the-shrike.net

That city stole my heart.
I think I already said that before here, but the more I think about that place, the more I miss it.
Plus now the first snow can be seen there, and guess what, I love snow too!
So here we have a bounch of Moscow’s pictures (not mine, sadly… I should have been there in the past 2-3 days for taking them) which I happen to like a lot. A big thank you to who took them, and I hope you all will enjoy them as I’m doing!

…pictures!…

Repeat with me: “Have to wait until December to go to Moscow, have to wait until December to goto Moscow…” ;)

This’s outstanding. Guys at UDON are as always doing an outstanding job with eXalted, and I’m out of my mind waiting for November to have in my hands the new #1 of the eXalted comic!!!

Look at this preview page:

I will give my left arm to learn to draw like that… it’s really amazing!
You can find more of these previews on the White-Wolf Exalted Comic page ;)
Enjoy it once again!

(image's © of the respective authors)

Ebbene sì… il primo post in italiano di questo blog.
Sarà che mi andava di rompere la sequenza inglese, sarà che è su un tema che mi verrebbe difficile da “tradurre” in una lingua non mia. Quindi, eccoci qui…

Oggi, durante il mio consueto giro in macchina per il lavoro del Mercoledì, l’autoradio è capitata su “Riportando Tutto a Casa” dei Modena City Ramblers. L’album in sé non ha niente di speciale, o meglio è bello come quasi qualsiasi cosa che i MCR abbiano mai fatto (e probabilmente faranno…) ma contiene una delle poche canzoni al mondo in grado di emozionarmi in maniera quasi viscerale, al limite delle lacrime.
Si tratta di I FUNERALI DI BERLINGUER.
Quando Berlinguer morì nel 1984 ero decisamente troppo piccolo per partecipare ai funerali, o anche solo per comprendere appieno cosa esattamente fosse successo, ma vuoi per cultura familiare, vuoi per la cultura che mi sono fatto successivamente, è un evento che mi è rimasto sempre impresso. In realtà però, non so esattamente perché ancora oggi sentirlo raccontare in quel modo dai MCR mi emozioni così tanto, è come se fosse una traccia lasciata nel mio essere che viene risvegliata ogni volta che quella canzone, lentamente parte… o forse sarà che in quel lontano 1984, da bimbo di 4 anni quale ero, vidi per la prima volta mia mamma piangere una volta appresa la notizia.
La ragione non la conosco, e forse nemmeno mi interessa conoscerla, so che ho i brividi quando ci penso, e tanto basta.

Un popolo intero trattiene il respiro e fissa la bara,
sotto al palco e alla fotografia.
La città sembra un mare di rosse bandiere
e di fiori e di lacrime e di addii.
[...]
I Funerali di Berlinguer - Modena City Ramblers

This’s something that made my day a sad one… a very sad one indeed.
Got this bad news from a livejournal’s friend post this morning, and I’m really quite shocked about that. Seems something so out of the world or at least completly out of the way I imagined Nightwish as a band. One of my favourite band, I must say… don’t know how it’s going to be from now on.

I will investigate more about what’s happenend inside them that led to that decision, and I won’t stop hoping about a call-back in the near future. This’s just plain awful, no more words for it :(

This is the right year… I feel it!
Ok, maybe not exactly this (2005), I don’t know why but I still have this school-deformity that makes me consider a year to start in Semptember and to end in June.
It’s insane, I know :p
By the way this is not the point, the real one is that by the mid-2006 I want to be able to fly one of this:

(Image is © of the photographer. More here.)

I guess flying is a dream for any child out there, but for some of them (like me) the dream remains strong even when you find out that you’re no more a little baby.
I tried this once, a tandem-flight, and was amazing to fly over the mountains without any other noise apart the wind on the sail… was amazing, even more exciting than jumping from 4400 meters with a parachute from a plane… oh yes, I’ve done that too.
But this is another story.

I want to learn how to safely fly with a paraglider, and I will have my license!
This is a promise to myself.

