I’ve been trying to come up with 8 reasonably interesting things about myself since Rudy de Waele tagged me with this meme a while back. I’m not generally too good at these things, so here goes with 8 semi-interesting things (hopefully) you didn’t know about me.

1. Despite having a solidly Italian name, and being born in Rome, I don’t speak a lick of Italian.

2. I used to brew beer. Not very well.

3. I’ve put my meager DIY skills to use in a couple of articles for Make magazine. One of these articles covered making a portable jockey box, so I could “enjoy” the aforementioned beer on draft anywhere. I also coverted a chest freezer into a kegerator with two built-in taps. In retrospect, these two projects were far more successful than any of the beer I made.

4. The reason I tend to like Symbian phones more than other smartphones is because their platform partners have the two single best pieces of trade show swag: S60 pens and UIQ mints.

5. I’m a huge football (sawker) fan. I’ve been to two World Cups and watched matches in eight countries.

6. When I was in college, I was the managing editor of the university newspaper, which was a 30,000 or so circulation daily.

7. I really like barbecue and have a poorly maintained and sparingly updated blog about it.

8. I find this sort of thing really, really hard. (OK I already said that, but I’m reaching here )