Stefano Bittante

How to make grayscale png images with GraphicsMagick

2010-11-26T19:51:00.006+01:00

If you have a color PNG image with transparency don't do this:
gm mogrify -type grayscale image.png
as it will lose the alpha channel.

You can get a similar result by just desaturating it:
gm mogrify -modulate 100,0 image.png

Photo Geotag

2009-12-30T21:35:00.003+01:00

One program to write them

http://www.geosetter.de/en/

and one program to read them

http://www.photome.de/

GPS coordinates digit precision

2009-10-13T13:50:00.004+01:00

Since Earth equatorial circumference is around 40000 km and longitude spans 360 degrees, it follows that near the equator 1 degrees is equivalent to about 110 km.

Thus:

0 digit precision: ±110 km
1 digit precision: ±11 km
2 digit precision: ±1.1 km
3 digit precision: ±110 m
4 digit precision: ±11 m
5 digit precision: ±1.1 m
6 digit precision: ±11 cm
7 digit precision: ±1.1 cm

However, the closer you move to the Poles, the smaller the lenghts of the parallels becomes.

For example near Rome, which has a latitude of 42 degrees 1 degree is equivalent to cos(90-42)*110= 74 km.

Thus:

0 digit precision: ±74 km
1 digit precision: ±7.4 km
2 digit precision: ±0.74 km
3 digit precision: ±74 m
4 digit precision: ±7.4 m
5 digit precision: ±0.74 m
6 digit precision: ±7.4 cm
7 digit precision: ±0.74 cm

iPhone voice dialing improvements

2009-09-25T01:32:00.005+01:00

Dear Apple Support, I can think of two ways of doing voice dialing: first one is when I'm in a rush and I don't want to spend time going through my contacts, second one while I am driving and I can use the iPhone only as a hand free device (holding the home button is reasonable, however).

The problem is that in the first case I don't like the iphone playing back the name to call through loudspeakers: I'm holding the iphone next to my ear, so it should use the earspeaker. Otherwise what happen is that if I whisper the name to call, the iPhone will play it back too loud.

In the second case I'm not looking at the iphone, so i'd like to have the whole call through loudspeakers, without having to touch the icon "speakers". My concern is just with voice dialing, if I initiate the call by going through the contacts I don't mind pressing the "spekers" icon.

Did I make myself clear enough? Any response is very well appreciated.

Stefano

Test di Medicina 2009

2009-09-13T18:23:00.001+01:00

I test di medicina del 2009 sono stati pubblicati online in modo tale che la risposta corretta fosse sempre la prima.

Ho mischiato le risposte in modo tale da permettere a tutti di provare a rispondere senza barare.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=132197049813

How to search text within php files

2009-08-24T21:19:00.001+01:00

find . -iname '*.php' -exec grep -l pattern '{}' \;

New Project

2009-08-19T01:42:00.002+01:00

Guess what: I've registered a new domain: www.bagnirimini.com

Bacari in Venice

2008-02-10T19:44:00.000+01:00

Using my gps logger and my camera, this time I realized an overview of where me and by friends have been.

OpenStreetMap

2007-12-22T02:12:00.000+01:00

Since I own a GPS logger and I've tracked a lot of my car movements, I thought it could have been a good idea to collaborate to a new project I found online. It's called OpenStreetMap.
This is the mapping of Padova before I started working on it.

Latitude / longitude distance in mysql

2007-11-29T02:22:00.003+01:00

This is the best function I've found for calculating the distance from two different locations using their latitude / longitude coordinates expressed in degrees. The number of km is returned.

Note that the IF-ENDIF part is not optional, since round-off errors could make tmp bigger than 1 or smaller than -1.

For those values ACOS is not defined and will return a NULL value.


DELIMITER //
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS km_from_deg //
CREATE FUNCTION km_from_deg (latA DOUBLE, longA DOUBLE, latB DOUBLE, longB DOUBLE)
RETURNS DOUBLE
BEGIN
DECLARE tmp DOUBLE;
SET tmp = 
COS(RADIANS(longA - longB)) * COS(RADIANS(latB))*COS(RADIANS(latA)) +
SIN(RADIANS(latB))*SIN(RADIANS(latA));
IF tmp > 1 THEN set tmp = 1;
ELSEIF tmp < -1 THEN set tmp = -1;
END IF;
return 6372 * ACOS(tmp);
END;
//
DELIMITER ;

Diet progress: 74 kg

2007-10-29T16:49:00.000+01:00

A bit slower that expected, but I reached 74 kg.
I guess now it will take another month from now to lose another kilogram and reach the target.

