Project Symphony

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2011-04-22T11:22:00.003+02:00

long time no post
yesterday was so memorable i needed to record it somewhere

- i had breakfast with my parents
- i was able to add an input format to bino
- i was able to make a Siano SMS1140 tuner working (needed this file renamed as dvb_nova_12mhz_b0.inp)
- i was able to change the fuse for my car plug that blew two weeks ago
- i was able to change one light lamp of my car

\o/

vimeo rocks

2011-01-14T09:57:00.003+01:00

So i decided to post my videos on Vimeo, with english subtitles

Attesa - http://vimeo.com/18759147
Ulysses' Syndrome - http://vimeo.com/18763331
Out of order - http://vimeo.com/18765477

and to celebrate this move, here is my first timelapse

Waiting for light

Waiting for light from Vittorio Giovara on Vimeo.

glBegin to vertex arrays

2010-11-21T03:34:00.003+01:00

So even though i already did some conversions from opengl to opengles, i cannot remember what and how i did! here is a little reminder

glBegin( GL_QUADS );
glTexCoord2i(0, 0);
glVertex3f( 0-(ButtonSprites[index].Width/2), 0-(ButtonSprites[index].Height/2), 0 );

glTexCoord2i(1, 0);
glVertex3f( 0+(ButtonSprites[index].Width/2), 0-(ButtonSprites[index].Height/2), 0 );

glTexCoord2i(1, 1);
glVertex3f( 0+(ButtonSprites[index].Width/2), 0+(ButtonSprites[index].Height/2), 0 );

glTexCoord2i(0, 1);
glVertex3f( 0-(ButtonSprites[index].Width/2), 0+(ButtonSprites[index].Height/2), 0 );
glEnd();

get converted into

int numvertices = 4;
glEnableClientState( GL_VERTEX_ARRAY ); // Enable Vertex Arrays
glEnableClientState( GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY ); // Enable Texture Coord Arrays

float* vertices= new float[3*numvertices]; //3 coordiantes per vertex
float* textcoord= new float[2*numvertices]; //2 texture coordiantes per vertex

//fill in your array of vertices and texture coordinates with data
textcoord[0] = 0;
textcoord[1] = 0;
textcoord[2] = 1;
textcoord[3] = 0;
textcoord[4] = 1;
textcoord[5] = 1;
textcoord[6] = 0;
textcoord[7] = 1;

vertices[0] = -(ButtonSprites[index].Width/2);
vertices[1] = -(ButtonSprites[index].Height/2);
vertices[2] = 0;
vertices[3] = (ButtonSprites[index].Width/2);
vertices[4] = -(ButtonSprites[index].Height/2);
vertices[5] = 0;
vertices[6] = (ButtonSprites[index].Width/2);
vertices[7] = (ButtonSprites[index].Height/2);
vertices[8] = 0;
vertices[9] = -(ButtonSprites[index].Width/2);
vertices[10] = (ButtonSprites[index].Height/2);
vertices[11] = 0;

glVertexPointer( 3, GL_FLOAT, 0, vertices ); // Set The Vertex Pointer To Vertex Data
glTexCoordPointer( 2, GL_FLOAT, 0, textcoord ); // Set The Vertex Pointer To TexCoord Data

glDrawArrays( GL_TRIANGLE_FAN, 0, numvertices ); //Draw the vertices

we made it! Hedgewars on AppStore

2010-09-16T23:17:00.004+02:00

FINALLY!
After almost 1 year of work, the porting is done!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hedgewars/id391234866?mt=8
man what a load of work! but i feel proud now :D

some of the reactions:
burp: wee!
burp: awesome
Smaxx: apple doesn't grant proper credit to me
Smaxx: let's call the fsf
Tiy: \o/
Tiy: \o\o\o\o
Tiy: o/o/o/o/

good job guys

Tibia time!

2010-02-14T22:04:00.000+01:00

http://www.scribd.com/doc/26852990/Characterization-of-Technological-Processes
http://www.scribd.com/doc/26852984/Microonde
http://www.scribd.com/doc/26852982/Metodi-Numerici-per-Sistemi-Differenziali
http://www.scribd.com/doc/26852980/Certificazione-e-Standard-nei-Sistemi-di-Telecomunicazioni

what else to add? 4 new docs from Tibia! Nice work

so my thesis is up

2010-02-07T22:30:00.002+01:00

Parallel and Distributed Programming on Low Latency Clusters

aaand it's finally here! the latest and hopefully last thesis i'll have to write is finally public!
You can download it, read it, shred it, enjoy it, burn it, copy it as long as you quote the author and the source!

How to compile SDL_Mixer for the iPhone

2009-12-16T04:08:00.010+01:00

So this is a question that has popped up more than once in SDL mailing list, so I decided to give my contribution to the howto-documentation. If you're looking for Ogg or MP3 decoders this is your guide; unfortunately i couldn't make it compile with MIDI support.

First: open the XCode.tar.gz archive in the SDL_mixer sources, and load the project file in Xcode.
Second: go the project preferences and modify the base sdk and architecture like in the pictureOf course you can choose a lower sdk, i successfully compiled the library for iphone 2.0. Once in the main windows again choose the "Static Library" from the Active Target list.
Third: Expand the Targets label on the left and double click on Static Library; this will show the specific target options. Select the Preprocessor macros doubleclicking it and modify it by removing MID_MUSIC, MOD_MUSIC and USE_NATIVE_MIDI and add __IPHONEOS__ definition.

Fourth: One last step, remove native_midi_macosx.c from the Compile Sources list in your Static Library target and the library is ready! It's compile time!

Sound great doesn't it? However here is bad news: for our application to correcly load OGG file (and most likely mp3 as well but i haven't tested it) we'll need another library to correctly link the various ogg functions. Don't worry, I'll guide you!

We have two options:
1- we can download ogg and vorbis and compile them from command line, set up the dependencies between the two, fix the paths and so on... if you're eager to try the command line is this:
< ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/iphone --host=arm-apple-darwin --enable-static=yes --enable-shared=no CC=/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/arm-apple-darwin9-gcc-4.2.1 CFLAGS="-pipe -mdynamic-no-pic -std=c99 -Wno-trigraphs -fpascal-strings -fasm-blocks -O2 -Wreturn-type -Wunused-variable -fmessage-length=0 -fvisibility=hidden -miphoneos-version-min=3.1 -gdwarf-2 -I/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.1.sdk/usr/include/libxml2 -isysroot /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.1.sdk" CPP=/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/cpp AR=/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/ar LDFLAGS="-isysroot /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.1.sdk -Wl,-dead_strip -miphoneos-version-min=3.1" >
2- we can simply use Tremor, which is an ogg implementation designed for memory constrained device with only integer operations: perfect for the iphone!
It comes bundled in another project, Cocos2d, a great framework for games. If you download it and select the libvorbis target, you will get a single decoding library statically linked for the iphone. It's compile time again!

Place both libraries in the Frameworks folder of your application and... Enjoy your ogg audio on the iphone!
Please drop a comment for critics and suggestions (and appreciations too :) )
Vittorio

So i've adhered to TNES campaign -- The New Exposé Sucks

2009-12-10T16:50:00.002+01:00

well the title says it all...
i really really really DON'T like new Exposé features under Snow Leopard.

i could stand the WOW SO APPEALING elecritic blue for the glow... some guys like blue, i too like blue, but under the windows? glowing? a blue rectangle of BLUE color popping out when the windows are placing? not on my watch...
anyways you can change it easily so it's not a big deal

what really drives me crazy is something that itook a little to realize: the windows placement!
OH _ MY _ GOD _ (in blue)
what effect is that? all windows in a grid? where is the piece of art effect that would resize and place the windows according to their positions? am i running a compiz plugin? is that some rejected Windoze effect that somehow got in Snow Leopard sources?

i couldn't believe my eyes! Luckily then i found some scientific grounds to understand WHY i wasn't really liking the new exposè: it has to do with usability and feel experience, read more on these two posts
http://www.loyalmoses.com/2009/08/snow-leopards-expose-bad/
http://www.indextwo.com/bring-back-the-old-expose/

and so i've officially joined the anti-new-exposé campaign (all blue) and i hope that you join it too! To participate, just write some lines here http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html telling 'em how much you dislike the new exposé and want an option to bring the old one back!

let's hope in a future service pack... whoops i meant software update!

New Xcode and New provisioning sk..ript

2009-12-09T02:23:00.002+01:00

So i like the new Xcode 3.2, but i liked the provisioning skip more in previous versions...

Anyways this is the method i tried and it (miracously) worked
http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-tools-utilities/20983-sdk-3-0-xcode-3-1-3-build-go-jailbroken-device-4.html#post129492

beware that python is indentation-sensitive so you have to carefully copy the script to make it work

Vittorio

docs and news

2009-11-19T05:45:00.003+01:00

besides the usual links for the stuff hosted on scribd

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22741568/Telecommunication-Electronics
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22741277/slides-Microprocessor-Based-Systems-48-32-bit-division-algorithm-flow-chart
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22740990/Elettronica-Applicata

we also have great news! Due to popular deman of nobody, all the slides published on Scribd will be ALSO published on SlideShare, to achieve maximum visibility!

http://www.slideshare.net/ProjectSymphony

here is the new outstanding link! don't worry we'll keep both upload systems -- older slides have been uploaded to slideshare and kept on scribd -- newer slides will be published on both!

Enjoy it fully!!!
Vittorio

BEWARE of Nintendo DS FAKES

2009-11-12T14:55:00.002+01:00

Pay lot of attention when purchasing a Nintendo DS videogame on Internet, eBay in particular... if the price is too good to be true, it's most likely a fraud.
The general advice is that everything that comes from china/hongkong is fake, that is, is a pirated version of the game built in mocked up ds cartrige. While it is true that 99% of what comes from those places is fake, importers can bring faked games worldwide, so geographic scanning is a no go.

