Prince, the day after

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It’s Saturday morning. The house is empty and I’m streaming a radio from Minnesota that has been playing every Prince’s song alphabetically (Alphabet St., pun intended) for the last 36 hours!
Musicology, the song that made me fall in love with him again, is playing now. No better time to wrap up my thoughts.

Flashback to when I was 12/13. Why did I pick Prince as my artist?
His music, his style, his being different, the dirty lyrics?
Probably all of them, in a word, this magical kingdom called Paisley Park.

“And life won’t be so bad
In Paisley Park” – Paisley Park, Around the World in a Day

Through his art, we visited this magical place, Anil’s words get to the point, where it’s OK to rewrite common sense, be whoever you want, enjoy life.

I like to remember Prince through his music, more than everything else. A few of my favorite lyrics and articles follow.

Be with me darling till the end of time 
I’ll give you my heart
I’ll give you my mind
I’ll give you my body
I’ll give you my time 
My favorite song: Adore, Sign o’ the Times

We want to play in the sunshine
We want to be free
Without the help of a margarita or ecstacy
We want to kick like we used to
Sign up on the dotted line
We gonna dance every dance
Like it’s gonna be the last time
One of the most joyous songs: Play in the sunshine, Sign o’ the Times

Whats the matter with your life
Is the poverty bringing u down?
Is the mailman jerking u round?
Did he put your million dollar check
In someone elses box?
Can’t stop singing it: Pop Life, Around the World in a Day

Everybody on this earth has got a vice
And mine, little darlin’, mine is the opposite of ice
Mine is the running hot water of the daughter of morality
One of his hottest and naughtiest songs: Temptation, Around the World in a Day

Good evening. This is your pilot Prince speaking.
You are flying aboard the Seduction 747
And this plane is fully equipped with anything your body desires

If for any reason there is a loss in cabin pressure
I will automatically drop down to apply more
Another dirty one: International Lover, 1999

To night it’s gonna be scandalous
Cause to night I’m gonna be your fantasy
Slow and sweet: Scandalous, Batman

You don’t have to be rich to be my girl
You don’t have to be cool to rule my world
Ain’t no particular sign I’m more compatible with
I just want your extra time and your kiss
Kiss, Parade

In my daddy’s car
It’s you I really want to drive
Underneath the stars
I really get a dirty mind
Whenever you’re around
Dirty dirty dirty song: Dirty Mind, Dirty Mind

People call me rude, I wish we all were nude
I wish there was no black and white, I wish there were no rules
we’re all the same: Controversy, Controversy

I’m not a woman
I’m not a man
I am something that you’ll never understand
I would die 4 U, Purple Rain

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called life
Best Guitar riff: Let’s go Crazy, Purple Rain

Hey, look me over
Tell me do you like what you see?
Hey, I ain’t got no money
But honey, I’m rich on personality
Badass: Baby I’m a Star, Purple Rain

You walked in, I woke up
I’ve never seen a pretty girl
Look so tough, baby
You got that look
Pure energy: U Got the Look, Sign o’ the Times

And I said, baby don’t waste your time
I know what’s on your mind
I may be qualified for a one night stand
But I could never take the place of your man
Best performed live: I could never take the place of your man, Sign o’ the Times

If a man is considered guilty
For what goes on in his mind
Then give me the electric chair
For all my future crimes-oh!
Electric Chair, Batman
More thoughts, lyrics and articles about my favorite artist.

“a sex symbol devoted to romance and pleasure, not power or machismo”, Prince, an Artist Who Defied Genre, Is Dead at 57 (NYTimes)
“Today is a very sad day. His music rearranged me… he will forever be my #1.” – Halle Berry
“A strong spirit transcends rules,’ Prince once said—and nobody’s spirit was stronger, bolder, or more creative.” —President Obama
“A tiny, svelte thing. Ethnically ambiguous, radiating lust. What is this? A man. Clearly a man. No. Not just a man. A Prince.”, On Prince, blackness, and sexuality (Fusion)
Prince Remembered: 15 of His Most Iconic Fashion Moments – US Weekly

He’s gone

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Prince was the fist artist I actively listened. I was 12.

I discovered music listening to Purple Rain, 1999 and Sign ‘o the Time.

He was my idol, for his music, the style and the message he brought to us.
I still remember most of his lyrics and can sing most of his songs.

Prince thought us that it’s ok to be ourselves, no matter what.

 

 

Trying to think of my favorite songs: Adore, Let’s go crazy, 1999,  Controversy, I would die 4 U, International lover, …

As I read my twitter, I thought I could save a few for you all:

Bedtime story

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

The Call of Cthulhu, whole story here

Articles of the week

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Starting today, I will post a brief weekly summary of the the best articles I found online.
https://dzone.com/articles/how-a-scrum-team-adopted-continuous-delivery

What’s next in computing? (by @cdixon)
An article about the evolution of software, hardware, AI and VR

I read a lot about the Open Web
Time to channel my Inner Dave Winer (by Joi Ito)
Anywhere but Medium  & What I mean by “the open web” (by Dave Winer)
An Open Web (e-book)

The U.S. Has Lost Its Damn Mind

A final word for Umberto Eco, who passed last week.

Back to blogging

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A few days ago, I read posts from Joi Ito and Dave Winer.
At the end, this sentence/tweet kept buzzing in my mind.

