Happiness and Misadventures

A Wooden Cold Frame

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

One of the aspects I prefer about living in the new home is the freedom of creating anything: stone walls, woodsheds, green areas, vegetable gardens… You name it. I’m slowly transitioning into a curious man who likes to give shape to things.

My girlfriend is the brain and I am the arms: she sees ideas on Pinterest and Instagram¹, shares them with me, and says, “You could do it.” Yeah, like if I have a great experience.

Well, in the last few months I was surprised by myself.

The latest idea was a cold frame for plants. All I got was this grainy picture from Pinterest:

I got the idea, but…

Using my advanced hacker skills, I reverse-searched the image and found this old pdf from a 2012 Internet Archive capture. There was a full scheme, great!

But I didn’t follow it. First, it used Imperial units, and they should be banned.² Second, the materials used are not the same I’d easily find here in Italy. I have plenty of beadboard, so the main structure will be made with that. Also, the renovation left me tons of wood scraps, sometimes quite good but different from one another, so I wanted to make do with what I had.

My father is always happy to help me create something with wood, so we together deep-dived into this project without thinking too much. It seemed quite straightforward, so we started with the four main legs, the bottom shelf, and then we assembled the main container with the beads.

As a cover, we used a plexiglass panel I already had, and based all the measurements around it. After a rainy night, I saw that water had leaked inside. Then I cut a piece of an old rain gutter — another waste from the renovation — to cover the top part. With a circular saw I had just received as a birthday present³, I refined some wood slats and we created the mechanism to quickly open the cover.

Simple yet effective. Notice the gutter on the top.

Finally, my girlfriend and I painted it with a very nice red tone we discovered — and with which she fell in love. Here is the final result, ready for the winter.

I’ve only just noticed that the shelf inside is missing in this photo!

And, placed next to the house…

One of the very few afternoons with no strong wind this spring.

It may not be much, but for me it’s a little piece of art!

🎧 Another Alice In Chains phase

📖 Still on Dawn, things are getting more interesting

About that, it’s scary to observe the speed with which AI content is flooding the web. ↩︎
I wanted to be humorous about this, but we should seriously do something about this… gap between us. ↩︎
That’s exactly the kind of gift I would never have thought to receive until a couple of years ago. ↩︎

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Project Hail Mary

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Finally a very good movie adaptation of a book! The characters are the best part, but kudos to the writers for both cutting some “boring” parts and making the plot easy to understand in the film format. Also, the soundtrack is amazing. Maybe it’s the best movie of the year so far!

Rating: 👏

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Interview with the Vampire

Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I had never seen this… classic, I guess? And… Well, not so good, but not bad either. Fascinating, even if I don’t understand why vampires can’t cut their hair. 🤔

Rating: 😦

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No Other Choice

Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I love Park Chan-wook because his movies have everything: humor, tension, action, and good metaphors. This one isn’t an exception.

Rating: 🌳

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Super Relax

Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the third comic book I have read by Dr. Pira, and I admit I am mesmerized for the third time: amazing cameos, a very good plot, and memorable drawings. Pira’s style may seem childish, but he is very good. I don’t know if it is a relaxing read, but surely is recommended!

Rating: 🔮

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Utopia, by John Lennon

Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

Bullshit. Alas.

I remember our teachers from elementary school. They tried their best to educate us about the importance of peace. In those years, the war in Kosovo was the latest one and 9/11 was on the horizon. I recall many events organized by my school, for example in the medieval church of my village, with readings and songs against conflicts performed by us children. The message from our teachers and parents has always been very clear: peace is not only good, it is essential.

An educator in particular, Paola, wrote songs about the importance of peace. They condemned hatred and contained a clear messages for children. They had sweet melodies and were simple to learn. I still remember some verses after thirty years. Translated into English, the chorus of one song would start with:

Peace is easy
It doesn’t cost a thing

But after having seen thirty years of awful news, why the hell should I believe in peace?

WWII left deep scars in my parents’ generation and the partisans, very active in my area, have always been considered heroes. The concept of resistance, alongside peace, has always been particularly important and I would never argue with that. I’ve been raised with these principles and have always done my best to stick to them: when voting, expressing and listening to opinions, and maybe teaching someone younger than me. I’ve never been an activist, but at least my ideas are quite clear.

The main problem is that History repeats itself. Here in Italy the lesson learned from WWII quickly faded away, at least from the late ’90s — in the rest of the world the situation is not very dissimilar.

Racism is not over.
Women’s rights are put in discussion again.
Fascism is coming back almost as a century before.

Dang, one hundred years. We humans are amazing in certain aspects. If we have an [economic] interest in something, we spend the one thousand percent of the resources we have to explore and grow it — see computers in the last fifty years. On the other hand, we may have some genes in our DNA that make us fucking forget the past. There have been dozens of wars, millions of deaths, uncountable protests, martyrs and assassins… And yet here we are, right where our ancestors used to be.

We have AI and smartwatches when they had brand new Model Ts, but the humans who use these devices are the very same ones.

I’m talking about politicians of course, because politics never changed across centuries, but not solely. What really bothers me is the common people, because since we are the vast majority of the world population we should be responsible for it. I don’t think I received a better education than most people, but I remember studying quite enough horrors of the past.

Why ~~can’t we remember~~ are we ignoring the past?

So please forgive me, John from up there. I respect you as a huge artist and musician, but I can’t really imagine what you have described. If not as an utopia.

🎧 Some metal from Québec

📖 Still on Dawn

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Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I would never have thought my girlfriend would appreciate a movie by Guy Ritchie, but she did! She has more of a Mary Poppins style when liking films, but I’m glad she appreciated this classic. Of course I had already seen it at least twice. Always great.

Rating: 🔫🔫

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Re: Using greyscale

Wed, 06 May 2026 10:48:29 +0200

I just read James’s post on using greyscale on mobile and definitely want to try. Other than that it could help me use it less, maybe it could also be useful for increasing battery life — or maybe the opposite, if the color processing is done after…

Bah, too much thinking. Let’s just do it and see.

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Dawn

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t remember who recommended Octavia Butler to me as a sci‑fi author, but after years I finally started a novel by her.

*Still in progress* 🏃

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Life Through Two Lenses

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When I was eight, our teacher hung a yellowish piece of paper on the blackboard and said, “Copy this.” I was sitting at the end of the classroom and suddenly felt confused. I could only see a large, blank sheet. After a while, I remember raising my hand and asking shyly, “Mrs. Teacher, I can’t see anything there.” She must have been used to that because she immediately replied, “Try getting closer.” I took a couple of steps toward the center of the room, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie appeared on the yellow paper. That’s how I discovered I am myopic.