There are ways to tell if a gamecard is fake (http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/DS/feature.asp?c=2191) but untill the game is arrived you have no way to determine it.

Well no more, thanks to the DSi!
In fact the dsi has shrunk a little its slot, so that good games can enter, but fake ones cannot!
So every fake ds game on ebay will have "for DS/DSL but not DSi"

GOTCHA! IF YOU SEE THAT WARNING STAY AWAY FROM THAT AUCTION

Vittorio

another xcode goody

2009-11-07T00:39:00.003+01:00

Xcode is a really good IDE and you never end to delve into his internals!
Today i have found how syntax highlighting works! Every type of language has its own syntax definitions and its own file where such definition is specified.

ALL files are found here

/Developer/Library/PrivateFrameworks/XcodeEdit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/

The syntax for the syntax (all puns intended) is quite symple and quite commented considering that they're internal files.

by tweaking the Pascal syntax file specification i was able to fix a nasty glitch that was affecting the single line comments present in FreePascal files -- a // comment was ignored by the syntax highlighter and printed in black, while as a comment should be printed in green (colors may vary according to configurations)

Add

"xcode.lang.comment.singleline",

at line 101 of file Pascal.xlangspec to fix the glitch!

There might be more fun in tweaking these files (or bricking xcode) but i simply hadn't time to dedicate! If you know other tweaks post them in the comments!

Vittorio

Hedgewars 0.9.12 released!

2009-10-18T22:05:00.006+02:00

Let's deepen into Mac developing

Today a new version of hedgewars has been released!
You can find the big changelog in the website homepage, but i wanted to give some insights on the exclusive mac development.

M3 Install Controller
This is a neat feature, for new users of the Mac world, that helps Hedgewars installation. New users in fact tend not to know about what a diskimage really is and so they may be tempted to run it directly from the diskimage. Luckily Hedgewars runs fine even on the diskimage (other programs do not) but it'd be better if the application were run from the hard disk.

Now i've added this controller (available at this site) to the sources and when you run Hedgewars from the diskimage here's what you get:

pretty neat huh?

Sparkle Framework
The Sparkle framework is one of the most well known application helpers for the mac world! Many famouse programs use it (Adium is the first that comes into my mind) because it makes it very easy to include an autoupdater feature to you application! It's free, opensource and quite customizable! Now when the next release is out, you'll be prompted to install it; Sparkle will download and update Hedgewars in a matter of clicks.

I can't show you the image because there is not yet any updates, but i can assure you it rocks!

Optimizations!
One of the hidden features of the new release is that we've added compilation time optimizations! Faster executables thanks to the -O2 flag! However mac users, thanks to the single type of processor installed (intel) we can enable even more efficient optimization, that couldn't have been enabled in other cases (because of the different and wider processor environment).

Stay tuned for 0.9.13 for which i have other interesting "exclusive" features to add!
bye
Vittorio

yet again, another sdk update with provisioning skip

2009-09-25T03:50:00.002+02:00

Welcome back from (my) holidays, rather long this year!

A lot of updates have been published and new stuff is being put forward at constant rate!
However some things never change, both in life and in software!

For example, the way to skip provisioning file with the new iphone firmware, is the same as described here: http://iphonesdkdev.blogspot.com/2009/06/use-xcode-312-to-build-sdk-30-app-to-30.html

isn't that nice? :)
cya later in this year
Vittorio

oh well, SWARM patch for gcc4 will be for you only then

2009-08-18T23:27:00.003+02:00

i really hate when abandoned software remains abandoned even if patches are sent for bugfixes and stuff! You'd just need to apply it, check it doesn't break anything and publish the new release! then you could continue keeping your software abandoned

SWARM is a SoftWare ARM emulator - nice idea - too bad that doesn't compile cleanly with new gcc4! i wrote a patch for updating all non-standard C++ apis and succeeded in having it compiled with modern compilers!
you can guess that the patch was completely ignored! i didn't expect full credit on the homepage but at least a "hey thanks, but not interested" or something!

since i don't like my work to be wasted i'm posting the patch here, hoping that other poor guys that have to use it can at least have it compiled on their own machine (instead of a virtual machine as slug as hell like i ended up)

enjoy

what do phone assistance lines have against me???

2009-07-20T10:03:00.004+02:00

I don't know, maybe I sound rude on the phone, or maybe i just have bad luck, but every time I have to deal with phone lines for assistance I never get what i want, or i have to wait indefinetely for very simple tasks!

let me show you three examples from my life, one ended, one in couse and one future

Nintendo Odissey
one of my Wiimotes breaks down and i send it for repairs under warranty; they misteriously lost a SIGNED package and refuse to give it back to me! I spent on the phone almost as twice as the value of a brand new Wiimote because I called Nintendo assistance almost 3 times a week for a WHOLE YEAR!!! They claimed that their lab never received anything and most likely i wasn't worth a repair... i ended up mailing the consumer defence association and the repair company directly begging for my poor wiimote...
in the end they sent it back without saying anything or being sorry

The missing bite
i sent my first gen aluminium iMac for a check up and for a silly problem they switched me to a more noisy second generation iMac... this is almost my fault but the funny part begins with the refund for the AppleCare on that iMac: since a couple of years in Europe you just need a (very long) single code to send money between banks and this has simplified things a lot! However, assistance wanted a further code (the SWIFT or BIC) that i didn't have, but actually i didn't want to give because there's no real need for it! What really set me angry is that they asked me for it only after three months after request for refund! Couldn't they tell me they needed it right away???
in the end i found the code, email them, but the person charge for handling my refund moved department, so i have to return to level 1 support (which mean more time waste to get what i want)

Click and run
i subscribed for a deagostini course and every month had to pay a given sum; after some time i didn't like the course any more and thought that by not paying they'd stop sending me useless stuff. That was very dumb of me, because i ended up in having to pay other three issues... I was even dumber in believing that paying all three in a single solution (instead of three single payments) would save me time, but it appears that they haven't found my money order in their records! So now i have to send the receipt by fax and hope for the best

Conclusion
well they're all very silly problems and nothing i should really worry about, but these events tend to rise your need of daily blood in general, as temptation to kill is maximum when you end the call. You can see how near to the solution but are forced to stay away from it for very stupid problems; and when you win your case, you always feel a bitter taste for all the time you've wasted!

PS
i'm posting here all the details i was able to gather about my nintendo case! I hope they might be useful if they someone gets in similar problems

servicetrade -- via palù, 36040 grumolo delle abbadesse (VI)
fax: 0444 263520 / 0444 263540
tel: 0444 263511 / 0444 263544
mail: info@stitaly.it
person in charge: margaret / EMTS
links: http://www.stitaly.it/ http://www.emtscenter.it/azienda/contatti.asp?lingua=it
nintendo info: 199191199
nintendi service: 199309067

PPS
Have a nice summer :)
Vittorio

Xcode template madness

2009-07-05T00:20:00.004+02:00

so today i wanted to order a little the list of Xcode templates, as user templates normally are placed in random locations: some in the preferences, some in the user library and so on

this is the list were both the standard templates and the user templates are
/Developer/Library/Xcode/Project Templates
/Library/Application Support/Apple/Developer Tools/Project Templates
~/Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode/Project Templates/
/Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode/Project Templates/
/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Project Templates

you can move templates where you like them

some docs

2009-06-30T17:07:00.002+02:00

a quick post to advertize new docs by Tibia!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16959893/Controlli-Automatici
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16959904/Introduzione-allAnalisi-in-TempoFrequenza
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16959906/Sistemi-Elettronici-Digitali

plus a little gift from me, the slides of my final thesis
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16959927/slides-Parallel-and-Distributed-Computing-on-Low-Latency-Clusters

Hedgewars on the iPhone?? perhaps one day...

2009-06-14T20:56:00.001+02:00

Let me first clarify that the blog posts across the internet claiming that an iPhone version is "near completion" are nowhere near the truth!

In fact the idea of porting the game originally started one year ago, but was soon dismissed because of lack of manpower/equipment. Everything remained silent until i joined development and i was proposed to resume developing the iPhone version; i was shocked by this because i never did anything with the iPhone and my SDL/Pascal was (and still is) very limited! However i received so much help by unC0Rr, nemo, tiy and many other people at #hedgewars that all together we managed to pull something off! With a lot of patience and trial&error, here's what we've got so far:

What we're showing now is a very BASIC demo, running in the iPhone simulator! The code compiles fine and graphics too, but there is still no support for audio and no way to control the game. This is where current development is at the moment, but now you can rest assured that you'll see one iPhone version of your favourite game in the future!!!

animals yet again

2009-06-08T03:27:00.001+02:00

yummy, inserito originariamente da Vittorio's.

from the USA trip set, i've updated the animals set with the squirrels!!
http://picasaweb.google.com/vittorio.giovara/USATripAnimali#

second shot

2009-05-30T05:15:00.001+02:00

lovin' tree, inserito originariamente da Vittorio's.

bird album is ready!
where's the bird in this photo? in the lower left corner!
ok it should have gone into the tree ones, but i like the blur behind the tree

http://picasaweb.google.com/vittorio.giovara/USATripAnimals
enjoy

and we're back

2009-05-28T18:39:00.001+02:00

addams hotel, inserito originariamente da Vittorio's.

from our tour in the USA!
I'll be publishing slots of photos as soon as i finish sorting them!
As always, the best one on flickr and the album on picasa!

I'll pick one (more) "best" shots from flickr and post it here!

stay tuned
Vittorio

the WHOLE SDL libraries availalbe for the iPhone

2009-04-20T23:21:00.005+02:00

So i have been toying with this toolchain lately... i must say that i'm constantly surpised by Xcode power! it's something that you have to get used to, but once there it can almost whatever you want!

anyways, i am in the middle of porting a certain game from a normal Mac framework to a iPhone/iPod Touch device! Most of the stuff is already there, like the Pascal compiler, but the main libraries are missing!

