The Marco Bambini Blog

Don't help other people (updated).

2008-05-01T17:13:00.008+02:00

This is a sad story and it isn't the first time that happens... I am not angry but instead I am sad and disappointed.
Some weeks ago I needed an artwork from an icon designer so I accepted a quotation from an European Icon Artist.

He said me that he needed some time because he needed to finish a big personal project (an icon tutorial web site).
After some weeks he said me that everything was finished but he had a lot of troubles with the final step, the payment processing. I am a developer so it was natural for me to offer my help (for free) and in a couple of days he had a fully working PayPal processing payment system and he started collecting money immediately.

I like the idea to exchange skills with other people, I am a developer so I can help you with some code, you are an artist so probably you can help me with some artworks.

Well ... what's the moral of the story?... he simply disappeared.
He doesn't reply anymore to my emails and he doesn't reply anymore to my chat messages.
That's all.

He is still working because he is regularly posting messages on his blog and I can see him online in iChat every day.
I had full access to his server (no more I think after this post) and I was tempted to just delete all the code I wrote for him... but I can't, there is something inside me that prevents me to do bad actions even if they are fully justified.

So that's all the bad action I can do, just a post on my blog.
You know who you are and you know that relationships with people need more correctness.

Update: After thought a bit more about this very annoying situation I decided to completely remove my code from his web site. That's the end of the story.

SQLiteManager 3.0 (part 2)

2008-04-14T14:31:00.000+02:00

The new Script Editor:

SQLiteManager 3.0 (part 1)

2008-04-10T11:56:00.004+02:00

Just a couple of screenshots:

Scripts and Wizard... ;-)

Status update...

2008-02-01T13:32:00.000+01:00

As you know I am working on some new apps and a brand new website.
The website really need a major revamp, I would like to simplify it in this web 2 era ... and I also would like to better organize it.

I plan to release three new applications (one of them will be SQLiteManager) and to open a new REALbasic section in the new website. I am now working for REALSoftware so I have no more rights to sell SQLite3ProfessionalPlugin and SQLite2ProfessionalPlugin ... but I plan to release some free stuffs for RB ... so a section just for them makes a lot of sense.

I am also working on the new REAL SQL Server 2008 edition that will contain tons of new stuffs so I will have a lot to write and to discuss about it, the idea is to merge my personal blog and my REAL SQL Server blog in one more professional blog that can be useful to all of you.

As always... I am open to suggestions...

Be careful when you play soccer...

2008-01-16T21:00:00.002+01:00

I am not dead

2007-11-13T18:15:00.000+01:00

I am just developing a new version of SQLiteManager, two new secret applications and a brand new website.
And you know that I am working on the new REAL SQL Server 2008 Edition.
Please be patient ... I'll return to regular posting on this blog very soon ;-)

Update...

2007-07-04T14:54:00.000+02:00

I am sorry for the lack of updates in the past month but I was really busy with the latest REAL SQL Server beta release.
I plan a major web site redesign and a merger between my personal and my real sql server blog.

I just need to find out the right platform and the right template ... I have a lot of ideas for a new technical blog for sqlite, the real sql server and so on... PDF articles should also be included to make life easier for you.

During my busy past month I founded the time for an official run as you can see from these pictures:

As you can see from out t-shirts, I ran to try to help a very sick baby (he is a son of a friend of mine)...

We ran not very fast, no competition for us here... I ran 9KM (5.6 miles) in about 45 minutes...
As always I am doing a lot of sport in this month... not much run but a lot of boxe and tennis.

Stay tuned for incoming news ;-)

Happy birthday to me

2007-05-27T12:21:00.000+02:00

Today is my birthday!

I am getting old ... ;-)

Last day in Austin

2007-05-18T21:27:00.002+02:00

This is my last day in Texas ... and tonight we'll go out to Siena for a diner. Today I received an unexpected gift:

Thanks a lot Lori, I really appreciate :-)

Sunday summary...

2007-05-14T00:26:00.000+02:00

So, REAL World is finished and it was really fun for me. I enjoyed people, customers, meetings, food ... everything was really good for me. I was nervous for my session but I received so many positive feedbacks that I think it has been a good session.

Yesterday has been a shopping day for me at the Simons Mall and I spent the afternoon and the night with Pierre and Stefane, the two guys from REAL Software France. Austin is crazy at night, next time I have to remember my digital camera.

It should be really fun to attend university here, I can't really understand how students could have the time to study in a city like Austin.