From then on, I wear prescription lenses about sixteen hours a day. I am nearsighted by about seven diopters in both eyes, so I just can’t live without vision correction. I know that there are many, many worse cases than mine without reaching blindness, but I think most people don’t understand how we myopics see the world.

There, I tried to reproduce how I see my monitor without glasses, while writing this post.

And this is just at about 70–80 centimeters from my face. You can imagine how I see panoramas. I’m not the only one who tried to replicate the effect, but you can just add one or two layers of blur to a picture.

The view from our hammock. Without glasses.

It’s like having a persistent Bokeh effect in front of you. It is especially weird with far source lights, which appear almost liquid in the dark. However, put that way, it sounds worse than it actually is. I am used to it, and to me my glasses are an organ, like as the liver or the lungs. They are just part of me.

The idea for this post came to me yesterday, thinking that I have experienced every important fact of my life through a couple of lenses. Other than the most intimate moments, I was always wearing glasses. Every conversation I had, every movie I watched, every word I read¹… I had them on. Can you say the same about any other object?

Now, the question everybody asked in the last few years: Why don’t you get eye surgery? Because I don’t trust medicine enough: laser operations keep evolving (trust me, I followed the topic a lot), they are efficient, but there’s still the tendency to worsen after a few years, and I’m afraid that something won’t work. I know how delicate my eyes are, and I prefer keeping the glasses or the contact lenses.

So why this post? It is just a quick love letter to my glasses. It is a strange relationship that maybe only a few can comprehend, and I totally understand that. For many people they are an item; for me they are part of the daily routine without whom I wouldn’t be… serene, probably? They are a companion. It sounds a bit crazy, but here I am.

🎧 A bit obsessed with IV by Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet

📖 I started Dawn by Octavia E. Butler. Not much happened in the first ~10%, but we’ll see

Yes, if you are nearsighted enough, you need glasses to read books too. ↩︎

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Dead In A Week

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I appreciated the surreal atmosphere and the sense of humor. Recommended British-style comedy!

Rating: 🥸

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Hoppers

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Super-cute and quite funny, I expected it to be more moving as others from Pixar. Anyway, I liked it a lot.

Rating: 🦎👋

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The Lost King

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t say it’s amazing, but… sincerely OK. The story is interesting, but surely not tense.

Rating: 👌

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Music Roundup - April 2026

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:19:36 +0200

Finally I have realistic #ListenBrainz statistics since I managed to sync the scrobbles from iOS!

This month my most played albums were:

1. First Came the Shadow - First Came The Shadow

I found this album thanks to the Apple “related albums” to Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet, and I was pleasantly surprised! It is delicate and strong; it has it all. I quickly listened to the whole discography, but it needs more attention.

2. Pinocchio - We Stood Like Kings

Bandcamp suggested this to me, and I was shocked! Extremely powerful on a couple of tracks, and overall very evocative. Good post-rock!

3. Myra - Spurv

Another unexpected discovery! I love this. Is that a metal album? Does it have a deer on the cover and a snowy atmosphere? It must be good.

4. Mr. Beast - Mogwai

Back to the origins. This album always deserves a couple of full runs. ❤️

5. IV - Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet

I was probably the only one not to know this band, but I was flabbergasted! I’m gonna re-listen to it multiple times. It’s in fifth place only because I discovered it in the last few days.

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Little Amélie

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Wonderful story and characters, impressive and unique animation. Truly recommended for everyone!

Rating: 👍👍

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The Tale of Tales

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve never been a great fan of Matteo Garrone, but this movie has a very particular aesthetic… Other than that, I didn’t like it.

Rating: 🤔

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Note from April 24, 2026

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 12:53:01 +0200

Today we picked some elderflowers! We will try to make a jam and a flavored gin. Updates will follow!

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Project Hail Mary

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I started reading this novel the day before the movie trailer was released. I loved The Martian — I have high expectations!

Well, the feelings are mixed. I found the most appropriate review on Hardcover. The story is amazing and the pace is very good, but there are no emotions, and the style is quite poor.
I can’t wait to watch the movie because Rocky is an amazing character!

Rating: 🗿

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Note from April 21, 2026

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 11:13:03 +0200

Today the nostalgia mode is activated — the radio started it. I’m so easily influenced by music!

It’s strange to say, but I come from an era when playlists were made on cassettes, recorded from the radio or other CDs and cassettes. I made a dozen myself for my friends, and Adam’s Song playing this morning reminded me that it was a constant in those years.

Enema of the State by Blink-182 was one of my favorite CDs in middle school. I still remember when a friend of mine lent it to me.

At that time, the other album I listened to most was All That You Can’t Leave Behind by U2; it was a gift from my mother’s hairdresser(!). I loved it and still do. Maybe it was with that album that I started learning the concepts of “melody” and “arrangement”.

Well, I know what to listen to today.

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IndieWeb Deep-diving

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

While browsing the web I often came across the term “indieweb”. I still don’t fully understand it, but I surely love its philosophy as well as the small web, Web 1.0, etc. That’s why I first created this blog on Bearblog.

The Tech

More recently I learned about microformats2 and how they could transform static websites like mine into precious gold mines. They can provide simple commenting systems with Fediverse integration, show the likes of a webpage, or just the mentions. About the latter, webmentions by Aaron are the ones that struck my attention first.

I love the idea of POSSE: post here on my personal space/website first, then copy (syndicate) it elsewhere. I asked AI (Claude and ChatGPT) to provide a Python script to integrate and manage in my publishing flow, and for now it seems to work well: the new Notes section of this blog is syndicated on my GoToSocial instance. It is my website, and here you can find everything about me — notes included¹.

I tried to implement webmentions using WebMention.io and a CLI tool by Remy, so both the Notes and Posts of this blog should display them. As a bonus, the Notes display the boosts, likes, and comments of the syndicated posts (I would have never achieved that without AI; that’s what it is useful for).

The People

While digging in the wiki of IndieWeb and microformats2, I realized how great the people behind these ideas are. These are minds whose simple geniality sparks are so precious in the centralization era when everything is in the hands of a few organizations.

