Fabio Alessandro Locati

CompTIA A+ Rapid Review (Exam 220-801 and Exam 220-802) by Darril Gibson, Microsoft Press

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:00:32 +0000

After Microsoft’s CompTIA A+ Training Kit, here I am reviewing the Microsoft’s A+ Rapid Review. This book is really similar to the book CompTIA Security+ Rapid Review (this too by Microsoft Press).

Darril Gibson, the book’s author, have compressed a huge amount of contents in a (relatively) small amount of pages (411). This is the first big difference in respect of the Security+ Rapid Review, since this book has more contents per page (and about the double of pages).

This book has the CAQC seal so it should have gone through a rigorous approval process to confirm the content meets exam objectives, language standards, necessary hands-on exercises and labs and applicable Instructional Design standards. So the book covers all the certification objectives, but I’m not sure if it does or not cover all the possible questions.

As I said in the CompTIA Security+ Rapid Review, I did like the question-answer approach, since you understand immediately which is your level, therefore you can understand which parts you have to cover more and which less. What I did not liked at all about this structure is the layout. Every question is answered right below the question itself. I think this is a very bad approach, since is really hard to answer to a True-or-False question without looking at the answer that you know is there. I think they should have putted all the chapter questions and after all the chapter answers.

At the end of the day, I would suggest this book to anyone is looking to pass the CompTIA A+ exam. I think it’s very useful to use it combined with the CompTIA A+ Training Kit since they complete one the other.

You can find the book at O’Reilly website.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

An idea to fight spam

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 08:00:28 +0000

Today I would like to give you an idea on how to implement a spam system that can reduce some kind of spam.

The problem:
Sometimes a company or a politician, that does not respect the usual privacy policy, continues to send e-mails even if the user already tried to unsubscribe.

My postulates:

The people who usually send this kind of e-mail are not very familiar with how e-mail work or how the privacy policy works. Obviously there is the case in which they are malicious, but I prefer to think that the biggest part of these people are in the first two cases.
These people probably will have issues removing a person from a mailing list, therefore they will tend not doing it, unless they have an advantage.
Is really annoying sending an e-mail to 10 contacts and receive 8 mail-delivery-subsystem errors.

My approach:
My approach is dividable in two directions that have to be implemented as features from the e-mail provider:

Be able to filter out all e-mails from a specific account or domain (and a lot of mail-provider already implement this, ie: gmail with filters)
Be able to set a “fake” mail-delivery-subsystem error (and this is the innovative part of my idea)

The “fake” mail-delivery-subsystem error:
The e-mail server of the user will have to check the user’s “blacklist” before declaring the user as existent. If the user has put the sender e-mail address in the blacklist, the e-mail server will have to decline the e-mail with an error.

Why will this work:
This approach will work for multiple reasons:

If the e-mails are sent directly by an operator, he will receive the error and she will understand that something is not right.
If the e-mails are sent directly by an operator, she will be bothered by the amount of mail-delivery-subsystem error he will receive and will try to stop sending e-mails that are bounced back
If the e-mails are sent by an operator using a mailing-list program, probably the program itself will remove the addresses that return a mail-delivery-subsystem error

Worthiness:
I think it does. We have an overhead for each mail received (and probably this overhead could be reduced due to optimizations) but, in the long run, way less spam e-mails will be sent, so the servers will be less busy parsing spam e-mails.

Digital Capture After Dark by Philipp Scholz Rittermann, Amanda Quintenz-Fiedler (Rocky Nook)

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 08:00:05 +0000

This book does cover one of the hardest topic that are present in digital photography. In fact, the photographies in the dark are the are the ones which are more frequently bad looking. The book provides with a big amount of techniques and tips covering equipment, the actual taking of the image, and post-production. A lot of these techniques and tips are easily found on photography specific magazines and articles, but a book grouping all these techniques is really good since it’s an organic and easy to found and read collection. Also, unlike many articles, the book contains a lot of reasoning on the the techniques so it’s not a mere how-to book. Despite usually the author does provide this kind of enhancements over the how-to techniques, this is not always true, and – I think – this should be corrected/improved in the next version of the book. Quintenz-Fiedler, the book author, is able to provide all the techniques and tips to became a really good “dark photographer” (I made up this name). This is really good if you consider that the book is only 192 pages long and full of pictures.
I would definitely suggest this book to anyone who is approaching the nightly photography or to anyone who already knows some techniques and wants to improve her pictures quality.

You can find this book at the O’Reilly on-line store.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 33

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 08:00:24 +0000

It’s Make! I think Make is one of the greatest, if not the greatest magazine available worldwide.
I think that this is a really cool number of Make. As it usually happens to me, the part I like the most i the “Projects part”, in which I always find awesome ideas.

