7-fjellsturen 2010

For the third time, I took the so called “7-fjellsturen“, the hike of the 7 mountains of Bergen in one day. I am very proud to say that I made in 10 hours and 40 minutes, 2 hours and 28 minutes less than my previous result.

Checkpoint 2008 2009 2010
Start 7-fjell (Gravdal ved Nutec) 8:47 00:00 8:28 00:00 8:55 00:00
Lyderhorn 10:14 01:27 10:06 01:38 9:45 00:50
Damsgårdsfjell 11:51 03:04 11:52 03:24 11:10 02:15
Løvstakken 13:40 04:53 13:37 05:09 12:41 03:46
Start 4-fjell (Årstad) 15:00 06:13 14:36 06:08 13:37 04:42
Ulriken 16:43 07:56 16:39 08:11 15:23 06:28
Fløyen 19:05 10:18 19:21 10:53 17:21 08:26
Rundemanen 20:27 11:40 20:07 11:39 18:24 09:29
Sandviksfjellet 20:56 12:09 20:48 12:20 18:51 09:56
Mål (Marken) 22:27 13:40 21:36 13:08 19:35 10:40

The hike was too long even for Sports Tracker, which crashed after 8 hours. This means that I only have incomplete and maybe corrupted data of my hike. :( The developers of this app will for sure hear from me… :)

Special thanks to Synnøve, who shared with me all the editions. Without her, I would have never managed this result. ;)

Update 6th June

It looks like the Sports Tracker data of my hike is not corrupted. It is only incomplete since I started the tracking again half-hour after Sports Tracker crashed. :)

Screenshots:

7-fjellsturen 2010 Sports Tracker screenshot 1

7-fjellsturen 2010 Sports Tracker screenshot 2

7-fjellsturen 2010 Google Earth screenshot

Asus Eee PC 1101HA, Intel GMA500 (Poulsbo) and the shattered dream of the out-of-the-box GNU/Linux support

Do not buy a Asus Eee PC 1101HA or any netbook/laptop having an Intel GMA500 (Poulsbo) video chipset if you plan to run GNU/Linux on it.

Unlike Intel’s other video chipsets, the GMA500 is not developed in-house but it is based on Imagination Technologies’s PowerVR which is barely supported under GNU/Linux. The GMA500 drivers are so messy that it is even challenging to get the native display resolution. You can read more about how Intel is ruining its relationship with the GNU/Linux community on Linux Journal and Ars Technica.

I spent about 3800 NOK (460 EUR) to buy an Asus Eee PC 1101HA last Saturday. Now I can not return it to the reseller. In other words, I am screwed.

From the richest to the poorest European country and back

I had a short vacation in Moldova together with my friend Diego. Probably you are asking yourself “Why Moldova!?”. At least this was the reaction of all of my friends when I told them that I had planned a trip to Chişinău. To be honest, despite the fact that I am already back from the trip, I am not sure what to answer to this question. :)

As far as I am concerned, I just wanted to have a trip to an east European country, possibly an ex USSR country. The idea was to go to a country which was culturally and economically very different from what I am used to. After several discussions with Diego about which country to visit, Moldova caught our curiosity… And there we went.

I have to admit that I knew really little about this country before going there, and two things impressed me the most. The first is, unfortunately, the poverty. The time seems to be frozen in the Nineties there. The average monthly salary in Moldova is around 2500 MDL (150 EUR) while in Norway is 30000 NOK (3500 EUR). Of course, life is cheaper in Moldova than in Norway, but even normalising the salary to the cost of living, the difference remains huge.

The other thing that left me puzzled is the lack of linguistic and cultural identity. Native Moldovans belong to the Romanian ethnic group. The official language in Moldova is Romanian, although natives speak a Moldavian dialect which is slightly different from the original Romanian. However, Russians and Ukrainians form a large ethnic group in Moldova. Russian is then the default second language at all levels of education, and everyone in the country can speak it fluently. Oddly enough, local Russians refuse to speak Romanian and oblige native Moldovans to speak Russian. Walking around Chişinău I heard more conversations in Russian than Romanian, which is quite sad. Maybe this is a superficial analysis of the integration problems, but what kind of cultural identity is this?