Obviously I always step into the station when the train has already departed. Many of these concepts are already 10 years old, if not more. It’s true that, at that time, blogging wasn’t even an option for me, but these concepts are completely hidden to 99% of internet users — that’s the indie part of the name, I guess.

Anyway, this project really excited me and made me wonder if I could participate in the community in one way or another… I’m no programmer at all, and I barely scraped the surface of these concepts… but I’m even more enthusiastic than when I discovered Mastodon and the concept of the fediverse.

The community is what makes a project active, and it was a post by Naty that introduced me to a whole new world of good-old-style blogs curated by wonderful people. In the last few months, the small web went “viral” again thanks to Kagi and Wander. There are also aggregation sites such as IndieWeb News and the very new Bubbles… Other than the Bearblog Discovery feed, which is always good.

Probably because of the juxtaposition with the world news, it’s wholesome to see so many people just… being people. With no social algorithms or products to sell. Just the will to write and share something.

By the way, I love the IndieWeb Carnival and IndieWeb Fiction Carnival concepts, and I hope they will give me the strength to write more… even if it would mean waking up at 6AM. The days are getting much longer, and the countryside work calls me… but I am eager to find an equilibrium to merge the technologic side of me and the newly found rural one.

Closing words: expect more changes to this website (always better², I hope), and, optimistically, more words in it!

🎧 I have Monosphere playing in my ears right now, and I’m positively surprised!

📖 On the last pages of Project Hail Mary

Nothing’s stopping me from posting directly on GoToSocial, but an alternative may slowly grow from this. ↩︎
There will be lots of mistakes too. ↩︎

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IT - Welcome To Derry S01

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I was sincerely surprised by this series. The expectations were high since the cast was the same as the two recent IT movies, and honestly I was not disappointed. There were some ridiculous twists (the old tree in the last episodes is chosen with no sense), but overall it is a good horror.

I also liked the reference to The Shining, but at the end it is too obvious from the dialogue. Overall, I’d like to see a sequel, or even a prequel, since the movie/book comes next!

Rating: 👍

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My Personal Indy

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is my very first entry for the IndieWeb Carnival, this month hosted by Pablo and the topic is Adventure. I’m astonished I never found time before. Shame on me!

I was quite an amoeba until a few years ago. That’s it. If I were on my own, making my own choices day by day, I’d probably never step out of my comfort zone. Maybe I’m a coward, but honestly I think I was grown in laziness and routine. Dangerous life at its finest.

Luckily for me, my girlfriend changed our approach to vacations a lot. So, during these trips, there’s always been a struggle between her, who would like to do crazy things, and me, who would like to enjoy the holidays as a calm person.

Like I said, it was luck for me. I realized, after too much time, what I was (and maybe still am?) missing.

We had several misadventures, more or less funny, mostly linked to our passion for Geocaching. From 2015–16 on, we made several trips without following usual itineraries and routes, but just geocaching trails. An example was Bretagne, in northwestern France. We found more than 100 caches in less than two weeks, and we saw some splendid spots very easy to miss otherwise. We just followed the app on the smartphone and looked for the dozens of cache trails around the woods or the coast. The French GC community was already amazing ten years ago!

Another great example, near Lake Maggiore in Italy, was the actual urban exploration of an abandoned youth camp from the Fascist era. The overwhelming vegetation on the walls, the rotting ceilings, the abandoned pools, weird creaking noises… It was a goosebumps experience! There were geocaches too, of course, but we were too scared to find any!

Anyway, one of the best adventures we had, in the broader sense of the term, was again in France, in Dordogne. I already wrote about it, and it does not seem three years have passed… We made a trip on the Dordogne River by canoe, sleeping in a tent. The water level was quite low, but we had our dose of chills due to a few rapids and a very stupid curve we made trying to reach a cave from the river… We fell from the canoe and swam to push it near the riverbed.

It won’t be much, but for me these trips are adventurous. She just showed me a crazy bridge in Wales, and we’re again discussing… but over time I’ve become a bit less tenacious. My girlfriend is my personal Indiana Jones, and I’m somehow her Marcus Brody.

🎮 Nothing 🫩 I could remove this gamepad

🎧 Some post metal classic, especially Neurosis

📖 Almost finished Project Hail Mary

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Note from April 12, 2026

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 09:01:19 +0200

Quite upset because the only way I could find to scrobble listens from iOS to ListenBrainz was to buy a third-party app (Marvis Pro - €10) and then scrobbling to… Last.fm!

Then, using a Python tool, I synced the listens to the ListenBrainz account. It runs on crontab on my Raspberry.

Darn it, Apple. Why make things so complicated?

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Note from April 10, 2026

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:05:01 +0200

Lately, I’ve been working a lot outside. We’ve built a pergola, covered a concrete cylinder used as a well with stones and old bricks… and I’ve listened to a lot of music. Metal music. Specifically, post-metal music.

The latest Neurosis album made me (re?)discover a playlist that contains some gems. I hardly appreciate some of them, but definitely have others on loop.

Jesu is one of my favorite discoveries, and Boris were quite a surprise too!

It’s particularly juxtaposing to listen to this kind of music in earphones while birds are chirping a few meters from you, in the shadows of linden trees on these beautiful spring days… but maybe they’d appreciate it. My girlfriend does not, though. For sure.

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A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Moving. Very moving, but beautiful too. Some very smart touches and an amazing photography make this movie special.

Rating: 💧

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Mercy

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Interesting and entertaining. Not-so-original twists, but they’re so well paced that it does not matter.

Rating: 👍

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How To Make A Killing

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Funny and dark, with a very good pacing. Very good casting too, everyone is perfect! Anyway, the finale is a little bitter… but it makes sense.

Rating: 🙃

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The Gunslinger

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I had read this book in Italian about ten years ago… and I didn’t remember a thing! I listened to the audiobook in English and… boy, that’s the finest King! Some parts are slow, but the dialogues are always real and the final one in particular is gold! Gotta listen the whole series, I guess.

Rating: 💫

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Send Help

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Very Raimi_sh_, in the best way. Funny, with a couple of unnecessary jump scares… Yeah, it has Sam’s signature!

Rating: 🐀

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Anaconda

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It was fun and there were a couple of epic scenese, but… it was totally unnecessary!

Rating: 🙂‍↔️

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Ghost Stories

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Entertaining and honestly scary in a couple of scenes. The final plot twist is interesting too… but I’m still perplexed. Recommended though!

