iffalse

As time goes by

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:33:46 GMT

music piano short

Herman Hupfeld

Each of us has a destiny. For good, or for evil. Here's a short version of something that's been on my mind for the past few weeks.

Incomunicabilità

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:59:58 GMT

music piano short original

Bruno Barcarol Guimarães

It's been a while since I last published some music. But today I have something very unusual, in many ways: a composition of my own.

Giaveno

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Milk. Raw milk, to be more specific — not only fresh, having been just recently extracted, but also not processed in any way to increase its longevity, such as pasteurizing (that is, boiling to eliminate any potentially harmful organisms). It is the closest you can get to milk straight out of a cow. For a long time I had been searching for it: I had managed to find a few distributors of fresh whole milk, which is already incomparably better not only in terms of taste, but especially of nutritional value (this is one of the reasons for my weekly peregrination to the nearby town of Settimo Torinese). But raw milk is very difficult to find.

Redesign

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 07:01:29 GMT

My web site now has a new appearance.

The beauty of Unix

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 19:50:41 GMT

One of the greatest advantages of using a Unix system is its openness and intelligibility: it rewards users who invest time into knowing and exploring its design. Just going about daily life using your computer offers the opportunity to learn about technical concepts that are elegant and (you could say) beautiful, not to mention extremely useful and applicable in many situations, personal as well as professional — though sadly this type of knowledge is not as common as it should be. Well, that is why this blog exists.

Superga

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal made, in 218 B. C., his famous crossing of the Alps, moving from the Iberian to the Italic peninsula. When the Punic army descended the mountains on its way to Rome they found the city of the Taurini (the “men of the mountains”) on the margins of the river Po. After all offers of cooperation were rejected, Hannibal's army razed the city to the ground in just three days, and the few survivors fled to the hills on the eastern side of the river.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Since I'm now, according to the famous incipit, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, I thought I'd write to my younger self, something I'd have liked a Virgil to have taught me as I struggled to find my way out of the selva oscura.

Caruso

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 15:22:56 GMT

music piano short

Lucio Dalla

“Sentì il dolore nella musica, si alzò dal pianoforte, ma quando vide la luna uscire da una nuvola gli sembrò più dolce anche la morte”.

Monviso from Moncalieri

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Autumn sunset at Viale del Castello in Moncalieri, with Monviso and Ponte dei Cavalieri Templari.

Turin baroque music festival

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The 4th edition of the baroque music festival organized by Accademia del Santo Spirito, which took place in June–July and October–November 2025 in some of the most beautiful churches and palaces in Torino.

Costigliole d'Asti

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Chiesa della Confraternita di San Gerolamo.

Total lunar eclipse

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Seen from Torino, Italy, behind Collina di Superga and Chiesa della Gran Madre di Dio, from Lungo Po Armando Diaz across Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I and the river Po.

Autumn leaves (solo)

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 17:31:17 GMT

music guitar vocals short

Eric Clapton

Can you tell Clapton is one of my favorite musicians — if not my favorite?

Perugia

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Recently, I was recommended a trip to Perugia to attend the Umbria Jazz festival (my friends are pochi ma buoni) — or rather was compelled to go the moment I saw how incredible the program was, with artists such as Herbie Hancock, and Marcus Miller, Jacob Collier all in the same festival.

Ustica

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Whenever my itinerary includes large cities — which are not my favorite places, you should know by now, I can only take so much of them at a time — I must per forza intersperse escapes to remote places. As soon as I got to Sicily's capital and largest city, Palermo (one walk through La Loggia at night, with the incessant chatter of the Italian evenings, was enough), I fled to the small volcanic island of Ustica, about 70km north towards the heart of the Tyrrhenian sea.

Trapani

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The trip across Sicily started at the western end, in the city of Trapani and the adjoining archipelago, Isole Egadi. Before Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans competed for dominance over Sicily — possibly even before the fall of Troy in the XII century B.C. — this region was inhabited by the Ελυμοι (Elymoi, “Elymians”), who had built a city and a temple in the nearby mount Ἔρυξ (Éryx, modern Erice). It even appears in Virgil's Aeneid, as the place where Aeneas burries his father Anchise before sailing to the penninsula.

