40th B'day: the definitive gift

I received for the beginning of my 41th tour around the Sun The Simpsons Chess Game Set, starring Homer as King, Marge as Queen, Bart as Bishop, Lisa as Rook (or Castle, according to the included leaflet), Krusty as Knight and Maggie as Pawn.

Note the Super Cute mini-sword and mini-shield held by the Barts.

A Superman is dead

A 63 years old father is dead by concussive trauma after several months of coma consequent to a bashing from a group of three in their twenties.

He reacted verbally to harsh jokes from the killer trio addressed to his disabled son.

He was an hero, and he died like a man. His name was Federico Teloni, let his name not be forgotten.

Aux armes, citoyens!

Briefly: French government proposes a law to ban from internet all those who download pirated material, following a "three-strike" rule.
The law blows up at the very last step needed to be confirmed.

Freedom 1 - Stupid laws 0.

Graphjam

Graphjam, probably one of the most funny sites on the net.

Join / Merge pdf files in Linux

Linux does a lot of things out-of-the-box, just like a Mac. Essentially, unlike a Mac, Linux isn't boxed, and viceversa does a lot of things more than a Mac. It just lacks the sheer semplicity of Mac.

To join pdf use GhostScript. I tried successfully on my Ubuntu 8.10 machine.

(citation from linux.com)

gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=finished.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf

Unless you're very familiar with Ghostscript, that string of commands won't mean much to you. Here's a quick breakdown:

• gs -- starts the Ghostscript program
• -dBATCH -- once Ghostscript processes the PDF files, it should exit. If you don't include this option, Ghostscript will just keep running
• -dNOPAUSE -- forces Ghostscript to process each page without pausing for user interaction
• -q -- stops Ghostscript from displaying messages while it works
• -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -- tells Ghostscript to use its built-in PDF writer to process the files
• -sOutputFile=finished.pdf -- tells Ghostscript to save the combined PDF file with the name that you specified

Obviously the operation is not limited to two files. I merged 12 files in a matter of seconds with a single command line. Yes, it supports wildcards.

gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=finished.pdf *.pdf

Australian do it worst

A land where is born the great Clinton Forbes cannot be so bad.

But Australia government pissed me twice recently:
1) Forcing the ISPs to implement a sort of Internet filtering that simply isn't going to work.
2) Refusing atheist's ads on their buses.

This isn't free speech. This is not even in the neighborhood of the free speech. You are insulting humanity as a whole.

Ok, Australians, let's make a deal: you don't insult me because of the government of my State, and I promise to do the same.

Words you may not know (I didn't)

Freeganism: portmanteau of "Free" and "Veganism", describe looting dumpsters as lifestyle. Done mainly for environmental purposes, the concept is very far from the homeless lifestyle.
Felching: the act of [censored] the mix of [censored], [censored], and [censored] after a [censored] in [censored] consequent to a [censored][censored] or [censored].

Please refer to Urban Dictionary for more detailed explanation.