http://www.myrta.eu life & opinions Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:26:34 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Since we are using a decimal numbering system, we have the impression that ten and its multiples are somehow more "important". So it happens that our goals are usually expressed in multiples of ten. Coming to the point, my h-index has become 10 in these last weeks. The h-index ... http://www.myrta.eu/posts/h-10-shameless-self-promotion/ PowerPoint is symptomatic of a certain type of bureaucratic environment: one typified by interminable presentations with lots of fussy bullet-points and flashy dissolves and soundtracks masked into the background, to try to convince the audience that the goon behind the computer has something significant to say. It's the tool of ... http://www.myrta.eu/posts/beside-powerpoint/ In spite of months of "silence", I am still alive. As I had promised, I have updated the design of the web to fit the current season (well I didn't do so for the summer and the autumn...). In the icy-header now you can see frozen branches of the ... http://www.myrta.eu/posts/icy/ This is the third day I have to moderate a bunch of spam comments. Together with the "usual xxx" spam I am also receiving 8-10 spam comments per day with links to car rentals and to offers for expensive cars (well this is what they pretend to be, of course ... http://www.myrta.eu/posts/spammed-away/ When back in Italy it is unavoidable to get involved in Italian politics. This time - I have been in Italy the first two weeks of this month - wasn't an exception. And this time the matter of the politicians' squabbles was the vote of the senators-for-life. In fact, since ... http://www.myrta.eu/posts/physics-and-voting-systems/ I really don't like SUV (sport utility vehicle). I think they are cumbersome and useless, occupy too much parking space and consume too much fuel. Among SUV, I particularly dislike Porsche Cayenne. Here, aesthetic reasons add up to what I already said — I find it ugly. So I was ... http://www.myrta.eu/posts/suv/ In a couple of days I devoured Glasshouse, a Science Fiction book by Charles Stross.The reason I like SF is that it is all about imagining possible scenarios for the far future and imagining how human behavior, habits, values would change as a consequence. The reason I like Charles Stross' ... http://www.myrta.eu/posts/glasshouse/ It is already (more than) one year that myrta.eu is up and running. For this occasion, the site got a new look, while the content stays -for the moment- unchanged. Not without regrets I removed the glorious but useless “click your star” portal. Now you access directly the home page ... http://www.myrta.eu/posts/y2/