Favignana

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

My first stop in Sicily — and I could not have chosen a better one — was Favignana, the largest of the Aegadian Islands. These are an archipelago of five islands in the Strait of Sicily, the closest about 7km from its western end, in the region of Trapani and Marsala. The Greeks called them Aἰγάται Νῆσοι (Aigátai Nésoi, Aegates Insulae in Latin), the “islands of the goats” (making them etymologicaly related to Capri), and according to English novelist Samuel Butler, author of a distinguished translation of Homer's Odyssey in 1900, their Ἱερά Νήσος (Hierá Nésos, “holy island”), the island of Marettimo, furthest from the coast, is none other than Ithaca, the famous homeland that Odysseus seeks throughout the epic.

Portofino

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 18:38:12 GMT

The city of Ianus keeps teaching me about movement and change. Ever since my first visit (of many) to Genova, I wanted to explore the coast around it, the riviera ligure. This weekend, after seeing that the gulf of Tigullio is only about 30km away, and that spring weather had arrived with gusto, I did what any sensible man would: got myself a bicycle and departed the very next day.

The godfather

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 08:21:18 GMT

music mandolin piano short

Nino Rota

You knew this had to be the first one.

Lonely stranger

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 15:21:33 GMT

music guitar vocals short

Eric Clapton

An unplanned recording, but I've been obsessed with the Unplugged album for months now.

Running away

Sat, 07 Sep 2024 16:12:09 GMT

music piano guitar bass short

Joey Dosik

Continuing the theme of perfect love songs with a 70's feel and a deadly groove.

How deep is your love

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 18:51:25 GMT

music guitar bass short

Bee Gees

Some songs are just perfect, and this is one of them.

Wayfaring stranger

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 13:15:39 GMT

music guitar vocals short

Old folk/gospel songs have always been some of my favorites, this one in particular. The lyrics and the atmosphere are just perfect, and it was made to be played on a Telecaster.

~/places

Fri, 31 May 2024 06:52:00 GMT

You might have noticed I like to travel. For a long time, it did not appeal to me to share this aspect of my life, as it is far from being an uncommon interest, especially in the era of vain social media pretension and ostentation, and no end of people traveling to supposedly “find themselves”, but who, in the words of one of the great Roman poets, “caelum, nón animum mútant, quí tráns mare currunt”.

But that has gradually changed over the past few years, to the point that I have now, after a week of furious programming, added a new section to this web site dedicated to it. Read on for an explanation, jump to the conclusion if you do not like to read (but then this is probably not the place for you in the first place…), or just go directly there and explore.

Genova

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Legend says the city was founded by the god Janus, whose two faces watch over past and future — the ruler of time, of gates and passages, of beginnings and endings, of traveling, commerce, and sailing, of war and peace, of morning, birth, journey, transition, and change (it was in honor of him that the Romans named the first month of the year, Ianuarius, which marks the winter solstice and the transition between years). This is attested by Pozzo di Giano, a well in what is considered the founding place of the city of Genova which, like the two-faced Janus, faces both sea and mountain.

Terme di Diocleziano

Sat, 02 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I could spend the rest of my life in Rome: every time I am there I end up spending hours in a single, small part of it, not seeing nearly enough, and leaving thinking I will have to return at least once more. This particular time, it was this monumental complex of public baths, built at the turn of the IV century. Located in the northeastern part of the city center, right next to the main train station, Roma Termini, it can be easily visited even during a short stay, as mine was.

Via Francigena

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:01 GMT

One of the two major early-Mediaeval peregrination routes across Western Europe — the other being, of course, the famous Camino de Santiago, which it predates by a few centuries and to which it is roughly perpendicular. Beginning in Canterbury (specifically, Canterbury Cathedral, seat of the Archbishop of the Church of England), at the southeastern corner of Britain near the Thames estuary, it crosses France, Switzerland, and the entirety of the Italian peninsula, passing through Rome and ending in Santa Maria di Leuca in Puglia, the southeastern end of Italy, after more than three thousand kilometers. From there pilgrims would sail across the Mediterranean to the Holy Land. Thus it connects, together with Camino de Santiago, Compostela, Canterbury, Rome, and Jerusalem, the main peregrination sites of Christianity.

