Paolo Cattani

I’ve got a brand new workstation. And, this time, my main OS will be Ubuntu Linux (16.04).

My first, real “serious” OS was the AmigaOS, back in the ’80s. It was a real-time, preemptive 32-bit multitasking OS, coupled with GUI and multimedia capabilities. But Commodore declared bankruptcy in the ’90s and the Amiga entered her ill-fate, so I eventually switched to the Mac OS (X) platform, mainly because it was the only other alternative to the Wintel duopoly. Macs were PowerPC based and NeXTStep (ehr… OS X) was quite an interesting environment.

Linux was there, but it was not a real alternative, for me. Not very user-friendly, few applications (of the ones that I needed) available, you must always resort to the terminal for quite anything… it was not for me.

But then, things changed.

Using OS X I began to be acquainted with a Unix system, and when Apple ditched the whole PowerPC thing and embraced Intel chips, there was simply no reason anymore to buy (expensive) Apple hardware. In fact, my last Mac was a PowerMac “Quad”, and then I continued to use OS X on assembled PCs (“Hackintoshes”), with very good results and performance (I must say). Meanwhile, many more applications begin to be available for Linux, and what was not natively available could easily be used through virtual machines or (even better) Wine… so, I took the final decision: let’s “switch” to (Ubuntu) Linux, and see how it is.

Well… for now, it seems quite a good decision!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New 2016 to All!

I’m really proud of my little sister Lucia!

Lucia has been a researcher for many years at the University of Pavia, and in the past she was part of a team that studied a wonderful machine that can produce water by condensing air moisture. Today, Lucia is employed as the R&D manager by Seas SA, a Swiss company that is actually manufacturing and selling such a machine, the AWA Modula. Yesterday, Seas showed their work within an Expo 2015 Event at the Swiss pavilion.

In a world where about 800 million people lack access to safe water it’s easy to understand how beneficial such a technology could be. The AWA Modula can produce water without any need of a primary source, because it works just like an air-conditioner especially optimized for water production (it only needs electrical power that can come from any source, including renewable ones). Just imagine: place it even in the desert, couple it with some solar panels and – voila’ – you have free, drinking water wherever you want!

Oh, and by the way, I’d like to say that I gave my little contribution to the project; I designed and wrote the simulation software (ATWsim, Air-To-Water sim) that Seas is currently using. The ATWsim software is a real-time simulation of the whole AWA Modula hardware inner thermodynamics processes, it can predict the actual behavior of the machine given the real-time conditions of the environment (ie water produced, energy consumption, etc.) or can be used to quickly prototype different configurations or enhancements of the device.

The most exciting computer that I ever owned, and certainly one of the most significant in the history of personal computing, is the Amiga 1000, the first Amiga model release by Commodore in 1985. It was so far ahead of its time that almost nobody – including Commodore’s marketing department – could fully articulate what it was all about.

I still remember a friend of mine, a “proud” owner of a “serious” PC, asking me what use would thousands colors be of on a computer, what importance could possibly have things such as real-time animation or stereo sounds, or what has music to do at all with computers! Today, it’s obvious the Amiga was the first multimedia computer, but in those days it was derided as a game machine because few people grasped the importance of advanced graphics, sound, and video – everyone else was of the idea that a COMPUTER should only feature a 4-colors text-based interface and be used just for spreadsheets and word-processing…

The Amiga was a revolution in every aspect. It could display 4096 colors and had custom chips for accelerated video. It had built-in video outputs for TVs and VCRs. It had four-voice, sampled stereo sound and was the first computer with built-in speech synthesis and text-to-speech conversion. And it’s still the only system that can display multiple screens at different resolutions at the same time on a single monitor. Moreover, the operating system was a true UNIX-like preemptive multitasking 32bit one, coupled with an advanced graphical user interface to tie it all together.

Programming it was a real challenge! The Amiga required me to learn brand new concepts such as multitasking and concurrent programming, resource arbitration through microkernel I/O interfaces, interprocessing messaging, GUI design and programming, multimedia (animation, digital audio processing) and 3d programming… It was really hard to learn and master all that stuff – especially if you’re just 14 years old! – but those days forged me and teached me how to face modern IT challenges, how to solve them without too many problems. I owe a lot to that wonderful piece of technology!

Unfortunately, we may never see another breakthrough computer like the Amiga. Technology that breaks clean with the past is increasingly rare, and rogue companies like Commodore that thrived in the frontier days just don’t seem to fit anymore.

Some time ago, I wrote a silly game featuring the little Beobi creatures.

It’s available on Google Play, for free, for the Android platform (smartphones, tablets). Language is italian, but the game logic is very simple – throw the Beobi down the toilet, where they are coming out from, and push the red button to flush’em up!

Feel free to download the game and enjoy it!