I'm talking about SDL, but after some thinkering i got everything done! Here is what i did after checking out every repository

SDL
well this was the easiest, porting this lib started in a past google SoC and they did a pretty good job. To get the lib it's sufficient to unpack the Xcode_iPhone.tar.gz and press "build".

SDL_net
this one wasn't particuarly difficult, as it required just a correct configuration in the Xcode.tar.gz project. In the project settings, set the Base SDK to Device - iPhoneOS (or Simulator according to your needs) and Architectures to Standard.

SDL_ttf
i had to google a little to get this done: ttf is built exactly as SDL_net, but all the applications built with it are hard depending on libfreetype. Of course this library is available for the iphone, but it's difficult to configure it correctly. Luckily i read this site which clearly explained what to do; include that file in your application frameworks and add the -lz flag to the linker options, and you are done!

SDL_image
the hardest of all, just because the svn repository was out of date! In fact there's this guy who did a neat job for introducing a native support for png, jpeg etc instead of third party libraries. His patches were accepted in mainstream, but the iphone project in the repo has not been updated and can't compile!!! I emailed sdl-list but got no reply... for now it's sufficient to download his updated package and compile from it.

SDL_mixer
this was not as easy as net but i guess that porting for this project has yet to start. For the moment i got a working library just by removing all the native_midi_mac stuff, as it's the only part that relies on a framework which is not present in the iPhone. I didn't need any midi support, so i was satisfied with it already.
Beware that while simulation will give no problems, there's an issue for the device! In fact the simluator is likely to load the ogg functions from the shared libs of the system, but since ogg is nowere in the iphone, we have to provide our own!
so let's grab libvorbis and libogg and compile them the same way we compiled libfreetype; i had some problems with the paths when compiling libvorbis, due to the macports installations. I resolved by placing the arm version of libogg.a into the lib directory of macports (/opt/local/lib) and creating a symlink to it named libogg.dylib. Obviously make backups so you can restore your installation!

Now that you know what to do, you can keep updated the freely available versions that i compiled! they are the latest revision... of today! If something doesn't work complain with the SDL guys! I do hope that by the 1.3 release, SDL for iPhone will become officially supported

click here to download all the libraries, both for the simulator and for the device (debug version obv)

DOWNLOAD HERE

if you find them useful, drop a comment here, it'll mean that my work is appreciated :)
Vittorio

CMake configuration for Universal Binaries

2009-04-18T02:57:00.009+02:00

So since i committed my partecipation in Hedgewars development, i wanted to support as many platform as i could

... and i ended up deploying only for Intel Leopards

why? well not that hedgewars can't compile on tiger (at least after a patch from mischi) or in powerpc environment is just that i couldn't set a working configuration for it! For quite a long time Qt was compiled statically which helped in reducing the number of relocated libraries, but forbidding any universal build
moreover the "Build once, Deploy everywhere" from Qt was not working even when i switched to the standard sdk!

At last, today I have found where was the problem! CMAKE
it appears that setting -arch ppc -arch i386 in the CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS flag has no effect! you have to specifically set the following two

-DCMAKE_OSX_SYSROOT="/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/"
-DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="ppc;i386"

and before issuing make

export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.4

Beware that using Carbon API from Tiger will slow down a bit execution on Leopard! for this reason i think it might be better to add an Intel-only Leopard optimized release of the software, since the new version of QT (4.5) supports Cocoa natively (which actually speeded up loading times.

I hope this helps desperate developers trying to support as many architecture as possible!
if you want to know more, follow this link, where it's explained how to include even additional configurations.

Vittorio

Hedgewars 0.9.10 available

2009-04-13T19:12:00.004+02:00

Hey guys, after much work, the new version of Hedgewars is finally available!
It seems i have been added to the developers list and that's really rewarding :)

the changelog is really long but the part that i've contributed most is

The game now officially works on windows, linux and mac!

Hedgewars is now a 100% cross platform game! w00t!!!!

Copies have just been uploaded, grab them while they're hot http://www.hedgewars.org/download.html

the biggest Scribd upload you'll ever see

2009-03-17T00:14:00.002+01:00

so what now? this is not the usual Scribd advertisement!
we've got 6 (and i repeat _SIX_) new documents for your pleasure

Fault Tolerance
Video Encoding
Low-pass Filter
Laboratory Experience
Radiofrequency Devices
Custom Instruction

all top notch quality! Authors include Matteo Ainardi, Matteo Bosio, Salvatore Campione, Vittorio Giovara, Alberto Grand, Fabio Margaglia and last but not least Alberto Tibaldi (plus other minor contributors)

autocompletion always on

2009-02-09T22:05:00.003+01:00

i like yahoo services and i believe that always relying on one company only (like google) is wrong both for privacy and competition

one of the downsides of yahoo systems is that authentication is set not to allow autocompletion! It's true that it asks the password only once every 15 days but it might be annoying when you often delete your cookies

i've just deleted my cookies after 4 months and now i decided to fix this: a quick google and solution found in the ubuntu forums

basically you can

install a greasemonkey script: http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/images/AllowPasswordRemembering.user.js
install a firefox addon http://forum.addonsmirror.net/index.php?showtopic=621

i choose for the greasemonkey one because what it does is really simple (just turns on the 'autocompletion=off' field)

old habits

2009-01-31T00:09:00.003+01:00

so you thought that the old times for publishing was over? WRONG
we just didn't have anything to publish! Now things returned as they were some times ago, so enjoy as usual

http://www.scribd.com/doc/11529432/Elettronica-Analogica
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11529138/RealTime-Operating-Systems-Homework-Report
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11529067/RealTime-Operating-Systems-Laboratory-Report
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11528182/GLEMiPS-Compiler-Requisites

Vitto

yay first page

2009-01-28T23:21:00.003+01:00

ok this is rather old news but i wanted to put it in this blog all the same

the efforts i put for getting a testing bundle package of the hedegwars game were recognized and i was cited in the front page as "cool contributor" yay!

go hedge team!!

ps if you want to try the mac bundle of version 0.9.9 you can! the link is hidden somewhere in the general discussion forum! just take in consideration that it's still in testing

HEDGEWARS finally compiles on Mac OS X

2009-01-13T00:57:00.003+01:00

Hi all!
I believe that Hedgewars is really a neat game and i'm sure it will increasly become more popular with such development pace.

I really like the development choices like QT4 and cmake because with them it's really easy to port to several archs.
In fact the linux and windows builds are there and work fine! What about MacOSX?

i've seen many others in the forums asking this question and so i started looking at the problem, making up my mind that i had to find it!

It was a long night, but completely worth it :)
The problem is at the linking stage for the final hwengine executable! the freepasacal compiler seems to forget every library path that was configured; so with a small modification we finally get the mac executable!

LETS START

1 - download and install MacPorts from www.macports.org to the default install dir

2 - from a Terminal, install all the necessary software

sudo port install qt4-mac libsdl libsdl_mixer libsdl_image libsdl_ttf libsdl_net cmake

it is a rather long procedure, manly due to qt framework; if you're an impatient guy there are some builds around (like these)

i also installed SDL (and all its friends) from the SDL homepage (http://www.libsdl.org/) just to be on the safe side... i don't know whether they're compulsory or not

3 - unpack the hedgewars source and run this command

cmake ../hedgewars-src-0.9.8 -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-O2" -DQT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE=/opt/local/bin/qmake-mac -Wno-dev -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

if you like, you can change the default install location by setting -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX and -DDATA_INSTALL_DIR

4 - before running make, you have to modify the following file: CMakeFiles/hwengine.dir/build.make, so open it and find the line that invokes the freepascal compiler

mine was like this
/usr/local/bin/fpc -B -FE../bin -Cs2000000 -vwi -O2 /(path-to-sources)/hedgewars-src-0.9.8/hedgewars/hwengine.dpr

you just have to add -Fl/opt/local/lib at the end, like
/usr/local/bin/fpc -B -FE../bin -Cs2000000 -vwi -O2 /(path-to-sources)/hedgewars-src-0.9.8/hedgewars/hwengine.dpr -Fl/opt/local/lib

5 - run make and sudo make install

6 - PLAY!!! just open terminal and write hedgewars

it's rather long for an install procedure but it really works :)
right now i'm working on the bundle archive, but i believe it'll take from me more than i thought

i hope that someone can find it useful :)
(and that the dev correct the workaround at 4)

Vitto

bridge river

2008-11-09T15:24:00.001+01:00

bridge river, inserito originariamente da Vittorio's Photos.

wow, it appears that i managed to shoot a nice pic this time!
unbelievable :p

Flickr

2008-11-08T22:39:00.001+01:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Grenoble gallery + contest

2008-10-21T08:36:00.003+02:00

Finally the new album is online!
http://picasaweb.google.com/vittorio.giovara/ViaggioAGrenoble#
it contins some pictures i took while visiting Grenoble, in south France! We paid off some our collegues that went studying in this city!
The trip could have gone better, but some pics are nice enough to be view :)

Moreover one of those pictures is taking place in a contest of digital photography: http://community.corsofotodigitale.it/photo/photo/show?id=2175136%3APhoto%3A447185
ok maybe it's not a first class contest, but it's nice to join competition sometimes!
so visit this site and please vote!!! :)

Vittorio

New year, New art

2008-09-25T03:03:00.004+02:00

hi all!
yes i've finally returned back from my holidays, relaxing but way too short!
I started my last year of school just a week ago, but it feels i've been there forever... wait a sec, i HAVE been there all that time :-D

anyway, during this period i fully exploited my SLR Canon and after some training i managed to get some presentable photos! I put some on Flickr and i'll put complete albums in picasa: that's how i intend to organize my "artistic" stuff

Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/vittoriog/ : best shots only
Picasa - http://picasaweb.google.com/vittorio.giovara : complete albums
DeviantArt - http://tanukichu.deviantart.com/gallery/ : drawings (if there will be any)

have a look at them :)
Vittorio

GLX 1.0 is out and that means... HOLIDAY!!!

