My top 10 movies of the decade (random order)
December 27th, 2009
My top 10 albums of the decade (random order)
December 25th, 2009
- Sufjan Stevens - Come on Feel the Illinoise
- Beirut - The Flying Club Cup
- Bright Eyes - I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
- Sigur Rós - Takk…
- Damien Rice - 0
- Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head
- Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs
- The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
- Death Cab for Cutie - Plans
- Beck - Sea Change
250+ great SAD songs
May 6th, 2009
- Aerosmith - Dream On
- Afterhours - Male In Polvere
- Afterhours - Non è per sempre
- Air - All I Need
- Andrew Bird - Tables and Chairs
- Antony and the Johnsons - BirdGuhl
- Aretha Franklin - I Say A Little Prayer
- Badly Drawn Boy - The Shining
- Baustelle - Gomma
- Baustelle - La Canzone di Alain Delon
- Beck - Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes
- Beck - Guess I’m Doing Fine
- Beck - Lost Cause
- Beck - The Golden Age
- Beirut - A Sunday Smile
- Beirut - Nantes
- Beirut - Postcards From italy
- Belle & Sebastian - The Boy Done Wrong Again
- Ben Folds - Landed
- Ben Folds - The Luckiest
- Ben Folds Five - Brick
- Ben Kweller - On My Way
- Ben Kweller - Thirteen
- Blink182 - Adam’s song
- Bloc Party - This Modern Love
- Bob Dylan - Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
- Bob Dylan - Hurricane
- Bob Dylan - If You See Her, Say Hello
- Bob Dylan - Not Dark Yet
- Bob Dylan - Sara
- Bob Dylan - She’s Your Lover Now
- Bon Iver - Flume
- Bread - I Would Give Everything I Own
- Bright Eyes - Contrast And Compare
- Bright Eyes - First Day Of My Life
- Bright Eyes - Lime Tree
- Bright Eyes - Lover I Don’t Have to Love
- Bright Eyes - Lua
- Bright Eyes - Old Soul Song
- Bright Eyes - Poison Oak
- Bright Eyes - Something Vague
- Bruce Springsteen - Secret Garden
- Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost Of Tom Joad
- Bruce Springsteen - The River
- Buffalo Springfield - Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing
- Carole King - So Far Away
- Carole King - Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
- Carole King - You’ve Got a Friend
- Cat Power - Lived In Bars
- Cat Power - The Greatest
- Cat Stevens - Father and son
- Cat Stevens - The first cut is the deepest
- Cesare Cremonini - Marmellata #25
- Cesare Cremonini - Padremadre
- Chocolate Genius - My Mom
- Coldplay - Fix You
- Coldplay - Green Eyes
- Coldplay - In My Place
- Coldplay - The Scientist
- Coldplay - Yellow
- Counting Crows - Colorblind
- Creedence Clearwater Revival - Who’ll Stop The Rain
- Damien Rice - 9 Crimes
- Damien Rice - Cannonball
- Damien Rice - Cold Water
- Damien Rice - The Blowers Daughter
- Dave Matthews Band - Crash Into Me
- David Bowie - Five Years
- David Bowie - Letter to Hermione
- David Bowie - Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide
- David Bowie - Space Oddity
- David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World
- David Bowie - Wild Is the Wind
- Death Cab For Cutie - What Sarah Said
- Death Cab for Cutie - Company Calls Epilogue
- Death Cab For Cutie - Different Names for the Same Thing
- Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Follow You into the Dark
- Death Cab For Cutie - Tiny Vessels
- Depeche Mode - Somebody
- Depeche Mode - Walking In My Shoes
- Devendra Banhart - Heard Somebody Say
- Devendra Banhart - In Niel
- DeVotchKa - How It Ends
- Dire Straits - News
- Dire Straits - On Every Street
- Eagles - Desperado
- Eagles - I Can’t Tell You Why
- Eagles - Wasted Time
- Elisa - Eppure Sentire (Un Senso Di Te)
- Elisa - Qualcosa che non c’e’
- Elisa - Una poesia anche per te life goes on
- Elliot Smith - Miss Misery
- Elliott Smith - Between the Bars
- Elliott Smith - Twilight
- Elton John - Your Song
- Elvis Costello - I Want
- Feist - Let It Die
- Final Fantasy - This Lamb Sells Condos
- Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way
- Francesco De Gregori - Rimmel
- Franceso De Gregori - Generale
- Franco Battiato - E Ti Vengo A Cercare
- Franco Battiato - La canzone dell’amore perduto
- Franco Battiato - La Cura
- Gary Jules - Mad World