Today in the morning I visited Capitol Hill and the University of Texas. In the afternoon I returned to the Abercrombie store because I received some more "wish list" from Italy.

My current load is:

2 caps
3 pairs of flip flops
23 t-shirts
2 short pants

only from the Abercrombie store!!!!! and surely some more things that I am forgetting now... Hei men, orders are closed now!

While I was here I bought also a digital camera and a 100GB portable hard drive.

I would like to go to run now... but I am so tired... it has been a very long week, and I have another week to spend here at REAL Software.

A little update

2007-05-10T00:41:00.000+02:00

Just a little update before I go down (I am at the 11th floor) to meet all the group for the BBQ.
I received my digital camera from Amazon in just one day (even if my memory card was sent by another vendor so I still miss it).
Now the battery is in charge and I'll try to post some photos tomorrow.
By the way: my new camera looks really good.

I talked with a lot of people and with someone I have had an intensive conversation about life, money, quality of life and so on... I really enjoy my time here.

Brad posted a detailed transcript of the keynote ... You can read a lot of news about the REAL SQL Server and there are also a lot of interesting numbers. The part I prefer is the "Marco Bambini is here" :-)

Tomorrow is my day, I am a bit nervous...

Austin: Day 2

2007-05-08T21:59:00.000+02:00

I am in office right now, waiting to go into the Omni Hotel for the first REAL World unofficial day. I am a little bit jet lagged so I feel tired ... even if until now I have had really great time here in Austin. Yesterday I went with Aaron and Mars to the Maiko Sushi Lounge ... we ate "the boat", a super big plate full of sushi, wasaby and some other japanese food... it was really good, as always I trust Mars about food and I am always satisfy. I have had a really great time with both guys.

I plan to order my new digital camera in the afternoon when I'll be in the Omni Hotel and I'll know my room number. I want to take a lot of photos this time!

Ready to leave?

2007-05-05T14:11:00.000+02:00

Well ... I have to be ready.

Tomorrow morning at 10AM I'll leave Italy for Austin. Two weeks in USA, the first one at Real World and the second week with all the guys in the RS offices.

Se you there...

SmartFish

2007-04-11T10:41:00.000+02:00

The objective of team SmartFish is to develop and commercialize a revolutionary general aviation aircraft technology that is highly innovative in terms of safety, economy and emotion. This technology can be used for a wide range of applications, from UAV to high performance sports planes to business jets that can accommodate up to 20 passengers.

Check out the movie

Every time I see something like this ... a team of people that try to realize their dreams... I can't not think about my dreams.
I am a dreamer ... and for this reason I am a lucky man.

Don't stop dreaming, never.

REAL SQL Server Session

2007-04-05T17:31:00.000+02:00

In May, during the MacWorld I'll present a session about the REAL SQL Server.
I am interested in hearing from you suggestions and advices about special topics or arguments that can I expand during my session.

Photos from Austin

2007-04-05T17:26:00.000+02:00

As you probably know I'll be in Austin from 6th to 20th May.
Last time I went to Austin in February for a company meeting with REAL Software.

I made some photos that I would like to share with you (they are terrible I am sorry) : Austin Gallery.

I'll try to make better photos in May ;-)

Why people run

2007-03-26T18:13:00.000+02:00

Remove the last 5 seconds of this movie and you'll know why people run:
http://www.stashmedia.tv/feed/Asylum_Propel.mov

Attack details and new mirror

2007-03-25T16:53:00.000+02:00

A couple of days ago a spammer posted a message into myspace.com, something like "Hey, I got a free Macbook today... Check out this site and you can win too..." and as source image he used a MacBook image I posted some months ago in my Blog.

In few hours this post spread into a lot of myspace.com accounts and I received more than a million of requests for my MacBook image (please note that I don't have a myspace account).
My hosting company was forced to shut down SQLabs.net web site for some hours (on Mar 22, 2007) while we tried to find out a solution to this huge issue.

To give you an idea of the traffic generated by this image, these are a portion of my statistics:

Date / Hits / Bytes Transferred
Mar 21, 2007 / 1094475 / 88.39 GB
Mar 22, 2007 / 883184 / 24.58 GB
Mar 23, 2007 / 1117560 / 222.21 MB
Mar 24, 2007 / 1654770 / 257.51 MB

We contacted the abuse department inside myspace.com and I think that they removed all the posts yesterday, in the meantime we tried several different kind of solutions, but the truth is that there isn't a definitive solution for this kind of attacks.