Rating: 🤔

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Note from March 17, 2026

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:06:18 +0000

GoToSocial is great, but until the capability of deleting old statuses goes online, I live in constant tension 😶

Today the disk space on my VPS ran out, and I almost didn’t know what I could clean up. Fingers crossed for the next releases.

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Resident Alien S02

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My girlfriend and I enjoyed the first season, but this is seems… a bit boring. We’ll see.

*Still in progress* 🏃

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Wicked: For Good

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Not for me. I liked the first one but found this sequel extremely boring, with a ridiculous screenplay — some choices make no sense!

Rating: 🫩

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Note from March 15, 2026

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:37:42 +0000

I just discovered Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, a collection of stories set in… space?! By Calvino?! I have to read it!

But I’m already tired if I think about the effort to look for it in local thrift markets.

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Note from March 14, 2026

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 18:38:54 +0000

Ok, this is my very first ~~post~~ note written entirely from my phone. I’ll make another, longer, one to explain the whole setup — which I don’t know if saying I’m proud of.

It has a huge vantage, which for me is the most important: it is entirely self-hosted. Only devices and machines at my place.

I’m experimenting with POSSE and so you can read this both in my blog and my fediverse account.

I self-built a mechanism for my setup so it can get very complex to keep everything “clean”… we’ll see!

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Note from March 14, 2026

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 08:40:30 +0000

This is a test, the first indieweb note on the blog.

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DIY Bearblog Appreciation Button

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The other day I stumbled upon Naty’s beautiful blog and found lots of suggestions about implementing indieweb features on websites generated by Hugo — such as this very blog. Among the articles, a guide attracted my attention in particular: inserting a like button on the blog like Bearblog’s one? Is this sci-fi?!

I immediately went to iine’s GitHub repository and loved the idea, but quickly found that the “quick and dirty” self-hosted option is based on Supabase or needs a PostgreSQL database installed.

Well.

I want to own my data, and I don’t want my blog to rely on other services, so a DB was the only option. I already have several Docker instances running SQL because of one application or another, so adding one wouldn’t be a big deal.

Since I am quite new to Docker and similar tools, I asked AI for help to generate a Docker Compose file, a simple Node server, and SQL configuration. And most importantly, JavaScript to handle the button behavior correctly.

By myself it would have taken weeks. I think this is one of the good use cases of AI: to help you create something if you don’t have the right skills.

This way the behavior is what I wanted:

No personal data involved (the IPs are stored only in the machine’s RAM)
A single click per session is allowed by the browser (and limited server-side to block bots)

I kept the name iine because it is based on that; I just customized it a bit and automated it with Docker. No merit.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it is mine.

This is my repository if you’re interested.

Next, I’d like to implement some other indieweb features on my website… or better yet, I’d like to transform it into a digital garden! But, as always, I would like to build it from scratch, and it would take just too much time. We’ll see!

🎮 Nada

🎧 Just discovered Kröwnn… and that they’re Italian!

📖 A couple audiobooks I really appreciated

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Pluribus S01

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The hype was high on this one, and I was not disappointed. We need more work by Vince Gilligan! Rhea Seehorn is a monster.

Rating: 🧬

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Of Ants and Dinosaurs

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I listened to this audiobook (my first one in English!) while preparing the vegetable garden… Boy, time flew! I loved the incipit, and to be honest the whole story is very well crafted. The similarities are striking, but the message is clear… overall in these sad days.

Rating: 💡

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Tre Ciotole

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Extremely bitter and sour with just a few sweet drops. I like Michela’s style very much, and the separation of the chapters into different yet interconnected short stories is genius. I don’t know if I’d recommend it to anyone, but yes, it should be a must-read somehow. It is very human.

Rating: 😶

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The Eternaut S01

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I own a very nice edition of the graphic novel, and I read it about ten years ago, but honestly I don’t remember it very well. Anyway, I immediately noticed the evident change of tone because of the present-day setting of the series. I liked it; there is very good suspense, and the characters are extremely well personalized. Also in this series, I can’t understand why they included one or two figures that feel just superfluous — at least for me.

A particular mention for the finale: a very good episode, but there is no partial resolution; it feels interrupted in the wrong way, with an almost unnecessary cliffhanger.

Rating: 🥸

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Emma.

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Boring for 90% of the time! Didn’t fully understand Mia Goth’s character. Anyway, amazing locations.

Rating: 🥱

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L'Incontro

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A very sweet novel about childhood and adulthood. A Sardinian version of Stephen King’s stories… with no horror. Lovely.

Rating: 😕

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Iced Lemon Tea

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Spring has sprung¹ here in Northern Italy. Finally. I had planned to enjoy the cold months playing some video games, writing more… but none of that happened. Well, that’s not completely true: there has been a short story – the first one in more than a year! – and I figured out how to play Windows games on my Mac… but nothing serious.

Back to work, I bought a four-meter-long tree pruner, and we used it a lot. In the last two or three years, we cut a lot of wood. Too much. The trees had loads of dead branches, and we had to chop a huge quantity of twigs and whole trees.

This spring, luckily, we started to see the results of the care we had put in: the deadwood was much less. I organized the largest pieces in a pile to dry² and, with the smallest ones, I am creating a sort of natural fence at the edge of the woods. We’ll see if the animals stop coming up from there from all directions. I’d like to create a couple of paths for them away from the house.

The other day, as I entered the kitchen for merenda time, I poured myself a glass of cold lemon tea… and I smiled while recalling one of my maternal grandfather’s habits. He liked to have a bottle of lemon tea in the fridge, so in the hot afternoon he would come home to have some.

My grandma told me that every morning she prepared hot tea with a couple of bags, then she put some sugar and, once cooled down, poured it into a bottle and placed it in the fridge. I have many fond memories of that kitchen. I remember many times being there with my grandma, but I can’t recall any with my grandpa. Strange.

Anyway, we’ve been… (cultivating? keeping?) a kombucha fungus for a couple of years, or maybe more. We keep the fermented tea in the fridge, and I was pouring that when the memories came to me. It may not be the same tea, but I’m sure that grandpa would agree about the merenda. And I think he would like the work we did around the house.

🎮 I tried to complete a full match of Balatro, but I keep failing :(

🎧 Among the many bands I listened to, I find Cabfighter awesome!