Formia

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

As many of the cities along the Tyrrhenian coast on the ancient via Appia, Formia was a favored place for Roman seaside villae — including one belonging to the stepfather of the emperor Augustus. Its Greek name Όρμιαι (Hormiae in Latin, from a word for “harbor”) refers to its many ports and the mild maritime climate provided by its surroundings: the gulf of Gaeta and the monti Aurunci. The remains of many of these villae and ports can still be seen all they from the city center to the rocky shore on the way to monte Scauri, with salient pieces of two-thousand-year-old mosaics coming out of the rock every now and then.

Minturno

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:01 GMT

The Roman city of Minturnae, in the southern region of Lazio, was built in 312 B.C. on the site of the previous conquered ancient city of the same name, part of the Pentapoli Aurunca. Its location, protected by the monti Aurunci to the north, golfo di Gaeta and mar Tirreno to the southwest, and the river Liris (now called Garigliano) to the southeast, and right on via Appia, the “regina viarum” (queen of roads, the main road connecting Rome to the southern end of the peninsula), made it a strategic point for a colony.

Cappella Sansevero

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This post will be different than usual. Taking photographs is forbidden inside the cappella, so these are not mine, but taken from their web site (I hope they will not sue me for the mountains of money I make with each post).

Ischia

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The last stop of my marathon in the Gulf of Napoli. I had become so enamored of the island from watching it all the way across the Gulf of Gaeta, more than 60km away — it is located right between the two gulfs, in the area where Campi Flegrei, the huge volcanic caldera, enters the Mediterranean sea, forming Penisola flegrea and the surrounding islands — seeing its dim figure through the maritime mist, its shaded contour against the colored sky at sunset, its dark green suspended in the bright blue where both sky and sea meet on sunny days (see the other posts where it makes an appearance), that I could not leave Campania without going there.

Pompeii

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

If you are obsessed with Ancient Rome as I am (as I hope you are), you knew this was coming. After the Palatine hill in Rome itself, the most famous Roman ruins which survive to this day are certainly the city of Pompeii. As its neighbor Herculaneum, it was at the time at the seaside (built on top of a layer of lava from a previous eruption), it was buried under several meters of volcanic material expelled from mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, remained lost for more than a millennium and a half until it was accidentally rediscovered, and now provides an unbelievable view into what life was like in the Roman empire two thousand years ago.

Herculaneum

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

At the foot of mount Vesuvius there existed, until the fated year of 79 AD, a Roman town named Herculaneum. Legend says it was founded by the Greek hero Ἡρακλῆς (Heracles, known to the Romans as Hercules) himself while returning from Iberia after one of his twelve labors, and named after him. While not as large as the nearby city of Pompeii, its position at (what was then) the seaside made it a retreat for Roman nobility including, it is believed, Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesonius, and its four thousand inhabitants enjoyed decent prosperity.

Something (guitar solo)

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:34:46 GMT

music guitar bass short

The Beatles

Day 24 without a musical instrument, I think the longest I've ever been without playing music since I was 15. So here I am editing old, unfinished recordings to try to stay sane.

Suio

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:01 GMT

Suio, on the border between the Italian regions of Lazio and Campania, is situated in an area rich in thermal waters, considered some of the best in Italy for the presence of iodine and therapeutical for their richness of sulphur.

Fonte di Salomone, Sant'Andrea del Garigliano

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

After crossing via Valle di Suio, next to the road which follows the Garigliano river, in the comune of Sant'Andrea del Garigliano, almost in Frosinone, just before the end of the province of Latina, there is a magical place, hidden among the trees that surround the river margins.

Sorrento

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Known to the Romans as Surrentum, from Greek Συρρεντόν, meaning “a confluence”, from the verb “συρρέω”. A city protected by steep rock walls, with a single entrance where parts of the Greek walls and gate can still be seen, and by the waters of the gulf of Napoli. I spent most of my time there (just over a day, unfortunately) walking Capo di Sorrento, and most of that in Bagni della Regina Giovanna, amazing Roman ruins from the 1st century AD, with its own natural swimming pool and port.

Monte Tuoro, Capri

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:02 GMT

Last set from Capri, though I would post every single picture if I could. These are taken over the two days I spent there, along two sentieri: one going from the famous Faraglioni up to monte Tuoro, the other crossing the entire Western coast passing through the ruins of Roman forts and rocky paths along the limestone cliffs, where dolphins and whales can be regularly seen (a pity they were too far away to get a good picture or video of them).

Belvedere filosofico, Capri

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:01 GMT

Faith, in one sentence.

