D. Motodays 2013, Motoclub Centurioni

2013-03-11T10:54:00.000+01:00

Con domenica 10 Marzo si è chiusa l'edizione 2013 di Motodays, il pre-primaverile salone della moto alla Fiera di Roma. Il Motoclub Centurioni era presente al padiglione 4, dove è stato possibile conoscere nuovi soci, incontrare gli amici che già conoscono e frequentano il Motoclub e, ancora una volta, è stato possibile ricevere la visita di Manuel Lucchese, campione del mondo Baja 2012, secondo degli Italiani nella classifica finale della Dakar 2013 e socio dei Centurioni.

Il Motoclub Centurioni a Motodays 2013

2013-03-10T11:29:00.000+01:00

Re-purpose ancient hardware - part 1

2012-04-22T11:03:00.000+02:00

An ancient Compaq Evo N115 is still working, however the concern is how: AMD Duron 1.2GHz processor, 64KB cache, 384MB RAM, 20GB hard drive, 13.3" 1024x768 TFT display ... manufactured some 10 years ago!

After some googling, I landed on the Webconverger page

The 450MB ISO image can either go to a USB stick or be burned to a CD; the boot is rather fast and takes you to the Webconverger registration page via the Iceweasel browser.

The concerned notebook is equipped with a RJ45 Ethernet jack, but the aim is to have it working on Wi-Fi by the means of a Netgear PC Card; unfortunately Webconverger does not seem to give the chance to personalise that much your setup.
The card works well with MS Windows drivers; my copies are stored here.

There is Puppy Linux derivative named BrowserLinux, a 93MB only Linux distribution, current version is 501.

There is an install-to-disk feature, but it has failed :( thus I keep the boot-from-CD coupled with the save-session feature; the latter saves a file on the hard drive (light encryption, at least, is recommended). Three re-boots are needed to have everything working: Firefox profile sync, Wi-Fi drivers working (download and save them somewhere in the hard disk, e.g. /mnt/home/home), Wi-Fi key stored. The re-purposed box boot is rather fast, navigation and (ordinary) page rendering are smooth, although Firefox version is 5.0.1 only.

Testing of some builds from susestudio are under way...

Grammar: The elements of style | The Economist

2011-07-30T10:42:00.001+02:00

Grammar: The elements of style | The Economist

From Frascati to Castelli Romani via Monti Lepini

2011-07-24T18:53:00.000+02:00

The route starts from the Cinecittà Studios heading straight to Frascati.

Indication along the road are decent and the road itself is very easy; once reached the surroundings of Cori, the landscape gets much nicer, full of olive trees and vineyards. The way up to Norma (SP Norbana) is the nicest piece of road, though too short.

Down from Norma and up to Sermoneta, a medieval village with a lovely view of the Pontina plain.

The way to Castelli Romani (e.g. Albano Laziale) is even easier along SS7 Appia.

View Frascati - Norma - Sermoneta - Castelli Romani in a larger map

What is your preferred encryption algorithm?

2011-03-01T16:49:00.000+01:00

Personas for Firefox | Betamotor

2011-02-14T11:27:00.000+01:00

Wear it from here.

openSUSE 11.4

2011-02-13T16:52:00.003+01:00

12 programming mistakes to avoid

2010-12-07T08:34:00.000+01:00

7 programming languages on the rise

2010-12-07T08:31:00.000+01:00

Yamaha 2011 line-up

2010-10-05T16:34:00.000+02:00

How to choose your new Android device

2010-09-20T20:40:00.000+02:00

Droidthing website offers you the chance to find an Android device upon your needs

Home page has a video clip on how to use the tool

Aprilia Dorsoduro 1200 - 2011

2010-09-16T11:58:00.000+02:00

Multi-display desktop

2010-09-11T14:21:00.000+02:00

Please, answer the following polls:

(Image source: www.sxc.hu)

Shoya Tomizawa, 1990 - 2010

2010-09-05T23:47:00.002+02:00

Brand new Gmail priority inbox

2010-08-31T10:52:00.000+02:00

The way of the Force against slideware killings

2010-08-29T14:43:00.001+02:00

The image below links you to a brief consideration

Then, take a careful look at

and read the article.

Key concept:
"If you have a large screen, use it to show visuals, not lines of text that remind you what to say. You do not have to use a screen, but if you do, use it to display visual information that illustrates or amplifies your message in the clearest way possible"

As a matter of facts, the Rebel Alliance managed to destroy the Death Star!

Remote computing: TeamViewer

2010-08-29T12:46:00.000+02:00

TeamViewer is a remote access software, free for non-commercial users. It allows:

remote administration and support;
file transfer between partner computers;
browser based access
to work behind firewalls

Security is granted via RSA private/public key exchange and AES (256 bit)encoding.
Supported platforms are:

MS Windows
MAC
Linux
iPhone/iPad

The software package can be downloaded from here (Linux page). Once done, run the installation software

MS Windows installation

Ubuntu 10.04 installation

OpenSUSE 11.3 installation

Installation steps are easy and documented, and OpenSUSE installation (i.e. RPM) it's even simpler.
Running TeamViewer provides you with an initial dialog showing an ID and a password for your actual session or asking you an ID of an already existing TeamViewer

Linux dialog

MS Windows dialog

By clicking the bottom right button, a further dialog opens for easier management of partners

TeamViewer signup page

Once registered and signed in

where connections can be very easily handled.

