I've moved the blog elsewhere, at http://blog.blogzero.org, since I got my own domain name and installed WordPress as blogging application.

Anyway, a big THANKS is due to Blogger for introducing me to the blogging side of the web.

If sometimes it's difficult to say which genre of music a band plays, with `The Go! Team' it's even harder. That's why the best answer I can give is ``get the album and listen yourself, you'll like it''. I love their `Thunder, Lighting, Strike' actually, but now I know that they cannot record on a CD what they can give you in a live performance. I saw them on friday 2nd, at Covo in Bologna.

When the six members of the band got onto the stage, their energy started spreading all over the place and I immediately felt it in my veins. As the guys were playing, dancing and singing so my body was moving, and my mind was dreaming... like it's doing right now, whilst `Everyone's a VIP to someone' is playing in my stereo.

I liked very much `The ice storm' and `Everyone's a VIP to someone'. But the very best IMHO was `Hold yr terror close', sung by Chi, the drummer, who also said a nice phrase in italian (which I don't remember actually, but it was something like ``I hope you're having a good time and you'll like this song''). She was so cute in front of the microphone all alone and her voice was so sweet.

`Ladyflash' was definitely the best way to end their show (``we came here to rock the microphone''.., they did actually). After that I took a picture with two of them and my friend Abba. Here we go! I'm looking forward to watch them again!

This is what Zack de la Rocha of R.A.T.M. was singing in `Guerrilla Radio'. I just put the CD in my stereo, raising the volume as much as possible till I don't get kicked outside by my parents. I've been a Rage Against The Machine fan since 1996, when I listened for the first time in my life their S/T album (1992), and I realized that I had lost 4 years without that energy in my ears! Then I got `Evil Empire' (1996), `The battle of Los Angeles' (1999) and a couple of singles (`The ghost of Tom Joad' single+video 1997, `Guerrilla Radio' 1999). Hail to all of them!! I would have given ANYTHING to see them live... and finally I did!!

18 february 2000, The Battle Of Milan, this is what they called their show. The building was crowded with more than 10'000 people, the four guys from L.A. on the stage while the people were screaming and singing with them. I managed to get in the first line in front of the band and I could see Zack singing with the same powerful voice I heard in the CD, and Morello playing the guitar like only he can do!

So they were singing `All hell can't stop us now'. I don't know what, but something actually stopped them. 2000 was the last year for R.A.T.M., when Zack de la Rocha decided to leave the band for some `disagreements' with the rest of the band. They got Chris Cornell from Soundgarden and founded Audioslave. But this is another story... I don't know actually why I started writing all these bullshits... I just wanted to say `do NOT let you RATM CDs get dusty' ;)

Guilty parties:
Zack de la Rocha (vocals)
Tom Morello (guitars)
Brad Wilk (drums)
Tim Commerford (bass)

Links:
R.A.T.M. official web site
R.A.T.M. lyrics

Whilst surfing the web today I ran across this pretty smart product: the Optimus keyboard. It's just a keyboard to plug into a computer... but with additional features. It is made with organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) on every key. This makes possible to actually draw any symbol on the keys, allowing to have different layouts with the same physical peripheral:

Are you a Quake player? You can set up the Quake layout too:

The keyboard is also equipped with additional keys which can be mapped to be shortcuts to produce any sequence (either write a string or execute a command in the system). The cool thing is that the keyboard will be OS-independent and open source, sold along with the SDK to program the interface. It should be launched in summer 2006 and cost ``less than a good mobile phone'' (as said by the producer).

Read this article and try to guess the answer. So true!

It's quite long, but it's worth to be read :)

For four days a year Modena is the center of the italian snow crew, since here takes place a fair called Skipass, with contests, exhibitions, shops and stuff about winter sports.. but not only! Lately this event has focused a lot on *freestyle* sports, such as snowboard, skateboard, inline skating, bmx, and motocross freestyle, with contests and amazing exhibitions on high ramps and artificial snow too!!

This year the meeting was from oct 29th to nov 1st, and I went there every day but the last. As representative of freestyler.it I had a press pass to get in and also to get closer into contest areas.

A few pics.. last two taken from www.skipass.it

If I had to pay to get in it wouldn't have been worth it. This is my comment about SMAU 2005, a ``hi-tech'' fair, well, at least this is what it pretends to be. Actually it's just an event where industries presents themselves to the people, introducing their products, no matter whether they're new or not.

As I explained in my previous post, I was invited there, so I didn't have to pay to get in and I could have gon to the convention celebrating 20 years of (pfui) Microsoft Italy, with Bill Gates as invited speaker. What did they say? Just a ridiculous self-celebration, rewarding their partners (bank institutes, communication companies...) with the ``Microsoft innovation award for Italy'', while Microsoft Italy guys were presenting their new products, like the new Xbox 360 (the graphics is really good, I don't have anything to say about this, since I don't own consoles), Windows Media Center, a system to use as universal multimedia player for the house and... here we go with the set piece: their *new* ``Virtual Earth''... hey, one second!! This sounds like something I already know... mmmmh, what is it?? Aaaah!! Yes, it's ``Google Earth''!! Yeah, but, what does this new software do?? Basically THE VERY SAME THINGS that Google Earth does!! So what's the innovation in this?? What's the new idea from Microsoft?? Have they ever invented anything?? Everybody knows the answer.

Finally the big wheel came and he started talking again about all these bullshits! Saying where we were, where we are and where we'll be, saying that when he began working with computers he had just 4kbytes RAM, very soon most PCs will have 4 gigs, so 1 million times more... bla bla bla. Just words to impress people, as you might have noticed this didn't impress me too much, and still I don't like him and his sw house. I would have paid to see an error blue screen during some presentation, that would have been great!!! Aware of what happened during windows 98 demo (this article on the CNN website reports it all and a video as well... ghghgh) I was ready to stand up and clap all those assholes, and my camera would have gotten burnt taking tons of pictures!!

Anyway, in the end I left a few Slackware promo flyers in the room! Nice girls at Microsoft stands though :)

Hey big man, how're you doing???