The other Dorigo blogger February 8, 2009
Posted by dorigo in italian blogs, personal.Tags: blogging, family, filippo
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Just a quick post to mention here the blogging activity of my son Filippo (9 years old), who has started to write short posts on matters of his interest. I suggested it as a writing exercise, since I believe he does not do enough of it at school -mind you, it is a good school, but I think Filippo’s skills will benefit from this stimulating homework.
Of course, he is writing in Italian, and in any case I doubt you are interested in his ideas. However, since this blog is also read by a few relatives of ours, I just thought I’d place a link here… Sorry for the nuisance, back to physics blogging tomorrow!
Reduced throughput July 29, 2008
Posted by dorigo in personal, physics.Tags: blogging, work
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Hot July, and an even hotter August is in store. Back from two weeks of virtual vacations (I worked about six hours a day), I found the regular sheetload of accumulated errands to run waiting for me and my inexistent free time. Besides the non-physics occupations I had to entertain myself with, I have currently two papers under internal review; one funding proposal to review; one funding proposal to resubmit; one paper for which to collect corrections from other members of a committee; one long document to write; three chapters of a masters’ thesis to correct. And then I have to follow the momentum scale calibration work within CMS; the meetings of the electroweak group there; the internal review process of a new important result; the analysis work of the Ph.D. thesis I am an advisor of. Then, if I found the time, I should also keep the ttH analysis rolling; follow the checkout of the CMS tracker and participate with data-taking shifts. And I feel I am forgetting many things. One for sure: keep this blog going. Oh well. Do I love my job ? Yes, but sometimes too much of a good thing is really too much.
Tomorrow I will leave to Padola, in the eastern Alps. But I will not enjoy my stay there too much… One thing will help, though: my internet connectivity will be very bad. That should at least enable me to concentrate on those issues which require me to read documents. Reading! Who has time for reading these days ?
All the above to say that I expect a slightly reduced throughput in this blog for the next couple of weeks. BUT: I have been sitting on a pile of gold for a while now, and I will slowly but steadily distribute it here. Fresh, new results from CDF, prepared for ICHEP 2008 in Philadelphia. One example ? The updated Tevatron average for the top quark mass, which now sits at 172.xx +- 0.7%… Stay tuned!
Sorry for the interruption… June 16, 2008
Posted by dorigo in internet, personal.Tags: blogging, spam, spam filter, wordpress
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If you visited this site from 2 and 5UT this afternoon, you might have found nothing but a simple line of text saying “this blog is inactive.”
The rather crude measure was taken by WordPress administrators, who found some spam in my blog of which I was unaware. They claimed I had de-spammed some porn site advertisement in my comments thread (from a post more than 2 years old), and after some complaining quickly put the site back on air.
Indeed, by checking back a few of the 370 pages of comments since January 2006, I found more than 100 comments containing links to commercial sites of all sorts. I usually delete those comments when they get in, if they survive the Akismet filter; but sometimes they must pass through the mesh and land in an old post, where they stay undisturbed. I have now started a cleanup which will probably take me at least a couple of hours. I got to June 2007 so far; the more recent stuff is still unchecked, so if you are willing and can use advanced googling maybe you can help me by signalling comments to be erased.
The incident with WordPress, however, made me think. I am the author and sole intellectual owner of all the stuff I have published in this site, but I can be subtracted of any control in the matter of a minute. But what ‘s worse is what came next: after allowing me back in my dashboard, they placed a “submit for approval” button on the “Write post” page in place of the usual “publish” button. Submit for approval ??? I immediately complained, and soon the publish button went back in its place. Yet, this really pissed me off. Submit for approval ? It is as if they cannot distinguish spam their filter cannot check from posts I write myself, or rather, claim they won’t care.
I am now considering moving the whole thing to my own site. It would break all links though, which is annoying. Any comments ? Suggestions ?
A Quantum Diaries Survivor 