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[I suggest my usual readers to skip this post altogether, you won't find anything useful here :-)] Romeo tagged me with this "How did you get started in software development?" quest. I was already feeling guilty, because given how swamped I am I knew I was not going to have time to reply to the tag: OTOH right now my main PC is unusable, since I am repaving a new HD on it, hence while the network install goes I can write this up. How old were you when you started programming? A quale età hai cominciato a programmare? I was 12. One Christmas parents & siblings joined forces and got me a Commodore16 : it was just *fantastic*. How did you get started in programming? Come hai cominciato a programmare? With the reference manual of the basic 3.5. What was your first language? Qual’è stato il tuo primo linguaggio di programmazione? Basic, the one that came with the Commodore16. What was the first real program you wrote? Qual’è stato il primo programma vero che hai scritto? Hard to define "real" here. I would say that the first program I have wrote for a purpose different than pure enjoyment was a control routine for a Siemens PLC. It was for a shop class, we had those PLC working in AWL-step5. Not very structured, but hey... certainly software! What languages have you used since you started programming? Quali linguaggi hai usato da quando hai cominciato a programmare? Ah, hard to remember them all. Already mentioned Basic and AWL-Step5. At the University it was mainly Pascal, C and Read More...
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2:35AM. I landed few hours ago in Seattle, back from a successful week in Kuala Lumpur & Singapore , and of course I am totally jetlagged and I can't sleep at all. Hence I'll kill some time writing the customarily post I do every April for this feed's birthday (former installments: 2004 , 2005 , 2006 , 2007 ). Five years is quite a long time in the IT timescale. It always amazes me to see the readership stats: given the specificity of the topics I write about, coupled with my regrettable tendency to tangents & severe verbal incontinence, one would never expect a yearly total of views well in the six digits and yet.. thanks everybody for your attention & patience :-) Here there's a selection of some of the most popular's posts since last April. Considering that in the past year I've also worked on the book and spoke at many events, besides the usual customer engagements, I am surprised I managed to write almost 100 entries. Some musings The Tao of Claims The Tao of Authentication series ( I , II & III ) The Authorization Continuum Omnidirectional Identities On R-STS On ProofTokens On DisplayTokens Cloud Computing & Identity Some samples & tutorials Sample usage of CardSpace & WF's new Send/Receive WCF activities Sample usage of CardSpace & WCF's new REST style services Sample usage of CardSpace & Excel Sample usage of CardSpace on non-HTTPS websites Sample usage of managed cards for accessing a biztalk.net RP The Teched EMEA STS demo series ( Read More...
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[warning: this post does not feature any identity related content, and it's probably useless] I feel for the UMPCs an unhealthy (walletwise) attraction, since the very moment they came out. In fact, if you dig in the early years of this blog you'll see I am a gadget freak: I am still proudly going around with my JasJar , even if it means having a fanny pack around my waist for the delight of my mocking colleagues (one day I'll give them proper grief about all the fashion mistakes they make according to Italian tastes, but that's another story :-)). During the black Friday I went, like many fellow geeks, in the annual pilgrimage to Fry's . Here, among unbelievably long lines and empty shelves, I saw the U810 : an exquisitely small convertible laptop, small enough to literally fit in the pockets of my jacket but with a keyboard big enough to support the parody of 3-fingers touchtyping I do. I have already seen it on engadget , but having it right there, with all the Vista icons so tiny in the 5.6" 1024x600 WSGA Crystal View... that day the line was too long, but the day after i just had to go buy it :) And here it is, shown together with my wife's 30" monitor: Tiny,eh? As soon as I got home I flattened the sad, sad Vista Basic that was on by default, for a more proper Vista Ultimate: promptly followed by Visual Studio 2008, Office, ArtRage , Live Writer , ZoomIt (especially zoomit, this thing is minuscule) Messenger, Paint.NET ... you get the picture. Below there's a screenshot Read More...
