Michele on the Road: on Travel, Photography and Life

Continuing on my quest for rant-Nirvana, here’s another rant. This time — and not for the first time –, I’m focusing on university.

As previously stated on this very blog, I feel university is pretty much useless — and mind you I’m referring to my field: computer engineering, but it could be easily applied to most fields –, unless you’re in it just for the piece of paper, which is what most people are in for, and which could be deemed as the culprit for university’s dullness.

The more I keep going to classes and doing exams, the more I realize how this is not helping me a lot.
There are people around me who are saying me university helps you open your mind, it teaches you how to have a method, but I can’t see it. How can I be taught something by mediocre professors that hardly seem to know what’s going on in the real World? most of the time they seem to be teaching for the sake of it, simply because they have to do it.
I happened to have a couple of good professors and I could really tell the difference, but the rest, don’t even get me started.

I don’t feel the need for the piece of paper, mainly for one reason: I’d rather starve doing my own thing than make a living of off someone else’s creature.
It might be a bad thing for me, but I can’t see myself being employed somewhere. As I said, I’d prefer being self-employed/running my own company and earning X/2 rather than working in some company I’ve got no say over and earning X*2 plus some stock options on the side. I’d feel nullified.
I’m no 9/5 guy — I can even do 7am/2am if I truly believe in what I’m doing — so I can’t imagine being seated at a desk doing some work I don’t care about and having to report to some obnoxious VP, or whatever.

Probably the best reason to go to university — I’m always talking about my field of study — is for networking, but that’s not true for every single university outthere.
Sure, if you go to Stanford, you’ll easily meet some smart guys who will probably end up making it big. But if you go to an average university, it’s a bit harder, there might be smart guys — haven’t met that many, myself, maybe one? –, but probably most will end up working in some big corp, maybe even becoming VP of put-serious-sounding-department-name-with-not-much-real-responsibilty-though-here, but that’ll be it, not much more. You won’t meet the next Larry & Sergey.

There are a few things I’d like to do in university, but none related to my field. For example, I love religions, even though I’m an atheist myself, so I’d like to get a Theology degree in the future. And this is just an example.

In the end, if you’re a smart and resourceful person, there’s not much a Computer Science (or similar) degree can give you, it might even get in your way. Why? because it might teach you to have a closed mentality — which is exactly the opposite of what, in my humble opinion, getting into university should do.

Guess I’m a bit frustrated, ha? ;)

I think I’m currently in rant-mode, so here’s another one. ;)

We all know CDs cost money, software often costs LOTS of money, DVDs aren’t certainly cheap and on and on. Yet, this isn’t a good excuse to illegally download this stuff from the Internet.

Many of the people I know who download music, software or movies from P2P networks usually say to me they’re doing it because CDs are so expensive and they should cost less money, and Photoshop costs a lot, so it’s OK if I download it, and is Windows really for sale?
I might as well agree with them, but this is not a good reason to steal.

If you like something so much you’d like to have it, you should go out and buy it.
Is 15 Euro really that much for your favorite band’s latest CD? probably yes, even though I don’t think so.
If you think it’s not worth it, then you shouldn’t even listen to it, you should listen to something else.
I love music, so I’m happy to buy CDs and support bands I like.

No one says you HAVE TO listen to famous artists, there are lots of great artists out there that will be happy to have you download their music for free, who cares if they aren’t famous! Just go to MySpace or Purevolume or the PMN and you’ll see what I mean.
The same goes for software: you don’t want to spend the money to get Photoshop — I’m using Photoshop as an example as I think it’s the most pirated piece of software after Windows –, then don’t use it!

I’d love to have Photoshop and Illustrator, but I think, ATM, it’s not worth it for me to spend that much to get them. So I’m doing just fine with Photoshop Elements and Inkscape.
I know they’re not the same, but it’s fine, because the former is cheaper and the latter is open-source. And if I really felt like I needed the real deal, I’d take out the wallet and get a license.

