Now, I’m not here to say there are no risks in traveling to far off places. However, when you stop worrying about it and start visiting other countries, you realize it’s not that dangerous, especially if you compare it to most Western cities.

Milan is certainly not safer than Cusco. And New York? not safer than Ho Chi Minh City.

Almost every city comes with its own perils. What makes the difference between traveling safely and looking for trouble is not where you go or who you go there with. The difference is in how you approach a new city.

You need to keep your eyes open at all times and learn to identify possible threats, which vary in each city.
And it’s really not that difficult, it’s just a matter of common sense:

• Don’t go around looking as a pimp: keep a low profile
• Watch out for people following you and generally try to avoid isolated or dark streets
• If you’re traveling alone, try not to get drunk… ;)
• Be friendly and make a lot of friends, but don’t trust them any more than they deserve
• Keep your wallet in the front pocket — and possibly distribute money between different pockets and bags
• Don’t ever leave your luggage unattended and if you travel on overnight buses consider buying a Pacsafe to secure your backpack
• Enjoying the nightlife is a big part of an abroad trip, but try to avoid well-known problematic areas and generally raise your awareness level at night

This list may have a few more items in it, and it may sound like a lot of things to remember, but believe me, it will actually become second nature after a couple of days.

And remember, you’re there to enjoy the sights, culture and people, so just do that, enjoy it! and don’t be overly paranoid, because it won’t necessarily make you any safer, but it will certainly make for a less remarkable experience.

What do you think? are you afraid of traveling abroad? would you go on a trip to a remote place alone?

With my departure date coming along — end of October — the time is coming for me to decide on the gear I’m going to bring with me.

This time I’d like to travel light, so I’m going to go with one body and no more than two lenses.
The problem lays in which lenses I’m going to take.

I’ve been pondering about getting a Nikon 18-200 and the reason is obvious: it would allow me to travel as light as possible without sacrificing versatility, but with what drawbacks?
Mainly, distortion at the widest side and some fall off. That said, distortion is easily corrected using Photoshop and as far as I could gather by reading reviews this lens is very sharp, which makes it even more interesting.

However, even though it’s got VR to improve performances in low-light situations, at f/3.5-5.6 it’s not a fast lens, because even though one should be able to shoot as low as 1/6th of a second, there’s no way you can snap a photo of a badly lit in-motion subject.
This issue could be mitigated by taking a 35mm f/1.8: tiny and fast.

The alternative would be to take an 18-70 and a 70-200, but at what cost considering I only want to take one body? I’d have to stop, take out the lens, change it and then take the photo, which in my situation would probably mean losing the photo most of the times as I tend to shoot a lot of candid portraits.
Also, changing your lens outside, especially if in a dusty situation, is gambling with your sensor: sooner or later — and I’d bet on sooner –, your sensor is going to get dirty and having the best lens in the world is not going to help if you’ve got a dirty sensor.

All that said, I was thinking about something even more extreme: going with a single lens, the aforementioned Nikon 35mm f/1.8. Why you ask? Because it would force me to really think about framing, perspective and composition.
When you have a lens like the 18-200 is easy to get lazy and start shooting everything you see, without thinking much about how it’s going to turn out.
However, even though it would definitely be a nice experiment, I’d rather not be there and damn me because I didn’t take a more versatile lens with me, so I guess I’ll keep this for another trip, maybe to somewhere I can re-visit more often — actually, most of the photos I took in London were shot with a Contax RTS with my all-time favorite lens: the Zeiss 50mm f/1.8.

The best solution would be to take two bodies, one for the 18-70 and the other for the 70-200, but I really don’t want to take two bodies and the reason is very simple: I don’t like going around towns looking as if I’m getting ready to photograph the Super Bowl, because it’s difficult to blend yourself with the crowd if you’re carrying a lot of photographic gear with you.

So I think in the end I’m going to go with the 18-200 and 35 combo.
I’ll probably have to sacrifice something in term of quality, but nothing that can’t be corrected in post-production.
In the end what’s important is not to bring home pixel-perfect photos; what’s important is to take photos that really capture the essence of the places you’ve visited and it’s difficult to focus on that when you’re too busy deciding which lens you should use for each shot.

What do you think? what’s your favourite lens? what gear do you bring with you when traveling?

So one thing I’d like to do is to review the gear I try and tell you why I do/don’t bring it with me when traveling.
I’ll also couple my reviews with a 1-minute video review, because seeing is believing. Why 1 minute? because it’s less than 2 minutes! And nobody’s coming out with a 30-second review! ;)

The first review in this series is gonna be about what probably is my favourite piece of garment, so much that I decided to buy two: one for home and one for traveling.

