A Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare by René Girard

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I’ve greatly appreciated in the past several books from René Girard, but when I was midway in the reading of this one I felt a bit bored.

I felt like if he was overkill or too slow in the covering of the comedies and on the mimetic behavior.

I moved ahead anyway and I was rewarded in the second part of the book.

The classical interpretation perspectives of the author are applied to the vast production of Shakespeare and seems quite fitting.

I would not suggest this book as a first approach to René Girard due to the size of the volume and the focus on a single area.
I recommend it to anyone with a relevant knowledge of William Shakespeare’s work.

Synology DS411Slim and encryption: DSM 4.0 not helping performance for me

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I’ve written recently about the poor performance writing to and reading from an encrypted volume on my Synology DS411Slim.
In an attempt to improve the bad numbers I’ve decided to take the risk of updating from a firmware that I knew was working for me (DSM 3.2) to a more recent one (4.0)

The interface looks sleeker than the previous one, but unfortunately there it is no improvement at all in writing to the encrypted volume.

DSM 4.1 is available too, I’ll likely give a try at it too as there are no major reports of problems.

New gadget at home: Nokia N9

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I know that is considered a dead man walking, but N9 looks nice anyway and my mother was looking for a new phone and is not too much into apps.

So I bought one for her and I’ll have one week of time to play with it.

First impression is absolutely positive.

In a week I’ll decide if I’m going to get one for myself too: I’ll post about my decision.

Content of my reading list by amazon (part 3 of 9)

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Hi,
Below you’ll find the third part of my reading list and, when available, the related comments I made at the time.
Most of the books, with only a notable exception, are novels this time and cover two main authors: Agatha Christie and Giorgio Scerbanenco.
As you can see from the dates both writers got me heavily engaged.
I recommend their novels with one caveat: I’m not sure of how good the english translations (if any) of Scerbanenco are.

I continue to move from the older readings to the most recent.

You can read why I’m doing this and can also the first part and the second part of the list
In some cases I had inserted in the list also books that I had read earlier when I found them interesting.

Friday, Oct 2 2009
The Hollow by Agatha Christie

Tuesday, Sep 29 2009
Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie

Wednesday, Sep 23 2009
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd  by Agatha Christie

Wednesday, Sep 16 2009
Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie

Tuesday, Sep 8 2009

Spingendo la notte più in là by Mario Calabresi
I was a baby in Milan nearly of the age of Mario when italian terrorism was rampage.
Mario’s book helped me understand the feelings that were all around me and then I was unable to grasp.
His book is not about politics, is about men, womans and babies that were hit by the violence.
The book helps understand that it doesn’t exist a right reason for killing people.

Monday, Aug 17 2009
La ragazza dell’addio by Giorgio Scerbanenco
Scerbanenco writes love novels with the same dry style he uses for police stories: you may find it unsuitable for the subject.

Aug 2009
The man who knew too much by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Thursday, Aug 6 2009
La Sabbia Non Ricorda by Giorgio Scerbanenco

Wednesday, Aug 5 2009
Venere privata by Giorgio Scerbanenco

Tuesday, Aug 4 2009
I ragazzi del massacro by Giorgio Scerbanenco
I love police books that are located in my home town. I find Scerbanenco’s writing in this book quite addicting.

Synology DS411Slim and encryption: major negative impact also in reading.

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A few days ago I created an encrypted volume on my DS411Slim and reported a major degradation in writing speed.
I hoped that reading was maintained in the original ballpark, but this is not the case.
12.5MB/s is all I can get and is very bad in comparison with the former 70+ MB/s

Since my first post I did some research and, according to Synology’s own tests, I should get about twice the current speed.

I’ll give a try at a more recent version of DSM (I’m on the stock 3.2) to see if it provides better performance.
I’m usually a bit reluctant to update the firmware of working devices, but the opportunity of getting better performance on the 50GB backups is pushing me in this direction.

Airline looking for a ticket price integration 4 months after the flight

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I don’t know if it’s because I fly very often, but I’m surprised by some of the strange things that happen to me with airlines.

This time is the request for an integration for the ticket of a flight that I did more than 4 months ago.

Due to change in plans I had the travel agency adding an intermediate stop to my roundtrip.
It looks like some confusion was made by the agency at the time and that I paid less than I should have.
Now the airline wants the integration and the agency says that this is normal and right.

It really sound absurd to me, like if my car dealer was asking me additional money months after I paid the amount indicated in the signed contract.
Is this really normal?