Monte Solaro, Capri

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Climbing monte Solaro in the island of Capri. The path begins in Porto di Marina Grande, right after leaving the boat. It goes up through tiny streets and stairs along the Northern portion of the town of Capri, then begins an almost vertical ascent through Scala Fenicia, a stairway built on the face of the mount in the 7th century B.C. by the Greek colonizers of the island (there are no pictures at this point because I was busy trying to survive the almost 1000 steps).

Capri

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I've been to many beautiful places in my life. But none compares, at least in terms of pure natural beauty, to this piccola isola at the Southern end of the gulf of Napoli, a few kilometers away from the Sorrento peninsula.

Pompei

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:01 GMT

I was in Pompei very briefly — just a single day, on the way to and from Vesuvius. That was much less than the four years I estimate it will take me to visit its famous ruins, given that my mind lives more in the Roman empire than in whatever this “real” life is, next time I'm there.

Vesuvius

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Vesuvius rises 1281m on the coast of the gulf of Napoli. In 79 AD it destroyed, in one of the most catastrophic eruptions in recorded history, many surrounding Roman cities. Up to 1.5t of material were expelled per second, in clouds 33km high, releasing 100,000 times the energy of the 1945 atomic bombings. The mountains surrounding the caldera are the remnants of the original, much higher (2km) Monte Somma, destroyed by that eruption.

Napoli

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The Greek warrior Ὀδυσσεύς/Odysseús/Ulysses sails the Tyrrhenian Sea in his journey returning from the Trojan War. He passes the Italian coast by the island of the Sirens, beautiful female sea creatures who lure men to their death with their voices and music. With counsel from the goddess and sorcerer Circe, he is able to escape the enchantment, and proceeds his travels, through the underworld of ᾍδης/Hades.

Gaeta

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Gaeta, a coastal city in the Riviera d'Ulisse, in the Southern end of Lazio, built on the tip of Torre di Orlando, a promontory formed at the feet of the Monti Aurunci. Aeneas, in Virgil's Aeneid, buries his wet-nurse, Καιήτη, in this place while sailing the Lazio, giving the city its name.

Santi Cosma e Damiano

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The equally small comune of Santi Cosma e Damiano is situated right next to Castelforte, on the same hillside overlooking the Garigliano valley and the gulf of Gaeta (but don't mix the two towns, or you'll upset the locals on both sides). There is a stony road which climbs almost to the top of the hill, the highest point in the surrounding area, the village of Ventosa and its 12th-century Romanesque watch tower, with a view of not only the valley and the vastness of the gulf, but stretching all the way to monte Cairo in the north, monti Aurunci in the west, Roccamonfina to the east, and going as far as Vesuvius and the island of Ischia in the south-east when the weather is sufficiently clear.

Minturnae, Minturno

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Minturnae was one of the major ancient city of the Αὔσονες/Auruncí, who inhabited the mountainous regions near the Gulf of Gaeta. It was conquered by Rome in 314 B.C and completely destroyed, but later reconstructed as a Roman settlement and frequented by the nobility, as were the other villae maritimae on the Tyrrhenian coast: Formiae, Pirae, and Cáiéta.

Castelforte

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:01 GMT

Castelforte is a small comune in the Garigliano valley. It is where Suio (see previous post) is contained and together with it, as the name suggests, served as a protective and vigilant center for the entire valley, from the surrounding mountains down to the delta of the river in the gulf of Gaeta.

Coreno Ausonio

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

A trail up the Garigliano valley towards the oriental Aurunci mountains — an area at the border between Lazio and Campania populated since pre-Roman times due to its marble, limestone, and thermal waters — and a sunset in the gulf of Gaeta in the Tyrrhenian sea.

Porto Alegre

Sat, 20 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Dostoevsky

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I met Dostoevsky, so to speak, a little more than a year ago. I won't go into how I got to Crime and punishment, but reading it (in the span of a single weekend) was the principal — though not singular or initial — cause of the most profound transformation I have ever suffered: at the same time a reorientation of my life and the consummation of my personality, a reconciliation of every internal doubt I had about me and my choices (if one may call them that) in life.

Tennessee whiskey

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 17:24:54 GMT

music guitar bass short

Dean Dillon, Linda Hargrove

Arroio do Sal

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Happy summer (or winter) solstice.