The Etobicoke, by UK-based Finisterre, is the only jacket you’re going to need, and that is for a very simple reason: the insulating material, Primaloft, performs magnificently.
I’ve been in temperatures ranging from -10 degrees Celsius — with a very light fleece underneath — up to 20 degrees, without chilling nor sweating, and believe me, I sweat a lot, so it was a great achievement.

Moreover, the Etobicoke is water repellent, very light and thin which means it can be used as a mid-layer in even colder weather, and it packs small: when you don’t use it you can pack it in its own pocket and use it as a pillow.
As they put it: minimum weight for maximum warmth.

As much as I looked around I couldn’t find a comparable alternative and simply put, at £105, it’s a great deal.
At the moment it’s sold-out on their website, but if you send them an email — they’re all very kind gals and guys — you can pre-order one from the new collection which should ship shortly.

I might sound too enthusiastic, but I really like my Etobicokes and Finisterre is a brand I admire deeply: they make high quality garments, they innovate a lot and really take care of this planet — they donate 1% of their sales to environmental causes, use recycled materials and wool from ethically farmed sheep.
I like them so much I’ve got a whole bunch of their gear which I might review in the future.

As far as I’m concerned, you can’t go wrong with the Etobicoke — or anything from Finisterre actually.

And what is your favourite piece of gear? what is it that you can’t leave at home when embarking on a new trip?

The post I was supposed to publish today is actually ready, but you’ll have to wait till Monday to read it — I’m gonna publish a new post each Monday.
Meanwhile, you can read a post which I hope will help you decide to go out and see the World!

I used to write about everything which led to an archive with lots of confusion in it and no common thread. So I decided to scrap my archive from useless — and often pointless — posts and leave only what I felt had some gravy in it.
I’d also like to give a clearer direction to the blog so I’m going to focus on what, except from work, makes up most of my life: travel and photography.
I’m gonna focus on writing about travelling — destinations, tips and tricks, reports from my wanderings, etc. –, photography and life in general every now and then.

Why did I decide to focus on these two subjects you ask? because I’ve been passionate about travelling ever since I was a little kid.
I’ve always loved getting ready for a trip, packing, hopping on a plane/train; I’ve always had grand visions of myself going to remote places, meeting people from all over the World, tasting different foods and just enjoying this wonderful dusty planet. And as soon as I started earning some money, I started spending to go abroad.

Photography is a whole different story I must say as I’ve never been much of a photographer.
I often hear stories about this or that photographer who started snapping beautiful portraits and breathless landscapes at the age of 8. Not myself.

My first photograph was a Polaroid which was supposed to be a portrait of my mum and dad, instead, and I still don’t know how it happened, while I aimed at their faces, their feet magically appeared on the squared piece of Polaroid paper. I mean, their feet! it’s like as far as I could get from their faces!

Then came the time when I had to take photos of my school trips. Let’s say I’m quite ashamed to show them.
Out of focus, bad framing and composition, and sub-par quality — but that is to be blamed on the camera and film, right?

However something clicked in 2003: I wanted to learn how to take photos properly and decided to get a Canon 300D, the first consumer digital-SLR, if I remember correctly.
I started snapping photos and as time was passing by I managed to improve my skills.

Then I went to Nepal and Tibet in 2004 and there my passion for photography started to burn as hot as it could. I was hooked, I knew I wanted to visit the World and portray it in my photos.
I came back from Tibet and started looking for critiques. I showed my photos to people whom I respected and held dear to their opinions.

I moved from digital to film because I wanted to shoot B&W and bought a Nikon F3, a Yashica Mat124g and various cheap cameras off of eBay.
I started snapping roll after roll, always looking for ways to learn more; I read Ansel Adam’s books and various others’, and went to a lot of exhibitions to try and learn from the work of masters.

Fast forward to July 2008, when I was getting ready to leave for Peru and Ecuador.
I couldn’t decide whether I would be shooting film or digital, so I decided to buy a Nikon F4 and a Nikon D200, I would use both, trying to decide on the fly whether each photo would be better suited in colours or in B&W. The experience wasn’t painful, but I knew this setup was far from perfect.
When I came back I decided I would be moving to an all-digital setup: I think B&W is much better on film — especially the prints turn out much better –, but with Silver Efex Pro and a good printer I can make good B&W prints from digital as well.

In November of 2008 I organized my first exhibition. It was called Peruanos and portrayed some of the people I met while traveling around Peru.
I think it was a success: everybody loved it and I managed to sell enough prints to cover all the expenses — and as a first timer I made the error of spending a fortune on the prints and frames, believe me — and give some to UNICEF who was kind enough to give me their patronage.

