A rough week...and two new recruits.

Phew!

It's been quite a rough week, stressing, intense, but nonetheless pleasurable.  I think it's good to be busy into something you like, because your efforts and the achievements you reap, make you feel alive (and happy). I've had two exams, the first went well, I aced it.

I had the second one today, while the other one was oral, this one was written. Altough we were prepared, the test was longer & harder than we estimateed it would've been. It was a real marathone that went on for over 4 hours. To make the situation worse, the class was a fiercy oven, with the sun hittin' hard. All in all, I am reasonably sure that despite the adversities we passed the exam, the grade is still uncertain, but we'll know that next week. This considered I am at 2/3 of the goal I set to accomplish before August. Last one of the 3, Logic, should be the hardest one. We'll need to prepare a project and we'll have to sustain an oral exam.

I've been studying my butt off, and what I am missing the most is drawing. I think that having a little more time to prepare the last exam I might manage to get something done, and I already have a few ideas in my overactive head. We'll see.

It's also true that when we had to take a little break, me, Vic and Enri together with Mattia, Ronky, Dande (Franz / Kyon Ryuu) & Marco played LoL to get ready for our ranked debut (There is not much time for this either, because once GW2 is out... xD). There have also been a few new recruits that joined our ranks, Rasmur and Giulia.

Giuli became our little mascotte, with her cute & tender voice capable of sharp & mean words. She laughs, she screams, she cries, she jumps around, she cheers us up (and she mushrooms all our lanes <3).

And despite her little age, the italian redhead also rivails me in staying up till late. She's a good player and she's gonna join DODF on GW2. Horray!

She doesn't just mushrooms around with Teemo,
she also saved my cute bum a few times with Shen.

Actually this entry was supposed to be posted yesterday but I had to go to the hair stylist for a summer-style haircut (as you can see in the picture at the top) and then I had to go out for an ice cream with someone so...

Today (as in the 27th) was a rest day for me, I slept a lot (more than the average person, which means incredibly a lot for me), took part in GW2 stress test (just 4 hours T_T...well extended to 5 hours) and started having dinner in the garden.

There have been quite a few interpersonal developments lately, but I'll talk about this in the next blog post :)

See y'all soon! :3

A compendium of articles about us :)

Not to brag, but in the last days a lot of newspapers, journals, blogs and a few tv channels have been talking about us (Team SmartDevs: Me, Vic & Enri). At first I thought it would've been just a couple but I kept stumbling upon them, so I thought I could make a little compendium about them. I don't have all of them collected yet, Wired article will be out on monday, and I still have to find a way to caption the video interviews.

NOTE: I look pretty wasted in these pictures :\ I slept like 5 hours in 3 days and it's really showing. I never imagined they'd take so many pictures!!!

1. Official Press Release (Original)
2. Il Mattino (Original - English)
3. Quattroruote (Original - English)
4. Wired (Original - English)
5. IphoneItalia (Original - English)
6. Clickutility (Original - English)
7. Università degli Studi di Napoli (Original - English)
8. Motorage (Original - English)
9. Trasporti Italia (Original - English)
10. Urbano Creativo (Original - English)
11. Omniauto (Original - English)
12. HubComunicazione (Original - English)
13. Motori  HDMagazine (Original - English)
14. Electricmotor News (Original - English)
15. Megamodo (Original - English)
16. Co2Motori (Original - English)
17. Italgeek (Original - English)
18. Julie News (Original - English)
19. Gabriele Caramellino's blog (Original - English)
20. Pullmanweb (Original - English)
21. Altenativa Sostenibile (Original - English)
22. ElaborAzioni (Original)
23. Strade & Autostrade (Original - English)
24. Ares Information Technology (Original - English)

Video from ANM the part about us starts at 7:14.

I think that such articles and videos are the reason I am receiving so many Facebook requests in the last days, and by many, I mean many. If I had to say, most of them are girls, some cute too, but the fact they want to know me only because I got a little known doesn't entice me one bit.

See y'all soon! :)

Hackathon Naples Victory: Mission Accomplished!!!

I know it's been a couple weeks I haven't posted anything, but it's definitely not for laziness, and also today I don't have much time, I have barely slept 5 hours in 2 days.

It was all in preparation for this day. Yesterday, we (Me, Vic & Enri) took part to Naples Hackathon (http://www.mobilitytech.it/english/HACKATHON.php).

My working set-up for the competition. 

The first day we projected and developed a native app on Android and iOS, graphics brand new included. Not to brag, but we were under the spotlight. We were quite flashy. And my Nostromo didn't fail to gather the attention of the other contestants and judges. We had to prepare a presentation aswell,  and I didn't want to do the usual PowerPoint (I warmly invite you to check the presentation I embedded down full screen, even if it's partly in italian it should be understandable), so I was up from 5 am to 3 am.

Green City - the App we presented

Today it was the big day. Due to my bus being late, I got late to the appointment and we didn't have any time to try our presentation beforehand, but it went all pretty smoothly. 

Green City on Prezi

Vic and Enri were really worried we'd lose. Honestly, I was pretty confident, and I told them: "We overturned countless desperate matches in LoL, we'll manage to win also this time!". Even so, when they started saying "And the winner is..." my heart skipped a beat, then they continued saying "...Team SmartDevs!" I popped up from my chair and started jumping up, Enrico walked zombie likely while Vic got almost frozen. I remember jumping all around, a lot of flashes and hands clapping. We received a lot of compliments, we got interviewed and featured on several newspapers and journals (even on Wired!) aswell as on a few TV channels. We received a cheque, but even more so we got a huge visibility, and we got in touch for possible jobs with a lot of big companies, like Renault, Telecom Italia, ANM, and we have our agendas booked till October (we are invited to Hackathon Milan!). Our app will be onboard on all the actual and future Renault's cars models. It was amazing. It really was!

We had to put online in a hurry our website www.smartdevs.it, and we're receiving a lot of hits. I also started getting Facebook requests from people I don't think I know. Unexpectedly a lot. There are a lot more things to say and pictures and videos to upload, but I'll provide them when I'll gather more. I feel rather tired, I think the lack of sleep, and the release of tension is starting to get on me.
Fuck yea, we won!!! \o/