2008-08-05T15:51:00.002+02:00

yep it's incredible, but it's here

the rewritten, quick and "dual core" DLX processor has finally reached the world!
ok it's not really dual core, but there are two execution paths, implementig the Very Long Instruction Word support.

For this processor a full physical design has been carried out, which you can find in the source archive.

Now that this processor has been completed, it's finally time for some holiday!!!
No more school untill september! yay!

Vittorio

Some pure old Mac fun

2008-07-29T03:59:00.006+02:00

So i'm basically worn out of all these projects to hand out, and after an entire day completing the before last report, i've decided to take some free time and play with my Mac

I was so happy with the results that i want to share them with you all

1. Open in Terminal
Sometimes you're browsing with Finder and you find yourself in a relative long path; then you realize that you need to use a shell command on a file in that far away folder! oh the pain!
Open Terminal helps you with this task: if you move it to the application bar it will open a terminal in the folder selected/dragged/present in Finder! it comes with a contexual menu as well!

The only drawback is that it uses horrible icons, but you can change them and use these ones (follow the instructions reported) which are OpenTerminalHere ones

Open Terminal is much quickier than the other "open-here" apps because goes in the background, consuming no more than a Dashboard widget (but it works also without it, and it's alwasy a little faster than the others)

2. Open from Terminal
Here I'm reporting two tricks for when you are in the Terminal
The first one follows the above one: you can create an alias for calling the Open Terminal script that cds to the Finder active folder

alias cdf='eval `osascript /Applications/Utilities/OpenTerminal.app/Contents/Resources/Scripts/OpenTerminal.scpt `'

Put that line in your ~/.profile file and you're done (if you want to use it right away do source ~/.profile)
The second one is for opening the folder of where you are right now (in the Terminal)

open .

really that simple! open is a Mac utility that call the associated application for opening the what is given as argument, very useful; so if you "open file.txt" it will start TexEdit!

3. Cd Up
Last trick for the Terminal: when you are in a very long path (in Macs this happens often) if you go in another folder by mistake, you have to write the whole path again!
However if you put this simple line

alias up='cd "`env | grep OLDPWD | cut -f 2 -d =`" '

in your ~/.profile, you can return to your previous location just by calling up
This works also for any Linux distro :)

4. View in FullScreen
This is a nice AppleScript that opens a Finder Window in full screen in CoverFlow mode!
Very nice, but lacks of a nice icon! Fortunately you can use the lselect one found before.

5. Quicklook for source text files
So as i work mostly with VHDL, i wanted to have a way to have a quick preview of the source file, just like any other .c or .java file!

Well this is possible and it's also rather easy: inspired by this hint i started looking in every Info.plist files until i found the right one! The XCode one!

You just need to perform these simple steps and you'll be able to use Quicklook for .vhd and practically any other text file format.

open /Developer/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Info.plist
go to line 1439
insert a line like vhd (replace vhd with the extension you need, i also added .dat and .cmm, but these two don't get highlighted)
save the file and touch the application (touch /Developer/Applications/Xcode.app) to update the preference contents
run a sudo qlmanage -r to restart the Quicklook daemon

6. X11 shorcuts like Mac shortcuts
Well, one of the reasons X11 is denigrated so much is that it has different cut/paste/save shortcuts, no drag and drop and different copy buffers

However this can be resolved very easily: just create a ~/.xmodmap file containg

keycode 63 = Control_L
keycode 60 = Alt_L
keycode 66 = Alt_L
clear mod1
clear Control
add mod1 = Alt_L
add Control = Control_L

In this way Copy and Paste will work like in Mac native apps, Cmd+c and Cmd+v, and all the shortcuts which required Control, will run with Cmd instead!

Well enough fun for now :)
It's time to go back working on GLX
Vittorio

3k-cc BETA 1 released

2008-07-25T15:36:00.002+02:00

After almost a month of waiting, it is finally here!
the compiler for the GLE-MiPS family of custom processor!!!! download here!

it is written in Java using JFlex and CUP and it is released as a beta as there might be some akward unexpected condition (have mercy, it was done writing at 6,30 in the morning!)

you know the site
http://gle-mips.googlecode.com

Our newest author with HTML5 paper and slides

2008-07-21T03:52:00.002+02:00

Welcome to Alberto Trivero, our new ProjectSymphony author!
He's made to the author level with two interesting computer security documents

they are about HTML5 sheets, explaining the new client storage capability of browser and how to abuse of them :)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4012693/Abusing-HTML-5-Structured-Clientside-Storage
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4012743/slides-Abusing-HTML-5-Structured-Clientside-Storage
doc and slides

good job Alberto
Vittorio

GLE-MiPS 1.2 - with Pentium4 Technology

2008-07-20T17:33:00.004+02:00

A new version of your favourite process has been released today!
The main news is that the adder is now implemented with a Sparse Tree Adder scheme, the same one found in Pentium4 cpus

subsequently all the modules that used an adder (like the multiplier) have been optimized, while simpler modules that didn't need such a complicated device retained their ripple-carry-adder scheme.

Here is the changelog:

adder now uses a Sparse Tree adder scheme
testbench included by default
ROM revisions
optimizations for modules using adders

You can download the source code here

http://gle-mips.googlecode.com/
Vittorio

QUATTRO 1.0 is out!

2008-07-14T21:09:00.002+02:00

And here we have QUATTRO
a new microprocessor design for small embedded systems!

With only 4 bit data, it features a shunk down instruction set of GLE-MiPS 1.1 (from which all the code derived)
with such small amount of speed we can gather a nice 120 MHz processor, big only a few transistors (synthesizes completely on a Spartan 3)

You can grab the code here
and visit the renewed version of the site

http://gle-mips.googlecode.com/

Expect some lines for documentation soon :)
Vittorio

GLE-MiPS 1.1

2008-07-04T23:45:00.008+02:00

First revision of the stable release! some improvements here and there but the central update is for the multiplier which now explicitly uses the Booth Algorithm

here is the source and the changelog

multiplier uses explicitly the booth algorithm
control unit revision
instruction decode and main architecture cleanup
register and multiplexer coding reviewed
bugfix in the comparator

http://gle-mips.googlecode.com/

Vittorio

upside down Webcams? here is the solution for Linux!

2008-06-25T15:07:00.003+02:00

Here i'm posting a resolution for a tedious problem that is affecting many laptops in the world!

Some laptops come with an upside down webcam, physically speaking!
then the windows driver takes care of repositioning the stream in the correct position, but this doesn't apply to linux drivers!

Luckily for all of linux people, we've found a solution: one of mine Linux padwan that goes by the name of Marco Argiolas lost sleep to overcome this problem (having just bought a laptop with such nice feature)! He tried every possible howto, many tutorials and suggestions, but what left in the end was to dive in the sourcecode of the driver and patching for it to work!

well, he actually succeeded! now, any upside down webcam using the uvc driver can see it right! he posted the patch to the devel mailing list, but while the devs approve it, you can follow his tutorial at ubuntu forums
in english or
in italian

i'll keep you posted with updates
in the meantime, many compliments to Marco ;)

Vittorio

GLE-MiPS stable and lots of documents!!!

2008-06-20T00:47:00.004+02:00

And we finally got it to the STABLE!!!
this project has been already awarded with a fantastic 30/30 mark (equivalent to an A)!!!

grab it here!

and if you are looking for documentation, we have two options:
either the wiki page at googlecode's
or the scribd pubblication

in any case, i hope you find it useful :)

while on the subject of cpu, i'm also posting a report of an (unsuccessuful) project of testing the cache in OpenSPARC T1 processor; it proved quite too hard for us and so we had to stop at a certain degree
however it might be useful for people involved in research like this
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3494208/Testing-of-the-Cache-Memory-in-the-OpenSPARC-T1
written by Matteo Ainardi, Matteo Bosio, Salvatore Campione, Vittorio Giovara and Alberto Grand

while speaking of documents, i also found out why some documents in Scribd were seen just as like they were printed by Gutenberg himself! It's all cause of the T1 font encoding, that even if may result more pleasant in file version, caused several glitches with the online view! Now all the affected documents (basically this one, this and this) are corrected

Firefox Download Day

2008-06-17T14:48:00.003+02:00

Could we mess such an event???

Today is Firefox Download Day! Help this browser enter the Guinness Record!!!

official link
discuss in twitter

Tiba overload!!!

2008-06-10T23:35:00.005+02:00

And while one of our documents has reached the Hot List for (no particular reason :D)

our great and only Tibia provides us with 3, and i say THREE, new documents

what to say...
very very very good job :)

GLE-MiPS - second beta beta!

2008-06-02T16:20:00.004+02:00

and we made it to the second beta!
Just after a couple of days we've managed to add

64 bits extension
integer modulo/division
data cache implementation

I must point out that the 64-bit extension is partial, because it is just an addon to the current 32bits architecture; so for now it is useful only for working on 64bits numbers and nothing else.
For the data cache there is a very strict size constrain as it requires several thousands of flip flops and most synthetisors can't handle such big numbers.

So, if you want to take a peek at the source, grab it here!

GLE-MiPS - reaching beta!

2008-05-31T02:43:00.005+02:00

hi all!
I'm pleased to announce that the project has reached the BETA status!
It should work as the blueprints says, but i need to thoroghly test it!

if you want to check it out it's here.

the good news now is that there are many fellow students who like this project and are quite willing to help!
Moreover we're forming a group for building a compiler of an Assembly-like language for this processor! So it appears that the project might be something successful in the end...

let's hope so
Vittorio

Second Project: GLE-MiPS

2008-05-27T00:54:00.006+02:00

Well, it's time to start another project, this time a little more serious!

we have to design a fully working MIPS-like processor!
After weeks of hard work finally we arrive to a very alpha stage... that means one thing: publishing!!! it's OpenSource obviously!

so i set up a google code account and stasted svnning! if you litterally check out, do

svn checkout http://gle-mips.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gle-mips

if you want to browse the source (and help me find bugs btw :D) you can have a look here!

http://gle-mips.googlecode.com

be careful that this is still very alpha, and not ready for submission anywhere; the single modules work, but the whole processor needs to be tested (heavily tested i might say)

that's all for now!
Vittorio

OpenSSL is hot!

