Skip to content

aka (赤) irssi theme


aka (赤)
Originally uploaded by curson

I’ve finally decided to publish my irssi IRC client theme. It’s kind of a coming out, I’ve been tuning this theme to my liking for the past 5-6 years, bits by bits, slowly adjusting to what I prefer.
I really hope someone would find this interesting and appealing as his/her own theme. I’ve sent an email to the irssi team in order for it to be added on the main gallery of the irssi.org website, which would be quite c00l for an irssi lover as I am.

Any eventual feedback is of course very welcome.
The file is here: aka.theme. Just put it in .irssi/ and load it by issuing the command /set theme aka in Irssi.
Enjoy! ;)


Share!
2008 05 12 geek
gentoo
linux
opensource
picture Comments (0) Permalink

Clay Shirky’s talk @ 2.0 Expo 2008

This has been an interesting viewing for this rainy evening.
It’s just 15minutes long, and I think it’s worth watching, very clever.

If you’re interested, the relevant discussion on reddit is here.

(Source: Here)


Share!
2008 04 29 internet
video
worthy Comments (0) Permalink

GITS live-action movie

It seems that the rights for the production of a Live-Action movie of that all time masterpiece (and one of my all time favourite) in manga/anime/science-fiction that is Ghost in the Shell have been sold to DreamWorks and that the designated director will be Stephen Spielberg.

A R G H!
That has been my first reaction to the news, and apparently I’m not the only one being worried around.

It’s not just the always present fear of the fan-base to see its sacred and favourite passion torn away by someone who doesn’t have a clue what he/she/it is dealing with, and not even only the reasonable and pratically proven rules that a 2 hours Hollywood movie won’t be able to express nothing even remotely close to the complexity required by something like GITS. I mean, I loved Jackson’s work on the Lord Of The Ring, but nevertheless, I felt some pain in seeing how badly the transposition was from the book, and we’re talking about something I regard as a miracle: I was expecting far worse. Maybe Peter Jackson had the right ideas, maybe he was lucky, maybe he simply found himself inspired enough to give his maximum, and still the result was great but somehow disappointing for “us” fun, and rightly so, I believe.
Now take Spielberg, the present one not the E.T or Schindler’s List or Amistad one, but the producer/director who destroied A.I and raped War of the Worlds and Minority Report… it’s a nightmare coming true for any GITS fan out there. Just like knowing that except for a miracle (and I’d call a cancellation of the live-action project one) your favourite creature is going to be tortured and eventually killed in a way only Hollywood is known to do, and we all are aware of how much Hollywood-ian Spielberg is, especially lately. We’ve seen this happening before with japanese productions taken to the big-screen by the USA industry, we’re going to see it with Dragonball (again: unless the usual miracle) and I really fear not even Maj. Kusanagi could escape safely this time.

There are things that should never be included in a “let's make a movie to pile up some cash“-list, certainly GITS is one of them.
Nothing is listed on IMDB yet, let’s hope this is going to remain on someone’s desk forever!


Share!
2008 04 18 cinema
life
manga/anime
me
sci-fi Comments (0) Permalink

…ehm… yeah?

I am not dead.
I actually feel quite ashamed but my latest blogging-self, and even if apologizing here is more or less like apologizing to a mirror, I feel like doing it.
It is strange, it’s just a period when writing a blog post, even if I have quite some ideas, it’s not something that seems to be able to find any place in my days. I think this could be because I’m actually writing something else, a sort of literary experiment (definitely a first time for me) eXalted related for my friend back in Italy, and this is actually consuming all the flow of my thoughts out of my mind into the keyboard. It may sound strange, but I’ve never been anything close to a writing person, and the fact that I’m trying to concentrate on the slow (and most of the time painful) process of producing something like that could well be the cause of my lack of energy for the every-once-in-a-while blogging activity.
Nevertheless, I felt that necglecting this experiment would be a great loss, as the-shrike.net is still my attempt to put a foot in the blogosphere out there, so I decided to try find some time for it.
It’s not a real restart, but… we’ll see.

Anyway, what better way to give some boost to this blog than to screw completly my WordPress 2.1 installation, mess around at 2am on a Saturday night to install WordPress 2.5 and change to a new (yes, I’m going more and more minimalistic :p) theme? Nothing like the pleasure of hacking CSS style file in the middle of the night before crushing to bed at 3:15am, right?

