Oh my!

Posted on 31/10/2008 by admin

I was adding WordPress as one of my Linkedin profile apps (since its “Facebookization”) while I noticed it’s been 85 (!!) days without updating Yellow Line: oh my, oh my! My loyal RSS feed readers haven’t been abandoned with pics from Flickr and links from Yahoo My Web. but what about the rest of You? For those who cares, obviously!Let me share with you a quick, and casually ordered, “facts of notice” list in Matteo’s life:

Nearly finished the (unending) restructure of my new home; some shots soon.
Tested the iLiad book reader (hopefully I’ll be able to post my thoughts on it soon)
Launched our brand new virtualized server farm
Spent some time at the hospital (nothing bad)
Had 2 cars repaired in one month
Visited Google offices in Italy
Partied for a colleague’s wedding
Redesigned my office desk passing from 2 monitors (17” LCD + Macbook) to one single 22” wide LCD (shot soon linked)
Succeded in the re-birthing of my nearly deceased office Ficus Benjaminus (shot soon linked)
Climbed trees
Talked with a lot of University students about our Second Life business adventure
Bought an Ipod Touch after 7 years waiting (and resisting!)
Learned (sort of) to play golf and enjoyed it
Spent a week on the mountains
Have found the (probably) right baby sitter for my daughter
Opened a Facebook account

Are some of this bullets going to become blog posts? Hopefully I’ll be able to use this list as a track for future work on Yellow Line!

Ever changing

Posted on 03/02/2008 by admin

True. Yes, you’re right (and – almost obviously) I’m wrong. But I have at least a couple of reasons to explain you why I haven’t blogged in a month; at a second look I’d say it’s just one reason: I love a constant change feeling to fulfill my life.

Point one. Professional life: officially speaking I’ll take a new role as manager at Gabetti with a brand new team reporting to me and a whole new task to supervise the whole servers+security+network side of our infrastructure.
If you know me or read this blog since some time you might know that my carrier/experience path (programmer turned web designer turned project manager turned interaction specialist turned researcher turned again project manager) has in the years just lightly touched the “hardware” side of the thing, so it’s going to be exciting finding a way to manage all this new knowledge that will flow into my mind in the forthcoming weeks.

Point two. Personal life: even if in our original path our current home would have been “current” for at least something like 10 years this summer (5 years in our counting) we bought a new and bigger one in the Brianza area near Milan. We’re currently restructuring it from the ground up but you might take a look at how it’s going to appear once ready (caveat: our architect designed the home, but the Floorplanner version and its mistakes are completely mine.

Thesis: I’ll try to post as frequently as I can, but need to suspend my pact with you. For a while at least.

Back to paper

Posted on 09/01/2008 by admin

As those who regularly read these pages know I’m a guy of the Digital Era: I listen to MP3 music both at home and while on the move, I regularly wear a couple of cellphones, my alterego’s name is Blackberry, I own 3 computers (and regularly use each of them), the main method I get in touch with my parents is via Skype video, etc. etc.

But all these bits are starting pissing me off. I want some more Carbonium (or, better said, 6 athoms of Carbonium 10 athoms of Hydrogen and a twist of 5 athoms of Oxygen).

It all started in early last year. When I get rid of the ugly Word generated fax cover and switched to b-side of used A4 sheets and the use of a pen.

This simple operation boosted my performances when sending data via fax:

Since I don’t usually use Word templates I’ve always got the need to search for them. Now I don’t do it anymore.
Since your’re supposed to be creating a – ehm – good looking fax cover you should also give a proper form to what you’re writing. Now I grab my pen and wrote what I have in mind directly on the paper.
Some times the printer crashes, and I have to reprint the cover and wait for the printer doing its job. Now I just take the first used sheet I find and I’m ready to start.
And, most of all, I can draw cooler smiles then those you find in Word!!! (actually cooler then those you find in WordPress too!)

But this was just the beginning. Then I received a present from one of our partners that definitely turned me on. A 365 days Moleskine diary. In full effect.

I’ve never owned a Moleskine book, but apparently all of my marketing/advertising/graphics/creative friends have one (Marcello, you know who you are), and I’ve always been kinda gelous of the particular feeling they have for their Moleskine.

Today I grabbed my beloved stylo and started copying all my meetings from the Outlook agenda to the Moleskine. What I loved more is the soft scraping sound the pen produces as the ink flow on the paper; it’s not a scheduler anymore, it’s a piece of me; an echo of my life tranferred on the Moleskine.

Wonderful.

Now I’ll tell you my friend what are my plans. I still need Blackberry and Outlook since they’re way too comfortable to be left behind. But the paper diary will become my preferred way of tracking appointments, it will be the first thing I’ll look at once in my office (just before opening my Bloglines account) and the last thing I’ll close before commuting to home.

Me, my stylo and my brand new Moleskine: technology for my own sake