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[warning: this post contains 0% of your identity/connectedystems RDA (that is to say, no technical content whatsoever)] Well, in the last weeks (months?) I really worked on an extremely heavy schedule. This Saturday I felt like I needed to relax and do something with my hands (other than typing and weaving the mouse). It didn't last long, Sunday I was already back on the slides for TechEd; but in the meanwhile, I had a lot of fun carving my very first pumpkin ever :-) it's not widespread practice in Italy, so I had no background whatsoever. First thing, we bought a nice pumpkin: bright orange, not too big, not too small, definitely round. Then we went to the hobby shop near Redmond Town Center and bought a wood carving mini set. While my wife was emptying the thing, I printed a big stencil and "projected" it. After that, I projected pumpkin shrapnels all over the place until voila'! The design I had in mind miraculously appeared. Here I am proudly posing with it: I am sure you recognize the design! ;-) This morning I proudly installed it on my desk: Information cards are welcome in my office! Mike had a good laugh when I showed him :-) Note the map that I use for the Italia9 interviews in the background. If the design is not geeky enough for you (somebody may say nerdy , but nevermind), check this out: this pumpkin is actually a USB Gadget! Not one that you'd find on Engadget maybe, but gadget nonetheless. Instead of featuring the classical shaky yellow flame for illuminating Read More...
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When I was living in Italy, I looked with a bit of envy all those websites & services that worked just in the States. Once I moved to Redmond, everything started to work right away: traffic services on the smartphone, bird's eye imagery, 3D models... everything worked right away in the area that interests me, form the very start! Hpwever I didn't forget those days, so imagine my joy when I've seen my dear Genova in this list of new imagery just released for Virtual Earth! I spent a good 1/2 hour playing with the bird's eye view of Piazza de Ferrari, il Palazzo Ducale, il Chiossone, Via XX Settembre... but I especially enjoyed the view of the DISI building in Valletta Puggia, where I've spent the years of my university. You can even see people on the terrace, where I was used to go to study and smoke the occasional cigarette (I managet to kick the habit only years later). Or the parking, theater of many discussions, arguing, big and small dramas, and the start of may beautiful friendships that, I like to think, resists regardless of the time & space gap that separes me from my friends. And for the firends that came later: now there are bird's eye views for Pistoia and Firence, too... via Panciatichi, la pizzeria Firenze Nova... with its unforgettable Millefoglie! My beautiful Genova. Luckily the Virtual Earth guys didn't add updated Recco and Camogli (the images of the former still show the sea barrier, taken down years ago), otherwise I would get *really* sentimentale Read More...
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As tradition requires (see exhibits a , b and c ), here there's the canonical, eigencelebrative post about the fact that it's n years that I mantain this blog feed (where n=4 ). I could comment on how everything changed in this last 4 years, but for the time being I'll spare you :-) I'll just remark that the "useless" tag is being used much less than in the past, out of respect for the audience of the many aggregated feeds I'm included, but I don't know for how much longer I'll manage to restrain myself... you're warned >:) Read More...
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That is to say, my router works/all my battery powered gadgets are recharging/the food moved back from the balcony to the refrigerator/I don't havt to do the most trivial activities at the light of pieces of swag gathered in my years of showing up at events & conferences. As you've probably read, here in Washington state (namely the Puget Sound area & Seattle) we experienced a pretty impressive storm. Trees fell like twigs, we had a number of floodings, and there were victims. The power went off in the night between thursday and friday, and all the areas I've seen around were in the dark until about one hour ago: with the notable exception of a thin stripe of building in Bellevue, including our precious Barnes&Noble (all things I managed to see because Aldo, international PM in VS and good friend of mine, was a man of vision and got a full tank before the fuel madness begun). I've never experienced anything like that in a lifetime, back in Italy the longest blackout I've ever seen lasted 1 hour or so (I was abroad during the big airconditioning-induced one): on the other hand in my home town we've never got >100Mph winds, and the areas to reach with power are small enough to allow concrete pillars for sustaining the power lines. I am very impressed by the ease with which people accepted the situation and coped, without excessive noise, without trying to skip lines at the groceries. Nice. The storm reminded me of something I've always known: I rely A LOT on my PC Read More...
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