Diet progress: still 75 kg

2007-10-07T13:22:00.000+01:00

This week I have to admit it, I didn't follow the diet in a strict way.
Too much beer on Wednesday, Friday and last night.

The results are pretty clear, no progress.

Tracking my running sessions: 5

2007-10-04T23:24:00.000+01:00

Ops, this time my GPS unit fell down and I've lost the on/off switch. No luck, so I went back running.
Notice the final sprint before stopping. It wasn't too difficult, only four laps this time.

Tracking my running sessions: 4

2007-10-03T23:12:00.000+01:00

This time I had to take a break (quater of a lap) just before the final lap (the seventh).
At least it was a fast lap.

Diet progress: 75 kg

2007-09-30T12:16:00.001+01:00

The balance is now telling me that I weight 75 kg. That means I've lost another 800 grams.
Not too much, but perfectly on target.

Tracking my running sessions: 3

2007-09-24T22:28:00.000+01:00

Longer run than usual (9 laps and a half), but with no speed variations.

Diet progress: -1.2 kg

2007-09-23T11:02:00.000+01:00

When I put 73 kg as one month target I wasn't so sure I could make it.
But the progresses are promising: now I weight 75.8 kg, that means I've lost about 1.2 kg.

Tracking Gabriele's running session

2007-09-19T20:12:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine, Gabriele, borrowed my GPS logging devices. A long run, and it could have been even longer if he had remembered to turn the GPS unit on few minutes before.
In fact all GPS unit needs few minutes to acquire a stable signal, especially when they have been switched off for a long time.

Tracking my running sessions: 2

2007-09-18T23:02:00.001+01:00

This has been a much harder session: five laps ad medium speed, three laps of speed variations, stretching session and then some exercises.

Tracking my running sessions: 2

2007-09-17T23:02:00.000+01:00

This has been a much harder session: five laps at medium speed, three laps of speed variations, stretching session and then some exercises.
During the last speed variation you can see how I gave the best of myself, in fact then I had to walk since I couldn't run anymore.

New bet: to weight less than Davide

2007-09-16T16:00:00.000+01:00

Lately Davide has been making fun of me because he eats like a pig and still weights less than I do. He is also so stubborn that he doesn't want to take a blood test, so these are the terms of the bet: "he'll take a blood test as soon as I will weight less than he does".

So the plan is simple: strict diet and a lot more of physical activity. With strict diet I don't mean I will not eat anything, that is very stupid. Instead I will choose carefully each food I'll eat during the day, avoiding to take any carbohydrate after lunch (1.30 pm) till the day after.
This isn't easy because it means i can't take any sugar in the coffee, drink a cola or having even a fruit. Pizza, pasta and bread are then prohibited at supper, so I could only have vegetables, meet or fish.
The explanation is that by keeping a very low sugar level in the blood, the body will start burning some of the lipids that have been with me for a long time. By not taking any carbohydrate after lunch it means that I will be burning lipids all night long.

So, let's being. Starting weight: 77 kg, one month target: 73 kg

Tracking my running sessions: 1

2007-09-10T22:49:00.000+01:00

It has been a long time since my last running session, so this has been an easy one. I joined Gigi, a soccer referee, too bad that I can't keep up with his pace.
We did three and a half laps around Prato della Valle at medium speed, then some speed variations for another two laps. Then a stretching session, and some running exercises.

Usurai.it

2007-08-23T18:48:00.000+01:00

The domain usurai.it is now active.

New project: Usurai.it

2007-08-17T19:03:00.000+01:00

Strange enough the domain usurai.it hasn't been registered by anybody, so I did it.

Pizza a Domicilio, removed again from Google (3)

2007-08-10T23:43:00.000+01:00

I can't figure it out, look at here:
Google has removed pizza-a-domicilio.it from its index again! And still Google Webmaster Tools are not correct:

The only thing I can do now is to raise the daily budget on Google Adwords to 10 €.

PB: Traffic Record!