- Genesis - In the Rapids
- Genesis - Ripples
- George Harrison - Beware Of Darkness
- George Harrison - Isn’t It A Pity
- Green Day - Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)
- Harry Chapin - Cats In The Cradle
- Iron & Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth
- Iron & Wine - Naked As We Came
- Iron and wine - Such great heights
- Israel Kamakawiwo’ole - Somewhere Over The Rainbow-What A Wonderful World
- James Blunt - Goodbye My Lover
- James Blunt - High
- James Blunt - Same Mistake
- James Blunt - You’re Beautiful
- James Carr - The Dark End Of The Street
- James Taylor - Fire And Rain
- Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
- Jefferson Airplane - Today
- Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit
- Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary
- John Lennon - God
- John Lennon - Jealous Guy
- John Lennon - Mother
- Johnny Cash - Hurt
- Joni Mitchell - Blue
- Joni Mitchell - River
- José Gonzáles - Heartbeats
- Joshua Radin - Closer
- Kings Of Convenience - Homesick
- Lou Reed - Caroline Says II
- Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground - Pale Blue Eyes
- Luca Carboni - Silvia lo sai
- Lynard Skynard - Tuesday’s Gone
- M. Ward - Poison Cup
- M. Ward - Post-War
- Magnetic Fields - Come Back From San Francisco
- Marvin Gaye - Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
- Massive Attack - Teardrop
- Mazzy Star - Fade Into You
- Mazzy Star - Into Dust
- Modest Mouse - Bankrupt On Selling
- Morrissey - Let Me Kiss You
- Morrissey - The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get
- My Morning Jacket - I Will Be There When You Die
- Negramaro - L’Immenso
- Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
- Neutral Milk Hotel - Naomi
- Nirvana - Where Did You Sleep Last Night
- Oasis - The Masterplan
- Pearl Jam - Last Kiss
- Pernice Brothers - Chicken Wire
- Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush - Don’t Give Up
- Phil Collins - Against all Odds
- Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
- Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
- Placebo - Centrefolds
- Placebo - My Sweet Prince
- Placebo - Song To Say Goodbye
- Placebo - Without You I’m Nothing
- Portishead - The Rip
- Prefab Stout - When Love Breaks Down
- Procol Harem - A Whiter Shade of Pale
- R.E.M. - Country Feedback
- R.E.M. - E-Bow The Letter
- R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts
- R.E.M. - Find The River
- R.E.M. - Half A World Away
- R.E.M. - Nightswimming
- Radiohead - Idioteque
- Radiohead - Knives Out
- Radiohead - No Surprises
- Robbie Williams - Angels
- Rolling Stones - Get Off Of My Cloud
- Roy Orbison - Crying
- Roy Orbison - In The Real World
- Roy Orbison - Only the Lonely
- Samuele Bersani - Giudizi universali
- Sarah McLachlan - Adia
- Sarah McLachlan - Arms of an Angel
- Sigur Rós - Glosoli
- Sigur Rós - Hoppipolla
- Sigur Rós - Starálfur
- Sinead o connor - Nothing compares to you
- Smashing Pumpkins - Jupiter’s Lament
- Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead
- Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day
- Sufjan Stevens - Chicago
- Sufjan Stevens - Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois
- Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
- Talk Talk - I Don’t Believe in You
- The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
- The Beatles - Across The Universe
- The Beatles - Fool on the Hill
- The Beatles - For No One
- The Beatles - In My Life
- The Byrds - Draft Morning
- The Cars - Drive
- The Cure - Pictures of You
- The Decemberists - Eli, The Barrowboy
- The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love 4
- The Killers - Mr Brightside
- The Killers - Somebody Told Me
- The Moldy Peaches - Anyone Else But You
- The Mountain Goats - Broom People
- The Mountain Goats - No Children
- The New Pornographers - The Bleeding Heart Show
- The Police - Wrapped around your finger
- The Rolling Stones - Angie
- The Rolling Stones - Wild Horses
- The Rolling Stones - You Can’t Always Get What You
- The Shins - New Slang
- The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
- The Smashing Pumpkins - Blank Page