São Luiz da Terceira Légua

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Mediterranean sea

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

While putting together the page from the last post this past week and going through my photograph archive, I was caught yet again by these ones and put it on my list to share them, since they are some of my favorites among all the pictures I've ever taken.

Istanbul

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Βυζάντιον / Κωνσταντινούπολη / εἰς τὴν Πόλιν. Thousands of years of history, a mixture of Greek, Roman, Ottoman, Western and Eastern cultures, and marvelous places, natural and man-made. I hope to return here someday for a longer stay. (I can now also claim to have officially been to Asia)

Villa Reale, Milano

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

How can you not love a place where you can walk into a public garden and find a temple to the Greek Fates and passages from Aeneas' journey through Hades from Virgil's Aeneid?

Torino

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

(a bit unexpected to post again, but Italy is just a fantastic place)

Trento, Padova, Bologna

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Magnifica Trento, sotto le Alpi. With a few bonus photographs from Padova and Bologna.

Trieste

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

A nubilous but spectacular walk along the Adriatic coast. Trieste / Opicina / Prosecco / Miramare / Barcola

Venezia

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Always a delight to revisit the Repubblica Marinara and see how it's fared since the fall of the Byzantine Empire.

Praha

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Parting with a dear old friend is always painful, but sometimes inevitable.

Brno

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

The power of the powerless

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 15:06:07 GMT

The power of the powerless, Václav Havel

Some literary works are considered great for their content alone, but a few can also be credited with altering the course of history. In the case of the horrors of the 20th century, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago is thought of as "the book which brought down the Soviet Union"; it certainly deserves the title, but it was one in a vast network of самиздат (samizdat), covert self-published books which subverted the heavy censorship of the Soviet bloc. Václav Havel, a poet and playwright who later became Czechoslovakia's last president, and subsequently the first of the newly-formed Czech Republic, was the author of one of these works. His focus is not on grandiose political ideas: rather, his thesis is that it is in ordinary people, the seemingly powerless, where in truth all power resides. Such ideological systems are a reflection of their own faults, of living in a lie, and so it is in their capacity, and their responsibility, to oppose them by living within the truth.

Un sospiro

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

music piano short

Franz Liszt

Bron-Yr-Aur

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 21:13:17 GMT

music guitar

Led Zeppelin

Meditation.

Prelude 4, op. 28

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 11:28:00 GMT

music piano

Frédéric François Chopin

The sound of absence and longing.

Pride and prejudice

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 19:34:49 GMT

Pride and prejudice, Jane Austen

While it is on the surface a romance, this alone would not account for the immense popularity of this book. As its initial title, First Impressions, suggests, there is much more to it than a simple love story. It is at its core about the philosophy of love but, as a novelist, Austen's exploration of the theme is that of a painter or a poet: not formal but abstract, deeper and more captivating, expressing what can be felt but not easily rationalized.

Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους (Apology of Socrates)

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 18:04:19 GMT

Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους (Apology of Socrates), Plato

One of the Platonic dialogues which depicts the last days of Socrates (together with Euthyphro, Crito, Phaedo, and Xenophon's Apology). Having been accused of "corrupting the youth" and teaching men "not to receive the gods whom the city receives", and knowing what his fate is, the philosopher consults his δαιμόνιον (daimonion, his "divine faculty") and decides that, rather than desisting and escaping from his trial, as his prosecutors would have him do, he is to deliver his defense in front of the court and face the ultimate consequence.

Brave new world

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 22:26:22 GMT

Brave new world, Aldous Leonard Huxley

The World State in the Year of Our Ford 632 is perfectly constructed: humans are produced in laboratories, engineered and conditioned for their societal purpose, kept young until their death, with free access to drugs and all sorts of technological amenities. Women are infertile or expertly trained in contraceptive rituals, encouraged to have as many partners as possible, and, if they ever "feel out of sorts", administered a passion surrogate or pregnancy substitute.

Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν (Meditations)

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 12:21:23 GMT

Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν (Meditations), Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

A book which should be mandatory reading for every man entering adult life. With deep roots in classical Greek and early Christian philosophy, these notes by Marcus Aurelius (the last of the "Good Emperors", maintainers of the Pax Romana in the first two centuries A.D.), written in the last third of his life, describe his conception of masculine virtue.