Synology DS411Slim and encryption: an unpleasant surprise

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Some time ago I built an encrypted volume on my small nas from Synology and today I did the first real test.
I’m backing up an entire volume with Disk2VHD, a nice free utility from Microsoft’s Sysinternals tools to make online volume snapshots.
I did this in the past several times from the same machine on a regular non-encrypted volume on the same nas obtaining about 37 to 40 MB/s of sustained writing speed.

Given the hardware encryption engine included the nas I was expecting a similar performance with the encrypted volume but this is not the case.
The speed is down to 7MB/S, a sharp 80% loss.
I’m running DSM 3.2
I wonder if this is common/expected or not.
The backup will have to be again a nightly activity until I find a way to get back the high-speed when using the encryption 😦

Update: I’ve had the opportunity to test large reads too and it’s not looking good

 

Content of my reading list by amazon (part 2 of 9)

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Hi,
Below you’ll find the second part of my reading list and, when available, the related comments I made at the time.
I continue to move from the older readings to the most recent.
Here you can read why I’m doing this while you can find the first part of the list here
In some cases I had inserted in the list also books that I had read earlier when I found them interesting.

Monday, Jul 27 2009
Il destino si chiama Clotilde: Romanzo damore by Giovanni Guareschi
Fun, entertaining and easy to read.
I strongly recommend this book to everyone.

1998
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
I bought it upon suggestion of the librarian at the same time I bought “The master and Margarita” but I’ve found Celine’s book unbelievably boring.
It is one of the few book that I did not finish and I don’t feel guilty about it.

2005
The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov
The book is not one of those that you can read before going to sleep to relax.
I loved it, but I don’t expect this to be the common reaction.

1998
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
I loved the book and found it quite easy for a russian author.
My wife could not make it to the end: likely something needs to trigger in the reader make the story flow.
Recommended only if previous exposure to russian writers was successful 🙂

2009
Heart Of A Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
Recommended with the same caveat of The Master and Margarita: only if previous exposure to russian writers was successful 🙂

2009
Democracy In America by Alexis de Toqueville
The reading is paused for a long time now, but hopefully I’ll go back to it with renewed passion in the future.

2009
Il padre: l’assente inaccettabile by Claudio Rise
The subject should be part of a wider public discussion.
The writing is clear and pleasantly easy for a non trivial subject; strongly recommended.
At the time of reading the book was not available in english.
You can find Claudio Risè site here; it’s only in italian.

Friday, Mar 20 2009
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The writing style is unusual but I found it addicting. I’ve read the book in a couple of days.
Recommended.

Wednesday, Jan 28 2009
Persuasion Engineering by Richard Bandler, John LA Valle, John La Valle
I’ve found it an interesting read.
As long as the contained concepts are used a an interpretation key for human behaviors, and not as the only right one, the book is worth the time to read.

2009
The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
I don’t dare to say that Aristotle covered every possible relevant ethic subject, but he covered a lot more than most modern people realizes.
Reading this book requires quit a bit of focus.

Crazy waiting time to get an airport tax reimbursed

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In january I had one of my frequent trips across Europe and when I arrived at the checkin desk to fly back home it turned out that the travel agency had my ticket wrong.
I paid for a new one.

Once home I checked my written request to the travel agency and it was for the correct day.
I started asking back to the travel agency the extra money I paid.

After 8 months I finally got reimbursed, but only the airport taxes from the airline: 34.95€
No surcharges, no actual ticket reimbursed.
I wonder if this is common practice.

Packard Bell iMedia I6657IT: you get what you pay for. And nothing more.

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I helped a friend to pickup a new pc for his video editing hobby.
He was on a budget yet needed some muscle so we picked up this system (4-cores i5 and 8GB of RAM) even if we weren’t able to find online a review of the system.

After just a couple of days the box arrived from Amazon and we unboxed and installed the system last Friday.

On the plus side: the system has a nice HW specification for a good price, is compact, mechanically robust and extremely silent.

On the minus side: it ONLY has what is implied by the advertised HW.
We opened the system to add the HDD from the older PC and found out that there is no space to put it.
But this is a piece of the expansion problem: only the SATA headers for the included HDD and DVD are soldered on the motherboard.
The same cost-saving approach is used for the other interfaces that are common on DIY core i5 system.

There it is one PCIe 1x slot available that could be used to add SATA and or USB3 ports.
We should be able to go for an external high speed enclosure to expand the system in the future.