In some way, I was kind of missing writing here.
Let’s see if I’m somehow able to start babbling again.


Share!
2008 04 13 blog
life
me Comments (0) Permalink

Sir Arthur C. Clarke Dies

Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the epic film “2001: A Space Odyssey” and raised the idea of communications satellites in the 1940s, died Wednesday at age 90, an associate confirmed. Clarke died early Wednesday at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since the 1950s, said Scott Chase, the secretary of the nonprofit Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.

(source: http://www.arthurcclarke.net/)

One minute of silence for one of the greatest genius of science-fiction and a marvellous visionary.
Today is a sad day :(


Share!
2008 03 19 books
cinema Comments (0) Permalink

Being wired

Ok, I’m a magazine addicted, we all know that.
Basically I’m able to jump a full meal if I’m out, starving but with just 5£ left and a magazine I like out with the new monthly issue still to be bought: consider it incredible, but I’ll avoid buying a sandwich and I’ll enter WHSmith instead :p
I read a lot of things in various formats: blogs, websites, books, magazines, webzines, fanzines, newsgroups, forums… whatever there’s around with words on/in it, it’s something I like to take a peak at, but while half of the things listed before come free as in beer, books and magazines are expenses that actually have an impact on my daily life. Not a huge one, but I actually restrain myself from visiting amazon too often (at my looking too long and never shortening wishlist makes me sad :p) and I usually cross the street when I come across a Waterstone shop or a WHSmith one… but it’s not always something I can resist. And when this happens, my bank account is not happy!
Anyway, my magazine addiction has a new item to list now. In addition to Scientific American, NewScientist, Airliner World and Prospect Magazine I’ve (finally) given up and I started buying Wired. My geek side is in giggling and enjoying every single word, might as well become my favourite reading of all the time.
The problem is: will I ever be able to get more geekier that I am now? ;)


Share!
2008 02 05 fun
geek
internet
life
me Comments (2) Permalink

Smoke on the water…  japanese version ;)


This was too great, amazing, incredible and geek in its own (japanese) way not to be posted here too.
Actually, it’s really a nice version of a never too old song, which should be known by anyone pretending to like good music.
Outstanding.

japanese ++ :p


Share!
2008 01 24 fun
japan
music
video
worthy Comments (0) Permalink

He is legend

I’m back right now after a night out in Shepherd’s Bush which ended with half a roasted chicken for dinner, which is definitely a good way to end a nice Saturday.
Anyway, not the point, the real point is that I was out with a couple of house-mates to watch I Am Legend. First of all, before all the comments (not many in fact), a couple of things you need to know about me:

  • I love science-fiction and the apocalyptic branch of it,
  • I’m a fan of Will Smith since the times of Indipendence Day and Bad Boys

Now, this said, the movie is good.
It’s not a masterpiece, and it wasn’t probably meant to be one, but it’s 158 minutes of good fun and a good two or three jumps on the chair too, if you know what I mean ;)
Will Smith is just superb, and for most of the movie is basically acting all alone, with just a dog to share the scene with, which I’m sure must have not be really easy. The setting is quite amazing, and the loneliness of his character is well portraied in how the abandoned New York is pictured out; I’ve actually heard that to shot the movie they basically closed half of downtown N.Y. to everyone… let me tell you I’m not surprised to know that the people living (& working) there were quite upset with that. But hey, the result is quite nice.
So what: I haven’t read the book yet (it’s in my Amazon.co.uk wishlist waiting its call…) so I can’t tell how the transposition had been made from paper to screen. I’m usually more a book fan than movie in this kind of situations, so I’ll probably end up liking the book more when I’ll read it. For now the movie is a product good enough to be suggested to friends.
If you haven’t done it yet, go and watch it! :D


Share!
2008 01 05 cinema
worthy Comments (4) Permalink

geekiness²

18:56:55 curson:> “hey baby, apprezzo il tuo charset… ti andrebbe di uscire con me?”

translation:
18:56:55 curson:> “hey baby, I like your charset… would you like to go out with me?”

Today.
Me.
On IRC.

…there are moments when I scare my own self to death :p


Share!
2007 12 10 fun
geek
internet Comments (2) Permalink

About leaving

I’ve had my Shiraz wine as an aperitif.
I’ve had my Carlsberg to go with the sausages and the salad.
I’ve got my Earl Grey for the rest of the evening.
I’ve got Deep Purple.