📖 I listened to the latest episode of the Witcher saga, and I loved it

This has always been one of my favorite English expressions. ↩︎
I chose a place quite near a slope, I hope they won’t tumble down! ↩︎

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Crossroads of Ravens

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I love this saga, and this book is as good as the others. It is a prequel and it narrates about a very young Geralt, but despite the fact that he’s the only returning character, Sapkowski can create a thrilling story. I can’t wait for the next chapter!

Rating: ❤️

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The Tasters

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A bitter story that grips the viewer. A bit long, but I liked it.

Rating: 😠

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Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Super cute story and amazing panoramas from the Shetlands. Must watch.

Rating: ❤️🦦

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Denmark

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Another bittersweet story. Maybe I should stop watching movies recommended by my girlfriend. But this was nice.

Rating: 😶

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Thelma

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Funny and not-so-funny. Very good cast and a couple of genuinely funny scenes. I hope to get older like her.

Rating: 🥲

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Elevation

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Nice short story. I almost wouldn’t have guessed it was by King if it weren’t set in Castle Rock. Sweeter than I expected, it was a true surprise.

Rating: 🙂

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Sinners

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s a very entertaining movie, but I don’t see why it has so many nominations. It’s cool, that’s all. Even the plot twist was already seen about thirty years ago.

Rating: 👍

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The Old Man and the Sea

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Very atypical, I liked it very much. Maybe one of the few books with no pauses or paragraphs at all. A short, slightly moving story.

Rating: 🥲

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Watcher

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It certainly creates tension, but I found some parts boring. The finale almost caught me.

Rating: 😶

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2010: Odissey Two

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I loved the first one, but I read on the preface that the plot was changed to follow the 2001 movie, which was a bit different than the book. We’ll see…

This sequel has two main issues: the pace — but that is not severe — and the fact that the plot follows the movie too closely in a couple of chapters. Anyway, it has two or three great ideas and twists that make it worth reading.

Rating: 🫡

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Rental Family

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Moving and lovely. Would rewatch with the proper mood. I don’t like crying late at night.

Rating: 😣

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The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s a shame there won’t be a second season — I loved this kind of absurd humor. Perfect for Noel Fielding!

Rating: 🐴

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Your Friends & Neighbors S01

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From this series I loved: 1. Jon Hamm. 2. Everything else.

Seriously, it is very good. At three quarters it becomes quite dark, but the finale brightens everything up again (a little).

Rating: 💣

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Untamed S01

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This series was a surprise: although it made a false promise of something monstrous, the pace is very good and the story is engrossing. I read that a second season was announced… but there was really no need for that. 🤷

Rating: 🌲

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Fantozzi

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a classic of Italian comedy, but the movies based on the same character by Paolo Villaggio have influenced much more… the whole Country! Anyway, the author was able to catch, just in a few year of office work, a reality still well-alive fifty-five years later. People change, they say. Meh.

Rating: 🙂

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Migrating Firewall And Splitting Networks

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This will be an almost technical post that probably nobody will find useful — oh, pishposh.¹ Maybe by getting practice I’ll get better with this kind of content.

The Premise

Our company had an obsolete Sophos XG firewall that had to be replaced with a new XGS model. In addition, the network had to be split from a single one, e.g., 192.168.0.0/24, into two: 192.168.99.0/24 and 172.16.99.0/24. Then all the machines’ IPs had to be changed accordingly. My duty was to plan the migration and configure both firewalls.

The new firewall had to be attached to the same network switch, to which I didn’t have access. A colleague of mine did the dirty work of the initial installation and configuration; the rest was done via VPN to the old firewall.

At first I thought to keep it simple and just let the two machines share the same switch, then change IP and default gateway. Since they would be on different networks, I thought there wouldn’t be problems. Some research, though, convinced me to change my approach.

The Quick Solution

An IPSec tunnel between the firewalls.

I honestly would never have thought about that, but it worked smoothly. The key is to use a new temporary network just for the IPSec VPN ports, which Sophos calls XFRM. For example, 123.123.123.0. It could be a /30 subnet, maybe even /31, since it only has two hosts, and it has the key function of allowing traffic between the old network and the two new ones.

So, after configuring the IPSec tunnel and creating the appropriate firewall rules², it was easy to implement the original idea: change IP and default gateway on the machines to point to the new firewall.

The Obvious, Obnoxious, Unexpected Error

After changing the network for a couple of VMs, we noticed a strange issue: SSH from the old network to the new one didn’t work properly. There was connectivity to the port, but the SSH process was just stuck.

After three, maybe four, hours of tries and attempts, I figured out³ that the problem was the Maximum Segment Size on the XFRM ports. I decreased it from 1360 to 1350 only and… voilà. All issues were suddenly gone.

From there, the remaining steps were easy and natural: finish changing the static IPs and the gateway on all the machines according to the new networks, and then switch DHCP.

It is banal to say, but it’s important not to have two DHCP servers on the same switch: first I turned off the old firewall’s, then created the new DHCP lease on the new one. I chose a segment in one of the two new networks, but a good practice could be creating a new ad hoc network (and the appropriate firewall rule) to quickly recognize DHCP-provided addresses.

Conclusion

At last, when all the VMs and machines pointed to the new firewall, the IPSec tunnel could be turned off with no impact. The old 192.168.0.0/24 and the temporary network 123.123.123.0/30 could be deleted from the new firewall — and the old machine was finally powered off after several years of duty. 🫡

Downtime: none! 🍾

🎮 Just no.

🎧 A fine metal band *chef’s kiss*

📖 I started a sci-fi classic — or better, its sequel

I just found out about this expression and I can’t stop using it. ↩︎
To be honest, they were automatically created by the Sophos OS. I just added the “VPN” network on the rules to allow traffic from my connection. ↩︎
Kudos to ChatGPT for this. ↩︎

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Closer to Dad

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Since the days are getting shorter, I can finally enjoy our new home a bit more. In the past three months, I’ve been working on several projects that were completely new to me: a fence with three wooden gates, stone walls, a car shelter… even a wooden door. I had to become an amateur electrician, carpenter, woodworker, and plumber. Most of all, I’m happy because I’m proud of what I’ve done.

It may look simple, but I built it from scratch with almost zero experience!

No, that’s not true; pride is not the main positive aspect. The real good thing is that I’ve spent a lot of time with my dad. He enjoyed helping me with these projects a lot, and did much more than he should have at his age. He is tough, and he says that he has lots of fun while creating something, like in these cases, but his golden heart makes it difficult to tell if he’s tired — he’ll always be there for my brothers and me, even if there is a mountain to move.