I found that for some strange reason the images I posted on my blog are always on top of Google Images (someone know a good reason?) so the first thing I did was to disallow google images to index my site, this involves editing the robots.txt file and adding something like this:

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

The second step I tried was to disallow serving my images outside my domain, this can be done using the .htaccess file:

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://www\.sqlabs\.net/" local=1 
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://www\.sqlabs\.net$" local=1 
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^$" local=1 
<Directory ".(gif|png|jpg)$">
Order Allow,Deny 
Allow from env=local
</Directory>

but this wasn't a good option because the overhead for each request was too high (and you have to count also the overhead due to the ModRewrite engine), so I found that the easiest and best temporary patch was simply to set the size of the requested image to just 1 byte.

This helps reduce the traffic from about 90Gb to about 220MB.

Maybe when the requests for this image will decrease I'll activate the ModRewrite script so I'll be more protected from the "Image Theft" problem.

Like mail spam, this is a problem without a definitive solution so maybe in the future I could have the same exact issue or something worse. With that in mind, I decided to set up a mirror site for my main web site (I own also the sqlabs.com domain) using rsync and some tips from this article.

My hosting company is Pair Network and I use their services since 1999, I am quite sure that no one can beat their professionally and their reliability.
As a mirror hosting I choose Dreamhost because they offer Terabytes of bandwidth for an incredible low price.

I am really satisfy with my new mirror site and sometimes bad things force you to take the right decision.
My new mirror site is http://www.sqlabs.com and it is automatically synced every 10 minutes.

Under attack

2007-03-23T19:15:00.000+01:00

We are under a Dos attack, from a script created by a spammer that is spreading across myspace.com.
Myspace.com doesn't seems to be interested in solving the issue.

We are trying (with the precious help of my hosting company Pair Network) to solve the issue.
The bad news is that no one can be immune by this kind of attacks. I'll post more details in the future.

Maybe I should just sue myspace.com as a last option.
I hope that there will be no more downtime for this server.

Special offer for SQLiteManager

2007-03-20T18:20:00.000+01:00

SQLiteManager will be available for a special price at mupromo starting from March, 21. MuPromo is a special promotional site run by MacUpdate.

Don't miss this big offer!

Weather is wonderful...

2007-03-15T09:02:00.000+01:00

Weather is wonderful in Italy and my cat seems to really appreciate sun and flowers. Yesterday I ran across the river Po, only nature, sand and water ... a near mistic experience.

If I'll have the time in the afternoon I plan to return near the river Po to take some photos...

REAL World

2007-03-07T11:18:00.000+01:00

It is now official: REALWorld Speakers

I'll present a session about the REAL SQL Server: "This session will cover all the secrets behind REAL SQL Server: how it really works, the right way to use it and how to take advantage of its advanced features."

If you are interested in the server, don't miss it! But please, be patient with my not so perfect English ;-)

My 4Mbit ADSL line rocks!

2007-03-06T21:40:00.000+01:00

SQLiteManager 2.6

2007-03-06T19:36:00.000+01:00

I have just released SQLiteManager 2.6, this update is highly recommended because it fixes some important bugs.
This is a complete list of changes for the new release:

Added a check to catch RegEx exceptions
Fixed a bug that prevents deletion of multiple rows from the Manage panel
The popup list of recent databases is now sorted so that top items are the most recent
Fields are now correctly cleared in the AlterTable window
Fixed a problem that occurs when trying to attach databases with a different encoding
Fixed a bug in the SQL panel
Fixed a bug in the CREATE VIEW window
Fixed a bug that occurs when multiple windows with different databases are opened
A shortcut has been added in order to be able to add tables, views, triggers and so on
Fixed a display issue with Windows
Updated DoD ListBox
Updated SQLite3ProfessionalPlugin
Updated SQLite2ProfessionalPlugin

If I'll found some serious bug than I'll probably release a minor upgrade, otherwise the next version will be a major upgrade, a 3.0 version. I have some ideas about what to do for the new release, but I'd like to receive your advices and suggestions.

It is 2.15AM...

2007-03-01T02:16:00.000+01:00

It is 2.15 AM and I am not able to sleep... I am on my bed with my MacBook and in the morning I have to wake up at 7.45 AM.
I would like to run in the afternoon or just after noon. I wasn't unable to run while I was in Austin, maybe in May during the REAL World I'll not forget my running shoes :-) and I'll find out some attenders that will enjoy run with me...
I think that for about two more weeks for me 2.15 AM will continue to be 7.15 PM ... but no problem, I really like living at night... what I do not like is wake up early in the morning ;-)