Thanks to the great stimulty that my professor L.P. Quartapelle is always able to bestow upon me, I made a new release of umesh2dgui.

We finally reached 0.4.3, and that includes the solver for Helmholtz problem that I worked on so much some time ago. Solution visualization is not yet too great, as it will cheat on you and you will not notice well when a solution is oscillating (notice that there is no stabilization in the solver).

On the other side of things the program is nice to toy with if you are a student of fluid dynamics and it is quite simple to use.

Compilation on a recent version of debian should not be a problem as all libraries, apart fltk2, are included in the disto repository. The only sad library is fparser. Fparser has been recently revomed from debian, so you will have to get it also by hand. I will follow the same policy and move the next version to use muparser. So this is the last release to use fparser library.

Last but lot least: Happy Halloween!

Best Regards,
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

Not a real piece of a news, just a minor post that someone may find useful if they upgrade to Dolphin 2.0 and Kde 4.8.3 (that will happen in those days if you are a Debian unstable user).

A program that I really like is Dolphin. It is really a great file manager and I enjoy it much of the time. It has only one problem. Each time they make a new version it "downgrades". What I mean? Simple, it becomes more idiotic, with new version having less options instead of more, forcing you to do something in a way they decide for you. In some sense it becomes more Mac-like.

Time ago it lost the ability to have more than one "Places"... and it has not recovered yet... you can either have one "Places icon" on the side of the breadcrumb or one "big" open, but not both. I naturally liked having both...

This time it's the treeview that has become a dogma. The treeview is that lot of "+" signs on the side of directory names that allows you to "open" dictories and see them like a tree. Great if you like it! I don't... There used to be a simple option tick in Settings -> Configure Dolphin -> View Modes -> Details called "Expandable folders", but in this particualr version it's gone... sigh :(

Ok, now let's fix it. It is rather easy. Open .kde/share/config/dolphinrc in your home folder and then add:

[DetailsMode]
ExpandableFolders=false

that will make the damn treeview go away. Neat and easy... and my eyes can relax without seeing all those "+" everywhere.

P.S.
If you want to read the whole story of how Peter Penz removed this option thinking he was the new Steve Jobs (so he can decide for all the users) you can read it here:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=289090

P.S.2
ppenz gave a great contribution to dolphin with the new view. But he really did it off with this move and expecially with the replies in the above bug report. People should never forget humility.

After so much time e nearly feel very stupid to do a post...

The reason is that I actually think it *is* that stupid! But I really want to give this thing some visibility, cause I lost a week end on it and I would really like all Nokia N900 users to be happy and understand how cool is their phone and how much stuff they can do with it if they are a bit geeky about it!

So what I did that made me so happy? I did a very basic stuff. I finally managed to sync my contacts and my agenda on my N900, and what? I did it in a "not too hacky way"... so no custom scripts or code or anything that a "end user" can't do.

This "wonder" is achieved by using syncML and some glue from syncEvolution that allows Horde and the N900 calendar app to communicate.

You can find the HowTo on maemo wiki here:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Sync/Usage_of_syncevolution#Horde

Hope this will help someone to sync their phone in 5 mins instead of 6 hours like for me :)

Best Regards,
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

And so this is Christmas
The time where I code
And what have we done
I released a new version
Another year over
Not yet, don't run too much
And a new one just begun
I still have to drive 500 km before the new year starts, please..
And so happy Christmas
Mmm.. let's say version is 0.4.1
I hope you have fun
Considering I will have to rewrite most of the code...
The near and the dear one
Ho, btw, the program is umesh2dgui
The old and the young
Now, and the last 3 Xmases I worked on this

So...
Actually this new umesh2dgui version is a big piece of a news, cause it includes the umesh2d mesher, making it finally a complete suit for generating a 2d mesh.

I admit it's not as pretty as I would like it to be, but it works. Indeed next release will be aimed to add features for usability, but those requires major code cleanup, so that is all what will happen till the next release.

I wish everyone my best Christmas Wishes and hope you enjoy.

Best Regards
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

If I'm taking the microphone to speak to you today², it is because the previous news entry was obviously a feeble attempt to twist facts to fill darkschneider's own hidden agenda. So my own conscience is now forcing me to correct those, so that the Faithful Reader(tm) can get an objective picture of the events.

Let's have a short look at what he said, and answer them step-by-step:

Life is marvelous, you never know where it brings you!
Lie ! Of course you did know ! It was written on your plane ticket ! Do not try to fool the Faithful Reader(tm) like that - you *knew* what to expect.

