About me
My name's Francesco Poli and my nickname
is FRX. I'm from Florence, Italy.
I was born in 1976-07-31 about 14:15:00 +0200 (about Unix time:
207663300 s).
I am a mechanical engineer and, at present, an Energetics PhD
student. My main research field is CA (Computational
Aeroelasticity) for turbomachinery applications.
If you want to contact me, write to <frx AT
firenze.linux.it>.
Main interests and hobbies
-
I like studying:
- scientific matters (maths, physics)
- many engineering matters: in particular fluid dynamics and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics)
-
I love computers and Unix systems:
- I use them at the university and at home (for work and fun)
- I adore studying computer science
- I am a supporter of the free software movement and I'm happy to be a Debian GNU/Linux user
-
I like listening to music. My favorite genres are:
- Thrash metal (Metallica, Anthrax)
- NWOBHM (Iron Maiden, Judas Priest)
- Power metal (Helloween)
- Death metal (Death)
- Nu metal (Slipknot)
- Shock rock (Marilyn Manson)
- Punk 'n' roll (Ramones, Sex Pistols)
- Corporate punk (Offspring, Green Day, NOFX)
- Grunge (Nirvana)
- Hard rock (Motörhead, AC/DC, Guns n' Roses)
-
I like watching movies. My favorite genres are:
- Science fiction (the Star wars saga, Invasion of the body snatchers, Blade runner, The matrix, The terminator saga, Total recall)
- Horror & horror SF (the Alien saga, It's alive, Evil dead, Night of the living dead, Pet sematary)
- Thriller (Psycho, Coma, The silence of the lambs, Frantic, The fugitive)
- Action & adventure (the Indiana Jones saga, the Die hard saga, True lies, Speed, the Lethal weapon saga)
- Commedy (the Ghostbusters saga, A fish called Wanda)
- Martial arts (Bruce Lee rules!)
-
I even watch some TV series:
- The Simpsons & Futurama (they are absolutely brilliant!)
-
I read one good manga:
- Dragonball by Akira Toriyama
-
When I have time, I read novels:
- Horror novels by Stephen King
- Detective stories by Lynn S. Hightower
- SF novels (Michael Crichton, Philip K. Dick, Douglas Adams, William Gibson)
What people say about me ;-)
- "He is an alien..."
- "It's a T1000..."
- "Your alotta talk in a CPU"
My passion for computers: the story so far
I first discovered coin-ops back in the summer of 1984, IIRC
(Unix time: 0.46 Gs). Perhaps the very first I saw was Kung Fu
Master...
With the desire of playing videogames at home, I asked my
parents for a Commodore 64. I received one for
the following Christmas (Unix time: 472.8 Ms). Why a Commodore
64? Mainly because of TV adverts: I was in the middle of
elementary school and didn't know too much about home
computers. However it wasn't a bad choice at all: C64 has
been a great machine indeed! I had great time playing marvellous
games such as Wonderboy,
Impossible Mission ("Another visitor! Stay a while... Stay
forever!..."), River Raid and The Way of the Exploding
Fist!
When I was a little older, in 1989-1990 (Unix time from 0.62 Gs
to 0.65 Gs), I started to learn a little about C64 BASIC and I
wrote my first tender small programs.
But it was time to upgrade my hardware: I bought an Amiga 2000 on 1991-02-16 (Unix time: 666.72 Ms) and then an Amiga 1200 in december 1993 (Unix time: 756 Ms). Legendary videogames were available for these platforms; among them: Prince of Persia, Project X, The Secret of Monkey Island, Le Chuck's Revenge - Monkey Island 2, Superfrog, Lemmings, and many more...
At the beginning of the university I bought a Pentium
machine with Windows 95 on it... :-( I had to sell my
beloved Amiga... :-(( This happened in october 1995 (Unix time:
814 Ms).
At the second year of mechanical engineering (spring 1997, Unix
time from 857 Ms to 866 Ms) I had a computer science course and
my passion got stronger and stronger. My teacher (Prof. Fantechi)
was brilliant and very kind: I had the opportunity of asking him
about many details I was interested in...
In that course I learned computer science fundamentals and a
pretty programming language: Pascal.
It was however when I discovered Linux-based GNU systems that
my passion for computers exploded!
At the beginning of the fifth university year I decided to do a
degree thesis on CA (Computational Aeroelasticity). My thesis
supervisor (Prof. Arnone) told me that his research group use
extensively Unix systems, and GNU/Linux in particular on IA32
machines.
With the desire to learn and practice Unix, I installed my first
GNU/Linux distribution (RedHat 6.1) (first login on 1999-12-16
00:13:34 +0100, Unix time: 945299614 s). Since that instant, my
Pentium II machine (I had bought a new computer
in June 1999, Unix time: 930 Ms) gradually migrated from Windows
98 to RedHat Linux... :-)))
GNU/Linux is an excellent OS for a computer enthusiast! It
permits and encourages you to study how the system works. I
learned the basics of system administration: now I administer a
couple of GNU/Linux machines at the University. Meanwhile, at
home, I nuked my dual boot Windows+RedHat installation and
switched to Debian GNU/Linux (version 3.0, a.k.a.
"Woody"): believe me, this is a really amazing OS! Debian rules!!!
GNU/Linux also gives you software developing tools for many
languages: compilers and interpreters are there and ask you
"Why don't you learn my language and use me?". The
same is valid for markup languages. I took the opportunity of
studying a bit of Perl and some HTML; I learned LaTeX (my degree
thesis is completely written in LaTeX) and FORTRAN77 (an ugly
language, but very used in my research field...). I'm slowly
studying C++ (well, by now, I'm a bit too focused on theory:
first I studied Stroustrup's book, then Lippman-Lajoie...).
I'm also studying XHTML and CSS.
What's next? Who knows?