White Palms...

Let is snow, let it snow, let it snow... ok, let's not find out how many more cliches I can amass in a single post. The short version: today snowed. It's unusual around here. Obviously it happened in a day on which I had little to no time to shoot anything, but as always I had my trusty Ixus with me and I managed to grab a few shots of the beach and the palms covered in snow. Yay me! (I'm definitely watching too much Buffy). Here's the view around midday, when the worst had already passed:

New toy

I finally caved in and succumbed to the charms of the iPod Touch. I had my eyes on it for a while now but always managed to rein in my shopping crave. Not this time and, frankly, I think it was a good thing. This is one brilliant piece of hardware. I'm sure I'll find things to nag about along the way but for now I'm duly impressed.

Incidentally in my wild applications hunt (you know how it is with new toys) I've found this nifty little software to post on blogger. It's called BlogWriter Lite and it's what I used to post this entry. Very nice.

What's on that desk? 2009 edition

Eww, following up this rambling, here's the new stuff cluttering my desk right now, in addition to "the stuff that's always there":

• two A4 spiral notepads
• two A5 spiral notepads
• another small notepad
  
• assorted documents
  
• four pens
• three pencils
• a book about Alan Moore
• La Fontaine fables
• a book about plants
• ST TOS S3 dvd set
• S2 & S5 dvds of Angel
• S7 & S2 dvds of Buffy
• MS Flight Sim dvd box
• green cup
• a magazine
  
• joystick
• amazon.co.uk receipt
• flashlight
• pocket digicam
• cell phone

I must go out and shoot someting ASAP (with a camera)... or possibly tidy up. Ugh!

The final run

It has begun. Nine more episodes and nuBSG will be history, as long as live (?) television is concerned. Sometimes a great notion was especially plot-heavy, not surprising considering this was supposed to serve as series finale in the event no more episodes could be produced (it was the last one shot before the Writers' strike). It's a good thing it wasn't, though, because, honestly, it would have been a lousy finale. Yeah, stuff gets revealed but overall it's pretty low on the whys and the hows. As the beginning of the final run, it works, but it definitely raised more questions that it answered. With only 9 episodes to go, it is a little worrying.

Currently I'm trying to shut up the insistent voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me I'm going to be awfully disappointed by the way this show will end. I'm also very excited to watch how it all ends, so confused and conflicted...yeah, that's me when it comes to nuBSG right now.

Bomb da Bomb

We've had a bit of excitement this Sunday, when an Army unit came to town to defuse this old WWII bomb found on a construction site. The bomb, all 500 pounds of it, was dropped back in 1943 or 1944 by a RAF airplane to take out the railway but never exploded and the defusing operation made it possible to discover why: it was dropped at a lower altitude than necessary, so the little thingie that was supposed to release the striker onto the detonator never unhooked. Therefore, no kaboom.

Anyway, to defuse it and then transport it in an isolated quarry where it was safely set off, 4000 thousand people had to evacuate before 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning (half of them probably stayed in bed pretending they left). It was a big operation (over two hundred people involved to make it happen) and a major event for the town. I'm not even remotely happy with the pictures I took but the event is unusual enough that I had to upload at least a few of them. I may add some more once I sort out the other cards.

What's on that desk?

I wage a hopeless battle against clutter on my desk: every once in a while I tidy it up and in a few hours it reverts to its natural state of major entropy. So, just to amuse myself, I've decided to list, roughly once a month, all the stuff that's on my desk. Note: mine's a custom-made desk, L-shaped: the | is two meters long, the _ is 70 centimeters. So, there's a lot of space above it and also quite a lot below it (shelves, drawers, the like). A lot of space means a higher tolerance for clutter, which is good, but it also invites it more, since, well, there's space for it. Anyway, let's go:

Stuff that's always there:

• A small metal shelf, holding from top to bottom: the ADSL router/gateway, a wireless gamepad, an external hdd and a usb hub.
• lamp
• printer
• cordless phone
• mouse charger
• 4 satellites of a 5.1 audio system
• a wood thingie shaped as a cobra that holds my headphones
• headphones
• another usb hub
• a California Raisin figurine that looks like Michael Jackson during the Bad album era
  
• monitor (22')
• a table calendar with photos of kitties
• 2 pen holders with pens (gasp!), pencils, eraser and the likes
• mousepad
• wired mouse
• wireless mouse
• keyboard
• 5.1 audio system remote

Stuff that's there right now but has its normal place somewhere else:

• buffy season 7 dvd boxset
• angel season 5 dvd boxset
• a green cup
• a cat-shaped plate with a used tea-bag on it
• digicam battery charger
• digicam
• assorted notepads
• laptop
• book on ancient Egypt's art
• book of an Andy Wahrol's works exhibition
• diary
• flashlight
• cellphone charger
• house keys
• pocket rule
• newspaper
  

Under the table, always there:

• drawers with assorted crap: old cd drives, ram chips, all manner of cables, blah blah
  
• pc case
• printer paper
• photo paper
• printer's ink cartridges
• empty boxes of computer stuff
• empty boxes of photo stuff
• joystick

So, this is the sitch right now, fairly manageable and decidedly not messy, since I tidy it up this morning. How much worse will it be in a month? The experiment has started!

From China with courtesy

These guys on the left are Yu Xin-Yuan e Zeng Shao Xuan and they're going to be, most probably, China's doubles team at the next Olympics. Xin and Shao have been teaming up forever, they're both from Bejing and are currently the number 1 doubles team in China.

I've first seen them last year in Rimini, then in Recanati, where they reached the doubles final and now, this year, again in Recanati. They travel with their coach Mao Rui and another coach I don't know the name of (sorry man :) ). They're all very polite, very professional and a joy to watch play because they really play doubles, no "parallel singles" with this two like it happens with some many other doubles teams these days.

Unfortunately their run here in Recanati ended tonight in the final: they lost 63 75 versus Benedikt Dorsch and Bjor Phau, two very good german players (Phau in particular has been a top 60 both in singles and doubles). Maybe next year, guys: third time is, after all, the charm ;)