Adobe is no non-profit organization: they’re here for the money, they’ve got shareholders. Why should they give away their software for free? or even for less than what it’s worth?
They really provide great value for money, if you think of it. The thing is everyone thinks they need the latest version of Photoshop because it will make him/her the best photographer on earth. Or Illustrator because then he/she’ll make outstanding logos with it.
Truth told: most of them will be just fine on one of the lighter and cheaper/free alternatives.

And it’s just the same for music. Most musicians do that for a living. They already earn a lot of money, you say? Sure, but that’s not a point.
If you steal one million dollars from Bill Gates he won’t even notice it, but would it be right? nope! Bill Gates earned his money, so there’s nothing you can do about it.
If you like an artist you should either support it and buy his/her music, or forget about it because, in the end, you don’t really care that much about it.

There are some who think it’s not right to sell software, music and other intangible things, because they’re not real, they’re something which can be reproduced an unlimited number of times, so there’s no real value. IMHO, that’s bullshit!
Think of the amount of work and money that goes into making a great album such as Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of The Moon, or an amazing app such as Adobe’s Photoshop. Those are efforts which are worth every single cent asked to buy them.

Let’s see a quick example: I’d love to get a Prius, but I don’t have the 25k Euro I need to buy one, does this entitle me to go out and steal one?
Using the same logic I could say: “Well, I think is not worth that much. It should be something like 10k. So it’s ok if I steal one, because in the end, they’re stealing our money asking that much for a car.”
And don’t say each car costs a lot to build just because you can touch every single part of it. Engineers that write code cost money and if you want to touch something you can go touch them and their families.

Overall, I think P2P can be quite helpful, too, because it allows you to try before you buy. You can listen to an album and decide that you like it and buy it. Or try an app and end up buying it, too.
But that should be it: download, try, buy or delete it.

And probably I’m not the best person to talk about it, because in the end I’ve got a bit of spare money I can spend on CDs, books, or software. But as with the Prius example, lack of money is no real excuse.
If the author is fine with giving his/her product away, then you’re free to enjoy it, otherwise you should respect the author’s decision and either pay or find an alternative.

In the end, if you find something useful and decide you need it, you should bite the bullet and pay for it.
For example, I definitely don’t like Windows, and I think it’s not worth the money Microsoft asks for it, but I needed it, so I bought a license.
Then again, feel free to do what you think is fair. :D

P.S.
To remain on topic, this post made me laugh out loud… :)

P.P.S. One thing software companies should do: provide more student discounts!

Since releasing this design, the tabbed menu it sports has been featured in quite a few galleries and every now and then I’ll receive an email from someone asking how I implemented it.
Personally, I think it should be quite easy to understand how it works by giving a quick glance at the HTML/CSS, but it doesn’t seem so. So I decided to write a quick tutorial for posterity.

Get the HTML in place

First of all, you’ll have to write the HTML. I’ve used a very simple ul list with some properly assigned IDs:

<ul id="usection1" class="tabbed-menu">
  <li id="lsection1"><a href="#"><span></span>Section1</a></li>
  <li id="lsection2"><a href="#"><span></span>Section2</a></li>
  <li id="lsection3"><a href="#"><span></span>Section3</a></li>
  <li id="lsection4"><a href="#"><span></span>Section4</a></li>
</ul>

Basically, each li has got it’s own ID. Plus, the ul should be given a different ID based on where on the site we are.
Are we in Section 1? give it ID usection1. Is it Section 2? use usection2. And so on…

Set the CSS on fire

We want to use different images for each item in the menu, plus they have to change when the mouse rolls over and the active item should be different from the rest.
So we need three images for each item. In my example images have the following size: 84×59. Also note, the images already include the white padding.