I learned a lot from this “very original” trip… especially to give value to the things I am lucky to have in my life. Being at home with all the comforts seems like a luxury now… I hope I will always remember about it.

NWPT 2009 and Danish language

I have not written any post about my summer vacations in Italy, Spain and Hungary, but now they are far away and I will skip them. I just want to share my experience at the last conference I participated, namely the Nordic Workshop in Programming Theory in Lyngby, north of Copenhagen, Denmark.

As always I travelled together with Adrian and this time I had to share the hotel room with him since my travelling budget for 2009 has been in red since July… Fortunately Adrian is not employed at the University of Bergen but at the Bergen University College, and it seems that funding is less problematic there. ;)

The conference was very well organised and covered very many topics of computer science. Adrian and I spent a lot of time modifying the slides rather than listening to the talks, but the presentations of our two abstracts went fine in the end.

During my stay I had the chance to test my skills in Scandinavian languages with some locals. Just for the records, written Danish and Norwegian (in the bokmål variant) are rather similar, so similar that reading Danish is not a problem for me… But the spoken counterparts are definitely very different. Spoken Danish sounds like a continuous stream of (guttural) sounds to me, with no chances to understand when a word stops and when the next starts. :) I hope that no one will take it personally if I say that it seems like Danes do not make any effort to pronounce words clearly.

But there is even more… Danish has a rather weird number system. The tens from fifty on are not based on the number ten, as is the case in most European languages (French being another outstanding exception). This strange system combines two archaic ways of counting: twenty-based instead of ten-based and fossilized expressions for two and a half, three and a half and four and a half. This is the result:

50 halv-tred-s(ind-s-tyve) half-third-t(imes-of-twenty)
60 tre-s(ind-s-tyve) three-t(imes-of-twenty)
70 halv-fjerd-s(ind-s-tyve) half-fourth-t(imes-of-twenty)
80 fir-s(ind-s-tyve) four-t(imes-of-twenty)
90 halv-fem-s(ind-s-tyve) half-fifth-t(imes-of-twenty)

After this experience, I think that these Norwegian comedians are not so far from reality. ;)

La tastiera italiana come causa di un pericoloso malcostume linguistico

Ho deciso di condividere un articolo che scrissi nel 2007 dal titolo “La tastiera italiana come causa di un pericoloso malcostume linguistico“. Nell’articolo mostro come la disposizione della tastiera italiana favorisca l’uso della combinazione lettera + apice in sostituzione della lettera accentata. Pur non avendo una preparazione universitaria in linguistica, decisi di scrivere questo articolo come reazione alla trattazione decisamente superficiale dell’argomento da parte dell’Accademia della Crusca. Ogni commento è benvenuto.

Buona lettura! :)

TOOLS 2009

This time it was the TOOLS 2009 conference in Zurich, Switzerland. Adrian and I arrived on a Saturday, without any particular plan for the evening. Many locals suggested us to go to Lucerne because of the first edition of the Lucerne festival. Adrian managed to convince me to go there, and I have to admit it was a good idea. Plenty of people, plenty of music, plenty of local food and drinks. And right after the sunset, the best fireworks I have ever seen: 25 minutes of pyrotechnic show with lights coming from both sky and lake… Amazing!

All the stereotypes about Swiss precision and efficiency were destroyed in one go on the way back to Zurich. We were supposed to take the train from Lucerne at 2:30, but probably too many people shared with us the same plan. :) The result was kilometric queues on the ticket machines and people packed in trains like in India. The train we took did not even arrive to Zurich and despite the promises of the railways personnel there, no further train came before one hour. In the end, tired of waiting, we took a taxi back to the city.