2008-05-25T14:58:00.007+02:00

Wow! it appears that my document of some time ago
OpenSSL - User Manual and Data Format
has made it to the hot list of Scribd!
http://www.scribd.com/browse

well i'm excited, it's the first time something like that happens!!!
I might consider reworking on it (as soon as i complete this semester projects)

thanks a lot to whoever viewed and liked this document!
Vittorio

The three betas of my life

2008-05-08T20:01:00.003+02:00

ok today i litterally had a cut to some of my lifestyles (namely my hair)
so i took the occasion to go somewhat extreme with the current sowftware i had installed!

by a strange stroke of luck 3 new betas of popular software was released out today

Open Office 3 - native support for Intel Aqua Macs
VMWare Fusion 2 - Unity support for Linux guests (partial)
Firefox 3 - native support for Aqua Macs (and a lot of other stuff)

ok the last was hasn't really come out today but as i said i wanted to go a little extreme with new stuff and firefox2 was giving me some headache (dunno why)

the use of the Aqua interface for ooo3 and ff3 is really one big hit and you can actually feel the increased perfomance boost! Unitiy in VMware is still a little buggy but it can work fine and gives hope that linux support will be carried on by the vmware team!

with all these betas installed i feel like living some months forwards :D

Some software engineering

2008-04-29T21:18:00.004+02:00

Here is the set of slides i had to write for the software engineering course.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2701182/slides-Misra-C-Software-Development-Standard
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2701328/slides-Software-Requirements-for-SafetyRelated-Systems

perfomed in latex beamer
hope you like it :)

JPEG 2000 vs H.264 -- FIGHT!

2008-04-21T01:07:00.006+02:00

here is the Video Communication project from our dear Vittorio Picco and fresh Giacomo Campieri from the telecomunication team!

They thoroughly analized two very popular compression format, jpeg2000 and h264, providing several images as example.

check it out!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2581731/H264AVC-intra-coding-and-JPEG-2000-comparison?ga_uploads=1

Presenting some slides

2008-04-17T23:15:00.005+02:00

Right in the middle of our exams, here we provide you the mithical slides we used for presenting our works from previous times!

About Computer Systems Security
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2563498/slides-OpenSSL-User-Manual-and-Data-Format
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2563466/slides-Block-Cipher-Modes-of-Operation-and-CMAC-for-Authentication
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2563436/slides-Authenticated-Encryption-GCM-CCM

and one we forgot to upload about the famous division algorithm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2563434/slides-MicroprocessorBased-Systems-4832bit-division-algorithm-

all in pdf so you can read them anywhere without problems ;)
more to come in the following weeks
bye for now!

20s boot

2008-04-04T22:48:00.005+02:00

Finally i had some time to play with Gentoo on the Toshiba M200 i bought from the USA.
this time i wanted to tune every possible bit of the kernel in order to obtain a quickest boot as possible! i seem to have managed to fullfill my plans!

here is a couple of hints i can share (some of them might a little bit risky)

first of all, i tried to make the kernel as small as possible, totally moduable a very little built in! i believe there's now only the pci, ide, generic x86 istructions and the root fs support, while all the rest gets loaded at boot.
to know which modules are absolutely necessary, take a look at the udev printing! move all the modules it loads to /etc/modules.autoload/kernel-2.6 and then disable the RC_COLDPLUG variable in /etc/conf.d/rc.
while in /etc/conf.d/rc you can also set the PARALLEL stuff in order to speed up services starting, but it's not very effective
i shrunk the root partition so that the checkroot service will take much less time for controlling the filesystem. While here i also modded the init script to hdparm the drive before performing the scan.

Well that's more or less what i tried to do, and everything seems to work fine!
next target: create an initramfs to load the modules for an even faster boot :)

Howto install KILE on Mac OS X natively

2008-03-24T22:39:00.012+01:00

Mission: install Kile on Mac OS X, natively, no X11 emulation

Even though kde4 made me reconsider positively the gnome desktop environment, the aspect i like most is the possibility of installing kde apps on non linux systems!

and one of the aspects i love of mac is that almost any linux program can be installed!
However when you use a lot a program it can become annoying that you have to run X11 first, then start the app from command line and in the end you get a program not very well integrated with the system.

So i though i could compile the necessary libs for installing my favourite kde application: KILE
which for me is the _best_ latex editor.
You can use it with X11 all the way, but if you want more, follow this guide.

0. The easy way
There is a shortcut to almost all the procedure described, that is, download and install the snapshots of Racoon Fink and compile kile like in section 3; however the svn versions usually work better when they are all svn, mixing version may produce unexpected surprises.

So if you want the quick (so to speak since you're gonna download ~3GB from torrents) and easy way follow the guide located here and proceed to section 3; for the bravest of you out there continue reading.
If you wish, you can test both methods on the same machine as they won't interfere.

1. Requirements
If you want the latest release of kde, you are very brave, or you want to learn something, this is the right path!

1.1 Fink
So first of all you need fink http://www.finkproject.org/ which is a nice easy and clean way to obtain all the basic dependecies we need. As a general rule, when you're missing some program or lib, just type

fink install

and you are ready to go!
I'm not covering how to install fink (because it is really simple) nor which dependency you actually need (because i don't know, as i believe i've installed almost any packet fink offers :P) [but you can see here some hints]

1.2 QT (updated)
Then you surely need QT-4.4, which recently exited beta, any previous version won't work. To make things easier you can directly take the qt-copy package, a patched version of qt for compatibility with KDE.

So obtain the patches from svn with

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/qt-copy/

Access the directory and then compile and install
./configure  -dbus-linked -no-accessibility -no-qt3support -optimized-qmake -no-3dnow -qt-gif -release -prefix /opt/qt4.4 -openssl
make
sudo make install
I put quite parameters trying to tweak performance a little bit. If you want to go in details:

-dbus-linked is needed by latest release, or kdelibs will complain
-no-accessibility since we're install qt for kile we can set this off, but it can be useful for some other applications
-no-qt3support as qt3 works with X11 only, it's something we can deactivate
-optimized-qmake should turn on some random optimizations
-no-3dnow only available in AMD cpu
-qt-gif was present in the official guide, so it shouldn't be harmful :P
-release removes unnecessary debug symbols (don't do this if you want to develop on the qt!)
-prefix /opt/qt4.4 i want third party stuff installed in /opt to resemble a Linux fs :)
-openssl for some strange reasons, kdelibs won't start compiling if openssl not enabled in this way

1.3 CMake
One last requirement is CMake (>2.7) that you can obtain with the following commands
(if asked for a password type "cmake")cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@www.cmake.org:/cvsroot/CMake login
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@www.cmake.org:/cvsroot/CMake co CMake
and compile as usualcd CMake
./configure --prefix=/opt/kde4-deps-svn
make
sudo make install
2. Installing KDE4
You need a couple of packets before we can install kile: kdelibs, kdepimlibs and kdebase.
Optionally you can install kdesupport which contains soprano, strigi and some other dependency we might need later.

One important step is to configure correctly the necessary environment variables.
As a minimum you need to do
export PATH="/opt/qt4.4/bin:/opt/kde4-svn/bin:/opt/kde4-deps-svn/bin:/opt/fink/bin:$PATH"
export CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/kde4-deps-svn/lib:/opt/fink/lib"
export CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH="/opt/kde4-deps-svn/include:/opt/fink/include"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/opt/qt4.4/lib/"
(i installed fink in /opt/fink, change your variables accordingly)

1.1 kdelibs
For me kdelibs was the most difficult part of the whole process because for some reason it did not compile easily;
however after some checkouts later it did compile with no problems.
As usual perform
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdelibs
and in the same directory where you run that command
mkdir kdelibs.build
because cmake wants to build stuff in a separate folder from the source and the .build will keep spotlight indexing away.
Now runcd kdelibs.build
cmake ../kdelibs -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/kde4-svn -Wno-dev -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
sudo make install
1.2 kdepimslibs
Then the other parts are quite straightforward, apart some dependecy missing.
So let's fix them first: do
fink install gpgme11 boost1.33
while the rest is just like beforesvn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdepimlibs
mkdir kdepimlibs.build
cd kdepimlibs.build
cmake ../kdepimlibs -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/kde4-svn -Wno-dev -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
sudo make install
1.2 kdebase
This one was a little tricky because for a bug it says Blitz is missing while in reality it wants qimageblitz!
If you installed kdesupport you should already have this, but for all the others, do
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/kdesupport/qimageblitz
mkdir qimageblitz.build
cd qimageblitz.build
cmake ../qimageblitz -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/kde4-deps-svn -Wno-dev -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
sudo make install
Note that this is being installed in the -deps folder; if you want to use the whole kdesupport, remember to install it there!
For those who didn't install kdesupport, remember that strigi and soprano are required for this packet!
Now we can install our nice kdebase, the last requirement for Kile! We don't need it whole, just the runtime and optionally the apps part!
Just perform
svn checkout svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdebase
mkdir kdebase-runtime.build
cd kdebase-runtime.build
cmake ../kdebase/runtime -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/kde4-svn -Wno-dev -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
sudo make install
cd ..
mkdir kdebase-apps.build
cd kdebase-apps.build
cmake ../kdebase/apps -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/kde4-svn -Wno-dev -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
sudo make install
and you can successfully proceed to step 3!