I was quite shocked about what has happened in Caucasus’ city Nalchik these past days.
As usual, I’ve been part of that running people searching around for good information (italian television is not something you can really rely on for good information) on the internet, and today I found a good report about how to find around good coverage about this event.
Well, today I found that someone had helped me (while helping himself) to sum things up.

It looks like the dust is beginning to settle after yesterday’s attack on the Southern Russian city of Nalchik, and the city is securely in the hands of the Russian military. In this post I’m just going to restrict myself to a roundup of news and views that have been published over the last few days, interspersed with a few thoughts of my own.

It’s good to see this wasn’t event close to what happened to Beslan one year ago, but this doesn’t help with counting the too many deads of this further act of madness.

(source: siberianlight.net)

The gods are coming to Milan on the 29th of October!!
And I have my ticket now… my precious.

It’s always a nice feeling ;)

(source: The Planetary Society Weblog)

Here is a gorgeous color mosaic of Hyperion assembled by amateur image processor Mattias Malmer from images from the recent flyby. The full-size image is almost 3000 pixels square!

Image is © 2005 Mattias Malmer

Hyperion is one of Saturn’s moon, and is currently one of the observed objects by the Cassini probe now orbiting the ringed-planet.
I personally find this picture amazing, and I don’t know exactly why, but it also makes me think about a desert rose.

:)

This is definitely one of those days when nothing seems able to amuse me, or to catch up my mind enough for me to focus on it for more that 5 minutes. And 5 very low attention minutes, indeed.
I was trying to find my way in my brain the net, and I went to check for any news about the Hyperion’s movie that seems on its way to be produced.
What’s Hyperion about? ;)
This would take more than one post to be explained and it surely deserves more than a thousands of posts to be written about, so let’s just say it’s a Science-Fiction saga written by Dan Simmons, a saga that happens to be one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read.

Anyway, this was not supposed to be the subject of this post, I’m going to write too much about this forgetting what I wanted to link, as usual :p

On Dan Simmons’ page I found a link to an artist page (who did an amazing paintings of the Shrike a character from the book, my favourite of course…) and I think his web-page really deserves a good look.
Amazing works and great style, I think.

Check his works out: François-Baranger.com .

I was reading some random blogs thanks to http://www.blogwise.com/ while drinking my Earl Grey (…hot… :p) and listening to HeavyMetalRadio.com, and I stumbled across at least 3 or 4 blogs with posts regarding a lack of will to write anything.
Ok, maybe this’s not the best english ever written, but the point remain this: is really needed to apologize with reader(s) when you don’t feel in the right mood to write something on your own blog?
This blog is even not more than a single month old, and for sure I’m not the best writer in the world, so there are moments when I don’t feel to write, or when I don’t have time/ ideas for posting something… but I don’t feel any kind of responsability for that.
This is my space… free for all of course, but first of all mine, because it’s just like the way I want it to be, I created it not for anybody else than me. Of course I like when people read what I write, and I hope to be able to write something at least a little interesting for others, but this’s not at what I really created all this for. I wanted a window on the great net, and now I have it!

Isn’t that all this pressure about the “I have to upload something each day/hour/minute“-thing comes from the desire for an audience, a strong need for an audience, a desire for approval?
Whom are we writing for: for us or for the public…?

Astronomers have used the penetrating power of two of NASA’s Great Observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, to identify one of the farthest and most massive galaxies that once inhabited the early universe.

Good work. Indeed, a very good finding in this messy universe surrounding us, and the demostration that Hubble Space Telescope hasn’t done its time yet. A shame it’s not so a common thought around, and that the money to sustain it had been cut some time ago. But it’s nice to see it doing its job until the end, even if it’s an old man by now.

(source: HubbleSite)

Anyway, this blog is 1 months old today, and I don’t know exactly why, but I felt this was a good way to celebrate it. So, get lost with me in this, and have a good time out there.