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MoDELS’08

11 November 2008

One month ago I attended the MoDELS’08 conference in Toulouse, France. Sounds important, isn’t it? 🙂 Well, it was to me. MoDELS’08 has been the first international conference I attended, and I am glad that I started with a relevant one. I had the chance to go there because my colleague Adrian and I had the paper “A Tentative Analysis of the Factors Affecting the Industrial Adoption of MDE“—the first paper accepted in my PhD programme—at the ChaMDE 2008 workshop, a satellite event of the conference.

The six-days conference had plenty of researchers from all over the world, including many of the “big names” in software engineering. Getting in touch with some of them was an honour. Many of the works presented at the conference were interesting. I even learned what “megamodelling” means. In my opinion, megamodelling is the most childish keyword ever appeared in computer science… However, the majority of these works were rather theoretical. The industry may never adopt model-driven engineering if the academy does not (quickly) provide anything useful to them. Of course, theory is fundamental, but sometimes I had the feeling of listening to speakers “selling thin air” rather than showing concrete results. Maybe one day I will be selling thin air as well, who knows… But for the time being it seems to me that research is software engineering is taking a dangerous path.

The city of Toulouse is gorgeous. So old and so modern at the same times, it offers a lot of sightseeing, attractions and restaurants where we had delicious meals and wines. I am waiting to upload a bunch of pictures on Flickr. Unfortunately, my Ubuntu 8.10 provides a buggy version of Digikam, and I have to wait for the developers to read my bug report and fix it.

That’s it folks at the moment. My next destination? NWPT’08 workshop in Tallin, Estonia, where I will have my first presentation. 🙂

Norge-Italia-Norge-Россия

6 August 2008

This year for the first time I had to apply for 20 days vacations… It made me realise even more that I am a full-time worker now. 🙂

Planning my vacations was not easy. I wanted to go home in Italy, but at the same time, I wanted some action somewhere else in the world… And I had to make it fit with some deadlines at the University. The final choice was the following: Italia at the end of June, and Россия—it just means Russia, but I could not resist writing it in Cyrillic :)—at the end of July.

A journey to Italy always gives me a mixture of contradictory feelings. On the one hand, it is pleasant to come back to my home-sweet-home after a long while: family, friends, sun, sea, tasty food, good wine. On the other hand, the provincial mentality of some Italians can easily piss me off.

My hometown is not that big, and I did not do that much there except sunbathing and swimming. But at least one day I was brave enough to hike the Gran Sasso mountain up to the top (2912m). This was the most exciting moment of my vacation in Italy, and I have to thank Antonio for being my guide.

If the first vacation was calm and relaxing, the next one was thrilling and exhausting. I visited St. Petersburg and Moscow, together with Diego and Federico, probably the best—or the worst depending on the point of view—travelling companions I could ask for.

St. Petersburg is a lovely old-fashion city, similar to other Eastern European capital, but still with a Soviet touch. Full of art, it was a good place to practice photography. Moscow is metropolitan and dynamic, somehow too big for my taste, but magnificent. Exhilarating nightlife, even though we had only a couple of chances to experience it. It is hard to compare these two cities, they are considerably different, but I was fascinated by both.

One thing I noticed is that Russian women dress up on more occasions than many European women do. Even to go for a casual walk, a Russian woman could wear high heels and feminine dress. A hardcore feminist might have the wrong impression that women do this because they are objectified, but Russian women themselves explained it this way: “We only live once; I want to look and feel at my best”. I could not agree more. 😉

What else can I say? I will probably be back in Russia one day! I uploaded pictures from my trips. Check my Flickr photostream, and do not forget to leave comments!

До свидания.

7-fjellsturen

26 May 2008

There is a town in the world where once every year almost 6000 people are waking up with only one desire: hike seven mountains before the day is over. The name of this town? Bergen.

I was one of those crazy people who managed to finish the so-called “7-fjellsturen”. My equipment was just a backpack with beverages and food, a rain jacket, and a camera. But what I needed the most was a lot of motivation and adrenaline.

I started at 9:00 and finished at 23:00, walking for about 35 km and going up for about 2400 m in total.

I am exhausted, stiff, and aching, but it was worth doing it. The weather was perfect, with clear sky and mild temperature. I have never enjoyed the nature that much, and at the end of the day, I felt part of it. Now I am left with a diploma, an exclusive t-shirt, and a lot of good memories…

I want to thank Synnøve, for being the best company I could desire for this trip, and Francesca, for giving me a chocolate bar when I needed sugars the most.

First semester almost over

20 May 2008

My first semester at the University is almost over. I did not touch that much my research project, but I had a lot to do anyway.

I took three courses. The first was Category Theory, the “theory of arrows” as the professor defined it, or abstract mathematics for humans. The second was Norwegian Level 1, pretty self-explanatory. The third was Theory of Science and Ethics, an interesting course about possible ethical implications of scientific research. In the latter, I had to explain my research plan in about 300 words comprehensible by “a guy on the street.” It seemed trivial at the beginning, but believe me; it was not. In the end, I reached a good compromise between understandability and detail. Maybe I will upload it here as well, at least some of my friends will understand what I am doing. 🙂

I have also been teaching assistant for Programming II, a course about programming methodologies in Java. I was preparing the mandatory assignment and corresponding solutions, organising the students into groups, and last but not least administering a Subversion server, something that took so (too) much time. It was strange to be at the same time a student and a teaching assistant.

I had some little trip at least. During Easter, I visited Sognefjord and slept in Selseng, Sogn og Fjordane. I had and unforgettable experience there: a bath in an outdoor jacuzzi with 40 degrees (Celsius) in the water, and -20 degrees in the air… And to complete the magical atmosphere: clear sky, full moon, mountains covered by snow, beer, and excellent company. Almost a perfect night, thank you guys!

I have also been in Lindås, Nordhordaland, with the Department of Informatics. We had the research school there, a series of seminars mainly given by PhD candidates and post-docs. The social event was canoeing, and there I had the chance to try my new waterproof camera. Yes, the Canon EOS is great, but I wanted a point and shoot camera for extreme situations, so I bought a new Olympus 1030SW: waterproof, shockproof, crushproof, freezeproof… I can do almost everything with it! But I also bought two new Canon objectives, an EFS 17-55mm f/2.8 and an EF 50mm f/1.8, together with a new Sigma 530 flash and a Gorilla Pod SLR, just to avoid my reflex camera to become jealous. 🙂 You probably saw an improvement in the quality of the pictures, right? 😛

What else? Well, next Sunday I will hike all the seven mountains surrounding Bergen in one day. It is an annual event, called 7-fjellsturen (literally the seven mountains trip). I am exercising a bit more this week to be in shape for the event. Let’s see what happens.

Tribute to Škoda Fabia

24 March 2008

Yesterday I drove a car after again after several months, and I understood how much I miss driving and especially driving my first and only car. It was a Škoda Fabia 1.9TDI silver colour, bought in 2001 and sold in Christmas’ Eve 2007 because of my move to Norway.

I had to do it a long time ago: this is my tribute to the car that drove me all over Italy and Europe, giving me a lot of satisfactions and not showing a single problem despite my GT drive style. 🙂

Goodbye, my dear Fabia…