3. Kile, finally!
Now that we've got everything we need, we can happy download and install Kile natively, without X11 emulation!
The svn reported on the website is for the stable branch, we're going to need something more extreme!
Obtain the source fromsvn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/extragear/office/kile
and compile it like you did with every packet till nowmkdir kile.build
cd kile.build
cmake ../kile -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/kde4-svn -Wno-dev -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
sudo make install
Now go to /opt/kde4-svn/bin and there you will find your Kile app, ready to be run!
You can move it into the Application folder  to get along with the other apps and use this nice icon to flavor it up!

4. Be happy (almost)
We're done! we have our favourite app running natively on our computers!
Wait something is missing! The quickbuild & co. don't seem to work!
Yep that's because mac are a little different from linux apps and it's more difficult to set up a correct environment for them!

But do not worry! there is a solution for anything!
Download and install Platypus from here. This tool is a wrapper for mac application to behave like real bsd programs!
I'll describe the simple step to make our kile fully running, for more information, visit the site at the end of this guide.

Open Platypus, give a name to the application (namely, Kile), select Shell script type and choose a new Script Path.
In the editor that appears you have to write your path you have set in the everyday bash (echo $PATH)  and the command line call for kile.
Since we're going to use this script for launching kile i suggest you move the Kile app in the Application folder to somewhere you don't visit often,
like Utilities/TeX (at least, that's were i put it mine).
Now write in the editor#!/bin/bash

export PATH="(your path here)"

/Applications/Utilities/TeX/Kile.app/Contents/MacOS/kile 
ans press Save. Now, before clicking Create, select the option "Runs in background" so we won't have the script icon hanging in the Dock.

All done! Click Create, put a nice icon to the script (the one of before) and here we go!
A fully working Kile editor!
Remember that there's still some tuning to do, like setting the Preview application instead of kpdf, but after compiling half kde
i'm sure you're willing to perform this last step :)


Hope you enjoyed this little guide and if you liked it, you can publish it anywhere you want as long as you link it here!
If you find some errors or don't like something, please contact me or leave a comment!

PS
Credits: here is the two guides i took most of for writing mine
http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Getting_Started/Build/KDE4
http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Getting_Started/Build/KDE4/Mac_OS_X
http://macresearch.org/command_line_tutorial_part_i_native_mac_apps_for_command_line_tools

documents documents and documents

2008-02-20T22:07:00.005+01:00

ahh the exams session has finished FINALLY
and i can publish all the stuff i wrote

let's start with the big one
Techniques and Solutions for Storage Encryption
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2095558/Techniques-and-Solutions-for-Storage-Encryption
for the Computer System Security course: it concerns with current and available implementation of the modern storage encryption technology, presenting some benchmark test for performance impact.

other homework reports

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2095506/Digital-Systems-Design-Homework-Report
my homework report for the Digital Systems Design

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2095407/MicroprocessorBased-Systems-4832bit-division-algorithm
previouse homework of Microprocessor-Based Systems, team with Alberto Grand

and then we have a bunch of homework essay by my classmates! happy reading
by Alberto Grand
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2096981/Intrusion-Detection-and-Prevention-Systems
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2096937/Block-Cipher-Modes-of-Operation-and-CMAC-for-Authentication
by Vittorio Picco
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2097000/Secure-Sockets-Layer-for-Virtual-Private-Networks
by Vittorio Picco and Lorenzo Peraldo
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2096960/Authenticated-Encryption-GCM-CCM
by Lorenzo Peraldo
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2097169/AntiSpam-Techniques

Peer guardian 2 and Nintendo WFC

2008-01-03T23:27:00.003+01:00

while in christmas holidays i had time to play with the Nintendo WFC!
I set up my mac airport, share the network connection and configure the dhcp (actually this was the most difficult part)
It didn't work! the AP was found and everything but i continuously got disconnected!
And the wifi was working as i tested the connection with programs like SvSIP (fantastic) and DSorganize browser

Then i remember that i'm behind a gateway in which is installed peer guardian 2 (privacy is important) and that poor guy is blocking the outgoing connections!
Apart from discovering that the WFC service make numerous connections to foreing server, like
GameSpy (nomina sunt consequentia rerum)
IGN Entertainment
Nintendo Of America Inc (well, that's ok)
and a couple of others, all this connections are required for the WFC to work, and so we have to allow them!
the problem is that nintendo servers are quite a lot! luckily there's this one guy, "fakhir" from the Phoenix Labs, who took the list of all the nintendo services and put it in one file, updated as soon as new servers are discovered

you have to add this url: http://mirror.thesynapse.org/phoenixlabs/lists/nintendo.php
into the Allow list and things will start working!

actually for me it didn't work completely, because i had to add a range of ip server from ign (from 207.38.8.28 to 207.38.11.11), but I'm sure they'll get them added in the list quite soon!

happy new year btw :)

and from Tibia too!

2007-12-22T15:22:00.001+01:00

wait, there is more!
Alberto Tibaldi (nick'd Tibia) wants to give you his own special christmas gift!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/928448/Fisica-dei-Materiali-per-lElettronica

I'm not even sure on how to translate it, anyway it's about electronical and physical stuff, so way out of my bounds :P
but it should be foundamental to anyone who's studying those subjects! the doc is very well written, fluent, coherent and with lots of formulas!

enjoy :)

just before Christmas

2007-12-20T22:40:00.002+01:00

and here i am yet again!
this time with Christmas gift for everyone!

for the studying guys, i finally completed the OpenSSL - User Manual and Data Format and published to Scribd as usual! Actually i did so some days ago, but they were preliminary versions of the document! so here is where you can learn all about openssl digests and ciphers (sort of)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/915895/OpenSSL-User-Manual-and-Data-Format

for the cinema guys, i wanted you to enjoy this special short about the Ulysses' Syndrome! Originally it should have been done with the guys of the first short, but then we realized that it was too big for us! so we put it off and started something else (that eventually turned up even worse). Later on i met some very skilled people with whom i was able to complete the short!
At any rate, before calling off this project, we shot some scenes with the guys of the first short, and one particular sequence of disastrous events was awfully funny!

and here it is! enjoy :D

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

some Latex finally!

2007-12-08T01:23:00.001+01:00

so finally i have time and will to upload some stuff about the previous courses!
and this time we used Latex for writing documents (proud reason 1) and moreover we wrote in English (proud reason 2) so everyone will be able to understand our docs!

Alberto Grand was my group partner this time and we worked together for both the tasks pubblished (and i must say we made a pretty good team)!

so here we go with the documents:

Information Theory and Codes - Link
This file is the public (and clean) version of two different homeworks about Information Theory first, and Coding Application second. They were very nice to do as they allowed to understand many unclear stuff of the course, moreover the professor (Michele Elia) was very kind and helpful to us.

Computer Architecture: SnARM - a Snake game implementation for ARM - Link
And this second file describes the implentation details and general instructions for our version of the Snake game developed for an embedded ARM board (more specifically it was a NXP LPC2292). It was fantastic to develop the code and test it directly on the embedded system and the result was pretty satisfactorly! The professor (Matteo Sonza Reorda) liked our project very much and so we thought maybe it could be useful for other people to see our work, expecially for the display handling

Remember that this file is distrubuted with a Attribution, Noncommercial, ShareAlike Creative Common licence (you can read what this means here: link to licence)
so fetch the files here: http://quicklook.altervista.org/stuff/snarm.zip
(i'm borrowing some space from the quicklook site :P)

what now? months and months of silence? well probably yes, but don't worry!
next time, i'm going to speak about OpenSSL ;)

Quicklook Plugin Database - The first project

2007-11-27T22:16:00.001+01:00

yo! that's been quite a while since i had time (and will) to post!
in the meantime my Mac has finally arrived and I already had time to play with it a little!
Actually I had some problems with it at first because i got a defective iMac, the ones with random screen freezes, and i had some troubles to install the fix (basically i didn't know how)
However after a completely new format and reinstall like the WW (tm) that is the "Windows Way (tm)" everything run swiftly!

So now, after i've played with some of the new functionalities of Leopard i really liked the QuickLook function! It may seem useless at first but after you come to use it you really find it necessary! and one of its main feature is the plugin expandability (plain html)
however i noted that no site was fetching the plugins developed and that files were just scattered on the web! So what shall we do? here:

http://quicklook.altervista.org

yep, that a site, coherently made with iWeb :D
I chose the template since for now they are very few (only 5 were listed) but i plan to use mysql and other stuff to make it more interactive along with the number of plugins available!
This post title is "the first project" because it's an original intent for Project Symphony: a collection of eterogenous works that cohexist like in a symphony!

Ulysses' Syndrome

2007-11-05T19:04:00.001+01:00

Hey there! I'm celebrating the good result of the first exam of the master publishing the short movie I directed last summer (actually the shots were took in summer 2006 but we could only edit them in summer 2007)

This is Ulysses' Syndrome! happy watching!

stay tuned for the backstage :D

Happy B!

2007-10-26T23:19:00.001+02:00

Happy Birthday!!! 22 years! yay!

oh, btw Lopard is out

Mac Os X Leopard to be released on October, 26

2007-10-16T21:05:00.001+02:00

After so much rumor and logn wait, the newest Mac OS is finally going to arrive!

26 October 2007

and this is what i call destiny!

the 26 October is my birthday!

it's a sign that bounds me to buying a Mac!!!
actually it's a present for my degree, but I wanted to wait for Leopard to come out
and I think I've done a good choice :)

Integral and differential operations over multiple variables

2007-09-29T19:24:00.001+02:00

Wow that's quite a post title, isn't it?
Well the content of what I'm going to show is none the less!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/340006/Calcolo-Differenziale-ed-Integrale-in-piu-variabili

My dear Alberto Tibaldi has provided his wonderful collection of notes of a course of Mathematics!
In particular, this essay regards (as the title says) integral and differential operations over multiple variables with lots of demonstrations and examples.
As usal everything edited with LaTeX. Great job Tibia!

