Alessandro Rossini's Web Site » Photography

The big 3-0

Alessandro — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:30:19 +0000

Yesterday the universe had plenty of happenings: a winter solstice, a total lunar eclipse, the darkest night in 400 years, and, last but not least, the last day of my twenties… Yes, it had to happen: I turned 30 today. “What is important is to be young at heart”, some might say… Bullshit! I honestly hate this big 3-0 and all the social expectations that it implies. Anyway, entering a new decade always triggers some self-reflection. I have looked back at the last decade of my life, and, inspired by the novel Caos calmo, I have written down some of the things I have done during these years:

Countries visited

Italy
France
Norway
Spain
Russia
Germany
Estonia
United Kingdom
Switzerland
Hungary
Denmark
Latvia
Moldova
Cyprus
Ukraine
Finland

Mountains climbed

Fløyen (400m)
Ulriken (640m)
Rundemanen (560m)
Sandviksfjellet (417m)
Lyderhorn (396m)
Damsgårdsfjellet (350m)
Løvstakken (477m)
Corno grande (2912m)
Preikestolen (604m)
Kjerag (1110m)

Airlines taken

Klm
SAS
Iberia
Ryanair
Sterling (now Cimber)
S7
Aeroflot
Lufthansa
Estonian Air
Alitalia
Norwegian
Vueling
AirBaltic

Laptops owned

Sony Vaio PCG-FX801
Toshiba Satellite A100-703
ASUS Eee PC 1101HA
Dell Latitude E6500

Mobiles owned

Nokia 5110
Nokia 6110
Nokia 7110
SonyEriccsson Z1010
Siemens MT50
Siemens C55
SonyEricsson K610i
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Camera owned

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P72
Canon EOS 350D
Olympus μ 1030 SW

Cars owned

Skoda Fabia 1.9TDI (1999 ed.)

Motorcycles owned

Yamaha FZR-600

There are actually many other things I could write down, but all in all I have been lucky to have had so many opportunities. I am curious to see how these lists will look like in ten years time…

First semester almost over…

Alessandro — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:01:50 +0000

It is not really a news that I open this post saying that I did not have so much time to write and bla bla bla… But it is actually the truth. My first semester at the University is almost over. I did not touch that much my research project, but I had a lot to do anyway.

I took three courses, the first was Category Theory, the “theory of arrows” as the professor defined it, abstract mathematics for humans… The second was Norwegian Level 1, pretty self-explanatory, and the third was Theory of Science and Ethics, a very interesting course about possible ethical problems of scientific research. In the latter I had to explain my research plan in about 300 words comprehensible by “a guy on the street”. It seemed trivial at the beginning, but believe me, it was not. At the end I reached a good compromise between details and understandability, maybe I will upload it here as well, at least some of my friends will understand what I do in my life.

I have been also teaching assistant for Programming II, a course about basic/intermediate Java staff. I was mainly preparing some mandatory assignment and relative solutions, taking care of the organization of the students into groups, and last but not least doing some system administration to create user accounts, something that took so (too) much time. It was really strange to be at the same time a student and a teaching assistant.

I had some little trip at least. During Easter I visited Sognefjord and slept in Selseng, Sogn og Fjordane. Incredible experience there: we had an outdoor jacuzzi with 40C inside the water, and -20 in the air… To complete the atmosphere we had clear sky, full moon, mountains covered by snow all around, beer, and very nice company… almost a perfect night. I have been also in Lindås, Nordhordaland, with the Department of Computer Science. We had the research school there, a series of seminars mainly given by PhD or Post-Doc students. The social event was canoe, this was the first time for me.

I had the chance to try my new waterproof camera. Yes, the Canon EOS is great, but I wanted a point and shoot camera for extreme situations, so I bought a new Olympus 1030SW: waterproof, shockproof, crushproof, freezeproof… I can do almost everything with it! But I also bought two new Canon objectives, an EFS 17-55mm f/2.8 and an EF 50mm f/1.8, together with a new Sigma 530 flash and a Gorilla Pod SLR, just to avoid that my reflex camera becomes jealous.

You probably saw an improvement in the quality of the pictures, don’t you? At least I hope so…

What else? Well, next Sunday I will climb all the 7 mountains surrounding Bergen in one day. It is an annual event, called “7 fjellstur” (literally the 7 mountains trip). I am training a bit more this week to be in shape for the event. Let’s see what happens…

As always, pictures will follow.

Canon EOS 350D

Alessandro — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 19:19:48 +0000

Recently I “retired” my old Sony CyberShot camera because I switched to a new shining Canon EOS 350D (Rebel XT in some countries). It is a digital SLR camera, something that I dreamed for a long long time…

I do not have so much experience yet, since I bought it I just had the time to read most of the user’s manual, but I am having already so much fun with it. Even using the plain EF-S 18-55m objective, the resolution of the pictures is fantastic, and the macro feature gives me a lot of satisfactions. For the first time I feel creative with a camera in my hands.

As always you can have a look at my pictures on my flickr photostream. Comments are welcome!