Well, let’s start again.

Hi everybody! Here it is you beloved Luca that is writing from Belfast, the main city of Ulster.
Since I am between two jobs (I love this, because it seems that I had a salary before and I will one after. The fact is that I did not see the former one and the latter, who knows…), I accepted the kind proposal of a professor to spend a period at the University of Ulster. So, here we are!

Daisy on the sea

First of all, I want to assure you: Ireland is really green. I didn’t spend too much time around, the weather and the work kept me away from that. But, every single piece of land is covered by this greenish-so-irish grass. Even the flower are green! Ok, they are not, but the landscape is amazing anyway.

I will not bother you with my work, I just started to figure out what I can do in such short time and maybe I will later.
But, instead, I can describe you some places around here.

No, I am not living in the clock tower!

Currently, I am living in a small room, inside the Dalriada Student Village (check the map: the construction are so brand new that they are not in the map either!).

View A Week in Belfast in a larger map
The location is great, just 200m away from the sea, the Belfast Lough. It so close, that it is very nice to walk after lunch!

Unfortunately the weather is so-so. Cloudy, mostly, and a bit too cold for my taste. But, we are in the North, and I wear a very warm sweat (thank you mom!). And, if you are lucky enough you can have some cool surprise, like this:

Where does the rainbow end?

Yesterday, was my first attempt to smell the air downtown.
Took the train, just 15 min before arriving in the centre (or close-by). First thing todo: irish breakfast!

No, I am not hungry!

I am not so brave to take the Ulster Fry: “I’ll have a french toast and two pancakes, with maple syrup, please”. I did not realize my mistake until I saw the dish. My stomach is not used to this kind of breakfast, and I just decided to skip the lunch…
Definitively, I was not hungry anymore.

The only solution to digest was have walk.
The path to the City Hall was blessed by International Hope, lost people and market-church.

Hope is International

Beware the lost people!

Can you spot the market sign (this is not a church)?

Finally, I came to the City Hall! Usually it is free to visit, but not on Saturday…

The City Hall of Belfast

St. Anne Cathedral

The inside of St. Anne Cathedral

The french toast was still floating around, while I was walking in the Cathedral’s quarter. The St. Anne Cathedral is nice, even if it is quite new: it was finished in the 80′s. The column you can see in the image is the “Spire of Hope“, a questionable sculpture.
But the inside is very beautiful, and the silence is outstanding: I was hearing the noise of my camera…

Family time at "Belfast Taste and Music"

Today, Sunday, nothing is better than a sunny day at the Botanic Garden. I thought. Bad for me, today was the last day of “Belfast Taste and Music“. Looking at the website it sounds great: admission fee £5, lunch-token 50p (buy 10 for £5). What a great opportunity to catch two birds with one stone! The idea of the lunch-token is that you can taste dishes from many cooks in Belfast. What that is not said in the website is that most of the meal cost around 6-8 token.
This is the classical situation wherein it helps a lot have been studied CSP…
And the portions are awfully small! The music is ok, but this place is mostly for family, with kids.

Roses at the Belfast Botanic Garden

Ok, fair enough, the fair and festival are always a bit “unfair”. Fortunately, the rose garden is awesome, and the flowers are so beautiful…

Other roses at the Belfast Botanic Garden

So far so good. Belfast revealed very nice places. It is not really outstanding, but I barely scratched the surface and there is time to impress me

Thank you and see you next week, destination Giant’s Causeway!

A week in Belfast – 1 is a post from: 'cipicchia!

RoboCup 2010 - The Final (copyright by Reuters)

Long time claimed, but impossible to demonstrate. With these words could have been described the goal scored by CHITA team to CMU (Carnagie Mellon).

Long story made short. During last RoboCup, in the match won by CMU, our team scored a goal from our half-field by using back-kick. The video is unavailable, inexplicably the CMU guy claimed: “I did not record that…”.

We believed that the proof of our moment of glory was gone forever, buried just in our memory.
But we believe in Internet! And, finally we have the proof!

“I’ve never seen back-kick scoring like this in real soccer,” he said after one of his robots found the net with a spectacular back-heel against a team from Carnegie Mellon University of the United States.

Read the complete article for discover the identity of the one!

(btw the source is reliable, is nevertheless the “Reuters“)

Scoring a back-kick is worthless… is a post from: 'cipicchia!

We will start the official competition on Monday, and that means we have still time to be better!
Our first test against Nao Devils was quite a mess: the behaviour was ok, but it has a critical bug preventing a good playing.
We fixed this, so next time we will play better, but they can fix bugs too…
BTW, do not worry, I believe we can made it.. LA VINCIAMO!!!!

Now, it is time to go to bed… but stay tuned for another update tomorrow (if I will survive to the humidity…)
AH! For those of you are eager to know the results, point your browser here…
Let’s go win SPQR!