The article I liked the most is “Growing the Ghost” by Gabriel Nagmay. This article speaks about the growing of the Bhut Jolokia, one of the world most powerful chili flavor. I really liked it since I really like peppers and the author gave me a lot of ideas and tips on how to feed the peppers properly.

Another article I really enjoyed, even if I’m not interested in building it is “The Counting Box” by Nathan Pryor. I really liked how he created a such nice object with such a great User eXperience.

I also really enjoyed the “Made on Earth” column and more specifically the “Sing with the Wind” part. I think that the artwork described in this part (the Aelus Acustic Wind Pavilion) is incredible. The artist has been able to add the audio part to the artwork. I think this is good but not amazing, by itself. The thing that makes this artwork amazing is the fact that uses NO energy at all to produce the sounds.

I would definitely suggest this Make issue to my friends .

You can find this Make issue at the O’Reilly on-line store.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

Vintage Tomorrows A Historian And A Futurist Journey Through Steampunk Into The Future of Technology by Brian David Johnson and James H. Carrott, O’Reilly Media

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:00:42 +0000

This book initially shocked me. When I downloaded it, it was a 140 Mb so I thought it was full of drawings and comics. As soon as I opened the file I saw it was nothing I thought it would have been.

The book is mainly written (it can seem tautological but I think that’s right to point it out) with a lot of photos. I think the reason of the “hugeness” of the file is given by the photos. Speaking of them, I think that some of them are really useful to understand the concepts that are being explained in the text, while others can be removed without removing any value from the book.Speaking of the authors, it’s really interesting to spend a few words on their biography. James H. Carrott is really interested in history, while Brian David Johnson is a futurist at Intel. Two people with such a different background have been able to create a very high-level book.

I would strongly suggest this great book to anyone that is interested in understanding deeply the Steampunk culture. This reading can be perfect for both the person who wants to discover the Steampunk world for the first time, and to who has already a knowledge of this world and wants to improve it and have some new points to ponder.

You can find this book at the O’Reilly on-line store.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

Designing Games – A Guide to Engineering Experiences by Tynan Sylvester, O’Reilly Media

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:00:21 +0000

When I read the first lines of the description “Ready to give your design skills a real boost? This eye-opening book helps you explore the design structure behind most of today’s hit video games. You’ll learn principles and practices for crafting games that generate emotionally charged experiences—a combination of elegant game mechanics, compelling fiction, and pace that fully immerses players.” on the O’Reilly website I thought it was a very well thought eye-catcher phrase to sell more books. Reading the book I understand that the phrase is 100% truthful.This is a must-have book to anyone interested in the Theory of Games and in designing a game of any kind (not only computer game).

This book is full of real-life example therefore is really easy to understand if you have some gaming experience (and if you don’t, please, do not design a game).

The book is divided in three sections. In the first section the author explain us some ways to attract the player toward the game and to keep him interested for the whole game. The second section gives you a lot of ideas and things to be considered before the process of planning the game. In the third section the author gives us a lot more information that will be useful to bring our idea to the reality.

This is the best book I’ve read in 2013 so far and I’m sure it will be one of the best book I can read in 2013.

I strongly suggest this book to whoever is planning to project or deploy a video-game or a real-game and to whoever is interested in the Theory of Games.

You can find this book at the O’Reilly on-line store.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

Exam Ref 70-413: Designing and Implementing a Server Infrastructure by Steve Suehring, Microsoft Press

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:00:28 +0000

I come to this book less than a month after reviewing the 70-410 Exam Ref. As the title may suggest, this book is tailored to the preparation of the Microsoft 70-413 exam. Speaking of the exam, I have to advice that the book does cover any exam objective, but does not cover every exam question.

The book is split into an introduction, 5 chapters and the index. The first chapter helps to understand how to plan and deploy a server infrastructure. The other four are focused on the designing and implementation of the various components: network infrastructure services (chapter 2), network access services (chapter 3), Active Directory logical infrastructure (chapter 4) and Active Directory physical infrastructure (chapter 5). A thing I liked about this book is the presence of questions (with detailed answers). What is improvable for these question is the number. I think they should put way more questions. So, the questions, are a good idea not well implemented. The only thing I hoped to see on this book but is missing is the emphasis on the security.

I would definitely suggest this book to everyone is willing to take the Microsoft 70-410 exam. If you are really interested in Microsoft’s implementation of networking and Active Directories, I would also suggest this book. If, in the other hand, you are interested in the standard ways to do these things, another book can be more suitable for you.

You can find this book at the O’Reilly on-line store.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

Starting a Business Learn What You Need in Two Hours By Scott L. Girard Jr., Michael F. O’Keefe, Marc A. Price, Nova Vista Publishing

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 08:00:46 +0000

When I’ve seen this book I had no idea about what I was going to find inside it.

