Marco Milani

Anyone who knows me very well noticed I have not written any post about Delphi.
Yes, It's a little bit strange even to me, because Delphi is one of my best topic in my technical chats.

I planned to write some structured delphi topics in future, in this topic I would only write a short text about the new Delphi release.

Some days ago, Codegear (now Embarcadero Technologies) announced the new version of Delphi (http://www.codegear.com/products/Delphi/win32). This version represents a deep cut to the past company uncertainty . Since CodeGear spun off delphi rised again its head and appear more mature and more reliable product then tipsily previous two or three versions... let me cite Delphi 8 as the worst treason from Borland.

Even if Delphi 2007 was a very good product, in this 2009 version there are some nice new features like:
* Unicode support
* new DataSnap technology
* generics and anonymous methods
* some new VCL components
* some IDE enhancement

I attended some events in which codegear presented these new features, despite these feature are quite interesting, in MHO this is far from a "cannot miss" release. Unicode is really specific to cross-culture applications,DataSnap and the new VCL components are just extensions of functionality already covered by 3rd party components and IDE is mainly the same as 2007 with some new enhancements.

Anyway I'm really happy to see this new Delphi 2009, mainly because this is the first version of Delphi published by Embarcadero Technologies, a company really focused on development tools. I'm thinking to Inprise, than Borland, DevCo, CodeGear.... what a confusion! And, mainly, how difficult was to understand the medium term vision!

With this version of Delphi, I can smell the fragrance of the great Delphi age again, like the time in which delphi developers wrote tons of hi quality and freeware components, in which RAD was really RAD and one could write Database driven applications in minutes, in which Delphi was a leader and not a follower in the innovation of development tools.

I love native compiled languages, I have a lot of concerns about intermediate languages like java and .NET, so I'm happy that Delphi will follow the business of the native win 32 compiled language.

I'm also fascinated by Embarcadero. I appreciated very much the new company vision: Development tools+Database tools=CodeGear+DatabaseGear.

I'm sure that happy days are coming for delphi developers.

There are a lot of free software, covering probably all needs. It is often difficult to find a really "good" utility due to many authors and solution proposed. "Good" means to me: stable, bug free, lightweight (minimal resources occupation), fast and specific in functionality.
In this short post I review three little utilities I selected and found really "good" and usefull in my everyday work.

Quick Find - http://www.snapfiles.com/get/QuickFind.html

This utililty helps me in finding programs links located in start menu. At this moment my start menu is made up of 3 columns (windows XP) and looking for a program is often a nightmare.
QuickFind caches all the entries and let the user to find the right one with a nice incremental search.

Iconize - http://www.snapfiles.com/get/iconize.html

This utility can close any application to the System Tray even if the application cannot natively close to the Tray. Useful when you open a lot of applications at the same time and want the program bar free or with the applications needed at the moment.

Startup Delayer - http://startup-delayer.softonic.it/

This utility can schedule the starting time of each application during start-up of the PC.
My PC was usual to start-up in 2/3 minutes...thanks to this utility now I can being active on my PC in 30/50 seconds because all the applications planned to start during the start-up are delayed after the log in. I sorted the scheduled starting time by importance, so the last entries are the less usefull applications or the applications I probably don't need at first.
During the startup a nice controller let the user manage the progress, even temporarily avoiding specific applications from start.

Quanto è bella la Corsica vista dalla moto!

Sono appena tornato da una settimana di vacanza in Corsica con amici... in moto! E' la mia seconda esperienza in Corsica dopo la "toccata e fuga" di tre giorni l'anno scorso; ora, come allora, sono rimasto affascinato dai panorami mozzafiato, dai colori vivi, dalle strade avvincenti (per i motociclisti) e ben tenute.

Devo ammettere che i puristi del motociclismo si scandalizzerebbero di fronte alla nostra esperienza: nessuna tenda al seguito, nessuna gavetta o fornello a gas, nessun sacco a pelo, nessuno spazzolino buttato in borsa. Solo moto, minimo indispensabile per vestirsi e alberghi prenotati... insomma, l'abbiamo presa comodamente.

L'ottima ed affiatata compagnia ha reso questa vacanza praticamente perfetta, dosata in modo equilibrato tra esplorazione di luoghi incantati, riposo al fresco dei boschi, nuotate al mare, abbronzature al sole, pranzi e cene prelibati.... ho l'impressione che questa sarà una di quelle vacanze che si registrerà nella memoria con la coccarda d'oro. Con questa atmosfera anche le disavventure (a lieto fine) e le fatiche diventano aneddoti che si ricordano con simpatia, penso, per esempio, all'attentato dinamitardo che una notte ha colpito un locale adiacente all'albergo in cui pernottavamo e all'estenuante fatica del rientro a casa.

Abbiamo sostanzialmente visitato il nord: il "ditone" a nord di Bastia (Cape Corse), la costa tra la riserva degli Ostriconi e Ile Russe e  l'interno fino a Corte, con puntata a Ghisoni. Tra i vari paesini attraversati è sicuramente degno di nota Sant'Antonino, con il suo belvedere e la taverna (Bellevue?) con menu tipico.

Ecco qualche foto scattata durante il nostro girovagare:

La banda, rigorosamente in tenuta motociclistica. Da sinistra: Monica, Davide, Ivan, Paola, Marco, Sara.

A dimostrazione che la Corsica non sia solo mare, ecco il caratteristico castello di Nonza. Per la cronaca Nonza può vantare anche una spiaggia enorme che per colpa dello scrivente rimasto senza benzina non abbiamo potuto visitare...

L'accesso al piazzale della basilica di Sant'Antonino.

Un tramonto mozzafiato visto da Belgodere. No, il bagliore è il sole, non l'esplosione...