Well, despite this “original” start, the conference went very well. The ETH, which hosted the conference, is located on top of a hill with a nice view over the city. The event was well organised and composed by several co-located conferences and workshops. Adrian made a brilliant presentation of our last work “A Diagrammatic Formalisation of MOF-Based Modelling Languages“, and many asked questions. I feel like the goals of our participation to the conference have been all fulfilled. The city was lovely and welcomed us with a great warm summer weather. The food was also great; to eat once more authentic Fondue and Rösti was a pleasure. :)

I left Zurich by train on Saturday, and my destination was not Bergen but Tortoreto, my home town in Italy. The trip home was a sort of odyssey. The train I took in Milan had broken air conditioning system and I had to stay inside it for five hours with no chance to open the windows… And if this was not enough, the catering services of the Italian railways had a strike the very same day, i.e., it was not even possible to buy water! Italy is somehow able to remind me every time that the choice of moving abroad was the right one.

Iomega UltraMax Plus — A Linux-friendly External Hard Drive with RAID support

Lately my home folder began to run out of space, so I started to look around for an external hard drive. I wanted a solution comprising at least 1TB space, RAID 1 support and USB 2.0 connector (since the last NAS I tried did not transfer more than 10Mbit/s). Obviously, the drive had to work out-of-the box with GNU/Linux.

The most popular solution seemed to be the WD MyBook Mirror, but various GNU/Linux forums including the Ubuntu ones had many posts reporting compatibility problems. The RAID control software is Windows-only, and the drive tends to spin itself down under GNU/Linux, causing the kernel to give up on it and disconnect the device.

It seemed almost like there was no other solution but I found out that Iomega produced exactly what I was searching for. The Iomega UltraMax Plus includes eSATA, USB, FireWire interface connections plus RAID 0, 1 , and JBOD features. And it even looks cool! ;) I could not find any information about possible compatibility issues with GNU/Linux, but I decided to buy it anyway. I have not been experiencing any issue since I received it one week ago. The RAID configuration is chosen via a hardware switch on the back of the drive, and GNU/Linux seems to handle it properly. I recommend it to anyone.

7-fjellsturen 2009

Yes, I did it again. The 7 mountains of Bergen in one day, 13 hours and 8 minutes to be precise. Despite the rain, I spent 36 minutes less than my first time.

Checkpoint 2008 2009
Start 7-fjell (Gravdal ved Nutec) 8:47 8:28
Lyderhorn 10:14 10:06
Damsgårdsfjell 11:51 11:52
Løvstakken 13:40 13:37
Start 4-fjell (Årstad) 15:00 14:36
Ulriken 16:43 16:39
Fløyen 19:05 19:21
Rundemanen 20:27 20:07
Sandviksfjellet 20:56 20:48
Mål (Marken) 22:27 21:36

Special thanks goes to “min kjære” Synnøve, who shared with me in both editions, plus Antonio and Mikal who joined us this year.

Lettera aperta ai rappresentanti politici italiani

Gentili rappresentanti politici italiani,

sono Alessandro Rossini, un giovane di 28 anni che è stato costretto purtroppo o per fortuna ad espatriare per non vedere vanificati tanti anni di sacrifici.

Scrivo questa lettera per condividere con voi la mia storia. Prendetela un po’ come volete: come la storia di un perfetto sconosciuto a cui non dare nessuna importanza oppure come l’ennesima preoccupante testimonianza di uno dei tanti cervelli in fuga che da decenni abbandonano il Bel Paese.

Ho investito diversi anni della mia vita sopra i libri per ottenere una istruzione universitaria. Non sono stato solo un “secchione”, ho coltivato i miei interessi ed ho avuto i miei momenti di svago, ma i sacrifici sono stati tanti. Il risultati sono stati un master in tecnologie del web ed una laurea magistrale con lode in informatica presso l’Università degli Studi dell’Aquila, uno stage aziendale di quattro mesi a Roma presso una importante società di consulenza e soprattutto un anno di scambio in Norvegia grazie al programma Erasmus.