As the title suggests, the book is pretty short (the PDF version count 161 pages) and so it’s really a few reading hours.

The book is divided in 5 chapters:

Planning: this chapter covers the Business Plan and all the accessories planning. From my experience (and the author too) a good plan is mandatory if you don’t want see your great idea failing.
Getting Financed: this short chapter (only 12 pages long) gives you some information and advice about the financial part of the company.
Getting started: here you can find a lot of good advice and general information about marketing, patenting, copyright and other important things you should know.
Staying alive: here you’ll find information and advice on taxes, press releases and other things that will keep your company going.
When tomorrow becomes today: in this short chapter (only 5 pages long) are highlighted some differences between ordinary business and web business.

The book is written with no specific sector in mind. This book can be read and found useful to a person that wants to open a pub or a person that wants to open an IT start-up. If this is good because anyone will find something for him, is bad because no one will find all information she needs.

I think the book is full of good suggestions, but a huge part is simple common sense. If you have no idea about where to start or if you do not know any entrepreneur, this is the right book for you.

You can find the book at O’Reilly website.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

CompTIA A+ Training Kit (Exam 220-801 and Exam 220-802) By Darril Gibson, Microsoft Press

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:11 +0000

Reading this book has helped me a lot understanding better how the A+ exam works. This book is tailored for the CompTIA A+ certification (and this led me to this book instead of another one, since I’m looking forward to take this certification).

I really liked the fact that every chapter does cover conclusively an argument. In this way, you can choose which arguments read based on your interests and your needs.

As all the other Microsoft book I reviewed, I really think they should increase the number of exercises. Four to twenty questions for each chapters is definitely too few to prepare an exam.

The book does come with a CD, but I have not been able to use it in any useful ways, since I’m a Linux user and therefore I can’t play CD designed for Windows and I already had the eBook.

Even if the book is written and structured for the CompTIA A+ exam, I think that anyone that wants to have an idea about how the IT world works.

I would suggest this book to a friend since the value of the book is really high and the price is not too high. Surely if he is a non-Windows user I would tell him not to count on the CD contents.

You can find the book at O’Reilly website.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

CompTIA Security+ Rapid Review (Exam SY0-301) by Michael Gregg, Microsoft Press

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 08:00:27 +0000

After the CompTIA Network+ Training Kit I find myself to review the CompTIA Security+ Rapid Exam Review.

This book is pretty short (258 pages long) but is very dense. It is divided into 6 chapters + one appendix.

For each atomic argument, the author does propose 1 to 3 True-or-False questions, their answer and the explanation. I did like the question-answer approach, since you understand immediately which is your level, therefore you can understand which parts you have to cover more and which less. What I did not liked at all about this structure is the layout. Every question is answered right below the question itself. I think this is a very bad approach, since is really hard to answer to a True-or-False question without looking at the answer that you know is there. I think they should have putted all the chapter questions and after all the chapter answers.

At the end of the day, I would suggest this book to anyone interested in the CompTIA Security+ exam. I think the book will not fit the reader needs if the reader is not interested in the exam itself. I would also suggest to anyone willing to do the exam to relay on a different book to study and use this one only for reviewing the concepts before the exam.

You can find the book at O’Reilly website.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

How to send an e-mail with attachment from the command line

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 08:00:59 +0000

Have you ever had to develop a script in UNIX that has to send an email?

If you have, probably you have used the “mail” function since this program is the standard program to send e-mails in UNIX environments if you are using the CLI (Command Line Interface).

The manual for mail reports this as mail usage prototype:

mail -r [sender] -s [subject] receiver-1[,receiver-2,...,receiver-n] < [File with the body]

I think all the parameters are pretty straightforward except the “File with the body” one. This has to be an ASCII file (ie: .txt) with the e-mail body content in the text-only mode.

Until here is normal mail usage. If we want to the send an attachment in the email, this method will not work.

The right tool for the job is uuencode which allows us to send an email with attachment from the command line (CLI).

uuencode [InFile] [FileName] | mail -r [sender] -s [subject] receiver-1[,receiver-2,...,receiver-n]

Where InFile is the file to attach and FileName the name of the file that the receiver will see.

As we can notice, in the last command I used the e-mail body disappeared.

The “obvious” command

uuencode [InFile] [FileName] | mail -r [sender] -s [subject] receiver-1[,receiver-2,...,receiver-n] < [File with the body]

Will NOT work properly.

This because both uuencode and the “<” function work on the Standard Input of the same command.

We can fix this with this simple command:

(cat [File with the body] ; uuencode [InFile] [FileName]) | mail -r [sender] -s [subject] receiver-1[,receiver-2,...,receiver-n]

In this way the mail command will use properly both the attachment and the body text.