A day you leave from your city to meet a friend, with the excuse of an Open Source meeting
That was not an excuse. But we never really managed to see much of the Open Source meeting for sure.
Ok, it is true that common wisdom tells you to always rely on local guides to find your way through mountain passes or, in our case, through the Brussel's public transport system. I didn't, listening instead to the devious advices of an italian foreigner. "All paths lead to Roma", they say - but I guess most of them are going far away from the FOSDEM.

and next you find yourself in a car, back from a cinema where you just looked a french movie without knowing a single french word.
Ok, ok, that one is *mostly* correct. Though Gabriele failed (purposedly, I'm sure) to mention that the movie was "Jumpers", a kind of pseudoscientifical world conspiracy tale that hardly needed any linguistic knowledge to be understood (the plot is much simpler than, say, your average Tex Avery short anime). Moreover, a significant part of the action takes place in Italy, with French dubbers of American actors making a huge effort to sound like genuine italian lads speaking.

Then, suddently, you say "I'm hungry"
One thing the Faithful Reader(tm) needs to know is that Charleroi is not much that of a touristic place (except if you are interested by industrial ruins...). Saying "I'm hungry" at 23:30 there is like spilling water on the ground in the middle of a Saharian encampment, and you can expect the same terrified, puzzled looks directed at you.

and you find yourself in a Libanese pizza night shop, that does not list "margherita" on his menu and it sells pizzas shaped like a Roman trireme...
The Libanese status of the pizzeria is a sketchy point - it is more exact to say that it is a Turkish pizzeria held by Libanese people; but given that Liban was under the rulership of the Ottoman Empire until 1918, this is ok.
Regarding Margherita's listing, my bet is that it is indeed on the menu, but given that most names were not translated from Libanese (Turkish ?), it is hard to tell.
Finally, the triremes are probably a rememberance of the boats of the Turkish fleet that fought the Christian forces at Lepante. That, or the Pizzaiolo never learned to make round bases for his pizzas.

and you feel lucky! Because you have avoided "Fried Feddy", that only god knows what it is... I Just love life.
It is "Robert". And that guy makes the best Belgian fries one can find (that is, when he isn't in jail for being accused of having poisoned another customer).

Now, Faithful Reader(tm), you know all the Truth. So be careful when reading news there, always keep a sketpical eye on everything, and watch out for other "Voice-of-the-Truth Gros" entries in the future.

Have fun !
Gros.

----
²: Could you even imagine a guy like Castro *typing* ? Neither can I, so for the sake of my own self-image, we'll say I'm using a microphone.

Life is marvelous, you never know where it brings you! A day you leave from your city to meet a friend, with the excuse of an Open Source meeting, and next you find yourself in a car, back from a cinema where you just looked a french movie without knowing a single french word.
Then, suddently, you say "I'm hungry", and you find yourself in a Libanese pizza night shop, that does not list "margherita" on his menu and it sells pizzas shaped like a Roman trireme... and you feel lucky! Because you have avoided "Fried Feddy", that only god knows what it is... I Just love life.

This is just my "today" in Belgium, after chocolate, a good entrecote and a beer.

Best Regards
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

Tonight, independently by my headache, I managed to add the delete news feature. Now users can delete the news they post from the edit page.
I also coded a pop up javascript confirmation dialog, just to be sure to not miss click on a news and delete it... that would be nasty.

The next feature to code is quite a boring one, it is the caching of news, that is needed to avoid the server to have to "HTML-ize" the news each time, adding the needed HTML tags to make the news format nice.
This is indeed a costly operation, because the server has to parse all the news text while doing it.

If my morale is not enough high to go for a boring coding, I will add support for images in the news, that is nice coding, cause you can see a nice image that will show along with the new, and I have some great pics already to post.
Boring part is anyway around the corner, since, if for parsing some lines of text cache is just "optional", for serving images, it is nearly mandatory, if you do not want to end up with a very slow loading.

Will see if reason wins or if appearance will. Virtus is in the middle!

Best Regards,
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

Tonight I coded the edit feature. Now I should be able to correct all the typos that I normally do when writing, so, if you find a typo, do not hesitate to write me, so I can try my edit news feature!

The code took about 1 hour of planning and 2 hours for deployment. A news delete feature is still missing, but that is probably a matter of 30 more minutes. Indeed that feature can be just added by extending the edit code, what needs to be double checked is that it is secure, but you never know, since I do not have enough experience to code "mostly safe" PHP yet.