2007-08-09T16:15:00.000+01:00

Yesterday (August 8th 2007) has been the day with the most traffic ever on Prezzi Benzina: 9975 page views.

Prezzi Benzina Traffic - August 2007

Prezzi Benzina Traffic - August 8th, 2007

Pizza a Domicilio, back again into Google index

2007-08-08T02:36:00.000+01:00

After only twelve days it seems that buying mister-pizza.it has been useful.
Google is currently indexing Pizza a Domicilio in the first pages again.

This means that it's the perfect time to lower the maximum cpc from 0.03€ to 0.02€ on Google Adwords. Anyway I'll keep the maximum daily budget at 5.00€.

Pizza a Domicilio buys Mister Pizza

2007-07-26T19:18:00.000+01:00

One way to increase the Page Rank of a web site is to buy an old website which has a good page rank and it's on sell.
Then by using an HTTP 301 redirect, all the traffic will be forwared to the website you want to rank better. Then, shortly after Google has recognized the change, it will pass the PR of the old website to the new one.

This is why today I bought www.mister-pizza.it. It has a PR of 2 and I payed about 400€. Not really what I call a bargain, but I hope it will be worth it.

At the time of writing the redirecting has just started to work. Let's see how long it will take before we see any change in the page rank.

Pizza a Domicilio, removed again from Google index?

2007-07-23T23:44:00.000+01:00

I have no words, it seems that Google is making fun of me.
After two days of traffic (when I wrote "back into Google index"), now there isn't anymore.

But what really makes me upset is the fact that even Google seems not to be aware of this.
Using "Webmaster Tools", section "Query stats" this is the supposed keyword average positioning of the last seven days:

But this is not true. Actually the first occurrence of "Pizza a Domicilio", displaying 100 results per page, is on the last one, the eight. This means that the true positioning is after the 700th.

Taking a train from Padova to Cornuda

2007-07-21T19:07:00.000+01:00

The path is the same as the Cornuda-Padova, but this time top speed has been 113 km/h, 11 km/h less than a month ago.
Why? Because Trenitalia decided that since railtracks were too hot, train had to go slower.
If you have Google Earth, here's the kml file

Pizza a Domicilio, back into Google index?

2007-07-12T18:41:00.000+01:00

It took almost two months, but after having been penalized by Google, now Pizza a Domicilio is back in the first result page, as you can see from Google Analytics, visits are growing.

on Google.it:

pizza a domicilio: 8th position
pizza domicilio: 8th position

while on Google.com:

pizza a domicilio: 2nd position
pizza domicilio: 13th position

174 nuovi comuni ad alta risoluzione su Gmap

2007-07-02T23:48:00.000+01:00

Ecco la lista degli ultimi comuni di cui è stata resta disponibile la mappa ad alta risoluzione su Google Map. A quando Padova?

Provincia di AG:
Burgio, Calamonaci, Caltabellotta, Ribera, Villafranca Sicula.

Provincia di AL:
Arquata Scrivia, Bistagno, Bosio, Carrosio, Cartosio, Casaleggio Boiro, Castelletto D'Erro, Castelletto D'Orba, Denice, Fraconalto, Gavi, Lerma, Montaldeo, Montechiaro D'Acqui, Mornese, Parodi Ligure, Ponti, San Cristoforo, Voltaggio.

Provincia di AR:
Sestino.

Provincia di AT:
Bubbio, Canelli, Cassinasco, Castel Boglione, Monastero Bormida, Montabone, Rocchetta Palafea, Sessame.

Provincia di BN:
Apollosa, Benevento, Campoli del Monte Taburno, Castelpagano, Castelpoto, Cautano, Circello, Foglianise, San Leucio del Sannio, Santa Croce del Sannio, Tocco Caudio, Torrecuso, Vitulano.

Provincia di CB:
Campodipietra, Campolieto, Castelbottaccio, Castellino del Biferno, Cercemaggiore, Gildone, Jelsi, Lupara, Matrice, Monacilioni, Morrone del Sannio, Petrella Tifernina, Provvidenti, Ripabottoni, San Giovanni in Galdo, Toro.

Provincia di CE:
Gallo Matese, Letino.

Provincia di CL:
Acquaviva Platani, Bompensiere, Campofranco, Milena, Mussomeli, Sutera.