I think I still have to learn a lot about photography, and as I do, I’d love to share my experience here.
I have a few projects, which will take me all around the World, I’d like to realize in the coming couple of years and I’ll share them with you as well.

Next up is a travel to an incredibly beautiful country at the end of October. However I’d rather not say where because it’s one of those places where you don’t want to attract any more attention than you deserve, but rest assured I’ll be back with lots of photos and hopefully another exhibition.

Just a quick note: I won’t stop writing about technology, but I’ll keep that to my company’s blog, which I think is a better fit.
Here I’ll keep it to travel and photography, hopefully with a regular schedule — I was thinking about twice weekly on Monday and Friday, let’s see if I can stick to it. :)

Best Books

This list includes books I’ve read this year, which weren’t necessarily released in 2007.

1. Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano
2. La Musica Sveglia il Tempo by Daniel Barenboim
3. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston

Best Albums

1. Lifeline by Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals
2. Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace by Foo Fighters
3. In Rainbows by Radiohead

Best Blogs

1. Swissmiss
2. uncov
3. Daring Fireball
4. Stacktrace.it
5. Music Milker ;)

Best Events

• Working on Wonsys full-time
• Being nominated for BusinessWeek’s Europe’s Young Entrepreneurs contest

But thanks to a suggestion from a friend, things changed recently: about three months ago I signed up on eMusic. Immediately thereafter, I signed up on Amie Street, too — which right now is my favourite source of new music. The first couple of days I was hypnotized: obsessively downloading songs and looking for new artists to put in my library. And things didn’t change much in the next weeks: I’m still obsessively looking for new artists! I can safely say thanks to those two websites I was able to fall in love with music again and the reason is there’s so much talent around, you just need to scout around a bit.

This newfound love for music, sparked an idea in my mind and in that of my partners: we should help spread the word on new talented artist, because there’s so much untapped potential on a website like Amie Street, so having someone help you find that potential could be of great use.

This is why we decided to create Music Milker, a blog where we post a new song every day. We also choose an artist we love every week and make him/her the Artist of the week, giving away free MP3s if the artist’s fine with it.

We’re trying very hard to spread the word on this new wave of beautiful music. So, if you’re in need of some new music to put on your MP3 player, go to Music Milker and tell me what you think about it.

A few days ago, I was contacted by a reporter for BusinessWeek who let me know I’d just been picked, along with 15 other very smart — and young — European entrepreneurs, to be voted for the Europe’s Young Entrepreneurs 2007 contest. I had to talk a bit about my ventures starting from 16bugs to what we’re doing now at Wonsys.

Sure enough I was and am ecstatic about it, and I’m really honoured to be included in that list. In my humble opinion Italy doesn’t pay much attention to its young entrepreneurs, so I’m glad I’ve been nominated and I feel a bit like I’m representing all of the young Italians who are trying to make it big. I’m not sure if I’m the best person to do it, but I’ll try my best at it.

Now you can have a look at the slide show…and feel free to vote for me at the end… ;)

As previously stated on this very blog, I feel university is pretty much useless — and mind you I’m referring to my field: computer engineering, but it could be easily applied to most fields –, unless you’re in it just for the piece of paper, which is what most people are in for, and which could be deemed as the culprit for university’s dullness.

The more I keep going to classes and doing exams, the more I realize how this is not helping me a lot.
There are people around me who are saying me university helps you open your mind, it teaches you how to have a method, but I can’t see it. How can I be taught something by mediocre professors that hardly seem to know what’s going on in the real World? most of the time they seem to be teaching for the sake of it, simply because they have to do it.
I happened to have a couple of good professors and I could really tell the difference, but the rest, don’t even get me started.

I don’t feel the need for the piece of paper, mainly for one reason: I’d rather starve doing my own thing than make a living of off someone else’s creature.
It might be a bad thing for me, but I can’t see myself being employed somewhere. As I said, I’d prefer being self-employed/running my own company and earning X/2 rather than working in some company I’ve got no say over and earning X*2 plus some stock options on the side. I’d feel nullified.
I’m no 9/5 guy — I can even do 7am/2am if I truly believe in what I’m doing — so I can’t imagine being seated at a desk doing some work I don’t care about and having to report to some obnoxious VP, or whatever.

Probably the best reason to go to university — I’m always talking about my field of study — is for networking, but that’s not true for every single university outthere.
Sure, if you go to Stanford, you’ll easily meet some smart guys who will probably end up making it big. But if you go to an average university, it’s a bit harder, there might be smart guys — haven’t met that many, myself, maybe one? –, but probably most will end up working in some big corp, maybe even becoming VP of put-serious-sounding-department-name-with-not-much-real-responsibilty-though-here, but that’ll be it, not much more. You won’t meet the next Larry & Sergey.

