Sep
30

Student antics and spam

2006 | Filed Under This blog, Thoughts | Leave a Comment

Over the last few days I’ve been getting some funny spam and I was worried that I had been targeted by some hacker/spammer.  However, it transpired that my site and some others were merely the target of a student who was participating in an SEO contest and using a system to bring certain keywords up to a higher ranking in Google.  This experimenting individual seems to have realised that he/she has done something that was not appreciated and will hopefully find another way to achieve what he/she wants to do.  Now that I have calmed down a bit, I don’t feel so bad towards this person, after all, we all make mistakes.

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Sep
28

Our son’s insertion

2006 | Filed Under Italy, Milan, My son | 2 Comments

Insertion? Insertion into what, I hear you ask.  Although it may sound painful, and in a sense it is, our son is not suffering physically, you will be pleased to note.  The insertion, or rather ‘inserimento’ is a system employed by certain day nurseries and nursery schools here.  In simple terms it is a period that allows young children to become used to being at school.

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Sep
28

Milan and some photos of Italy

2006 | Filed Under Italy, Milan | 11 Comments

It is a lovely day today.  Warm and sunny, but a little cloudy.  I needed some books so I hopped on the bus and headed for the centre.  While walking from the castle along Via Dante towards the centre I noticed the outdoor exhibition of photographs, I saw the same photos, I think, last year, but they were worth looking at again.  These images have all been taken from the air and show some well and not so well known areas of Italy.  Living in Milan, it is easy to forget just how beautiful a country I am lucky to live in.  These images reminded me of this fact and made me feel happier too.

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Sep
28

End - a short story

2006 | Filed Under Writing | Leave a Comment

Jake put the book he had just been flicking nostalgically through down. How things had changed he thought. He had been looking through one of those large so called coffee table books containing few words, but many large glossy photographs. This particular volume was called ‘Images of rural England’ and the photographs it proudly displayed showed a varied collection of lush green undulating hills, leafy woodland, peacefully intimate valleys and various idyllic villages. The cover of this tome had seen better days, which was not surprising to Jake who knew that it was well over one hundred years old.

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Sep
27

As I predicted.

2006 | Filed Under Italian politics | Leave a Comment

Yes, as I predicted back in June, here, that nice Mr Prodi and his cronies have gone and decided to put up tax levels - but only if you earn over 70k Euros or are self-employed.  In addition, in view of the extra tax income, the dear government is attempting to cut education funding too.  I guess that these little measures may help Italy crawl out of its pit of national debt.

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Sep
27

BSOD again

2006 | Filed Under Italy, Technology and Gadgets | Leave a Comment

My darling new laptop regaled me with yet another jolly memory parity error blue screen of death message today. Tomorrow I shall give Dell another tinkle and see if they will let me exchange my RAM. Parity to the people!

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Sep
27

Accosted, I was!

2006 | Filed Under Italy, Me, Milan | Leave a Comment

Whilst waiting for my public transport of choice this evening I was accosted by a tall dark attractive female stranger who first offered to give me a lift wherever I was heading, in English, I might add, and then she asked me which way I was going.  This, very tall, lady of African extraction, I would guess, was quite insistent, though not aggressive.  Being a sensible, sometimes, sort of guy, I politely declined her kind offer and was somewhat relieved to see my bus coming round the corner.  I deftly hopped on and away.  The whole, very minor, incident left me rather bemused.

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Sep
26

IVA - VAT - 1st October - changes - watch out!!

2006 | Filed Under Work | Leave a Comment

Luckily I have an excellent commercialista - accountant.  She does not speak English, but my Italian is good enough to allow me to chat to her about tax and other financial issues.  She rang me up today to tell me about a slight revision to the law with regard to the settlement of IVA/VAT and other taxes.  From the 1st October this year, 2006, it will no longer be possible to fill in an F24 form by hand and wander along to your bank to ask them to process the thing.  Oh no.  From the 1st October F24s can only be paid by those registered for IVA in two ways: via a home banking system and or by your accountant.

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Sep
26

Italian TV again

2006 | Filed Under Italian TV | Leave a Comment

A while back I wrote this .  Have I changed my opinion - which was quite well justified by the info in my previous post IMHO?  In a word, no.  The telly is still 90% rubbish.  I thought I’d make a few more observations on this subject.

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Sep
26

Agri-fever

2006 | Filed Under Italy | Leave a Comment

You may or may not know what ‘agri-turismo’ is.  On the assumption that you do not, I’ll try and explain.  Agri-turismo is an Italian expression which refers to what is basically a farmhouse hotel, almost.  Sometimes these places form part of a farm, other times enterprising individuals have bought up old and dilapidated country premises and transformed them into an agri-turismo ‘hotel’, for want of a better word.  The are really just a type of hotel.  A fashionable type of hotel.  Why are they fashionable?  I think it’s because the are usually located in some quiet country area and so prove very popular with Italian city dwellers looking for some way of escaping from the noise and chaos of the city.  Then there is the fact that all of these agri-turismo places have a restaurant which specializes in regional dishes or just does its own thing.  Good wine is also available too.  Many Italians frequent these places, mainly during the August holiday month, but also throughout the year because they represent an alternative to going to the same old country or mountain house over and over again (tough life in Italy, I know..).  In fact, some Italians are waking up to the fact that the cost of buying/running a second house often equals or exceeds the cost of several good family holidays a year, and, as I said before going to the same old place year in year out may just become a little samey.

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Sep
25

Black boxing taxis

2006 | Filed Under Italy, Milan, Technology and Gadgets | Leave a Comment

I was chatting with a student the other day about an interesting proposal to stick a black box in all of Milan’s taxis. This box of tricks would be linked to GPS, UMTS and other services and would be able to tell just what the ideal route for a destination is, meaning that the old trick of taking you all round the houses will not work.  Needless to say the taxi drivers are not all that keen on the idea seeing as even the old ‘Via Washington has been closed due to an accident’ trick will not work any more.  The only other way of avoiding these little fiddles, before the black boxes become de rigeur that is, is to speak Italian with a strong Milanese accent, although even that would not help you get away with the ‘road blocked due to an accident’ trick.

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Sep
20

Windows start up time

2006 | Filed Under Technology and Gadgets | 3 Comments

OK, so I now have a laptop with a cutting edge cpu, lots of ram, a fast hard disk and a reasonable graphics card, so why is it still so slow? Let me make myself a bit clearer, it’s not slow to open applications and to apply graphics effects but it is slow in starting up and shutting down, and I have not even begun to install the server software and other gubbins which I run for web site development purposes.

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