- The Smashing Pumpkins - Disarm
- The Smashing Pumpkins - Galapogos
- The Smashing Pumpkins - To Sheila
- The Smiths - Asleep
- The Smiths - I Know It’s Over
- The Smiths - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
- The Smiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
- The Strokes - Is This It
- The Weepies - World Spins Madly On
- Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Breakdown
- Tom Waits - Georgia Lee
- Tom Waits - Martha
- Tom Waits - Time
- Tom Waits - Train Song
- Tori Amos - Winter
- Townes Van Zandt - Pancho And Lefty
- Travis - Travis / Flowers In The Window
- Travis - Why Does It Always Rain On Me
- U2 - If You Wear That Velvet Dress
- U2 - One
- U2 - Staring at the Sun
- U2 - Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
- U2 - With or Without You
- U2 - All I Want Is You
- Vasco Rossi - Ogni Volta
- Vasco Rossi - Sally
- Vasco Rossi - Vivere una favola
- Velvet Underground - Femme Fatale
- Wilco - Jesus, Etc.
- Willie Nelson - Pancho And Lefty
- Yann Tiersen - Les Jours Tristes (Instrumental)
- Yann Tiersen - Summer 78 (instrumental)
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Little Shadow
25 interesting Ruby projects
December 8th, 2008
Mixing last RubyConf 2008, GitHub, RubyForge and so on. I want to list some new (but also mature) interesting Ruby projects, it’s a kind of memo for me:
- Glimmer: simplified Desktop Development in Ruby. A JRuby DSL that enables authoring of user-interfaces using the platform-independent Eclipse SWT library
- Prawn: fast, Nimble PDF Generation For Ruby (I used it within Prawnto plugin for a project on Rails and I found it very simple and very productive)
- Cucumber: a reimplementation of RSpec’s story framework, based on Treetop, testing at his best.
- Crate: tool for building and packaging standalone statically compiled ruby appliations
- Journeta: a dirt simple library for peer discovery and message passing between Ruby applications on a LAN
- NeverBlock: a library that allows developers to write non-blocking, concurrent code in a transparent manner.
- RAD: framework for programming the Arduino physcial computing platform using Ruby. RAD converts Ruby scripts written using a set of Rails-like conventions and helpers into C source code which can be compiled and run on the Arduino microcontroller (I think this library could be a good example how Ruby can be used also for low level programming and not only for very high level dev)
- Waves: it embraces HTTP and REST instead of trying hide them from you with one-size-fits-all abstractions. It provides a rich DSL for matching HTTP requests, more flexible than routing schemes, and a layered approach to mixing in just the architectural magic that your applications need
- Puppet: a system for automating system administration tasks
- RubyCocoa: a bridge between the Ruby and the Objective-C languages, allowing you to manipulate Objective-C objects from Ruby, and vice-versa. It lets you write full-stack Cocoa applications in Ruby and to write a Cocoa application that mixes Ruby and Objective-C
- Rush: is a replacement for the unix shell (bash, zsh, etc) which uses pure Ruby syntax
- Flay: it’s a Ruby code analyzer for structural similarities. Differences in literal values, names, whitespace, and programming style are all ignored. Code that flay reports as similar is a good candidate for refactoring
- Johnson: wraps JavaScript in a loving Ruby embrace
- MagLev: Ruby that scales, mystic for me now
But I cannot forget some of the main Ruby projects
- Web Application Framework: not only the master Rails but also:
- Merb: the lightweight and powerful
- Ramaze: the minimalistic
- Mack Framework: built to aid in the development of distributed, portal-like applications that have a need for speed
- GUI development:
- Ruby-Gnome2: bindings for the GNOME 2.0 development environment
- MonkeyBars: a library that enables you to make use of Swing from JRuby
- Shoes: is a tiny graphics toolkit, designed for beginners
- FXRuby: it’s based on the FOX Toolkit
- WxRuby: it’s based on the cross-platform [wxWidgets] C++ GUI framework
- QtRuby: bindings to both the KDE API and the Qt APIs (is dying?!?)