Provincia di CS:
Albidona, Alessandria del Carretto, Bonifati, Buonvicino, Castroregio, Fagnano Castello, Malvito, Plataci, San Donato di Ninea, San Lorenzo Bellizzi, San Sosti, Sangineto, Sant'Agata di Esaro, Santa Caterina Albanese.

Provincia di CZ:
Torre di Ruggiero.

Provincia di EN:
Cerami.

Provincia di GE:
Campo Ligure, Masone.

Provincia di IS:
Castelpizzuto, Isernia, Longano, Macchia D'Isernia, Miranda, Pesche, Pettoranello del Molise, Sant'Agapito.

Provincia di ME:
Capizzi.

Provincia di MO
Fanano, Fiumalbo, Montecreto, Pievepelago, Riolunato, Sestola.

Provincia di MS:
Comano.

Provincia di OT
Aggius, Bortigiadas, Monti, Sant'Antonio di Gallura, Telti, Trinità d'Agultu e Vignola.

Provincia di PR:
Monchio delle Corti, Palanzano.

Provincia di PT
Abetone.

Provincia di PU:
Belforte all'Isauro, Carpegna, Frontino, Pennabilli, Pietrarubbia.

Provincia di PZ:
Cancellara, San Paolo Albanese.

Provincia di RC:
Gioiosa Ionica, Grotteria, Mammola, Marina di Gioiosa Ionica, Martone, San Giovanni di Gerace, Siderno.

Provincia di SA:
Aquara, Bellosguardo, Campora, Castel San Lorenzo, Felitto, Laurino, Magliano Vetere, Roscigno, Stio.

Provincia di SI:
Asciano, Rapolano Terme.

Provincia di SS:
Bessude, Bonnanaro, Bonorva, Borutta, Cheremule, Erula, Giave, Ittireddu, Mores, Nughedu San Nicolò, Ozieri, Torralba, Tula.

Provincia di TN:
Aldeno, Besenello, Calavino, Calliano, Cimone, Garniga, Lasino, Padergnone, Trento, Vezzano.

F.MI +1.59%

2007-07-02T21:59:00.000+01:00

F.MI closed at 22.43€ (+1.59%) after that the company published June results. Fiat market share is now over 30%.

Total strategy gain is now +688€ (3.95%) + 124€ div (812€ overall)

To Lignano and back

2007-07-01T23:45:00.000+01:00

This weekend I went with my friends to a camping in Lignano. During the travel I used my GPS logger to keep track of all the gas stations. I only had to add two of them:

To the sea-side and back

2007-06-24T23:23:00.000+01:00

This Sunday I went with my friend Nicola to Jesolo and during the travel I took a picture of all of the gas stations. Most of them were already inserted, so I just needed to update their prices, anyway I still had to add three of them:

Taking a train from Padova to Bassano

2007-06-23T22:57:00.000+01:00

As I've already done from Cornuda to Padova on Taking a train from Cornuda to Padova, I took a GPS log of the railway travel from Padova to Bassano del Grappa. This way you may understand better how the Italian railway works.

This is the speed plot of an old diesel Train, maximum speed 108 km/h. WOW!

If you have Google Earth you may want to plot this kml file at high resolution.

Taking a train from Cornuda to Padova

2007-06-20T22:59:00.000+01:00

This is the GPS track log from Cornuda to Padova to by train.

This is the speed plot of an old diesel Train, maximum speed 124 km/h. WOW!

If you have Google Earth you may want to plot this kml file at high resolution.

PAD, let's remove some links

2007-06-18T05:36:00.000+01:00

I was reading that Google does not like a website when its link popularity raise to quickly. This make sense, but I could have never thought that Google could actually penalize a website for doing this.
For this reason I've just removed all the link to www.pizza-a-domicilio.it from http://gallery.prezzibenzina.it and from http://poi.prezzibenzina.it.

While doing this I realized that in some sections of the gallery everybody could add comments to the pictures, thus leaving the door open to comment spam bots. In fact after disabling this option, I had to remove over 10 thousand of spam comments (which didn't take long since I have direct access to the database).

Polarizer Filter

2007-06-15T06:12:00.000+01:00

I always wanted to show the effect of a polarizer filter, and so here a nice picture: on the bottom you can see how the window is reflecting the outside environment, while on the top the filter is turned 90° making it possible to see through the window.