CompTIA Network+ Training Kit (Exam N10-005) by Craig Zacker, Microsoft Press

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 08:00:55 +0000

Reading this book has helped me a lot understanding better how the networking works. This book is tailored for the CompTIA Network+ certification (and this led me to this book instead of another one, since I’m looking forward to take this certification.

I really liked the “structureness” of this book. After a brief introduction (Chapter 1) the book author analyzes the whole networking stack starting from ground up. The first chapters, in fact, are about Physical layer (Chapter 2), Data-Link Layer (Chapter 4) and Network Layer (Chapter 6). Then we find the Transportation Layer (Chapter 8) and the Application Layer (Chapter 9). We also find some really interested chapters like Network Devices (Chapter 3), Wireless Networking (Chapter 5), Network Security (Chapter 11) and Network Management (Chapter 12).

I really liked the author’s clarity and the dept of the arguments. As the last Microsoft book I reviewed (you can find the review here), I really think they should increase the number of exercises. Four to ten questions for each chapters is definitely too few to prepare an exam.

The book does come with a CD, but I have not been able to use it in any useful ways, since I’m a Linux user and therefore I can’t play CD designed for Windows and I already had the eBook.

Even if the book is written and structured for the CompTIA Network+ exam, I think that anyone that wants to understand deeply the Networking systems should read this book since it does cover all the major concepts of the Networking, as it does the CompTIA certification.

I would suggest this book to a friend since the value of the book is really high and the price is not too high. Surely if he is a non-Windows user I would tell him not to count on the CD contents.

You can find the book at O’Reilly website.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

2012 evaluation and 2013 planning

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 21:47:34 +0000

Today is the last day of 2012 and tomorrow will be the first day of 2013. I think that there is no better moment to think back to the year that is going to end in a few hours and think forward to the year that in a few hours will start.

My 2012 has been really full of experiences. I’ve made a lot of courses, works and new experiences. I’ve also passed some exams for my Philosophy Bachelor Degree.

In 2013, I think, I should focus more on the University exams (since I have to pass other 10 exams and I want to pass them all in 2013) and on the IT certifications.

Another thing I’d like to do is a regular update on my blog. In the last years I’ve posted a lot, but I’ve never decided in a systematic way when publish what. I think I’m now ready to do this big jump. I’ll start posting on al Tuesday and Thursday. The first of the two will be a book review, while the other will be something different.

Strata Conference New York + Hadoop World 2012: Complete Video Compilation by O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 16:59:13 +0000

When I’ve been selected to review, I was shocked by the amount of material that is hidden in this product.

This is more than 100 hours of videos of the Strata and Hadoop World conference.

The material is divided in three sections: Keynotes (14 videos), Tutorials (64 videos) and Sessions (81 videos).

The Keynotes are really short video (7~15 minutes each) that tend to be some sort of advertise of the companies that are sponsors (I guess) of the event. This is nice, but I would not waste time on these, if a person has really small amount of time.

The Tutorials are way longer videos (from 30′ to 8 hours for each session) and the longest are split into multiple videos. This material is really important to whoever is looking for learning some basic things about Hadoop and the Hadoop ecosystem. I would definitely suggest to any new user the video “An introduction to Hadoop” by Mark Fei (total 174 minutes). The topic is really good for a beginner and Mark Fei is a wonderful speaker. I really appreciated him.

The Sessions are sort of insights on different topics. Each session touches a different topic and they are between 10 and 50 minutes long. The sessions tend to be really specifics, so I suggest to anyone that is not already an Hadoop expert to look the Tutorials before starting with the sessions.

I should also mention that this huge amount of video showed me some limitations of the O’Reilly website that I hope will soon be fixed. The first one is about the “Watch” button. On my computer the video reproduction does not work. It may be an O’Reilly problem or my problem, since I use a Linux powered netbook. In any case, I think it should work even on my computer. The second limitation is about the download feature. The maximum speed I’ve reached is ~300Kb/s. Maybe because I’m in Italy, but I would expect O’Reilly to have a CDN. Another option would be to use a decentralized system like Torrent (but maybe they fear the unauthorized distribution). The third limitation is about the lacking of multiple selection to be able to download multiple videos with a single command.

Overall, I do suggest this videos for the quality of the material. The price is surely high (399.99$), but the material really worth it.

PS: The fifth star is on hold for the platform limitations and not for the quality of the material that would have taken 5 stars, if considered alone.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

Exam Ref 70-410: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 by Craig Zacker, Microsoft Press

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:31:31 +0000

This in not an O’Reilly book, even if you have found it on the O’Reilly website. In fact this book has been published by the Microsoft Press. Maybe this is a good thing, since we are talking about Windows Server, one of the main Microsoft products. Who can speak about Windows better than its creator?

As the title may suggest, this book is tailored to the preparation of the Microsoft 70-410 exam. On the exam topic, I have to advice that the book does cover any exam objective, but does not cover every exam question.