About that, while talking with my eldest brother, we agreed that none of us can say we spent a lot of time with our dad — not through his fault or choice; it just happened that each of us had a good portion of life… away. Probably these months have been the closest experience I have had with him. We’ve lived together in the same house for years; we’ve eaten countless times at the same table… but we shared this experience, and I’m hugely grateful for that.

He taught me a lot, and one of my greatest fears is not showing him enough gratitude. One only recognizes the importance of some acts after too much time, or at least this is true for me. I am so slow from this point of view.

Luckily, I feel that last year we strengthened our relationship, so I can say I have a few fewer regrets. As I read in a book a few months ago:

The real aches of old age are regrets.

Good, we’re making slow progress.

🎮 Nothing

🎧 Lots of music! Currently I’m on the first album by This Will Destroy You

📖 A modern Polish classic which I loved

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Slow Horses S01

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This will be a long journey. For now I watched two episodes and, despite the slow pace, it looks interesting.

Season one was very intriguing! The slow pace reminded me Breakin Bad. Let’s see how it evolves.

Rating: 👍

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Arriva Sergio

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This was an early gift from my girlfriend for Christmas. It is about a computer technician who is something more than a genius… Some kind of philosopher, and much more. I loved it, and the minor characters are… unexpected, at least!

Rating: 💾

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Eternity

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A truly lovely story. A wonderful concept at the core — which I’d love to be true — and a nice plot. Maybe a little long, but it’s totally worth it.

Rating: 🥹

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Gatto Mondadory - La Trilogia della Valle Scrivia

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Not gonna lie: this is an epic fantasy graphic novel. It is absurd, incredible, and funny. Much like in any very good media, it contains everything.

Rating: 💥

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Primeval and Other Times

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This was one of only two books I bought from a store last year, full price, after reading a page or two. It has an almost ethereal atmosphere that can surround the reader and transport them to this special Polish village. The first half was my favorite on my first reading, then the World War II changed not only the village, but the whole book. Anyway, it was a lovely read.

Rating: ✨

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Christmas As Usual

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The latest Christmas movie of our marathon (which I’m not sure is over): was very enjoyable, with a couple of almost unnerving moments due to an extremely high level of awkwardness. It makes you want to live in Norway.

Rating: 🍿

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Outer Dark

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

That was dark indeed. Dark but beautiful. I like the “fast” McCarthy’s style: whatever happens, it never stays too much on a single scene. One quote in particular struck me:

I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.

Rating: 😶

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Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I loved the animations, the sweet Christmassy story, and… the songs! Funny and beautiful!

Rating: 😍

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National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t like the term cringe, but that’s exactly the feeling I got from the first scenes. Then I got used to it. In a bad way.

Rating: 😬

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Wake Up Dead Man

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Fantastic atmosphere and very good performances for an entertaining movie. We need more films by Rian Johson!

Rating: 😌

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Jurassic World: Rebirth

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

They really ruined the franchise. The whole World first trilogy was garbage, but this is something beyond: it is unnecessarily long, boring, and has very few action scenes. A very high-budget B-movie. The dinosaurs are few, and… mutant?! In the next movie there must be aliens. That’s the only thing left.

When I read who the director is, I was shocked. I still have fond memories of Monsters, and this is a very badly written sequel.

Rating: 🥱

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28 Years Later

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This was a surprise. I didn’t expect such tension in the first half, and I loved it. The second one is a little slower and the doctor turns out to be probably the most interesting character.

Rating: 💀

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Eloise at Christmastime

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not sure how we found this half-forgotten TV movie, but it is surprisingly funny and tender. It should be a Christmas classic, like many others!

Rating: 👍

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Colors of Time

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This was the first film we watched in a cinema in years, and we really enjoyed it in a very small theater with a few people. Nice story, classic French comedy.

Rating: 🤗

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Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The emoji in the rating means cringe. That’s the feeling I got from several scenes, but overall it is a good comedy. Somehow I miss these late ’80s comedies.

Rating: 😨

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Thanksgiving

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Well, it’s a nice horror… I guess? Totally absurd in some scenes, but in the end it’s entertaining. Weird and unnecessary final scene.

Rating: 🫨

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The Studio S01

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m four episodes in, and it’s great!

Unfortunately, those were the funniest ones. The series started with a bang, but the second half is quite slow. Other than that, it is exceptionally well curated and funny, almost an instant classic!

Rating: 🚀

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MacOS Black and White Wallpapers

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t always use Brave browser, but the other day I stumbled upon a cool image by one of their sponsors.

Simple yet sexy

I liked the high-contrast circle in the middle, and immediately thought that it would be awesome on some Apple wallpapers. So, I found some of the old macOS pictures I liked most and made some tests. I think the result is pretty cool!

A little less sexy, but still ok

You can grab them here if you like them. For now there are three of them, probably I’ll add some more.

🎮 I played a bit with Cocoon, very interesting

🎧 I bought everything on Electric Valley Record’s Bandcamp!

📖 I started The City We Became, but abandoned it after a couple of hours. Maybe I’ll give it a second chance. Now I’m onto something darker, just a few pages in

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MaXXXine

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A mediocre horror tending toward good. I didn’t expect to see Giancarlo Esposito and Kevin Bacon! I think Pearl was the best one of Ti West’s trilogy.

Rating: 🤷

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The Life of Chuck

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I haven’t been struck by a movie like this for a while. It has everything: an amazing plot, a surprising soundtrack I’ve listened twice today, perfect editing, and good actors,… When I realized who the director was (as soon as half of the main cast showed up), I wasn’t surprised of the overall quality: the Flanagan team is amazing! Everything they did is worth watching. There are a couple of scenes here that alone are totally worth it.

Rating: 💫

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Witching And Bitching

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Well, my girlfriend wanted to watch “Bewitched”, and I might have misspelled it and found this… gem! It is fun, gory, and entertaining. Also, the VFX are quite incredible for a Spanish, unknown movie –for me, at least–!

Rating: 🤟

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…And the Circus Leaves Town - Kyuss

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t review albums here often, and for the occasion I chose one of my essentials. I owned it for years but didn’t listen to it properly until a few weeks ago. There are no sophisticated sounds or who-knows-what, but… it is heavy in a good way. You can hear so many hints of the sound that would evolve in Queens Of The Stone Age’s. Screeching and beautiful.