Always sync your RAID, but don't forget BACKUP

2007-09-27T03:01:00.001+02:00

Welcome Back!
Yes I finally returned active after a bit of happenings that occurred me!
As I returned from the holidays I wasn't at all greeted by my pc since Windows decided that 65536 colours were too much for me and believed I just needed 4.
Also my Nec 1760VM LCD monitor presented his letter of resignation since it's getting old (5 years) and now it needs some time after receiving a video signal to warm up.
My linux partition was the only one happy to see me! Thanks Beryl!!!

Anyway just some days ago an horrible accident happened, as i removed one hd cable while cleaning the inside of the case, and that drive was part of a RAID 5 device. I put off resyncing with the other discs but after one or two reboots also another drive was out of sync and the controller (an Adaptec 2810) couldn't activate the raid any more!
In a nutshell, a 750GB drive failure!

I recovered a couple of files from part of the drives with R-Studio and File Scavenger but there was nothing to do since they couldn't detect where a stripe ended and another started! In fact i was able to restore just very small files not bigger than the stripe size!
Luckily I have a disc backup of my short movies, I published online my thesis and my best pics are on deviantArt; so there weren't too many "impossible" files, except for 2 unpublished ads I liked and captured (and which I SHOULD have uploaded to youtube, argh) and some captured videos i don't know if I still have on tape...

The lesson is: even if you have a RAID array of infinite disk with multiple redundancy or with an anti-voodoo course, always do BACKUP. In fact I was caught off guard because i tought that my raid would never let me down, and so i skipped doing backups!

Trying to look on the bright side, now that all my documents are gone, I don't have any .doc or .xls files! So i don't need m$ Office anymore (very nice thing since it appears that Excel 2007 is not able of calculating 850*77.1) and so i can freely use OpenOffice and Latex for my documents :)

So long...

2007-07-11T21:26:00.001+02:00

Well, it has been a long year and I must say i quite enjoyed myself!
I learnt lots of interesting subjects, deepened my yet small Linux knowledge and also started this blog (which is starting to receive some comments! :o )

Now though i need some vaction at the seaside!!! Since i deliberately won't have internet access (let's say i need some deintoxicating) for a few months it is very unlikely that this blog will be updated!

don't fear! I'm leaving you with something to read in the meantime! the webcomics i read!

Slightly Damned - One of the best! It's the story of a jakkai who is sent to the hell, but she's not evil enough and thus she's only slyghtly damned; so she's put in a sort of limbo where encounter an unlikely daemon, Buwaro! Together they manage to escape from hell and as soon as they put foot on earth they have to save an angel... very funny story and witty humor! I love the artstile very much! -> link

Dragon Tails - group of dragons in our mother time! It has a very funny comic strips! Nowadays it's moved to dealing with rpgs, done in completely new 3D artwork. -> link

VG Cats - does this really need a presentation? very nice parodies from the world of videogames! -> link

Ace of Abra - story of a pokemon trainer which is sent here and there to battle with his friend! Not at all bad, since it adds something to the anime it's lacking of... MATURITY! go and check yourself :o) -> link

F@nboy$ - again from the world of videogames, a fanboy for each platform! not the best for drawings but very nice strips all the same! -> link

Kevin & Kell - one of the oooldest DAYLY webcomic still running! very interesting characters and even difficult topics treated always with humor. -> link

obviously i read some other comics but i believe that for now you have some material to look at :P maybe in the future we'll complete this list, ok?

So happy holidays to everyone :)

the very first one

2007-07-07T02:18:00.001+02:00

I'm posting today the short i directed some time ago and published on youtube!
You'll find also the backstage, that it's almost better the the short itselft!

enjoy

no people or animals were harmed in the production of these two shorts

This is "WoW"

2007-07-06T15:43:00.001+02:00

Soooooooooooo
we started this last session with 3 exams left...

then they were soon 2

after a while they became just 1

and today... none left!!!
that means... GRADUATION

yep, that unbelievable, but there it is! Engineer in Computer Science! sounds good :D

new Art

2007-07-03T00:02:00.001+02:00

nothing big today :)
just an update of my deviantArt profile!
4 new photos were uploaded!

here, take a look http://tanukichu.deviantart.com

Windows and Doors

2007-06-26T13:32:00.002+02:00

When you do something wrong with fdisk you can say goodbye to your partition table!
that's what happened to me, but things were made worse by the nasty XFS resize tool which required a mounted partition to work...

anyway i don't want to talk about this little error of mine, but of what came after! I decided to put back Windows on, since there were too many incompatibilities and I wanted to try the Windows Server 2003 downloaded from the MSDNAA.

the installation was just like Windows XP, but only in this occasion i noticed that formatting 80GB with NTFS disk takes 40 minutes, with Reiserfs (or any other linux fs) takes less then 10 seconds...
So, like any other Windows, the first thing to do after a fresh install is to go to windowsupdate.com! I didn't set up a firewall because i tought that a server *might* already have some kind of protection from external threats! yet again, i overesteemated Windows...
In fact while I was trying to set up the graphic card in safe mode the nasty worm of "You have 60 seconds before reboot" show up! And since updates or virus scan weren't working any more i just had to rewind everything!

Yeah, after the usual 40 minutes of formatting and after installing i was prompted with a nice welcome, the ctrl+alt+del for entering! I set up the firewall right away and when I rebooted i was prompted with an even nicer welcome, a blue screen of death! Every time i tried to log in the system crashed and it was all firewall fault, in fact when i had uninstalled it the system went fine again...
Not only the firewall was driving me nuts (instead of Zone Alarm i put PCtool Firewall), but the antivirus as well was nagging at me!!!
I tried the main ones, Free-Av, AVGfree and Avast: AVG said its licence didn't allow installation on a server (are you crazy??? why???), Free-Av said it couldn't install on corporate business machine (I'm not a business, I'm a single person), and Avast simply refused to launch because i was in Windows NT (pure maddness, Windows XP is NT as well)
Lucky was that i found a GNU/GPL antivirus, ClamWin, that allowed installation anywhere, anytime! All hail to opensource!

Would you think that's all? Not at all! The best of all, the ATI graphics card!
Linux users know that Ati is not quite good at drivers for linux, but they would cheer up saying "at least windows drivers are fine" - WRONG!
There is NO driver for the ATI Mobility (chip R200) on Windows Server 2003! The official one would just screw the screen and force to continuosly reboot, the unofficial ones, like DNA or Omega drivers went just crazy (the former refusing to install and the latter setting up strange screen resoultions)

It all ended by cleaning everything up and putting up Windows XP yet again!
You know, i wasn't sure if I was dealing with a Windows or a Linux as they both had the same drivers issue with everything! That proves that it's not the operating system you use, but how well it's supported by third parties! So Windows XP has very good support, while Windows Server 2003 hasn't! So we could say Windows Server 2003 is the same of Linux... just a hundred times less stable :-)

ok we couln't :-D

Yet another Linux embedded device

2007-06-17T21:27:00.001+02:00

a few days ago a nice shiny Netgear WGT634U Router arrived to my place and happily started toying with it right away! Though not on sale anymore, it has very good features, like 108Mb/s wireless and a USB port for external hd.

So, i booted it up and tested with the DS and the WII (as I mainly bought this router for its complete compatibility with Nintendo devices) and they were doing really fine! No encryption (just mac filtering) due to the poor DS security system. Anyway this router also proved a nice range and no lags! good! It was time to check its other options!

Unfortunately there were the usual silver linings! I tested the usb capability with my external usb drive, ntfs formatted - no writing allowed - it was readonly... so, since "linux partition" were supported i tried formatting it in xfs, reiserfs, ext3; noone showed up! cool!
Moreover when I tried to upgrade to the latest firmware the connection was refused and the old firmware kept!
Finally, what turned really me down was that there was no NFS support, but just a plain Samba server! ugly!!!

So these three convinced me to try linux on this router! there were two main options: OpenWRT and OpenWGT! The latter should be dedicated for this router, WGT634U, but it's not really developed any more; so i tried the former, which has a wider support for routers of all kind!

OpenWRT has two main release: White Russian, stable branch, and Kamikaze, development branch. These two version differ mainly on the configuration method! With Russian you have to play with the nice nvram command, with Kamikaze you can swiftly modify files in /etc to change configuration. Kamikaze was the only to support my router so I had very little choice.

That's it! I put it on the router! Wow! What has changed? mmm let's see the web interface! what? no web interface? well, let's try ssh! password required? what password?

ok the panic ended when I tried by chance to access with telnet! I set up a password and ssh was activated! I was really annoyed that there wasn't a web interface but i was soon proved wrong.
On the ssh consolle, it was like any other linux system, with all the most important commands!
After a while i found this little uselful program, ipkg, which acts exactly as apt-get!
With ipkg you can install any program available on the official repositories! And there are a lot! Kernel moduls, servers of any kind (cups, nfs, samba, ftp) along the normal stuff you find on routers (dhcp, firewall, wireless).

Later on, i also found out that there was actually a web interface, not included in the repositories as still in development, called webif (already installed in White Russian) which you can download from the openWRT site. It was really nice, but it was evident that it need much development (still usable though).

Then I wanted to try out the USB expansion port! I read you could use it not only as external hd, but with any usb device compatible in linux! So you could easily plug a hub and have nfs server, bluetooth device, print server and much more! I made some attemps at building a print server, but the wiki are only for White Russian, so the method provided didn't work (actually there was no /dev/usb/lp0, but if you create the node with mkdir -p /dev/usb && mknod /dev/usb/lp0 c 180 0 it has been reported to work)

However i wasn't happy enough! It was cool having linux on the router but it was too bleeding edge and having Kamikaze didn't help! I was unsure whether to put a plain White Russian or back the original firmware! Since i tought my router was not supported i opted for the second!
And since i wasn't sure if the suggested method worked, i did so using the most unstable web interface!

