Just give me a phone!

2008-01-10T16:04:00.001-08:00

I have been increasingly annoyed with my cell phones, mostly because they are so loaded with useless features that is more and more difficult to get them to work as a phone!
During my last visit to Italy my mum gave me her "freebie" cell phone and I was impressed by its simplicity. It was a Motorola F3, also known as "Motofone". Alas, it is normally not imported to US (too simple?) but I was able to buy it on ebay. It works flawlessi with my pre-paid T-mobile GSM and it is probably the only non-java, no-camera, no-bluetooth, no-crap cell phone you can easily find. By the way: if you plan to use it in USA make sure you buy the USA/Canada/Mexico 850/1900 Mhz version, not the european 900/1800 Mhz version. The phone is a simple dual-band design and it comes in two different hardware versions for different markets.

Science Cafes

2007-12-16T21:49:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-06T22:38:00.001-08:00

_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!

2007-12-06T22:36:00.001-08:00

_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!

2007-09-28T21:46:00.001-07:00

_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...

2007-05-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

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

2007-02-12T14:56:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-22T15:58:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-03T14:01:00.000-08:00

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.

Green screen of death of the iSight

2006-12-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

Lately my Core 2 Duo 20" iMac was having trouble with the embedded iSight camera: in Photo Booth was showing just a green screen.
I knew it was not an hardware problem because skype could use the camera without problems, but no joy with any of the apple apps: Photo Booth, iChat, iMovie. They all showed the green screen.
After searching on the Internet I found several suggestions pointing to resetting the SMC.
I tried that and, lo and behold, iSight works again! Woo Hoo!

Like Avedon

2006-10-10T11:29:00.000-07:00

I like Avedon's style when it comes to portraits, so I tried a self portrait in his style. Here is it. My wife thinks that I look like a convict... go figure!

Welcome to the Cyberspace

2006-10-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

Ok, I did it. Everybody is doing it, so I am starting my blog too!