Niagara Falls Panorama

2007-06-10T05:18:00.000+01:00

I have made this picture using six 10-mega pixel shots that have been merged with Hugin.

After learning that to create a good stitch I should use the AEL Lock (Auto Exposure Lock), I was expecting to create an awesome panorama this time. Too bad that I forgot that my Sony Alpha 100 has a DR (Dynamic Range) ability that is enabled by default.

When DR is enabled, every picture has its own contrast enhanced, and this could cause problems if you are trying to stitch the photographs all together, because you will end up having darker or lighter overlapping areas.

Server Crash

2007-06-06T08:47:00.000+01:00

And here I am, at the Venice airport, almost ready to flight to the USA and what happens?

Eighteen hours before the flight the server crashes and then trying to fix it, my system administrator changed the IP addresses of all of my domains. He said it would have been transparent. Too bad that Murphy's law doesn't know the meaning of being transparent.

Two things happened. First PAD doesn't use the main DNS, so if there is a change in the IP address, I have to modify them manually. Second, the old IP addresses have been re-assigned to somebody else, so that until the DNS changes propagates, the websites are unreachable.

At the moment only www.pizza-a-domicilio.it changes haven't been propagated. If you try to open it you get the following message:

:19638/webhost/rollout">-->

All the other domains are up and running.

PLM, adding some content

2007-06-03T22:15:00.000+01:00

I guess I have been to busy lately, and what happened is that I completely forgot to remove the parking page and to add some content to the site www.prolocomaser.it. So I decided to upload there the panoramic pictures I've taken of the city of Maser.

PAD, mass mailing (partial) result

2007-05-31T18:00:00.000+01:00

Now it's time to analyze the results!

Of 3655 emails, 291 bounced back (8.0%), mostly for unknown user and mail-quota exceed.

17 people (4.6%) instead answerd me provinding information about Pizza shop I wasn't aware of, while 11 people (3.0%) replyed with "REMOVE ME" as subject, probably because they weren't interested.

Phplist tracking is saying that the message has been read 2039 times by 1156 people (31.6%)
Anyway only 214 people (5.9%, according to Google Analytics) reached the home page www.pizza-a-domicilio.it so far.

PAD: Mass mailing

2007-05-30T18:00:00.001+01:00

I had over 3650 people who signed up to Prezzi Benzina newsletter, so I wanted to take the opportunity to let them know of my new project Pizza a Domicilio.
I downloaded and installed phplist, one of the best open source mailing list tools available around.
One of the best features it has, is the ability to personalize each mail.

SMS service failure

2007-05-26T15:31:00.000+01:00

Few days ago I started suspecting that something must happened to the mobile phone I use as sms gateway, since I haven't received any sms since May 19.

Anyway, since that hardware is staying about 60 km from where I live I could not check it before today. What happened was that the mobile phone received a flash sms from its own operator (Vodafone) with some configuration details about GPRS and WAP, and since then it disconnected itself from the network (the signal strength was zero).

I should probably put up some control routines, so that I could get warned it this happen again.

Pirate Pebbles Flintstone

2007-05-25T23:17:00.000+01:00

I've taken this picture with my Sony-Ericsson P990 mobile phone because I really liked the way the handbag strap was hiding Pebbles' left eye, making her looking as a Pirate.

Later, when I got home I searched for some scars through Google Image Search, and the I used Adobe Photoshop to merge them.

Here's the result: "Pirate Pebbles Flintstone".
(in italian "il Pirata Ciotolina Flintstone")

Mostra della ciliegia 2007

2007-05-25T15:19:00.000+01:00

Vi piacciono le ciliegie? Se è così, potreste essere interessati alla 17esima "Mostra della ciliegia" che si terrà domenica 27 Maggio 2007 a Maser (TV).
Per maggiori informazioni potete visitare il sito della manifestazione: www.mostradellaciliegia.it.

Pizza a Domicilio

2007-05-24T23:58:00.000+01:00

Sembra che Google si diverta ad indicizzare il mio blog molto più velocemente di qualsiasi altro sito che gestisco. Quindi perché non sfruttare questa occasione per fare un po' di pubblicità:

Cerca la pizzeria con consegna a domicilio più vicina a casa tua: www.pizza-a-domicilio.it

PAD, small improvements

2007-05-23T00:33:00.000+01:00

Since there arent' so many people helping me in inserting the home-delivery pizza shops in the database, I had to realize some improvements:

I added also some takeway pizza shops, but the user who wants to see them on the map must express his willing by clicking on a check box.
the address that the user has entered in the search box is displayed on the map through this icon: .
the zoom is chosen so that at least three pizza shops are visible at the same time.