Rating:

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Frankenstein

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After The Shape of Water and Pinocchio, this is yet another little masterpiece by Del Toro. Really loved it. Time to read the book! 📖

Rating: 🫀

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The Phoenician Scheme

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Finally, a film by Wes Anderson that I like! The French Dispatch was boring, and Asteroid City was… well, saturated. This one is fun! Benicio Del Toro gets half the credit, and the photography makes the rest.

Rating: 😃

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Incubo

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

An old collection of horror stories from 1980. Vintage and spooky. *Chef’s kiss*

I really enjoyed most of the tales in this book. I only knew a couple of the artists —the most famous ones obviously, Agatha Christie, Matheson and Bradbury— and I’m happy to have found new ones! Some stories had a very distinct ’50s flavor, but others have a much more familiar King-ish tone. Lovely.

Rating: 🌘

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You've Got Mail

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Rewatched this after years because my girlfriend had never seen it. After thirty years, it is still enjoyable. It should have won an Oscar for the scenography: the old shop and Meg Ryan’s apartment are awesome!

Rating: 🧈

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The Three Musketeers

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been listening to this audiobook for the last two or three weeks, and I immediately fell in love with Dumas’s tone towards the reader (he sometimes seems to break the fourth wall) and the atmosphere he creates. Overall, the plot is very simple for such a long manuscript. One positive aspect is the slow rhythm combined with excellent characterization!

And, most of all, the finale is the icing on the cake: that b..ch! Well deserved!

I can’t wait to read (listen?) the sequels!

Rating: 👏

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The Devil's Backbone

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I was curious because I thought I had watched all of Del Toro’s movies… but I was wrong! And I loved this one. A soft touch(?) accompanies the viewer throughout, and the bittersweet finale is perfect. Very good young actors!

Rating: 😮

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KPop Demon Hunters

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Funny, but mostly with amazing animation techniques. I know the songs are catchy, but luckily they didn’t stick in my head for too long. 👀

Rating: 🙂

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When Evil Lurks

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I knew this film had a particular charm, but I never thought it would catch me like that. Very intriguing and shocking. A bit slow in the second half, but it’s worth it.

Rating: 😧

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Bridget Jones's Diary

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This one aged a bit less well than the sequel, but surely is funnier. A modern classic.

Rating: 🫢

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Clue

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To be honest, I almost fell asleep halfway through. In the end, it was quite funny and I liked the multiple finale sketch.

Rating: 🥸

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Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After a horror movie, we had to dial down the tension, so we chose this “old” comedy… not aged perfectly, but still enjoyable.

Rating: ✅

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Bring Her Back

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Wow! We watched this on Halloween night, and we weren’t disappointed! Poor boy! Not so much tension, but a lot of unwanted gore. Very good movie.

Rating: 💣

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The Dark Half

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I was unaware of the existence of this movie, and I liked it as a perfect early ’90s horror! The atmosphere, the SFX, the finale,… lovely(?).

Rating: 🪶

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Nullboard on a Raspberry Pi

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A few months ago, I stumbled upon Nullboard, a minimalist Kanban board. I’ve always had a soft spot for time and task-management softwares, as well for minimalism. I was immediately intrigued by its simplicity and its intelligence: the data is stored in the browser, so the entire software is just a simple HTML page.

The other day, I decided to self-host it on my brand new Raspberry Pi 5. I wanted some simple rules:

To access it on a port other than 80/443, from my LAN only — I chose 8880
To create backups using its own tool, but unfortunately this is only available for Windows

Regarding the second point, I quickly found a Linux alternative. Then, I decided to self-host both the Nullboard HTML page and the backup agent. After cloning both repositories on the Raspberry, I ended up with this directory structure:

/opt/
├── nullboard-nodejs-agent/
│   └── backups             # Where the backups will be stored
└── nullboard/
    └── index.html          # The actual Nullboard webpage

it’s that simple. The only remaining task was to make the Nullboard page available via a URL such as http://<raspberry-ip>:8880. Since I use Caddy, I added the following lines to the Caddyfile configuration:

:8880 {
    root * /opt/nullboard
    file_server

    route /agent* {
        header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *
        header Access-Control-Allow-Methods "GET, POST, PUT, OPTIONS"
        header Access-Control-Allow-Headers "Content-Type, X-Access-Token"

        # Respond to preflight OPTIONS requests
        @options {
            method OPTIONS
        }
        respond @options 204

        uri strip_prefix /agent
        reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:10001
    }
}

Also, the TCP ports 8880 and 10001 (the one used by the backup agent) must be opened on the Pi’s firewall.

Et voilà! A minimalist setup for a minimalist Kanban board.

The Alternative

On the same list of self-hostable software where I read about Nullboard, I also came across Planka. I couldn’t resist installing it because, just like Nullboard, it seemed quite simple and lightweight with almost zero configuration needed. However, it feels very different and has many more options… perhaps even too many! I’ll try them for a couple of weeks, then I’ll uninstall one… We’ll see!

🎮 …still nothing

🎧 Some metal suggested by Bandcamp

📖 Still the horror anthology

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Lies of P

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I turned on the PS4 after about a month, and noticed it was on the PS+. Let’s try it, I like the soulslikes!

Abandoned because I don’t have time — both for playing and for practicing so much for videogames. The atmosphere is quite peculiar, though; it reminds me a lot of Bloodborne.

Rating: 👏

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October Sky

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I was totally unaware of this film, and I liked it very much. All stories about family are touching to me, and this isn’t different.

Rating: 🥲

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New Self-Hosting Adventures

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In these first cooler weeks of autumn, I dedicated some of my spare time configuring a Raspberry Pi. I’ve owned one since 2017 or so and used it mainly as an ad blocker. Now, after moving into the new home, I wanted to host some services on a tiny personal server.

Resiliency Is Mandatory

Working in data protection, I know how easy it is to lose data; so, backups and redundancy were mandatory for this project. I considered buying a refurbished server, mostly for the RAID controllers of which they are provided, but the energy consumption is very high, and overall it would be excessive — more than anything, my girlfriend would hate it and she’d hide it somewhere. So, I did some research and found several solutions to implement RAID on a Raspberry Pi.

I admit I asked ChatGPT the pros and cons of several setup, and I’m happy with the answers. Eventually, the choice fell on a HAT adapter for two SATA drives. It does not support RAID, but I chose to use ZFS as filesystem: it surely uses more CPU than a RAID controller, but the consumption on a Pi 5 is irrelevant.