Ubuntu remotely by a Windows box and viceversa

Windows via TeamViewer web quick connection

Two Windows boxes remotely from an OpenSUSE 11.3 desktop

Generally speaking, TeamViewer works fine and performances seem (I haven't run any measurable test yet) a little better than LogMeIn, particularly, the Linux software is more stable, even though running under Wine

23707   Sl   12:04   0:25 c:\Program Files\TeamViewer\Version5\TeamViewer.exe
23774 Ss   12:04   0:10 /opt/teamviewer/teamviewer/5/wine/bin/wineserver
23777   Sl   12:04   0:00 C:\windows\system32\services.exe

Mozilla Firefox 4 has updated to beta 4

2010-08-29T10:31:00.000+02:00

Last night I left the browser open and it updated itself from beta 3 to beta 4, an automated feature introduced since beta 2. At the first sight, the change is the tab-bar moved up

Furthermore, a new button has appeared on the far right-hand side of the tab-bar giving the chance to re-organise your tabs

Firefox sync is now included by default, the number of supported languages has increased, and it still loads itself in a reasonable time, though Google Chrome seems to be a bit quicker.

Full changelist from beta 3 is here.

VirtualBox: beginner and intermediate guide

2010-08-29T10:21:00.000+02:00

VirtualBox is a virtualization product for the x86 architecture; started by Innotek, acquired by Sun and now maintained by Oracle.The software is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Lifehacker has a couple of nice pages to introduce and make you proficient with VirtualBox:

VirtualBox can be downloaded from here.

Several websites offer appliances for download: just google "virtualbox appliances"; the Sourceforge page looks interesting to me.

Android, FreeDOS, and LinuxMint on a OpenSUSE 11.3 desktop

Ducati factory out of SBK 2011

2010-08-28T12:40:00.000+02:00

Ducati will not take part in the 2011World Superbike championship with a factory team. The press release.

Loreena McKennitt - Huron ( Beltane Fire Dance )

2010-08-16T08:20:00.002+02:00

Top viruses in July 2010

2010-08-14T08:27:00.000+02:00

(Source ZoneAlarm by CheckPoint)

1. Trojan-Downloader.JS.Pegel.bp

Secretly downloads malicious script from a remote server, installs and redirects users to further malicious websites.

2. Exploit.Java.CVE-2010-0886.a

Allows attackers to download and execute arbitrary Java on vulnerable PCs by luring victims to malicious sites.

3. Trojan-Downloader.VBS.Agent.zs

Downloads and installs new versions of malicious programs, including Trojans and AdWare, on victim PCs.

4. AdWare.Win32.FunWeb.q

Displays unsolicited pop-up ads which do not appear to be relevant or associated with the user's browser sessions.

5. Exploit.JS.Agent.bab

Uses a Microsoft Internet Explorer vulnerability to silently install malicious software onto the user?s computer.

Conky and OpenSUSE (11.3) on a Plasma desktop

2010-08-13T10:10:00.001+02:00

Conky is a terribly light system monitor for X

Apart from its home, a good starting page is this one, and a helpful tutorial on how to arrange it on your desktop is here, though some further tricks are needed to have it working on your Plasma desktop enjoying transparencies (I surfed a while throughout the Web, so I regret I cannot mention all the pages, well not that many, I took hints from).

With OpenSUSE there is no need to hunt for the right package, download and install it, just open Yast2, type 'conky' and check it for installation.

Then copy the conky.conf file in /etc/conky/ to your home as .conkyrc and start editing it.

Initiate from the settings suggested in this page, but be sure to make these further changes in order to have conky stuck on your desktop, transparent and below all other windows

own_window yes

own_window_class conky-semi

own_window_type desktop

own_window_argb_visual yes 

particularly, the last one.

To have your Google Calendar within Conky, install gcalcli from Yast2; the gcalcli how-to wiki page is here.

More work is needed if you want also some weather information through the ConkyForecast python script.

Download the tarball from here;
Unpack it somewhere;
Rename its src folder as conkyforecast and give running permissions (755) to the conkyForecast script;
Copy conkyForecast.config to your home as .conkyForecast.config;
Now you need root privileges to move the conkyforecast folder to /usr/share/.

If your desktop is set to wallpaper slideshow, it would be smart to set shades to improve readability

default_outline_color white

default_shade_color black

draw_shades yes

What is still uncomfortable is enabling / disabling and external display during a session (I do it quite frequently): Conky runs in a window and as such is managed, therefore it could requires to kill Conky and restart it.

Whether you want to share the monitor with more computers, move .conkyrc, .conkyForecast.config, and .gcalclirc somewhere in your Dropbox account (remember to link them back in your home).

I have a Linux Mint box to test it, therefore I followed literally the Ubuntu steps for installation:

sudo apt-get install conky
gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

where the line deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/m-buck/ubuntu hardy main has been added;

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install conkyemail conkyforecast
sudo apt-get gcalcli

Once all the software is on-board, link .conkyrc, .conkyForecast.config, and .gcalclirc from the Dropbox folder to the home, and it works.

OpenSUSE 11.3 reviewed by Linux Journal

2010-08-11T23:18:00.000+02:00