Tranquilli.org

Walking with Dinosaurs

Nico Tranquilli — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:39:17 +0000

After 65 million years they’re back!

Dinosaurs once again roam the earth in a spectacular theatrical arena show, Walking with Dinosaurs, based on the award-winning BBC Television Series.

Internationally renowned designers have worked with scientists to create 15 life-size dinosaurs, including the terror of the ancient terrain, Tyrannosaurus-rex! (official website)

taken on Fri, 5 Mar 2010 22:39:17pm (CET) - Futurshow Station, Casalecchio di Reno (BO)
Click image to Play Video

Check out the full set of photos from this event

New kid(s) in town

Nico Tranquilli — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:43:47 +0000

mini-itx fanless home server and nas storage

In the process of upgrading my home network, I’ve just picked

- a new NAS, Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, with 1.5TB+1.5TB disks in x-raid configuration (netgear’s raid1 with dynamic exapansion); this is replacing my older Maxtor Shared Storage II

- a fanless CPU/Motherboard, Intel D510MO with Intel’s next-gen Pine Trail Atom processor, as my (always-on) mini-itx linux home server; it replaced an old (unstable) VIA C7+Jetway mobo

ReadyNAS Duo storage server

The NAS

I use the ReadyNAS Duo to provide redundant/scalable storage to CIFS/AFP and NFS clients, for local/remote backups (rsync for Unix , Time Machine for Apple clients) and media streaming as well. Videos, music and pictures can be streamed to any uPnP/DLNA client on local net (an EVA2000 internet set-top box connected to the TV, the iPhone… a future Squeezebox) or iTunes clients (through FireFly straming server).

mini-itx case

The Home Server

The linux based home server will do its work as usual:

- development/testbed server, rsynced to a production VPS in the cloud, for personal hobby/projects
- Asterisk PBX for my voip phones
- OpenVPN endpoint for remote access to the home lan
- SSL tunneling for some home devices (e.g.. imap/ssl access from voip phone)
- mysql server
- monitoring (I’m going to try Zenoss) and usage statistics (mrtg, webalizer)

Andrea with his instructor, heading off-piste

Nico Tranquilli — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:48:14 +0000

Kronplatz vacation, Jan.2010

taken on Sun, 10 Jan 2010 10:37:30am (CET) in Cornolatino, Italy
[ NIKON D300; 34 mm @ f/7.1 @ 1/500th @ 200 ISO ; metering: Auto, Multi-segment, +2/3 EV ]
[ location: 46 deg 44' 47.40" N, 11 deg 58' 12.00" E, 2099 m a.s.l. ]

Andrea & Rocky

Nico Tranquilli — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:56:57 +0000

Olang (BZ), Italy - Jan.2010

taken on Sat, 9 Jan 2010 8:50:04am (CET) in Voldaora di Sopra, Italy
[ NIKON D300; 200 mm @ f/2.8 @ 1/250th @ 200 ISO ; metering: Auto, Multi-segment, +2/3 EV ]
[ location: 46 deg 45' 18.00" N, 12 deg 0' 25.80" E, 1354 m a.s.l. ]

state-of-the-art grooming in Kronplatz

Nico Tranquilli — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:00:51 +0000

Olang/Valdaora (BZ), Italy

taken on Thu, 7 Jan 2010 18:37:06pm (CET) in Sorafurcia, Italy
[ NIKON D300; 200 mm @ f/2.8 @ 1/250th @ 2500 ISO ; metering: Manual, Multi-segment ]
[ location: 46 deg 44' 46.80" N, 12 deg 0' 37.20" E, 1166 m a.s.l. ]

Olang ski show

Nico Tranquilli — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:17:29 +0000

Olang/Valdaora (BZ), Italy

taken on Thu, 7 Jan 2010 18:15:26pm (CET) in Sorafurcia, Italy
[ NIKON D300; 80 mm @ f/2.8 @ 1/320th @ 3200 ISO ; metering: Manual, Multi-segment ]
[ location: 46 deg 44' 46.80" N, 12 deg 0' 37.80" E, 1171 m a.s.l. ]

Ah, lovely snow!

Nico Tranquilli — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:03:43 +0000

Bologna, Italy - Dec 18 2009: snow is starting to fall

taken on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:18:18pm (CET)
[ NIKON D300; 30 mm @ f/1.4 @ 1/40th @ 3200 ISO ; metering: Auto, Multi-segment, -2/3 EV ]

WiredTour iphone application

Nico Tranquilli — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:10:59 +0000

WiredTour overlays points of interests (events, photos, webcams and wikipedia pages) on a map and search for news and weather forecasts.