Erasing linux...
this was the last output i would ever receive from this router! Yep, i bricked it! I could try to repair it with a serial cable but it's too much of a hassle, and so i decided to ask the vendor if they can replace it!

summing up! Linux on the router is nice, but you need to have an advanced level of linux knowledge, and be ready not to come back! If you have enough time to play with it though i would suggest giving a try to it anyway, as long as you don't want to put the original firmware back :-D

3rd year is over

2007-06-15T23:14:00.001+02:00

So, today was the last day of school! Now we can start studying hard for the next three tests and this year will be completely over.
If I had to wrap up this year, I'd say it was quite a good year, especially compared with the previous one! We finally started computer science, at least for the first semester, so we deepened some very funny aspects, like Operating Systems and Networks, the two subjects i liked most), while i less liked the database and programming part.
The year before this was much more traumatic as we were studying so much electronics that we often were found in identity crisis :-D It's true that the electrical part is very important in computer engineering, but if we were to study all the professionalizing subjects for an engeneer in just three years, we wouldn't even know how to turn on a pc!!!

However now it is too late to complain because in a way or another I managed to reach the end of the year in one piece! And to celebrate this event, I published on my Scribd account the two essay about some lab experiences in Phisics

The Wheatstone bridge
The Hall effect

Alberto wrote practically everything in them and he did a very good job by using Latex in both! I basically double checked them and for the second time in my life I approached a Latex document; the first time was while I had to write my degree essay, but I wasn't much motivated, this time though i was able to understand some of the grammar of Latex and I'm likely to use it in the future (as soon as i discover why it doesn't compile docs with images)...
so all hail to Alberto, all hail to Latex!!!

happy reading!!!

Don't FlashMe - a Nintendo DS story

2007-06-04T22:01:00.001+02:00

I always told never to flash your Nintendo DS.
It is useless, you run into too many risks, the warranty is voided and so on...

HOWEVER
I wanted to try! I was too curious about how to do it, and wanted to try myself the (very few actually) features it enabled, especially the direct boot, as the SuperKey was driving me crazy for not being detected from time to time.

So I took courage and downloaded the FlashMe v8 from the FlashMe Official Site!
I read some guides over the internet, this one in particular, but I already had problems just find the toothpick and the tin foil, but that's because my house is a mess right now!
Anyways, I somehow created that thing and stuck into the DS, so the flashing begun... everything was ok...
halt!
at 26% the DS turned off.

ok, no panic, maybe it finished so quickly that it already shut down... no it was not! Black screen if you tried to turn it on!
ok, no panic, no panic, gasp, breathe, no panic, breathe, breathe... ok air pressure stabilized

what was written on the guide? if your DS shuts down during flashing you just have to go into the recovery mode by holding Start and Select (I also pressed A and B just to be safe). So I did and I was welcomed by a charming SuperCard intro!
I resumed the flashing and completed it without no further problems...

Now I've got it running on my DS and already miss the Nintendo DS welcome screen (as well as
the suspend option)... I guess that if I had a slot1 device I would never and NEVER install a FlashMe firmware, as the advantages are way too limited...

Next-generation DVD: read this to decide

2007-06-03T13:32:00.001+02:00

>>>> Click here to read the essay <<<<

This is my final essay I wrote some time ago as "thesis" for the Politecnico. I'm putting "thesis" into quotes because it doesn't even compare with a real thesis: the real ones are 20 credits heavy, while the quoted one only 2! Anyways, though I'm happy I've writtend this essay (marked 27) I wish I had done something more interesting, while instead I chose the first one and the quickiest.
I'm not regretting this because for the few credits it counts it's ok, but I wouldn't have minded learning how to do something, or having deepened some other subjects. Oh well, I'll catch up with the next thesis, the heavy one.

So here is the long waited essay! You can easily read it online, download, convert to any format from this site.
This work is released under the same old licence: You can copy and use this document as you like as long as you quote the author (and if you let me know doing so I'll be grateful to you)

While presenting my essay I also introduce you to Scribd, a new way to post your documents online! It's actually the equivalent of Youtube or Deviantart for documents instead of videos and images! You can publish stuff, convert it to whatever format you nee
d and keep documents private or public! As you can see the online view is very comfortable!

Scribd is also useful for removing those copy-disabled pdfs! Just put it online and then download it without that useless protection! (update 2007/06/11: feature disabled)

Closing the first month

2007-05-31T19:56:00.000+02:00

And so the first month of this blog is over!
I've managed to update it for half month, but later I had other major things to do, so I couldn't write much (even if I wanted to talk about some films I viewed and games I played)

I hope to be more active next month ;)

Linux's Internet Connection Sharing

2007-05-15T23:15:00.001+02:00

While setting up my computers I had my Windows server (i know, that's a contracdiction) configured as gateway with the Internet Connection Sharing system.
However, as i had to reinstall the Nintendo Usb Connector, I could not access internet from my private lan! What's the solution? use the iptable of Linux (in another pc)

I'll report the solution i used which i found here (look for the Redhatter reply)

The computers by the way are doing fine! One pc ended up with Kubuntu Dapper, since all my other version were corrupted (don't ask how), another with Windows 98 (i didn't have time to configure a 586 pc...), another one with Gentoo with Xfce4 (which positively impressed me, really); all these were given to my friends which were very happy to have a way to experiment their first Linux :) !!!
The last one is torn apart, made with all the spare pieces of the other pcs! It has too little ram to have anything more than the command line, so i think i'll keep this waiting for other spare pieces to arrive (hoping that the Gentoo system installed doesn't get old too fast :o) )

Wireless miracle

2007-05-09T01:50:00.001+02:00

Something really unexpected happened just a moment ago...
one of my contact showed off about his installing of ndiswrapper so exited by the news i wanted to try it myself! You have to know than i never tried this because i have a very weird wifi card (it's hybrid with a TV/Tuner card) so the last thing i could think was having it run on Linux!

The first trials were awful, i took the driver from my vendor's card and repeatly installed all the version i could find in it (there were winxp, winme, win98, win2k) but no one was functioning! The more it didn't work, the more I wanted it run!

As a last resort i had a peek in the system32/Drivers section in my windows partion... guess what!
The drivers were completely different from the one i downloaded!
so i took the .inf and .sys files, put them in linux, launched ndiswrapper, modprobe it and...

[ 278.678923] ndiswrapper version 1.43 loaded (smp=yes)
[ 278.688265] ndiswrapper: driver cb55n5x (Marvell,04/16/2005,2.0.0.16) loaded
[ 278.688499] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:0f.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
[ 278.689208] ndiswrapper (ndis_encode_setting:390): unknown type: 4
[ 278.689232] ndiswrapper (ndis_encode_setting:390): unknown type: 4
[ 278.689240] ndiswrapper (ndis_encode_setting:390): unknown type: 4
[ 278.689249] ndiswrapper (ndis_encode_setting:390): unknown type: 4
[ 278.689257] ndiswrapper (ndis_encode_setting:390): unknown type: 4
[ 278.689296] ndiswrapper (ndis_encode_setting:390): unknown type: 4
[ 278.689316] ndiswrapper (ndis_encode_setting:390): unknown type: 4
[ 278.689441] ndiswrapper: using IRQ 21
[ 278.965031] wlan0: ethernet device 00:13:d4:99:40:cd using NDIS driver: cb55n5x, version: 0x2000010, NDIS version: 0x501, vendor: '', 11AB:2A01.5.conf
[ 278.965056] wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK; AES/CCMP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK
[ 288.889100] usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper
[ 293.871970] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready

Yeah! my Asus P5WD2 Premium Motherboard with Wi-Fi / TV Hybrid is now working correctly (at least the wifi part :P)
I've also edited the list page on the Ndiswrapper site so that everybody can gain from my experience! The Ndiswrapper team made a really good job! Now i want to try if i can get other devices up with this nice tool :)

How Gentoo saved the day

2007-05-07T00:25:00.002+02:00

I received a couple of very old computer, two pentium III 500, one pentium II and one pentium MMX; all the RAM together they had was less than 1 G and the pentium II was aldready dead...

Anyway I had to figure what to do with these "wonderful" computer and I thought to use them as a compiling station, using the unix tool distcc
I did previous attempt at installing other distros of linux, but the only one i wanted to try with distcc was gentoo!

A complete afternood was spent just trying to make the pc (the distcc server and the distcc client) see each other! However when I made it, the compiling process was as swift as ever!
Actually i had some weird problems with the bootloader that wouln't run correctly, but in the end i managed to compile everything (kernel included) in my gentoo box!
Afterwards i just copied all the files from one hd to another and the two pentium III were done! Two gentoo installation in one!

Now that i have 3 distcc server running i'll enjoy myself compiling the other bigger utilities like X and the desktop environment...

after all this it's likely that I'll give these pcs to whoever needs them :)

Catching up...

2007-05-02T22:20:00.001+02:00

Well, this the real first post of the blog, so I think I'd better begin with what I've done till now and what I'm about to do!

Right now I'm studying Computer Engineering at the Politecnico in Turin and as you could guess I'm fond of anything related to Informatics and Technology!
I also have other interests like Cinema and Filmmaking, Photography and Videogames.
I mentioned fimmaking and photography because I actually like to make both: you can see my photogallery in DeviantArt and my short movies on YouTube (links are in the sidebar).
If you wish to watch my short go here.
As for the videogames I'm a Nintendo consumer since I have almost all their consolles like the DS Lite or the Wii (the GBA only is missing); I just love its videogames and its continuous innovation!

One last thing about computers, I'm a real supporter of the OpenSource (and Linux) world! All the projects you'll find here are under a GNU/GPL licence, so that you can use and distribute them as you like (and if you quote the author, he'll be very happy)!

I think that's all for now :)
Bye and thanks for stopping by
Vittorio

First post!

2007-05-01T15:17:00.000+02:00

This is the first post of...

Project Symphony

Happy 1st may!