Alla fine del mio ciclo di studi, mi sarebbe piaciuto rimanere in accademia a fare il ricercatore. La ricerca è una delle cose che mi stimola di piú… Già da bambino dicevo che da grande avrei fatto l’”inventore”. Non avevo ancora idea di cosa avrei inventato, ma le intenzioni erano buone. :) Il relatore della mia tesi mi invitò a partecipare al concorso per l’assegnazione di una borsa di studio per il dottorato, ma le condizioni di lavoro sarebbero state quelle stranote: poco piú di 800€ netti al mese, ovviamente se fossi rientrato fra i pochi “eletti” a vincere il concorso. Ma oggi uno scapolo che non vuole piú gravare sulle finanze dei genitori ha bisogno di molto di piú di 800€ al mese.

Nei mesi seguenti la mia laurea, ricevetti anche alcune offerte di lavoro dall’industria. La maggior parte delle proposte arrivarono da Roma e Milano, ed io sarei stato ben disposto a trasferirmi, se solo avessi ricevuto una proposta di lavoro adeguata. L’offerta piú vantaggiosa mi proponeva di lavorare a Milano per uno stipendio di 1200€ netti al mese, con un contratto di formazione e lavoro della durata di un anno. Mi chiesi piú volte cosa avessi studiato a fare, visto che è possibile guadagnare di piú con lavori per i quali non è richiesta la benché minima preparazione universitaria.

Con la ristrettezza e la precarietà di queste offerte, voi (dimenticando per un attimo l’agio in cui vivete grazie alle cariche che rivestite) ne avreste accettata una? Io proprio no. Molti dei miei colleghi ci erano già passati e si trovavano a vivere con l’ansia di non arrivare alla fine del mese.

Eppure, con i vostri programmi elettorali avete sempre promesso, tra le tante cose, aumento degli investimenti in istruzione e la ricerca, riduzione del precariato lavorativo, snellimento della burocrazia, ma soprattutto avete promesso un futuro ai giovani. Puntualmente, avete disatteso tutte queste promesse.

A dir poco scoraggiato dallo scenario che mi si presentava davanti, iniziai a pensare che l’unica strada auspicabile per la mia carriera sarebbe stata quella di spostarmi all’estero. Grazie ai contatti fatti durante la mia esperienza di studi in Norvegia, ricevetti una offerta di lavoro come ingegnere informatico presso una azienda di consulenza di Bergen. La scelta non era delle piú semplici, ma alla fine accettai e poche settimane dopo ero nel profondo nord. Dopo qualche mese di lavoro come ingegnere, ricevetti un’altra proposta di lavoro come dottorando presso l’Università di Bergen. Non mi feci scappare questa occasione, e riuscii finalmente a realizzare uno delle mie piú grandi aspirazioni: diventare un ricercatore.

È inutile che vi dica che le condizioni contrattuali sono decisamente allettanti: lo stipendio di partenza (anche normalizzato al costo della vita) è piú del doppio di quanto offerto in Italia, la classe di stipendio viene aumentata annualmente, le ferie pagate sono cinque settimane all’anno e l’orario di lavoro è flessibile. Ancora una volta, voi cosa avreste fatto? Io ho preso la mia decisione serenamente, ho accettato di investire almeno i prossimi quattro anni della mia vita qui.

Da due anni vivo in un Paese che, pur con i suoi difetti e problemi, è sicuramente moderno e dinamico. Ricordo ancora che al mio arrivo tutti mi parlavano in inglese, e le uniche cose che dovetti fare furono richiedere il permesso di soggiorno ed aprire un conto in banca. In meno di un giorno avevo finito con la burocrazia: nessuno mi chiese di riempire decine di moduli ridondanti, nessuno mi chiese di comprare marche da bollo, nessuno mi chiese di rivolgermi ad altri uffici. Alle tasse ci pensa direttamente il datore di lavoro. Le mie qualità vengono valorizzate ed alla fine del mese ho la mia gratificazione economica.