Booklet printing with LaTeX

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 17:49:01 GMT

In another episode of "there was something very peculiar I wanted to do, there existed no decent guides on the internet, so here is mine": booklet printing. I had the need to turn a LaTeX document I had produced into something physical which could be taken with me easily. After a few days of research and experimentation and some wasted paper, I arrived at a very satisfying result. There is something about real-life printed books (even a small one) which cannot be translated to digital media. So here is how you can do the same for any PDF document you might have.

Wish you were here

Tue, 10 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

music guitar short

Pink Floyd

strace prelude in C

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 10:34:57 GMT

Much has been written about the venerable strace, one of the most important allies of the systems programmer. However, the focus is often on the specifics of the particular program being examined, not on the functioning of strace itself and the operating system environment involved in the execution of the process. Today we explore this neglected part of the system call trace.

C++ virtual tables

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 20:09:10 GMT

One of the principal differences between C and C++ is the latter's direct support for virtual functions. While it is entirely possible, as will be demonstrated, to implement virtual dispatch in C, C++ offers language primitives that instruct the compiler to generate the necessary back end code automatically.

nngn - lua & wasm

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 10:10:25 GMT

This is a short interlude in my series of posts. The original post in the series briefly mentioned that one of my build targets is WebAssembly, and the last one was all about how Lua is a fundamental piece of the architecture. How that build process works did not seem particularly interesting, so I did not write about it.

nngn - lua

Sun, 30 Aug 2020 17:54:09 GMT

Out of sheer patriotic duty, the main component of the engine is Lua. The famous tiny scripting language is the only hard dependency (other than a C++ compiler and a vaguely POSIX-compliant operating system) and is the interstitial fluid that coordinates all the other components.

nngn

Sun, 30 Aug 2020 17:54:08 GMT

Back in 2018, I publicized a project I had been working on intently for more than a year. Because of the circumstances, it ended up never having its own entry here in this blog. That is finally being corrected, and I am going to write not just one, but a series of posts about it.

SIGFPE

Wed, 20 May 2020 21:56:52 GMT

Every programmer at one point will encounter the arcane semantics of IEEE-754 floating-point arithmetic. If for you that point is right now, allow me to list the worst offenders of the principle of least surprise:

Dot product as cosine subtraction

Sat, 25 Jan 2020 18:04:00 GMT

The two principal definitions of the dot product have always seemed incoherent to me. After trying (and failing) to research this many times, a math.stackexchange.com question finally gave an explanation that made sense to me. Here is my interpretation of it — and trust me, if I can understand a mathematical concept, so can you.

Black mountain side / Bron-Y-Aur stomp

Sun, 29 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMT

music guitar

Led Zeppelin

An (old) newly developed love for thumbpicking and Jimmy Page. Some parts are better than others.

mv ~

Sun, 21 Jul 2019 21:26:13 GMT

Both from personal experience and from having read all sorts of blogs, I learned that the secret to not having to give excuses for updating a blog in a very infrequent and irregular fashion is to completely ignore the fact that it has been more than a year since the last post (I would say this is an autological self-reference, but that would be paradoxically contradictory). The big news this time is that from now on, the new home for this blog is: https://bbguimaraes.com/blog

O pato

Sun, 07 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

music guitar short

João Gilberto

R.I.P.

Cello suite no. 1 (prelude)

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

music mandolin

Johann Sebastian Bach

The lemon song

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

music bass short

Led Zeppelin

I'm sorry for the mistakes, it has taken me a whole weekend and a whole bottle of Becherovka to get this song down.

Blackbird

Sun, 06 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

music piano short

The Beatles

Cripple creek

Sun, 23 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

music mandolin short

traditional

Sheik's theme

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

music piano

Koji Kondo

The legend of Zelda – Ocarina of time

Boogie on reggae woman

Sat, 08 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT

music piano short

Steview Wonder

~/music

Sun, 12 Mar 2017 21:12:00 GMT

For too long my musical (if you can call them that) experiments have been scattered all over the internet. Not anymore!

A bit of soul (blues hangover)

Thu, 29 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMT

music piano

Ray Charles

Água de beber

Sat, 24 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMT

music piano bass short

Tom Jobim

Fado tropical

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMT

music piano mandolin

Chico Buarque, Ruy Guerra

College research projects

Sat, 20 Aug 2016 23:47:00 GMT

A long time ago, when I was in college, I got involved in two research projects.