The organization of the book seems really reasonable to me. The first chapter will help you to install and configure correctly Windows Server 2012. The second chapter will help you to configure users and roles. The third chapter speaks about virtualization. The forth chapter is about networking and the fifth about Active Directory. The sixth and last chapter deals with Group Policy.

A thing I liked about this book is the presence of questions (with detailed answers). What is improvable for these question is the number. I think they should put way more questions. So, the questions, are a good idea not well implemented.

The only thing I hoped to see on this book but is missing is the emphasis on the security. I would have added a full chapter on security. It may be covered in some other book/exam or not, I’ve not yet searched.

I would definitely suggest this book to everyone is willing to take the Microsoft 70-410 exam. I would also suggest the book to anyone is interested to understand deeply Windows Server 2012. Even if Windows Server 2012 is very similar to Windows 8, I would not suggest this book for the user that wants to use better Windows 8; there are better books for this kind of usage.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program

20 Recipes for Programming PhoneGap by Jamie Munro (O’Reilly)

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Sat, 19 May 2012 22:21:24 +0000

This book starts with a little introduction and with the instructions to setup the environment. After this, the book starts at full speed with “the Recipes”. The structure based on Recipes is what I liked the of this book. Every Recipe has the structure:

Problem
Solution
Discussion

I think that this is a very powerful structure because in this way we can learn from the obstacles that each one of us can encounter in his way while coding. Also, this structure, gives to the reader the choice of what read when. In fact, is possible to read this book from the first page to the last or to pick the single arguments that are useful to him in that precise moment. Another thing that I really liked about this book is the fact that Jamie Munro uses in the same time PhoneGap and jQuery Mobile so you can learn two libraries in the same time and you can learn immediately to write an application that is nice to see and use. I really liked this book and I would suggest this book to everyone is interested in using the PhoneGap framework to develop Mobile applications. Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the OReilly Blogger Program

Code Simplicity by Max Kanat-Alexander (O’Reilly)

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:10:40 +0000

This is not the typical O’Reilly programming book and you can find it out very easily when you have the book in your hands, since it does not have any code inside. The author, in fact, tries to create a software development science. This left me very puzzled since:

I think this kind of stuff has to be said by people after you, not buy the author himself
The author mainly collect ideas and principles that are already explained in a lot of other books
The author suggests the DRY and the don’t fix if it isn’t broken principles and I think these will not always bring you to good code
The book only says what to do, it does not cover how to do it
Re-factoring and single responsibility principle are not covered

Apart of these five points, I think that the book has reasons to live. It is a really fast and superficial presentation of the subject. I think it would be appropriate for students who are approaching for the first time the subject or for people that for working reasons have to deal with the subject but not in first person (like a project manager). I would not suggest this book to people with real world programming experience or necessity.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the OReilly Blogger Program

HTC One X: my super power saver policy

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 19:53:56 +0000

I’d like to share with you the policy I’m using to preserve my phone energy. I’ve tried most of the out-of-the-box policy, but I hated them all.

My personal policy is based on the idea that the components that require the biggest part of the power are the 3G and the display. So if you are able to keep both off you can have the best battery life. Having a smartphone and not using it and keeping it off-line would be – obviously – insane.

My policy is way more battery consuming than that, since I think I bought a phone to use it, and I use Whattsapp a lot, so I need 24/7 internet connection. How I solved? I power off WCDMA every time I don’t need to surf the web. In this way, I’m able to use Internet through the GSM (32kb/s) but it doesn’t eat my whole battery in a few hours.

I really suggest you to use the same policy since from my tests, it can increase your phone battery life from 8 to 36 hours without sacrificing anything.

As last thing, I’d like to propose to HTC to use this policy by default on their devices so their battery will last way longer than their opponents phones.

Linux Pocket Guide by Daniel J. Barrett (O’Reilly)

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:05:13 +0000

This is one of my favorite book about Linux. Probably is the most favorite one. In the last years I’ve been looking for a book that was like a printed man with some more explanation and a rigid order. This book does all this plus something more (that I’d rather not having).

I really liked the professional to professional user, since otherwise it would be much bigger and boring for pro users. I’ve to say that thanks to this the book is really small.

The books says to cover Fedora but the 99% of the book fits perfectly any other Linux distribution.

The only thing I dislike of this book is the GUI program part, since it seems to be there just to fill unused pages and not really useful.

I really like Mr Barrett writing style. Is full of useful tips, everything is well organized and categorized and really easy to be read. Also I think Mr Barrett have done a great job in writing a short and hand-size book. A lot of “Pocket Guide” are simply huge, while this is exactly the right dimension.

