On Jan 1st 1999 a new currency was officially born: the Euro. It was the result of the efforts of most members of the European Union aiming to create a single currency to foster growth in the area, be strong against market storms and cut down on banking costs. That day the exchange rate with respect to the 11 initial participating currencies was set in stone and the European Central Bank took control. For three years the Euro remained something untangible, but on Jan 1st 2002 actual coins and notes were circulated and the now obsolete national money retired. Read the rest of this entry »
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A new tradition has been established in Ferrara lately. Every year we celebrate the new summer with a city-wide night party thrown on the solstice day. In yesterday’s edition I attended a wonderful fireworks show where music and light synchronized together built a moving synesthetic show. Fireworks went on for about 45 minutes, with a sequence of several songs, each one with a different choreography. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg owns so many pieces of artwork that they cannot handle them all in one place. For this reason they routinely organize exhibitions abroad and opened a few branches around the world. They have one in Las Vegas, one in Amsterdam and recently opened a third one in Ferrara. To celebrate its birth, Italian Hermitage organized an exhibition dedicated to Benvenuto Tisi, also known as Il Garofalo, at the Estense Castle.
Benvenuto Tisi was born in Ferrara in 1481 and is one of the most prominent painters of the School of Ferrara. He began gravitating around Domenico Panetti, Lorenzo Costa, Dosso Dossi and then refining his style under with Boccaccio Boccaccino. He already had a distinctive style, with bright colors and strong use of light as it was common in the Venetian school, when he eventually visited Rome and met Raffaello. That was a breakthrough and his style dramatically improved, so much that out of Italy his paintings sometimes are mistakenly attributed to Raffaello, even if Garofalo kept a distinctive mannerism.
What strikes me the most in Garofalo’s paintings is the use of light/dark and bright colors to highlight the subject and yet the obsessive presence of background stuff, as if he were shy of wasting the corners of the canvas. Also very interesting the ethereal mood his characters can express.
The exhibition also features a few paintings by Garofalo’s contemporary artists and the ticket includes a visit to the Castle. This alone would be worth the money. Several inner rooms were recently restored and feature astonishing ceiling frescoes and the atmosphere of renaissance lifestyle and parties. Just looking at the kitchen you get an idea of the huge banquets the Este family used to throw in their golden period, to say nothing of the Giardino degli Aranci or the underground Jail.
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from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced.
But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.
The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire
and thunder upon them. For the beast had been
reborn with its strength renewed, and the
followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
Looking at this dithered GIF makes me so nostalgic…
Today AOL announced Netscape Navigator has been discontinued. Time for a new chapter in Mozilla’s book.
Oh yes, I do remember those days at the end of last millennium when WAP was the latest innovation in mobile technology and the first phones equipped with a browser were hitting the market: Siemens S35, Nokia 7110, Ericsson R380, Motorola Timeport… I had an S35i and I loved it. Black and orange straight monochromatic display, just 3 lines by 14 chars worth of text, almost no graphics.
GPRS was yet to come, we had just CSD at 9600bps and we had to pay by air time, just like a normal phone call. It basically felt like going back to BBS age and use a modem over analogic PSTN, but with a textual browser that you could carry with you anywhere.
Phones didn’t come pre-configured and setting up one was tricky. For each carrier you had to enter a different dial-up number, user and password, gateway IP address and port, plus strange settings like connectionless. Of course people would never remember those parameters by heart and would look them up on the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »
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While talking with a friend this morning, at some point he mentioned he saw a statue of Guglielmo Oberdan in Venezia. I recalled streets and squares named after him in several Italian cities but didn’t know who he was, so I decided to look it up on the Internet and I was impressed by what I found.
Guglielmo Oberdan was born in Trieste in 1858. Back then, the Italian nation struggled to reunite under a single kingdom and Guglielmo lived his youth during Garibaldi’s legendary fights. Garibaldi couldn’t conquer Trieste, so that remained domain of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. People from Trieste strongly felt they had to fight to become part of Italy. The revolting movement was know as irredentism. Read the rest of this entry »
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From Wikipedia:
The Alhambra (Red Castle) (in Arabic الحمراء = Al Ħamrā’)) is an ancient mosque, palace and fortress complex of the Moorish monarchs of Granada, in southern Spain (known as Al-Andalus when the fortress was constructed), occupying a hilly terrace on the south-eastern border of the city of Granada. It was the residence of the Muslim kings of Granada and their court, but is currently a museum exhibiting exquisite Islamic architecture [...] The palace was built chiefly between 1248 and 1354, in the reigns of Al Ahmar and his successors;
In this place, seven centuries ago Jews used to live in peace with Muslims. There was tolerance and mutual acceptance. But in 1492, Granada was taken over by Catholic monarchs Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, and they immediatly issued a decree ordering the expulsion of all Jews from Spain and its territories and possessions by July 31. At that time Torquemada was leading the Inquisition, burning Jewish and Arabic books.