For realizing the last feature I've used the GMap API function GLatLngBounds.extend(). Here's a snippet:

var bounds = new GLatLngBounds();
bounds.extend(new GLatLng(41.895466, 12.482323)); // searched address
bounds.extend(new GLatLng(41.882694, 12.520852)); // first pizza shop
bounds.extend(new GLatLng(41.921056, 12.457294)); // second pizza shop
bounds.extend(new GLatLng(41.874163, 12.443047)); // third pizza shop
map.setCenter(bounds.getCenter(), map.getBoundsZoomLevel(bounds));

Pizza a Domicilio, keywords removed?

2007-05-22T23:57:00.000+01:00

For some strange reason if now I search pizza a domicilio on google.it, I'm not able to see any more my website www.pizza-a-domicilio.it. I don't know what is going on, but as you can imagine, I am not happy with it.

So, let's start using some of the domains I maintain for some keyword linking.

Page Rank 4: http://www.prezzibenzina.it (top of all pages, keyword pizza?)
Page Rank 3: http://poi.prezzibenzina.it (top of all pages, keyword pizza a domicilio)
Page Rank 3: http://gallery.prezzibenzina.it (top of all pages, keyword trova pizzerie)
Page Rank 3: http://www.evoluzioni-italia.it (bottom of the home page, keyword com)

PAD, is Adwords getting greedy?

2007-05-22T00:52:00.000+01:00

Google Adwords says now that it wants 0.04€ for the following keywords:

pizzeria asporto
cinese a domicilio
pizza d'asporto
pizza domicilio
pizze a domicilio
pizzeria d'asporto

and 0.08€ for these:

cinese d'asporto
pizza asporto
pizze asporto
pizze d'asporto

Let's see what happening rising the maximum cpc at 0.04€ (0.08€ is really too much)

PAD, almost a positive cash flow

2007-05-21T00:41:00.000+01:00

This weekend I've been at the sea side at Bibione and I did not have Internet access. This means that all the traffic on PAD was genuine (it wasn't generated by me).

It's very rewarding the fact than on Sunday I raised 3.85$ from Google Adsense, while spending 4.05€ (1€=1.3$) on Google Adwords. This is amazing because I never suspected I could do advertising on Google almost for free.

The same day, the most money payed to Google Adwords was for the campaign with a lot of keywords (126 clicks at about 0.03€ each = 3.69€), while the campaign with only pizza as keyword was far less expensive (5 clicks at about 0.07€ = 0.36€).
Strange enough the first campaign generated clicks mostly through the Google and its search network, while the second only from the network of contents.

What happened is that Google Adwords now wants 0.30€ for the pizza keyword. At this price I can't afford it anymore, it's really too much.

The good side of the story is that on this keyword there is a lot of competition and this is why I got 3.85$ with only 20 clicks on the Adsense Links (about 0.19$ each).

PAD, pizza keyword at 0.08€

2007-05-18T11:24:00.000+01:00

Google Adwords changed it's own price for the keyword pizza. Now it thinks that 0.04€ are not enough and it wants 0.08€. I guess I should give it a try anyway.
Maximum budget per day is still at 5€.

PAD, more advertising and getting some money

2007-05-17T21:49:00.000+01:00

Since I wasn't getting to many visits with the previous campaign, I started a new group of announces for the pizza keyword. Google Adwords is requiring at least 0.04€ for this keyword, so I placed my maximum cpc at that price.

Now that advertising is getting more and more expensive I decided to place some Google Adsense links on my result pages, so that if somebody would use them I will get paid.

PAD, advertising campaign

2007-05-15T21:34:00.001+01:00

To get some more traffic for the website www.pizza-a-domicilio.it today I started a campaign on Google Adwords for the all the combination of the keywords pizza, pizze, pizzeria, pizzerie, domicilio, a domicilio, asporto, d'asporto. Since hungry people may want something different from pizza, I also chose the keyword cinese (chinese).
I set the geographic area equal to Italy, the language to Italian and the maximum cpc at 0.03€.