Best Regards,
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

Finally I found time to update this site.
I did this because I needed to improve my PHP and MySQL knowledge, so I coded the login engine and this new news engine. Now I'm able to post news directly online, without editing and uploading the HTML files.
While this is not an uncommon feature, it is anyway nice that I managed to code it from scratch, it was very funny. Until now the work took about 10 hours, split like 2 hours for login, 4 hours of planning and 4 hours for the news engine.

For the future I plan to add editing of posted news, online user registration with email confirmation, image upload for a news and an image upload page for registered users.
The list is quite big and will take lot of time, I am really sure I will not find time to make all this stuff, but you never know...

If someone needs this code, I can haply share it under GPL v2 license. Also if someone needs hosting I offer a nice hosting with shell access, site and database for a real cheap price.

On the umesh2dgui side, some work has been done, but I did not released a new version yet.
When a new version will come it will most probably contain the finished mesh visualization, that code just need touch-ups. Indeed umesh2dgui is finally able not only to help you in the mesh definition but after the mesh generation to show you the output, so literally removing the need to use mtvplot, that is unmaintained and not widely available as it is supposed to be.

Best Regards,
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

Life is always strange... I notice that it is greatly influenced by moods. Sometimes you are in the mood of doing something, sometimes not... Fact is that I am in a "good mood" time, so I am spending every minute of my spare time on something, especially one of my projects, umesh2dgui.
So surprisingly I have released another version of it, 0.3.6 and as previously announced it has one of the key features in it, closed object recognition. As a bonus the "Primitive Browser" feature got in too and I think that it is really a lovely addition for the end user.
Now umesh2dgui just miss one key feature so I think that with some more efforts we will soon see a new stable version, the 0.4.0, that will finally be really usable for production.
Salutes and happy Easter to everyone!
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

Ha! Found time for an update. First reason that caused this update is that I worked on one of my project I host here, so that part of the site needed some new links and such so to make the most of I decided to post this news too.
First of all. No I did not had time to finish my story on the water cooling system, but I can say that the guy for whom I built it modified it to a "Mk II" version, taking out the evaporative tower and replacing it with a Seat Toledo radiator bought for 20 euros.
Second. I finally decided to not work on the RTai code for two main reason, one, it takes too much of my time, two, now it is not the rigth time to do it.
Third. I finished the work on the ducted prop fan for my university, it ended up with 2 nice thesis of my friends, but the results where not satisfactory. Moreover I had only marginal role in the work and that not enough to write an article.
Fourth. Mmm you still reading... so you are interested in the only real interesting news I may give here. Hold your breath....... naa that too much. Breath again. I have released a new version of umesh2dgui, it is naturally another development version numbered 0.3.5, but it has some quite nice polishing features I loved to add. Important is that the next feature will be the first of two key feature it miss. It will identify closed objects alone. So wait for 0.3.6 since it will be a good turning point for usability.
As a last note, I will say that I have some ideas for a new section, but it will be only for Italians, since it will hold all my didactic writings I do with LaTeX. Stay Tuned!
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

It took time to me to update this site, you know why?
Before opening the site (and paying the bills for it, by my personal money) I asked some friends if they where willing to help me to keep up a site where we can store some news and info on other peeps we think was worth to have a site but for some reason could not affront a one or was not able to make one by themself. Since they agreed to offer help and said "Wonderful idea!", I payed the space the registration and opened it.
None of them was seen again...
This was a bad way to discover that not many are willing to help others. Yeah they can do it, but only if it look for "free", but it is not. They long for a supreme thing a thing they cannot buy. Glory. Now what happens? Easy!. If this site starts to have success people will offer their help, even the same friends will probably come back here and provide what they should have provided time ago.
Now my question is "What to do?" accept their help and politely thank them or throw in their face the fact that they was away when I needed help.
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

After many days and many months finally I updated this site.
My idea now is to keep this updated with some news I feel important about myself, my family and the world that I have around, and yes, that is the same world you have around. Here I hope to find a place to post my rants, my thoughts and maybe some poetry things I like to write. Here I wish to particularly thank hoxu, he is a guy from an irc channel that helped me to design this site, answering my questions and expecialy convincing me that it needed an update, He told me to use css and not lot of php as I did before.
I cannot forgot I love php a lot.. I am C in my hearth (as my linux-wildo project show) but I have seen that there is other things you can use to make "art".
I wish to thank philc too from the same irc channel, that gave me artistical suggestions.
Gabriele Dini Ciacci