It reminded me about the importance of the Open Web. The difference between owning your content vs keeping it in a walled garden.
And most importantly: how do we keep the open web relevant? What can do about it?

I wrote my first blog post in 2006, when I moved from Florence to NYC. Through blogging, I shared my stories, kept in touch with friends while having lot of fun.

Blogging isn’t easy, it takes time, but it pushes you to a deeper level of thinking.

For all those reasons, I want to get back to blogging!
I’ll use this platform as hub for my content, without giving up Twitter or Facebook.

I’ll mostly write about food, tech, my trips. Let’s see where it goes!

Game on!

Beef Kaldereta – filipino cuisine

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After the Avocado lime ice cream, we decided to make it a tradition: prepare a new dish every week.
Last Sunday I tried Kaldereta, a Filipino dish, for the first time.

After some research online and offline, I found a recipe that inspired me.
Truth to be said, the Kaldereta is very similar to Italian’s spezzatino, so the preparation wasn’t too challenging.
I used all the ingredients from the recipe, except liver and cheese. I replaced calamansi with lime.
I cooked the meat in the pressure cooker, this reduced the time from 3 hours to about 45 minutes.

The result was surprisingly good!

 

My take on Avocado Ice cream

Alessandro1 Comment

I haven’t posted in ages. Food is bringing me back…
As way of background, I blogged about New York City at first, about tech and food.

I love food: eating it as well as cooking it.

Today I made Vegan avocado lime ice cream, Recipe courtesy found on Serious Eats!

I won’t go through the recipe into details, as you can find it in the link above.
Also, preparation is quite simple.
Put avocado, sugar, water, lime zest and juice in a blender and blend until smooth.
Refrigerate the mixture for a few hours, until very cold.
Then churn it in your ice cream maker. I use the Kitchen Aid ice cream maker attachment!
Transfer it to an airtight container and chill for a few hours, until firm.

Scoop into a bowl, and enjoy it!

My VelocityConf 2012

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Velocity Conf 2012 is over and there are a lot of videos, slides around the web.
I made an effort to put together a list of them, specifically the sessions that I attended.

You can find more here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL80D9129677893FD8&feature=plcp
http://lanyrd.com/2012/velocity/slides/

Ping me if you find the missing slides or you want to add material.

Here they are:

Mike Brittain (Etsy):
Simple logs analysis and trending
Building resilient user experience

Estelle Weyl (Standardista):
Mobile Web Performances

Bryan McQuade (Google):
Understanding and Optimizing Web Performance Metrics

Luke Kanies (Puppets Lab):
11 Ways to Hack Puppet For Fun and Productivity

Hooman Beheshti (Strangeloop Networks):
 The 90-Minute Mobile Optimization Life Cycle

Jay Parikh (Facebook):
Building for a Billion Users

John Rauser (Amazon):
Investigating anomalies

Richard Cook (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm):
How complex systems fail

Vik Chaudhary (Keynote Systems, Inc.):
Broadening the User Perspective – From Network Latency to User Experience Timings

Matthew Steele (Google), Roberto Peon (Google):
SPDYing Up Your Site

Raffi Krikorian (Twitter), Arya Asemanfar (Twitter, Inc.):
Real-time systems at Twitter

James Turnbull (Puppet Labs):
Roll Back: The Impossible Dream

Tom Hughes-Croucher (Jetpacks for Dinosaurs):
Using Node.js to improve the performance of Mobile apps and Mobile web

Matt Atterbury (Google Inc), Mustafa Tikir (Google):
Using Google Sitespeed and PageSpeed Products to Debug, Improve, Measure, and Iterate.

Dan Webb (Twitter Inc), Rob Sayre (Twitter):
Time To First Tweet

Mike Christian (Yahoo!):
Frying Squirrels and Unspun Gyros (Video)

Ben Galbraith (Walmart.com), Dion Almaer (Walmart.com):
The Performance of Web vs. Apps

Albert Wenger (Union Square Ventures):
Political and Commercial Threats and Opportunities for a Faster and Stronger Web

Jesse Robbins (Opscode):
Changing Culture & Being a force for Awesome… (Video) (Slides) (Interview)

Kate Matsudaira (Decide):
Leveling Up – Taking Your Operations and Engineering Role to the Next Level.

Tim Lossen (wooga – world of gaming):
Dashboard Mania

Mandi Walls (Opscode):
Challenges to Cultural Change (Slides) (Interview)

Stoyan Stefanov (Facebook):
Social Button BFFs

Nicole Sullivan (Stubbornella):
5 Essential Tools for UI Performance

Nathan Yergler (Eventbrite):
Living With Technical Debt

How to extract audio from a youtube video

alessandroNo Comments

I was looking for the song Also Sprach Zarathustra.
But I could only easily found it as video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLuW-GBaJ8k.
After a quick search I found out how rip the audio from a youtube video (via linux/fedora):
1) Download a video from youtube
–  yum install youtube-dl
– youtube-dl
2) Extract the audio track
– ffmpeg -i nodame_theme.flv -ab 128 -ar 44100 nodame_theme.mp3  (thanks to http://linux.byexamples.com/archives/229/extract-audio-from-video-or-online-stream/)

3) verify and play your file 🙂

That’s it folks!