Here's the complete list:

cinese a domicilio
cinese d'asporto
pizza a domicilio
pizza asporto
pizza d'asporto
pizza domicilio
pizze a domicilio
pizze asporto
pizze d'asporto
pizze domicilio
pizzeria a domicilio
pizzeria asporto
pizzeria d'asporto
pizzeria domicilio
pizzerie a domicilio
pizzerie asporto
pizzerie d'asporto
pizzerie domicilio

Paging test: positive!

2007-05-09T23:24:00.000+01:00

In the following charts you can see that after the changes the number of slow queries has been reduced dramatically. So the changes were really worthwhile.

A very long waited feature: paging!

2007-05-08T22:49:00.000+01:00

Finally, after probably over a year of planning, I had to modify the section of Prezzi Benzina where all the prices were displayed.
This was necessary because some gas stations now have too many prices:

2818: 1982 prices
3321: 1672 prices
3704: 1538 prices

It was taking too long for each page to load, making the people trying to fetch the page again and again, causing the server to be overloaded.

The only way of fixing it was to breaking down the prices in different pages. With MySQL it's very easy to do it by using the LIMIT and the OFFSET keywords.

Tomorrow I must remember to test if the server load will be lower.

Comacchio Gas Stations, done!

2007-05-06T16:58:00.000+01:00

Today I finished checking the GPS positioning of the gas stations found along State Road SS309 crossing the city of Comacchio. Not that many, only ten of them, but I manage to get also the pictures (and thus the prices) of two of them: one Agip and one Q8.

Pizza a Domicilio, let's begin!

2007-05-05T00:00:00.000+01:00

As promised, today I had to make Pizza a Domicilio available to the public. At the moment there are very few pizza shops, but I hope to resolve this problem as soon as possible.

The structure is very basic, it's based on a plain home page where users are supposed to enter their address, and then, pressing the "Search" button they are redirected to a page displaying a Google Map of the area around the specified address.

The destination url format is http://www.pizza-a-domicilio.it/map/?q=XXXX, where XXXX stands for the searched address. The geocoding is then performed thanks to Google Maps API, since any other way of doing it would have less efficient.

This requires contacting a google server for any search performed by the user and this could possibly make the whole website experience much slower. This is why every search is cached, for a faster retrieval, into the same local database providing the pizza shop details.

The pizza shops are then retrieved from the server as a XML file and then placed on the map with the following marker: .

In order to make the search easier I placed some direct links to the Italian biggest cities: Milano, Torino, Roma e Napoli. I also placed a link to Padova because it's the town in which I placed the most pizza shops.

Clicking on the marker will display some additional information such as the address and the telephone number:

PLM: Domain activation

2007-05-02T00:16:00.000+01:00

The domain www.prolocomaser.it has been activated and it's now displaying a default parking page.

Back from Rimini!

2007-05-01T23:33:00.000+01:00

I went to the sea-side with some friends of mine and since I wasn't driving I spent a lot of time tracking down gas station and taking pictures of the prices with my Sony Alpha. I've taken 145 pictures (to be sure the prices were readable there are a lot of doubles) for a total of 323 MB.

Some of the pictures are quite interesting since I catch an owner changing its own prices, a policeman and a policewoman using a telelaser, and all this while the person who was driving (Marco) tried everything (he is cleaning the windshield in this pictures) to stop me taking pictures.

PAD Final Logo

2007-04-26T20:56:00.000+01:00

D&D Studios completed the logo, and what to say, I'm really satisfied with it.
Here the two versions:

Sony Alpha 100 panoramas

2007-04-25T22:49:00.000+01:00

Since I didn't have free time lately, I could not play too much with my new camera. I wanted to understand how easy it could be to create a panorama from over 20 pictures without spending too much time on it.

What I did was to mount the 75-300mm on the Sony Alpha, putting it in a backpack with a tripod and the go on the top of an hill.

After mounting the camera on the tripod, I leveled it, and then I've taken two set of pictures, the first zooming at 75mm (full back), the second at 300mm (full forward).
The first set consisted in 23 pictures saved at 10 mega pixel with maximum quality, while the second in 44 pictures. I should have taken more pictures, but sadly enough I had all the memory cards almost full, and so I couldn't do it.