And here you can find all RubyConf 2008 videos.
What the frack u’re waiting? take ur pc and start coding in Ruby. 
10 indie songs that change your life
December 8th, 2008
They change your life: destroying it if you feel sad or making understand your truth.
- New Slang - The Shins
- Jesus Etc. - Wilco
- Your Ex-Lover Is Dead - Stars
- First day of my life - Bright Eyes
- Chicago - Sufjan Stevens
- Table and Chairs - Andrew Bird
- Hoppipola - Sigur Ros
- In The Aeroplan over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel
- I will follow you into the dark -Death Cab for Cutie
- The Blower’s Daughter - Damien Rice
2008 Best in Music
December 6th, 2008
For last.fm this:
http://www.last.fm/bestof/2008
For metacritic this
http://www.metacritic.com/music/bests/2008.shtml
Fleet Foxes, MGMT, Bon Iver, Coldplay and so on.
For me? See my played at last.fm:
http://www.last.fm/user/vlain/charts?subtype=artists
Probably the best was a revival from The Strokes, Morissey, David Bowie, Beck and the discover of Stars, Devendra Banhart, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, MGMT, The Kooks, Ben Folds.
A good film: The Last Valley
November 22nd, 2008
An easy saturday afternoon trying to render my house clean. Clean up the bathroom, the pavements and so on. The last thing is: iron, a little torture.
So subdue to my destiny I iron watching television and this movie starts: “The Last Valley” with two great actors Micheal Caine and Omar Sharif. A little surprise, a movie that I don’t know.
A story set in the17th centur:
People in a small German village in the last valley to remain untouched by the devastating Thirty Years’ War try to exist in peace with a group of soldiers occupying the valley.
A story about war and a story about religion. A nice surprise in this common afternoon.
And remember as The Captain (Micheal Caine) says Father Sebastian: “God is a legend”.
Just facts: (C++ || Java || Php || Ruby || Python) && (J2EE || Ruby on Rails || Zope || TurboGears || Django)
November 16th, 2008
All together right now. A simple and impartial post from Doxaliber about web development (in Italian):
Php, Python, Ruby per lo sviluppo web. Un’analisi.
He describes the situation today and shows the fact that PHP is the fast way to deploy a web application, true and sad. Following again a simple and brillian video (in English) about “A practical comparison between Zope/Plone, Ruby on Rails, Turbogears and J2EE”, the author (Sean Kelly) is an expertise in these technologies:
Indie Way and Taste
November 9th, 2008
I like a lot of things, like everybody, but I don’t have any religion. I looked for a way in the past, a true way, my way. Maybe I found it, maybe I found it about two years ago, after a bad period. Only now I realize it: it’s Indie, Indie way. It’s a taste, I call it the Indie taste.
It started with Indie music, little production, raw sounds, no middle-man:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indie_rock_artists
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_music
- http://www.last.fm/tag/indie
Indie does not mean underground, don’t mean few fans, Indie mean a way to do it and it’s stunning his beauty.
It’s a taste in that beauty, it’s a nous.
So stop words and let me listen one masterpiece of indie-lo-fi In the Aeroplane Over the Sea from Neutral Milk Hotel
New programming language
November 8th, 2008
If you know a programming language (from here only lang) then every body told to you that for learning a new lang you need only 1-2 week. This affermation is totally wrong. Because 7-14 days are in the middle of nowhere.
In order to learn new lang syntax you need 1-2 days, in order to learn the philosophy of new lang you need at least 2 month. Therefore 7-14 days are totally a big CRAP. Simple and petty.
Do you agree?
Dedicated to all the teachers (especially academic old teachers).