FEATURES

supports Flickr and Panoramio
supports Upcoming.org and Last.fm events
supports Wikipedia georeferenced content
supports webcams from Webcams.travel
places relevant to your location are searched in the news (supports Bing and Yahoo news search)
gps data, reverse geocoding and weather can be displayed for your location and for any place on the map
a search feature enables users to move to specific places on the map
each point of interest displays a short summary of information within a text-bubble
new POIs are automatically loaded and displayed as you move the map

Freely available on the App Store

WiredTour support

Nico Tranquilli — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:28:31 +0000

Use the form below for comments or request about the WiredTour iphone application

writing software for the iPhone platform

Nico Tranquilli — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:50:08 +0000

Dec 02 2009 UPDATE: this is now freely available on the App Store
Dec 04 2009 UPDATE: It’s 4th on the top free applications for the travel category (Italian App Store)
Dec 17 2009 UPDATE: updated version (1.1) now available (includes georeferenced webcams and Last.fm events)

Main application screen

Lately I spent some time learning how to write iPhone applications.
Having been an avid C programmer for so many years it wasn’t difficult to start writing code in Objective-C (a powerful yet simple OOP language based on C);
a good book and the standard Apple docs that come with the SDK did the rest for the Cocoa touch API and the iPhone SDK in general

Finally, a couple of hours ago I managed to submit a first application to the App Store; nothing original but it still can handle maps, gps data, tables and scroll views, images, graphical transitions, REST API calls and results parsing for different webservices (yr.no weather data, geonames, flickr, panoramio, bing, yahoo search, google maps, upcoming.org) mostly through asynchronous network calls. Almost 7K lines of code.

Casa delle Farfalle

Nico Tranquilli — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:58:32 +0000

taken on Sun, 1 Nov 2009 16:08:03pm (CET) in Madonna del Pino, Italy
[ NIKON D300; 55 mm @ f/2.8 @ 1/250th @ 800 ISO ; metering: Auto, Multi-segment, -1/3 EV ]
[ location: 44 deg 16' 42.60 N, 12 deg 20' 11.40 E, 9 m a.s.l. ]

Check out the full set of photos from this place

Visiting the Comacchio Lagoon /2

Nico Tranquilli — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:57:09 +0000

Check out the full set of photos from these places

taken on Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:11:02pm (CEST) in Casa Campo, Italy
[ NIKON D300; 300 mm @ f/7.1 @ 1/320th @ 200 ISO ; metering: Auto, Multi-segment ]
[ location: 44 deg 39' 28.80" N, 12 deg 11' 22.20" E, 8 m a.s.l. ]

Comacchio

Nico Tranquilli — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:51:00 +0000

Check out the full set of photos from the Comacchio lagoon

taken on Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:28:32pm (CEST)
[ NIKON D300; 55 mm @ f/9.0 @ 1/200th @ 200 ISO ; metering: Auto, Multi-segment, -1/3 EV ]

Ferrara Balloons Festival

Nico Tranquilli — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:15:20 +0000

Ferrara Balloons Festival is one of the largest festivals of hot air ballooning in Europe, with numerous teams from Italy and other parts of the world bringing their traditional or uniquely shaped aircraft.

The festival also features concerts, shows, entertainment and a grand Village of the Air with numerous attractions, shops and food outlets.

Check out the full set of photos from this event

taken on Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:17:43pm (CEST) in Borgo Malpasso, Italy
[ NIKON D300; 70 mm @ f/4.5 @ 1/640th @ 200 ISO ; metering: Manual, Multi-segment ]
[ location: 44 deg 51' 4.20" N, 11 deg 37' 19.80" E, 0 m a.s.l. ]

Few of the Baloons Festival shots, more to come

Nico Tranquilli — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:57:30 +0000

The festival also features concerts, shows, entertainment and a grand Village of the Air with numerous attractions, shops and food outlets

Check out the (currently incomplete) set of photos from this event

taken on Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:30:08pm (CEST) in Borgo Malpasso, Italy
[ NIKON D300; 17 mm @ f/4.5 @ 1/640th @ 200 ISO ; metering: Auto, Multi-segment ]
[ location: 44 deg 51' 4.80" N, 11 deg 37' 22.80" E, 0 m a.s.l. ]