For the stitching I've used Hugin, a free GUI interface to Panorama Tools. Through these open source projects, I was able to create two huge images, the first was 19104x1791 pixels, while the second 19267x1829. The computed images are not at the maximum possible resolution because Hugin said that 2 Gigabyte of RAM was not enough.

Since it's not very practical to show such images on a browser, I had to used another tool, called Zoomify, that even if it's not an open source project, was at least available in demo mode:

Here there the results:

http://www.prezzibenzina.it/zoomify/maser_20070423_75mm.html (full size link)

http://www.prezzibenzina.it/zoomify/maser_20070423_300mm.html (full size link)

What did I learn from this experience? Quite a lot actually:

In the computed images, it's still possible to identify how the pictures where stitched together, and this is because, even if Hugin/Panorama Tools are quite good in matching image tonality and exposure, next time I will use the AE Lock function on the camera, so that each set of picture is taken with the same aperture and exposition (is white balancing locked too?)
2 Gigabyte of RAM are not enough when it comes to generate images bigger than the ones displayed here, but maybe tweaking some parameters will lead to minor memory usage
Shooting trees and grass without a polarizing filter leads to poor image quality, this is why I've already ordered a cheap 55mm circ-polarizing filter on eBay
I will never go out for a shooting trip with full memory cards again,
I will never go out for a shooting trip with full memory cards again,
I will never go out for a shooting trip with full memory cards again....

Impossible Guitar

2007-04-22T23:13:00.000+01:00

When I saw this guitar outside Niagara Hard-Rock Cafè I desidered to use it in a funny artwork.

Here the result:

New (simple?) project: Pro Loco Maser

2007-04-22T00:38:00.000+01:00

I always say that I'm too busy to accept new projects, and this is because I try to use my free time for developing project that may either money rewarding or at least useful for the community.

Since in the past I realized a manifestation website called www.mostradellaciliegia.it today I accepted to realized a new website for the non-profit organization "Pro Loco Maser", so that in the future they could manage all of their local manifestations.

So few minutes ago I registered the domain www.prolocomaser.it domain for 42€ (tax included) throught the we.register.it, not because I think their are the best, but just because I found it easier to manage all of my Italian domains from a single place. In micro-economics they called it vendor lock-in and it is something you (as a client) should always avoid. Oh well, at least I am able to recognize it, I really don't have enough time to look for better service providers.

Few anticipations: I'll probably use Joomla as CMS, and the contents will be similar to www.prolocoalano.it (another no-profit organization nearby).

Cherry manifestation

2007-04-20T23:07:00.000+01:00

Do you like cherries? If so, you may be interested in the 17th "Mostra della ciliegia" (Cherry show) held on Sunday May 27th 2007 at Maser (TV) Italy. For more information (in Italian) you may visit the event website: www.mostradellaciliegia.it.

PAD Logo second draft

2007-04-17T11:21:00.000+01:00

Here the second draft from D&D Studios, with a better looking pizza and the website url.

Üzemanyagárak

2007-04-16T00:30:00.000+01:00

Looking at the most used keywords for accessing Prezzi Benzina (Italian for gas prices), I found a strange word: Üzemanyagárak.
Searching that word on Google I found out that there are a lot of Hungarian web sites with links like this: Üzemanyagárak. The reason of course is very simple, it seems to be the Hungarian translation for fuel, but still I don't understand why so many Hungarian people are interested in Italian gas prices.
Are there so many Hungarian people in Italy? Why didn't I find any other foreign keyword?

PAD Logo draft

2007-04-12T01:31:00.000+01:00

As it has been suggested by Adam Khoo in the book I am still reading, I used the outsourcing service provided by Elance. Among many bidders I chose D&D Studios, and here there are their first two drafts.
I was so impressed that I've already used the first one to make a work in progress page.

Awesome start

2007-04-08T16:25:00.000+01:00

My new project, "Pizza a Domicilio" is running faster than I expected.
When I chose the domain name I expected a good positioning on Google result pages, but reaching in about a week the seventh position with the key-phrase "pizza a domicilio" was completely unexpected.
The key-phrase "pizza domicilio" is well positioned too, since it's at the eleventh position. Too bad that there are only ten result per page, so this implies being on page two, but still it's much more than expected.