News from the RoboCup 2010 is a post from: 'cipicchia!

The schedule are already on the net, check it out here.

Now, I have a plane to catch, so… see you on the other side of the world!

Ready to go! is a post from: 'cipicchia!

This year the SPQR team will join the UChile team to become the “CHITA hominids”.
As you can wonder, CHITA comes from CHIle + ITAly = CHITA.

So… here it is the 2010 logo:

The CHITA RoboCup logo

As I was telling you before, this year design is based on this logo. The shirt will be by “Fruit of the Loom” like these.
There will be some change in the colour (last year we had red-shirt, but the ball is red too, so…) and here it is some draft.
Tips’n'tricks: for a larger view, click here

Pick up your choice!

WARNING: there are two slightly different design: inset (D,H,I) and filled (the other). Vote your below (multiple choices are allowed)!

It’s that time of the year… is a post from: 'cipicchia!

Istanbul is a beautiful city. We arrived yesterday, and we took just a little peek.
The skyline is full of spike like this:

The Istanbul skyline

Crossing the Galata bridge, many fishermen cheer us up:

The fishermen on the Galata Bridge

After the bridge, we experienced the Turkish way of selling stuff: many many merchants, with all oriental things you can imagine and more.
The Spicy Bazaar is a pleasure for the eyes, but it is also a good way to literary smell the ancient Orient:

The spice pyramids at the Spicy Bazaar

There are many of this pyramid of spicy things (I cannot name them all). And there are also some very good shops (recommended by Obama!):

Recommended by Obama!

We pass by the Hagia Sofia square, and since it was closed, we went to the Blue Mosque:

The Blue Mosque

It is simply amazing. I’ve never been into a mosque before, it truly has some mystic power inside (even if you are not a believer):

Believe it or not?

The interior as, of course, gorgeous:

The ceiling of the Blue Mosque

The exterior are very simple, but the sunset makes them really magic:

The internal court of the Blue Mosque

After another peek at the Hagia Sofia back (really!):

The Hagia Sofia

we came back to the hotel, by the same bridge: the gorgeous sunset let me take this:

The Istanbul skyline at the sunset

Today the weather was not so good, and even if we went on top of the Galata tower, the pictures are not even close to the reality:

Istanbul downtown from the Galata tower

The gorgeous view from the top of the tower is really amazing, I wish I have more days to come back during the sunset!

Now, I just hope Friday (my day off) will be a great day…

A day in Instanbul is a post from: 'cipicchia!

Google goes Topeka

Why such thing? Well, they launched a fiber optics experiment, and Topeka changed its name in March as “Google, Kansas, the capital city of fiber optics“.

So, it seems they did a surprise to us, but I guess that people there they have their reason. Maybe, there are also some hidden reason here what it the day today?, but who knows what will happen in the future.
As the time goes by, we will see if Google Topeka will be right!
Let’s go Topeka then!

No Way! Google changed its name! is a post from: 'cipicchia!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Avatar 2: reloaded is a post from: 'cipicchia!

A key moment of the Open finals

What happen to the SPQR team? Well, the first two matches were quite bad, bad colour calibration, bad behaviours and some integration trouble.
The last one was actually quite good. Everything we developed so far was integrated and working. The colour calibration was redone and the overall behaviour was somehow the expected one.
Unfortunately we lost at the penalty kicks: our robot reached the ball, but for a bug in the code never kicked the ball.
Too bad for a team that worked every day trying to do its best. The newcomers were a little bit frustrated by this debacle, but I know that this could be a chance to do a better job.

And there will be a good occasion to prove our value very soon: our team will participate to the 1st RoboCup Tournment in Greece, held on May.
Thus, fellas, let’s back to work and let’s win the prize!

and the winner is…. is a post from: 'cipicchia!

Thursday 18th

• 9:00 – 9:30 Opening ceremony
• 10:00 – 11:00 Practice matches for TV
• 11:00 – 12:00 Practice matches for schools
• 15:00 – 18:00 Round robin

Friday 19th

• 10:00 – 11:30 Round robin
• 12:00 – 14:00 Lunch time
• 14:00 – 15:00 Round robin

Saturday 20th

• to be decided: Semi-finals
• to be decided: Finals
• 12:30 Ending ceremony

The teams were grouped in these pools:

Pool A		Pool B
A1	Nao Team Humboldt	B1	SpiTeam
A2	MetroSpelBots	B2	SPQR (Cheetah)
A3	Kouretes	B3	Les Trois Mousquetaires (L3M)
A4	Austrian-Kangaroos	B4	Los Hidalgos

Finally, here there are the round robin:

I will keep you posted about the results. Hope to see there!

Mediterranean Open – Official Schedule is a post from: 'cipicchia!