There are a few things I’d like to do in university, but none related to my field. For example, I love religions, even though I’m an atheist myself, so I’d like to get a Theology degree in the future. And this is just an example.

In the end, if you’re a smart and resourceful person, there’s not much a Computer Science (or similar) degree can give you, it might even get in your way. Why? because it might teach you to have a closed mentality — which is exactly the opposite of what, in my humble opinion, getting into university should do.

Guess I’m a bit frustrated, ha? ;)

We all know CDs cost money, software often costs LOTS of money, DVDs aren’t certainly cheap and on and on. Yet, this isn’t a good excuse to illegally download this stuff from the Internet.

Many of the people I know who download music, software or movies from P2P networks usually say to me they’re doing it because CDs are so expensive and they should cost less money, and Photoshop costs a lot, so it’s OK if I download it, and is Windows really for sale?
I might as well agree with them, but this is not a good reason to steal.

If you like something so much you’d like to have it, you should go out and buy it.
Is 15 Euro really that much for your favorite band’s latest CD? probably yes, even though I don’t think so.
If you think it’s not worth it, then you shouldn’t even listen to it, you should listen to something else.
I love music, so I’m happy to buy CDs and support bands I like.

No one says you HAVE TO listen to famous artists, there are lots of great artists out there that will be happy to have you download their music for free, who cares if they aren’t famous! Just go to MySpace or Purevolume or the PMN and you’ll see what I mean.
The same goes for software: you don’t want to spend the money to get Photoshop — I’m using Photoshop as an example as I think it’s the most pirated piece of software after Windows –, then don’t use it!

I’d love to have Photoshop and Illustrator, but I think, ATM, it’s not worth it for me to spend that much to get them. So I’m doing just fine with Photoshop Elements and Inkscape.
I know they’re not the same, but it’s fine, because the former is cheaper and the latter is open-source. And if I really felt like I needed the real deal, I’d take out the wallet and get a license.

Adobe is no non-profit organization: they’re here for the money, they’ve got shareholders. Why should they give away their software for free? or even for less than what it’s worth?
They really provide great value for money, if you think of it. The thing is everyone thinks they need the latest version of Photoshop because it will make him/her the best photographer on earth. Or Illustrator because then he/she’ll make outstanding logos with it.
Truth told: most of them will be just fine on one of the lighter and cheaper/free alternatives.

And it’s just the same for music. Most musicians do that for a living. They already earn a lot of money, you say? Sure, but that’s not a point.
If you steal one million dollars from Bill Gates he won’t even notice it, but would it be right? nope! Bill Gates earned his money, so there’s nothing you can do about it.
If you like an artist you should either support it and buy his/her music, or forget about it because, in the end, you don’t really care that much about it.

There are some who think it’s not right to sell software, music and other intangible things, because they’re not real, they’re something which can be reproduced an unlimited number of times, so there’s no real value. IMHO, that’s bullshit!
Think of the amount of work and money that goes into making a great album such as Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of The Moon, or an amazing app such as Adobe’s Photoshop. Those are efforts which are worth every single cent asked to buy them.

Let’s see a quick example: I’d love to get a Prius, but I don’t have the 25k Euro I need to buy one, does this entitle me to go out and steal one?
Using the same logic I could say: “Well, I think is not worth that much. It should be something like 10k. So it’s ok if I steal one, because in the end, they’re stealing our money asking that much for a car.”
And don’t say each car costs a lot to build just because you can touch every single part of it. Engineers that write code cost money and if you want to touch something you can go touch them and their families.

Overall, I think P2P can be quite helpful, too, because it allows you to try before you buy. You can listen to an album and decide that you like it and buy it. Or try an app and end up buying it, too.
But that should be it: download, try, buy or delete it.

And probably I’m not the best person to talk about it, because in the end I’ve got a bit of spare money I can spend on CDs, books, or software. But as with the Prius example, lack of money is no real excuse.
If the author is fine with giving his/her product away, then you’re free to enjoy it, otherwise you should respect the author’s decision and either pay or find an alternative.

In the end, if you find something useful and decide you need it, you should bite the bullet and pay for it.
For example, I definitely don’t like Windows, and I think it’s not worth the money Microsoft asks for it, but I needed it, so I bought a license.
Then again, feel free to do what you think is fair. :D

P.S.
To remain on topic, this post made me laugh out loud… :)

P.P.S. One thing software companies should do: provide more student discounts!