Let’s style the lis and ul:

ul.tabbed-menu {
  display: block;
  float: right; /* In case you want it on the right */
  width: 336px; /* Width of an item * # of items */
  height: 59px; /* Height of an item */
}

ul.tabbed-menu li {
  overflow: hidden; /* No bits of text should spill out of the li */
  display: block;
  float: left;
  position: relative; /* What's inside the li should be absolutely
                         positioned INSIDE the li */
  width: 84px; /* Width of the image */
  height: 59px; /* Height of the image */
}

Now make each item look different:

#lsection1 a span, #lsection2 a span, #lsection3 a span, #lsection4 a span {
  /* It should fill the LI */
  position: absolute;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
}

/* Basic look */
#lsection1 a span {
  background: url("section1.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

#lsection2 a span {
  background: url("section2.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

#lsection3 a span {
  background: url("section3.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

#lsection4 a span {
  background: url("section4.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

/* When ul's id and li's id match, it means that li is the active one */
#usection1 #lsection1 a span {
  background: url("section1-active.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

#usection2 #lsection2 a span {
  background: url("section2-active.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

#usection3 #lsection3 a span {
  background: url("section3-active.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

#usection4 #lsection4 a span {
  background: url("section4-active.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

/* Here we set the mouseover effect */
#lsection1 a:hover span, #usection1 #lsection1 a:hover span {
  background: url("section1-hover.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

#lsection2 a:hover span, #usection2 #lsection2 a:hover span {
  background: url("section2-hover.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

#lsection3 a:hover span, #usection3 #lsection3 a:hover span {
  background: url("section3-hover.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

#lsection4 a:hover span, #usection4 #lsection4 a:hover span {
  background: url("section4-hover.gif") no-repeat top left;
}

That’s it. You can change the number of items simply by changing the width of the ul and by adding the proper code to the CSS.
Mind you, the order in which the different blocks of code are written in the CSS IS important.

If you find this tutorial useful, please Digg it!. :)

I was baptised. I went to a Catholic school. Basically, I was grown to be a Catholic. And I’m not.
As soon as I started asking myself questions, I began being dubious about religions. Not just Catholicism, all religions.

I think religions do more harm than good and usually, positive things about a religion can either be found somewhere else, too, or were introduced in that religion, through an evolutional process, with the help of free thinkers — often battled by the heads of that same religion.

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I think University is useless. Unless you’re studying something that’s pure theory such as Mathematics, Physics, Literature or something like Medicine and probably Law, it’s just as useful as eating crap.

I’m studying Computer Engineering and not only I find it extremely dull — which is kind of subjective –, I find it extremely useless, too. Why?

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Some time ago, I was talking with Scaruffo about photography and whether it is art or not.
He said photography is not art simply because it’s photography. Instead, it’s a mean which can be used to produce art. So it’s the subject that’s art, not photography.

In my humble opinion he is wrong. Indeed, I think the subject is a mean and the photograph is the piece of art.
And the explanation to this can be very simple: a picture conveys emotions, it can express a message and, as you might know, a photo is worth one thousand words.

I don’t think photographing means stealing reality. Reality in ways is fictitious and the act of stopping it into a frame make it something real.
Plus, it’s not simply choosing an existing subject, it’s about creating something unique: the angle, exposition, cropping, etc. Each photo is different from another, even if a photographer photograph the same subject in two different occasions.
So each photo is a unique piece. A unique piece of art.

A photo can make me feel as a painting can do. This is why photography should not be considered less artistic than painting.
There are bland photos, as there are bland paintings. There are profound paintings as there are profound photos.

The artistry in a photo is not all in the subject. Indeed painting for century was what photography is now: it portrayed reality. And the painter interpreted the real world as much as a photographer does.

To me photography it’s one of the finest forms of art available.

Note to Scaruffo’s assistants: if you want to answer in name of Scaruffo himself, but don’t want to bother writing the comment in English, write it in Italian and I’ll then translate it for everybody to read.

Update: read what Scaruffo has to say about this.