I’ve both the first and the second edition of the book and, I have to admin, is not really clear to me what they changed. I think they changed only small things since the new edition (2012) speaks about stuff that was current when the first edition become public (2004). Example of this are xv, grip and xmms.

I think this is a really good book mainly for who is studying Linux or for who has already knowledge of it but sometimes (or usually, in my case) forgets the exact syntax or flag of the various CLI tools.

jQuery UI by Eric Sarrion (O’Reilly Media)

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:03:08 +0000

jQuery has very interested me in the last period. I think that it is the best JavaScript library for me. jQuery UI is a set of functions that allow you to improve the graphics and the functionality of your websites with very few lines of code.

My jQuery level was pretty close before I took the time to read this book. I’ve found this book amazing and really interesting even for fast-learner as I am (knowing dozens of languages and libraries I tend to go really fast when I’m studying a new language or library). I think this book is mainly for beginner or intermediate users since it focuses the reader on the main parts of jQuery UI leaving aside some real-world and advanced coding details that may be crucial in the real world development.

A thing that I really like is the approach “one widget = one chapter”. In this way you can jump straight to the chapter that you need without having to read more that 200 pages that you don’t care about, in that moment.

The book comes without Index and this is sad, I think. Even if in this kind of book is not necessary, I think that is a very cheap feature that all books should have.

I would recommend this book to everyone is a jQuery and/or a jQuery UI novice or beginner user. If you are already an advanced user you may want looking toward something more hardcore.

HTC One X from the music point of view

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:34:28 +0000

In the last few days I’ve been able to test a little bit more the multimedia part of my phone.

What I’ve discovered is weird from my point of view. The phone performed amazingly using the headphones (even if my are low level). The audio is always sharp and deep. I arrived at the headphones test after another test that terrified me: the speaker test.
The speakers are not the best you can find on the market and are placed wrongly, since the audio is very low if you place the phone on a desk. If you put it on a soft area the phone is close to be muted. I think the cause is the speaker collocation.
Another nice feature of this phone is the presence of two different audio levels for speaker music and headphone music. Maybe this is a stock Android 4 feature,but is nice anyway.

Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers by Michael Schrenk (O’Reilly Media)

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:57:51 +0000

I’ve been immediately caught from this book as I’m in a project that is based on a webbot, and I’m developing it using PHP and cURL.

Since the first day I’ve started to use cURL (and a lot of other PHP classes) I wondered about the sense of all these complex and extravagant classes and functions. The book author has a really different approach to the classes, and his approach is way more similar to mine that the standard PHP approach. One example of this is the LIB_http.php class that is a wrapper for some http functions.

When I started to code my own webbot, I thought I was taking the wrong approach since I preferred to parse the HTML with RegEx instead of following the tree-navigation. Reading this book I discovered that the approach I used is the one suggested by the author.

The book arrives to describe how to operate a botnet and this scared me in the first moment. Even after I read it all, I still doubt about the rightness of putting some of these knowledge public like this in a book.

The only part of the book that I did not like was the one about iMacros, since I like to see the whole code of everything I use.

I really liked the book, therefore I’ll give it a 5/5 and I would suggest this book to everyone is interested in the webbots and spiders world.

HTC One X: First week

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:57:16 +0000

I’m using the HTC One X since the 6th of April, so it has been a week so far.

This phone is awesome . Comparing to my old phone (LG P-500) is really fast and it seems to mount a completely different Operating System. I know, the P-500 has Android 2.3 while the HTC Android 4, and I know that the HTC mounts HTC Sense while LG has anything similar to it. A lot of times my old LG had some good functions that were “killed” by its slowness (even if it was pretty fast, if you think about the hardware it was mounting).

The phone, even if is huge, is still handle-able. I’ve experienced only a couple of moments in which the phone was simply too big. The first one was during the first day when I was trying to touch something in the top-left corner using only the right hand. I failed. This problem solved during the second day since I got used to the new size and I was able to handle it properly and to touch it all using one hand alone. The other time I experienced a size problem was during the forth day, when I tried to put it in the pocket of a skinny pair of jeans. I’d to try it some times before understanding which was the best way to make it fit.

One other point that I’d like to touch is battery life. If I use it “normally” in wi-fi only I can get up to 2 days (36hrs), while with 3G for more than half day it dies after about 10 hours.

I’ll update you as soon as I’ll notice something else

Mobile Design Pattern Gallery by Theresa Neil (O’Reilly Media)

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:15:45 +0000

This book is weird, I’ve to tell you. I was expecting a book with some examples and some text. Well, I ended up with a book that, at the first sight, seems more a book for kids rather than a professional book since is 90% images.

The book is clearly organized, each chapter covering one specific aspect.

Navigation
Forms
Tables
Search, sorting and filters
Tools
Charts
Invitations
Feedback & Affordance
Help
Anti-patterns.

