Born: 1981/04/27,
I live in
My sweeping career started way back on my father's old 386
laptop with Windows 3.1 and the first real minesweeper, at that time
included in the so-called "Windows Entertainment Pack". It's always
been just a game until my mother started getting some sub-200 times and I
understood something better could be done. I don't remember what my first record were, but I sure remember being very impressed when I
once saw a 127 coming from my own hand. I was the best in my family now! After
that I played just occasionally because after all it was such an interesting
game, made up of both randomness and user-skill ...until I met Daniele (look at his profile, too!). After that we started
challenging each-other and I got my first sub-100, until I reached 92, but
after sometime we didn't seem to get any better and the challenge was almost
over. Then One day Daniele told me about The
Authoritative Minesweeper and after watching what the real best times were
around the world (yes... I thought I could be the best in the world, too,
before checking Damien's site) we both agreed we could do better.
A new challenge started and this time it was more serious than the first one. Daniele started getting some sub-100's; I just changed my
pc and got an optical mouse, needing some extra training, but when all was
settled one after the other (I've been on the lead most of the time) we went
sub-90, sub-80 and finally sub-70. I reached 61 on 2004, May 10th on a 120 3BV,
which has been the best ever Italian until some time later Daniele
scored a 60.
Until this point I only told about the expert board because that was the main
challenge, but good times started coming from Beginner and Intermediate boards,
too, reaching a lucky 1 on the first and a good 15 on the latter. These,
together, make of me the best ever Italian sweeper at the time I'm writing
...but Daniele is just a second back and in the last
months I've never played much, seeing my times raise from the ones I used to
score in the happiest days.
Speaking about my other interests, one of the hobbies that has
always taken me a lot of time is music. I started attending some basic lessons
at the age of 5-6, then started playing piano until
the mid-school (at the age of 11) where I started taking cello lessons. Playing
cello took me through a 5-years period in the Young European Musicians
Orchestra, which made me travel around
Other than playing keyboards and singing i like a lot
trekking and skiing, even though I'm not really a "sporty" guy.
Another thing which takes me some time is the Leo Club Padova Medoacense, part of
the International Association of Lions Clubs.
After secondary school I decided to enter University and chose Information
Engineering here in Padova. I'm now doing the
stage-period in a company and will hopefully take the first level graduation
early next summer. After that I hope I'll be able to enter the second level and
then, who knows......................................
I'm taking care of some sites on the Internet, one
dealing with university and some friends, the one about my Leo Club and
one where I keep some of my best
pictures taken around the world.
If, after visiting these sites, you're wondering why this page is so white and
style-less, the answer is that the stage I'm attending is taking me the whole
day and the other activities and my friends take most of the remaining time,
thus this page was made at late night (it's now 1.55 am) stealing some hours
which were supposed to be dedicated to sleeping... an activity I (sadly) don't
seem to like much in these last weeks...
Well, I just hope I haven't bored you fellas
sweepers... Good night (for me and whoever reads this bits
instead of resting his/her mind) and good sweeping!
Francesco ;-)