Quella di trasferirmi all’estero è stata comunque una delle scelte piú difficili della mia vita. Trasferirsi a piú di 3000km da casa vuol dire mettersi completamente in gioco e ricominciare da zero. Rinunciare alla vicinanza della propria famiglia, dei propri affetti, delle proprie amicizie sono solo le piú ovvie delle conseguenze di una scelta cosí importante. Si deve imparare una nuova lingua, cambiare le proprie abitudini alimentari, familiarizzare con nuovi usi e costumi e farsi piacere anche quello a cui non siamo e non vorremmo essere abituati. Si deve affrontare la solitudine, ricostruire una rete di amicizie e a volte sentirsi un ospite indesiderato. Credete sia facile? Eppure io preferisco affrontare di petto tutto questo pur di avere un futuro…

Gentili rappresentanti politici, sarò ripetitivo ma ci tengo a ribadire che io sono solo uno dei tanti cervelli che hanno ricevuto ospitalità e garanzie all’estero. I giovani che fuggono lo fanno perché non hanno possibilità di esprimersi nel loro Paese, e non c’è da meravigliarsi: la ricerca universitaria si regge in piedi con mezzi di fortuna e le aziende italiane in cui si possa parlare di ricerca e sviluppo si contano ormai con due mani. Questo è un problema che conoscete bene, eppure non provate ad arginarlo in nessun modo. Non vi preoccupa minimamente che molti giovani capaci se ne vadano a dare il loro contributo in altri Paesi? Di questo passo, chi si occuperà dello sviluppo dell’Italia? Da 50 anni non fate piú politica, ma pensate solo ai vostri interessi. Perché al posto di giocare alla creazione di nuovi partiti, federazioni e alleanze, non cercate concretamente di frenare gli innumerevoli sperperi di denaro pubblico per investirli in maniera opportuna? Oppure il sistema è veramente cosí marcio da non poter porre rimedio?

Io rimango perplesso e soprattutto triste di fronte al declino di un Paese cosí bello e dalla storia cosí ricca.

Cordiali saluti,
Alessandro Rossini

Marburg and FASE’09

I have the feeling that my blog is slowly becoming just a collection of reports about my trips… Not that there is anything wrong with that, but a bit more of variety would be better. Anyway, here I am once more talking about research and travelling.

During March I had two trips. The first was to Marburg, a little town about one hour train north of Frankfurt, Germany. This trip was not due to a conference, but because I needed to work together with my colleague Adrian -– who was spending three months as a visiting researcher at the Philipp University –- on an paper which we had to submit for a journal publication. We managed to get finished with the paper and to submit it, but fortunately it was not only work. Marburg is a delicious university town, it reminds me a bit L’Aquila, at least the L’Aquila I am familiar with. I stayed one week in a king sized room of a guest house, with furniture from the beginning of the 20th century and a bathroom that was probably bigger than the room I have in Bergen. :) No, I did not have travelling budget to waste, on the contrary I tried to spare… This was actually the cheapest solution available since Marburg was hosting a big conference on Medicine during the same week, and all the hotels were fully booked. I learned something funny while in Marburg: many of the public toilets in Germany have a special sink specifically designed to… puke. :) A local PhD student commented about this with “We have strong drinking traditions in Germany…” Brilliant!

The second trip was to York, as always together with Adrian, to attend the FASE 2009 conference, part of ETAPS. Here I presented our last paper “A Category-Theoretical Approach to the Formalisation of Version Control in MDE.” I was not so stressed in the end, and I am very satisfied with the presentation. Receiving compliments from colleagues and other researchers was a great reward. The same evening after the presentation we had a “gala dinner”, which was actually delicious, and of course we continued the celebrations in the pubs of the city centre. The ale beers from the local breweries helped me to forget about the research carried on in the last months… :) The city of York was somehow fascinating, also because of its history. Founded by Romans in the year 71 and captured by the Vikings in 866, it shares a lot with the history of both my home country and the country where I live now.