After a little while, I learned how to learn (a lot of) good patterns and bad patterns (anti-patterns) from this book. The downside of the approach the author kept is that all the arguments are not deeply analyzed, while the main information are given. For each topic, Neil shows some patterns pointing out for each one a good use of it and the possible risks using it. The last chapter (the one about the anti-patterns) is, in my opinion, the most useful. Here some anti-patterns are analyzed pointing out why they are anti-patterns and how to improve them.

The only problem I’ve seen in some points is the phenomenon in which sometimes the image is one page and the caption in another and this is annoying.

I rate this book 7/10 since I liked it but I hoped to see a little bit more theory. I think it would be enough adding ~1 page for each chapter of theory to reach a higher grade.

The Art of SEO by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Jessie Stricchiolla and Rank Fishkin (O’Reilly Media)

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:06:49 +0000

Since the four authors are very popular in the SEO field, I was expecting the best book on SEO ever. All my expectation have been met.

I think that the book authors have done a great job describing these difficult concept in an easy and ordered way. The book, also, is very complete. The touched topics include: user-focussed data, key analytical tools, effective website creation, result tracking, search engine theory and behaviour, the impact of social media, SEO best practices and much more. Sometimes the authors deviate from the topics usually covered in SEO books, in fact you can find topics like In-house vs outsourced SEO.

All the chapters are full of links and the book is supported by a website.

I’m really happy to have invested time in reading this book. This is definitely the best SEO book I’ve ever read and probably one of the best IT book I’ve ever read. I hope to see the Third version before 2015 (First edition: 2009, Second edition: 2012), since the SEO world is quickly changing so three years would mean that for about half of the Second Edition life it will contain a lot of reference to old things.

I would definitely advise all the people that would like to promote a website or are interested into SEO for hobby or work to read this book. I also believe that people who decided to outsource their site SEO would have benefits reading this book.

jQuery Mobile: Up and Running by Maximiliano Firtman (O’Reilly)

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:24:00 +0000

jQuery Mobile is a library that allows you to develop mobile apps using jQuery. Is even possible to use a jQuery Mobile program as a native app, thanks to programs like PhoneGap.

This book assumes that you already know jQuery and I think that this is good since the author can focus only on the main topic in this way. I think you should know or study jQuery before even starting this book. I do know that’s possible to understand jQuery code even if you don’t know anything of JavaScript if you have rock solid programming knowledge, but I discourage it.

I really liked this book since it says what to do and what not to do for each of the ten sections. Also it has hundreds of images that will help you through the learning process.

I would suggest this book to everyone who is interested into developing a cross-platform app or a mobile website.

Mining the Social Web by Matthew Russell, O’Reilly Media

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:04:24 +0000

Mining the Social Web is a good start for anyone is going to create scripts to analyze patterns in Social Networks. I’ve to say that this book consider that the reader already masters Python. I think that should be written directly on the title (ie: “Mining the Social Web with Python”).

I liked the really fast approach to the Social Networks, even if a lot of times I wanted more; for this reason I consider it only a start, not a complete book.

The part I really enjoyed was the one about the HTML5 microformats. This is the only book that cover the topic from the data mining point of view, as far as I’ve seen.

I had the pleasure to read this book in the e-book version, and I’ve to admit that O’Reilly did a really good job in linking the different parts of the book through hyperlinks.

The biggest part of the book is focused more on what text is important rather that why it is important. In the book is touched the why speaking about the Semantic Web processing, but this is beyond the goal of this book, I suppose.

I would recommend this book only to those people who are willing to have a starting point on the web mining or who is trying to understand if the topic is interesting for him/her.

Make ION working properly in Fedora 15

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 10:07:52 +0000

As I was already writing here, I’m going to describe you how to make ION working as you will.
This post is the English translation of this Italian post.

The EeePc 1015PN, at least the European version, comes with these two video cards:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [ION] (rev ff)

The first one is a nice Intel integrated card that allows you to have good performance in the 99.9% of the typical netbook user-cases.

In the other hand, the Nvidia ION is way more powerful than the integrated Intel card. ION is capable of running HD videos, full-screen Youtube HD videos, games, and much more. The downside of the nVidia card is the power drain. This version of ION does drain ~600mA more than the Intel integrated card. These 600mA, as you can imagine, need also to be dissipated, forcing the vent to spin at its maximum speed. Even with the vent at the maximum speed, the temperature increases from the 40~55°C (idle with ION deactivated) to 65~80° (idle with ION active). Therefore I’ve created a script that keeps ION deactivated by default and allows the user to active it when is needed and stop it when is no more needed.

The procedure I’ve used is pretty easy (I love the KISS idea) and it should work on 99.9% of Linux distributions and with 99.9% of computer mounting ION (so not only 1015PN). I can’t grant it because I only tried this on Fedora 15 with the 1015PN. Since we are using global paths, every command has to be run with “su” or “sudo”. My suggestion is to start a root shell (open a normal shell, type “su”, type the root password) and exec all commands in that shell.