Choo choo ch'boogie

Sat, 30 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

music piano

Louis Jordan

Georgia

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

music piano

Hugh Laurie

I will survive

Sun, 20 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT

music piano

Gloria Gaynor

Not for Elise

Sun, 28 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMT

music piano

Ludwig van Beethoven

Forgive me, Ludwig, wherever you are.

2014 books

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 16:42:00 GMT

I read a lot of books. Last year I had some money laying around and decided to put it to good use. I ended up buying fourteen books from O'Reilly (simply the best publisher in the technology field) on May and finally finished reading them all (exception bellow) on the first days of this year. This a quick and informal review of each of them.

Calculating π the unix way

Thu, 11 Dec 2014 22:51:00 GMT

A nice trick I learned a while ago that is worth sharing: calculating pi the unix way (you know, on the command line, with pipes, as god intended).

pip --extra-index

Wed, 10 Dec 2014 12:46:00 GMT

This is a tale of debugging. That fine art of digging the darkest corners of a computer system to solve whatever problem is haunting it. This particular story is about python's package manager, pip.

Jô Soares

Sun, 16 Nov 2014 00:00:00 GMT

music piano short

For a friend.

Elysian Shadows

Tue, 24 Jun 2014 00:00:00 GMT

music piano short

A quick jam with a song from the Elysian Shadows team. Check them out at elysianshadows.com.

Cow and chicken

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 00:00:00 GMT

music piano short

First and only take. From ear. From memory. Bad recording. Bad angle. Bad sound quality. But I couldn't resist the urge to record it after seeing this.

Manufacturer's blues

Fri, 02 May 2014 16:13:00 GMT

The state of technology sometimes gives me the blues.

Uploading files the unix way

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 00:26:00 GMT

I just did something which I thought was worth sharing. It shows a couple of fundamental techniques in unix systems used in a context where most people would not think of.

A post-mortem

Sun, 14 Jul 2013 22:14:00 GMT

A lot has happened since my first rπ post.

That moment you realize something really wrong is going on

Thu, 30 May 2013 22:18:00 GMT

Python mocking

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:17:00 GMT

If you are into unit testing, you probably have been introduced to mocking. And if that is the case, you probably already have been bitten by it. Mocking requires some understanding of code execution, importing and name resolution that most people lack when first encountering such situations. In Python, mocking is a relatively simple process, if you analyze carefully what needs to be done.

Handy bash substitution

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 04:06:00 GMT

Working on the command line is awesome. But there are times where all the typing gets unwieldy. No one likes to type a long file name a lot of times. Sure, using the up arrow and tab keys can make things faster sometimes, but I'll show you some tricks to make your life easier.

An image is worth a thousand megabytes

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 01:11:00 GMT

Now we have all the components we need to run our Raspberry Pi, we can start preparing them to actually work together.

The raspberry

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 23:29:00 GMT

My late Christmas gift (from me to myself) arrived on Monday, and it is a little Raspberry Pi.

The super user is more powerful than god

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 10:48:00 GMT

Hiding text in LaTeX

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 22:24:00 GMT

When writing my dissertation, I like to leave some text that I won't use at that particular moment but know I will need in the (near) future.

Problem when adding SSH key on github

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 03:41:00 GMT

Recently, I had I problem with github. I couldn't add SSH keys anymore, the web page would just hang and present me a “Connection reset” error after a few (annoying) minutes. I struggled for a week, but have finally found a solution, which is not the best, but at least I can access github from my machine once again.

perl is beautiful - part 3

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 01:25:00 GMT

In the last post on the subject, I'll show a couple more perl tricks I use everyday.

Low-level language

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 03:01:00 GMT

“Tudo é céu, tudo é mar; torvo negrume sobre as cabeças borrascoso pesa, e horrenda espessa treva enoita as ondas”. MARÃO, Públio Virgílio. Eneida.

perl is beautiful - part 2

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:53:00 GMT

We've seen how perl can be used, but you may be wondering, so what? Fasten your seatbelt, for fun begins now.

perl is beautiful

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 02:18:00 GMT

Writing the first post on a blog about programming is fairly easy. Now, the second one needed a little thought to come up with. I decided to show a trick I use almost daily, be it at work or on personal projects.

99 Bottles of Beer

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 03:13:00 GMT