I’m fine. Well, I’m better than I was a couple of days ago.
The dinner has been a nice one, easy and fast to cook, but so enjoyable and nice that it is sure helping me feeling better (and full :p) right now, but what I think it’s really making the difference, is that I know that tommorrow I’ll take service again, after about 10 days at home (between OFFs and STANDBYs).
It’s quite strange to realize (in fact) once again how much I’m addicted to the job I do, and how much this is part of my nature now. When I am stuck on the ground, for whatever reason it is, I kind of suffer, it’s just uncomfortable for me not to fly. The point is most of the time I don’t see what I do as a job, I simply do it because I like to do it, which I think is kind of lucky situation to be in, when doing something that you like is actually earning you money to buy your food and pay for the roof you’ve over your head :p
The point is: I’ve a lot of addiction, really a lot. A large number of them are not exactly listable here [;)] but sure their common trait is that they make me spend money, not earning anything in return in the form of currency. Yes, they give me satisfaction and good pleasure, sometimes, but having my actualy real job listed among them is a kind of big luck. That’s why, probably, I’ve not thought too much about moving from Italy to UK to continue being a Cabin Crew, being what I like to be.

I don’t know exactly why I’m writing it here, actually this is probably the most personal post I’ve ever made here on the-shrike.net, but tonight I felt like doing it, and here it is.
I’ll be flying to Paris tomorrow afternoon, so enjoy your week-end in this side of Europe (and the world) while I’ll be flying over Siberia to Tokyo at 38000 feet… and semi & improperly quoting one of the character from one of my most favourite series ever:

I’m Federico, and I am almost happy…


Share!
2007 11 15 flight
food&drink
life
me Comments (3) Permalink

Holy Land

Don’t worry, it’s not going to be a religious post of any sort.

Living alone, in a new city (and not even quite a small one!) is kind of a strange feeling sometime, because as a matter of fact everything you were used to consider as yours is definitely not around you anymore: friends, places, sounds, colors…
But, there’s something that has in fact been following me here, in my migration to this new universe of mine: my music.
It’s, in fact, following me everywhere I go: around London, in my flights, and of course during my (let’s say: boring!) standby days locked at home waiting for a call. Strange to consider it to be something from home, when in fact it’s not in a particular way related to places of my past, well, only a few songs that are actually on my iPod (Asriel) are in fact strictly related to events of my past, most of them are just pieces of music I like.
Anyway, this is not the point, not exactly.
I’ve been in a very bad mood today (it happens, so they say…) and of course as I always do in this case, my music is my refuge, my safe haven where to hide from the rest of the world. It helps, especially when, by chance, I am able to pick up in my 2000 songs database, something that really suites me for the particular mood/moment I am in. Today, it happened.

Holy Land by Angra is probably one of the masterpiece of metal from the 90s, and it’s definitely one of my favourite album ever! Today, it happened to be also the very perfect choice for my actual mood. It’s amazing when you’re just able to find what you need, exactly when you need.
So, what are you waiting for: go get this amazing piece of music, no really, NOW, should be in everyone’s home.
It’s more than sublime on so many levels, that I don’t think I know enough words in english to express it, it must be listened to.

Somehow I turn around and see
My nerves break down inside
Maybe you might know much more than me
So tell me what is right to say

Down the weakness of my soul
Lie the secrets, and I know
There’s something pushing back
Wish my hands could turn to gold
And my heart would break the cold
To give my thoughts some sense […]

Z.I.T.O. - Angra

‘nigth, uh…


Share!
2007 11 14 me
music Comments (0) Permalink

Test post with vimpress

Let’s try it, and if it works, is pure geek-happiness!
I’m playing with this, and it appears to do what it is supposed to, definitely
something that’s going to change completly my way of blogging on Wordpress.
It’s a very simple & nice script to post to a Wordpress blog using VIM which happens to be my
favourite text editor.
So far so good… I’m leaving in less than 2 hours for a 8 days trip to Japan and India (work, of course!) so I will test (and eventually post something more about this) when I’ll be back next Monday.


Share!
2007 10 15 blog
geek
linux
opensource Comments (2) Permalink
Close
E-mail It