Climbing like a Gecko
4:02 PM
No, I don't want to post a video about me and my friends climbing on some glassy rocks. 
A friend of mine today gave me a link of an article about large invisible cables and self-cleaning releasable superadhesive materials (thanks Marcello) studied at the Politecnico of Turin by an Italian researcher. These inventions were projected thinking over animals, like Spiders and Geckos, they could be used to create a real Spiderman suit.
Here there's the Abstract of the publication:
By Nicola M. Pugno: "Towards a Spiderman suit"
«Spiders can produce cobwebs with high strength to density ratio and surprisingly display self-cleaning, strong and releasable adhesion (like geckos). Nanointerlocking, capillary and van der Waals forces, all potential adhesive mechanisms, are thus discussed, demonstrating the key role played by hierarchy in the design of superhydrophobic, i.e. self-cleaning (dry or wet and enhanced by activating Fakir drops as in lotus leaves) and superadhesive materials. The reversibility of the strong attachment is quantified thanks to an improved nonlinear peeling model including friction, for which the solution in closed form is provided. Thus, mimicking nature, thanks to carbon-nanotube-based technology, we suggest the feasibility of large invisible cables, as well as of self-cleaning, superadhesive and releasable hierarchical smart materials. We found that a man can theoretically be supported by a transparent cable with cross-section of 1 cm2 and feasibly, with spider material gloves and boots, could remain attached even to a ceiling: a preliminary step towards a Spiderman suit.»
(Source: IOP Institute of Physics.)
Another interesting study started from the incredible climber faculty of the Gecko is: High Friction from a Stiff Polymer using Micro-Fiber Arrays.
Now there is only one ability of Spiderman to reproduce: the super power!
...but thinking at the movie, it's more like creating Goblin!
System Preferences - Default Apps
7:56 AM
Today I wanna talk about an application that lives in my System Preferences panel of Mac OS X 10.4, I use it occasionally, but I think it's very useful.
RCDefaultApp is a free Mac OS X 10.2 or higher preference pane that allows a user to set the default application used for various URL schemes, file extensions, file types, MIME types, and Uniform Type Identifiers. MacOS X uses the extension and file type settings to choose the application when opening a file in Finder, while Safari and other applications use the URL and MIME type settings at other times for content not related to a file (such as an unknown URL protocol, or a media stream).
Mac OS X can be used to set the default application for file extensions, file types, etc but it's not easy to use.
Visit the site of the project for other information.
Download Default Apps here.
The new iMac
2:51 PM
On 23 August I received this spectacular machine, I bought the 24-inch 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo model with 1GB of RAM, I planned to expand it with 2x2GB modules as soon as my favourite store opens, (on the Apple store the prices are absolutely ludicrous).
At the first sight the iMac is wonderful. The screen is extremely bright and big ^_^ , it's very different from a notebook glossy screen, thanks to the glass surface the impression is more like a CRT panel. This cover clearly produces effects of reflection but protects the screen from malicious mischief, and gives the screen a more professional appearance.
CPU and Graphic card seem very fast, Windows Vista runs very well with Boot Camp, but I think that if I need it, I'll use it under VMware (when I'm going to upgrade the RAM).
Actually I'm very satisfied also because the iMac is noiseless, and very cool.
For other information visit apple.com/imac.
If you have any questions, write a reply, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Dihidrogen Monoxide
10:16 AM
Reorganizing all my bookmarks that I have in Safari, I found a forgetted links about a serious problem that is not enough discussed.
So I decided to take a break, and use some minutes of my time to talk about a dangerous substance: the Dihydrogen Monoxide.
All the information about it are avaiable on the dhmo.org site.
This looks pretty old, but all the things written in it are the hard truth.
Go and pay attention to the site. Media seems want to ignore the problem, remember that the only way to reach the truth is sharing knowledge.
Enjoy your reading 
CSS Compressor v.0.1 alpha
12:28 AM
This program reformats the structure of a CSS file to reduce its size.
It could be useful to reduce the load time of a website.
It removes useless spaces, break line or semicolons, and using Safari it groups properties of each class or tag.
The last function is only available on the Apple browser (or Webkit based browsers) because it's the only one known that,in this moment, supports the look-backward function of regular expressions.
The entire code is javascript-regexp based, so no code is sent at the server; the business logic is executed by the browser.
eg. compression:
before:body { margin: 0; }after:
body { padding: 0; }body{margin:0;padding:0}
Project added into the Lab section
Update 2007-08-26: On 23 August I receved the new iMac, testing the advanced feature avaiable for Safari I discovered that it doesn't function on this Intel machine...When I'll complete the installation and setting up of this beast I'll work on this problem. :-)
Bus City Planner
5:25 PM
This Web Application was built in March 2007 by Mauro Labate and me as a part of our first level degree thesis in Computer Engineering at Politecnico di Milano.
This software could be collocated in the public mobility field, it supplies every kind of information necessary to reach any point of the city of Como using the autobus service provided by S.P.T. (Public Transport Society).
Each user inserts the point of departure, the destination and the start or arrival time, the application calculates and shows on a geographic map the fastest available itinerary.
The site was implemented only as demonstrative non commercial version, for this reason it does not contains every lines and courses provided by the SPT of Como, but it is functional and predisposed to contain a complete database.
There were also scheduled possible implementative extensions to be developed for a commercial use of the application.