Firstly, we need to install some software that are mandatory like: stuff to compile (gcc), kernel sources (kernel-devel), git (git) and dkms (dkms):
1
yum install dkms git gcc kernel-devel
We need to active dkms daemon:
1
chkconfig dkms_autoinstaller on

Go to the right folder, download the sources, rename the folder according to dkms naming system and go into the folder:

cd /usr/src/
git clone http://github.com/mkottman/acpi_call.git
mv acpi_call/ acpi_call-git/
cd acpi_call-git

Create the file /usr/src/acpi_call-git/dkms.conf with the following text:

PACKAGE_NAME="acpi_call"
PACKAGE_VERSION="git"
BUILD_MODULE_NAME[0]="acpi_call"
DEST_MODULE_LOCATION[0]="/kernel/acpi/"
AUTOINSTALL="yes"

Teach to dkms to administer what we have just created:

1
2
3

dkms add -m acpi_call -v git
dkms build -m acpi_call -v git
dkms install -m acpi_call -v git

Create the file /etc/init.d/ion with the following text:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Startup/shutdown script for Nvidia ION.
#
# Linux chkconfig stuff:
#
# chkconfig: 12345 05 95
# description: Startup/shutdown script for Nvidia ION.
#
# Copyright (C) 2011 by Fabio Alessandro Locati
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see .
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: ion
# Default-Start: 1 2 3 4 5
# Short-Description: The ION Manager
# Description: The ION Manager
### END INIT INFO
 
# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
 
prog=ion
 
check() {
    echo "\AMW0.DSTS 0x90013" &gt; /proc/acpi/call
    result=$(cat /proc/acpi/call)
    case "$result" in
        0x30003)
            echo "Both Videocard recognised"
        ;;
        *)
            echo "Oops, something went wrong"
        ;;
    esac
}
 
init() {
    echo "\OSGS 0x03" &gt; /proc/acpi/call
    return 0
}
 
on() {
    echo "\_SB.PCI0.P0P4.DGPU.DON" &gt; /proc/acpi/call
    return 0
}
 
off() {
    echo "\_SB.PCI0.P0P4.DGPU.DOFF" &gt; /proc/acpi/call
    return 0
}
 
load() {
    modprobe acpi_call
    return 0
}
 
start () {
    load
    init
    off
}
 
status() {
    echo "I haven't found a way to check if ION is ON, yet. Sorry :(."
    echo "You may understand it from the speed of the vent"
    echo "or the battery drain."
    return 0
}
 
case $1 in
	check)
		check
	;;
	init)
		init
	;;
	on)
		on
	;;
	off)
		off
	;;
	load)
		load
	;;
	start)
		start
	;;
	status)
		status
	;;
	*)
    	echo $"Usage: $prog {check|init|on|off|load|start|status}"
	exit 2
esac
 
exit $RETVAL

Make the script executable:
1
chmod +x /etc/init.d/ion
Tell chkconfig to take care of our script:
1
chkconfig --add ion

The first reboot will be quite the same as the previous ones. You need to reboot twice to make everything working.
To see if the computer sees both video cards, you need to execute (until you make the whole procedure and reboot twice, this check will fail) as normal user or root user:

1	service ion check

To power up ION execute as normal user or root user:

1	service ion on

To stop ION execute as normal user or root user:

1	service ion off

I’ve not yet developed a function to check if ION is on or off, but you can easily understand it putting your hand over the vent. If the temperature is some degrees higher than the room temperature ION is off. If the air is really hot, ION is on .

Summer time

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:12:28 +0000

Summer arrived today in Milan there is a beautyful blue sky and the sun shine after weeks of cloudy and rainy weather.

The 30/04 LIP

Fabio Alessandro Locati — Fri, 06 May 2011 14:29:52 +0000

Even if already passed a week from the LIP (Linux Install Party) that the ViGLug organized in Settala.

I don’t think this is the right moment or place to speak specifically about what (not) happened at the event. I think it would make sense only if you would have been present at the event itself. What I’d like to to is to extract some concepts that are and will be useful in other contexts.

The first one I’d like to speak about is the roles division. Even if it may seem pointless, redundant or bad, is necessary even in small contexts. This is really important for both internal and external people. This is useful to be able to ask to the right person the questions about his area of responsibility, and to avoid possible conflicting answers.

The second and last topic I’d like to touch is about decision. Often, make the decision is more important than the decision itself. A lot of times, any decision taken and executed quickly turns out to be the best decision. This even because we should keep in mind two things: not deciding means decide to not-decide and postpone a decision, is the decision of postponing that decision.