So, according to these instructions, this is the approach I’d recommend to install ZFS on Raspberry Pi OS:

echo 'deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmware' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install --no-install-recommends dkms
$ sudo apt install --no-install-recommends zfsutils-linux/bookworm-backports zfs-dkms/bookworm-backports
$ sudo modprobe zfs
$ sudo systemctl enable zfs-import-cache
$ sudo systemctl enable zfs-mount

Then, to create a ZFS mirror with the name zdata:

$ sudo zpool create -o ashift=12 -o autoexpand=on -O compression=lz4 -O recordsize=1M -O atime=off -O xattr=sa zdata mirror wwn-0x5000c500fab2c696 wwn-0x5000c500fab296a6

Note: the last two parameters are the names of the drives attached to the controller found with /dev/disk/by-id/.

About the storage, I chose two 3.5" 2TB 7200rpm disks — they should have a longer life span than 2.5" ones. One huge downside, though, is that these drives needed 12V input, while the Pi 5 wants 5V. Simplest solution: use a different power supply attached directly to the SATA HAT. Easy to say, but there was a further issue: I couldn’t find in any documentation the size of the 12V input barrel, so I had to wait for the part to arrive and then try a bunch of them (a very kind thank you to Layla, who provided the part!). Eventually, I found it after a couple of attempts.

I think we need a new standard, as for USB-C

So I had the Pi 5, the HAT, two hard drives, and two power adapters. Ready to boot! About that… What OS to choose?
After pondering a bit, I stuck with Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm: since it’s based on Debian, I will probably find the best compatibility with any Linux software I want to install.

ZFS and Backups

As mentioned above, I immediately set up a ZFS mirror (a.k.a. a software RAID), and I was impressed by the swiftness with which the software manages its internal checks. I had never used it before, and it’s always fun to implement new things when they work well! I hope I’ll never need to check whether the error detection works flawlessly or whether it’s easy to recover a whole disk of the pool, but it should be, and it’s enough for now.¹

So, about the local redundancy, for a home server with not-so-critical data, it should be fine. Then, it was time to think about the total loss of the Raspberry. I needed a remote backup. Where then? With my VPS, I use an Hetzner Storage Box, so I opted for the same solution. Since 1TB is a lot of space, but optimization is better, I chose restic as a backup tool: it deduplicates and encrypts data, and it’s quite fast! Restoring files is surely slower than a simple copy and paste, but one just needs to learn a couple of commands.

Therefore, after scheduling² the scripts to back up the several applications (we’ll talk about them in a minute), I’m quite confident that the system is well-protected against failure. So… What is this system for?

Always DeGoogling

The main reason I bought all this stuff was to create a simple media server. First, I tried OpenMediaVault, but then I realized that Jellyfin was all I needed: fast to configure, simple, and efficient. I exclusively use it locally, so I didn’t set up a reverse proxy, and it works very well on all our devices — except for the Samsung smart TV, may the devil catch the creators of Tizen OS.

Then, I decided to try an alternative to Google Photos. I already wrote about Ente, but after the issues while importing Google Takeouts, I decided to try the other main player: Immich. Well… The problems were the same, but I understand that it’s not the developers’ fault. It’s Google that slightly compresses the photos, so the ones on the phone seem different to softwares than the ones uploaded in the cloud. So, when importing the Takeout first, and then the ones on the local device… it duplicates everything.

Luckily, I discovered that doing the opposite doesn’t cause the issue, and it works quite well (so it should do the same for Ente): first the phone, then the Takeout. It worked! After deleting a few duplicates easily found with the proper Immich utility, I was good to go: all my ~80GB of photos were imported! It took a few hours for the machine learning container to process all the photos and videos, but it did a great job recognizing the faces (this function always creeps me out) and organizing the “map” of the pictures.

Finally, I quickly set up Caddy as a reverse proxy (I’ve always used NGINX, but I wanted to try something else) and Authentik as local OAuth for 2FA, and I finally got the full package! To be honest, configuring Authentik was maybe the hardest part because I had no idea how it worked. The documentation is well-written, but the software is so huge that it’s not easy to just set up a TOTP as I wanted. Eventually I got it, and I felt like Hackerman.

Chat Control Mania

After writing another similar script to copy the Immich and Authentik backups and data to the cloud, I was ready for the latest big project: an XMPP server for personal use.

Those were the days when Chat Control was in vogue again on Mastodon and some YouTube channels. I thought this could be the occasion to test XMPP, which has always been a niche product from my point of view. I came across Snikket, which seemed to be the simplest solution. On Hacker News, a couple of months ago, I had read a very positive experience, but unfortunately I spent a day trying to solve an issue I could barely find on the internet. I could have asked the community, sure, but the comments on HN made me curious about Prosody.

It took me a while to understand the different modules I could (or should) activate, and a few more hours to understand the TURN and STUN server. It was a lot of information 😵‍💫, but eventually… now you can reach me also through a brand-new XMPP JID.

🎮 Nothing, but I download the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy on PS4

🎧 I just discovered a super power rock single from Norway

📖 An horror anthology that started with a bang!

In my experience, even with RAID controllers, it’s always very delicate to recover a configuration or rebuild the array when it’s not done automatically. ↩︎
Instead of the simple crontab, I recently started using the systemd timers, and they’re much handier because they write in the journal/log — managing the output is much easier! ↩︎

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Little Shop of Horrors

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How is it I’ve never seen this film? It’s awesome! I don’t particularly love musicals, but most of the songs are memorable. Also, the cast is perfect! Steve Martin’s role is short but epic. Recommended for anyone who appreciates ’80s comedies.

Rating: 💣

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Practical Magic

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Following the trend of October-ish movies, we enjoyed this… classic? I didn’t quite understand the point of the whole film, but it was fun.

Rating: ⚡️

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James and the Giant Peach

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My girlfriend and I watched it because neither of us had seen it before, but… we quite regretted it. The first half is ok, then just boring.

Rating: 🥱

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Lost Man's Lane

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Spooky season 2025 - here we come! 🎃

Meh. I didn’t like the narrator’s style or tone. I understand that Mrs. Green was a pioneer in detective stories, but there are two main issues: some of the clichés are excessive, and some parts are not well explained. It was too rushed or too slow.

Rating: 😕

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Weapons

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Wow! Such a good and tense movie! Very good start for the spooky month.

Rating: 💇

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Quand vient l'automne

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A punch to the stomach. A quite lovely(?) story with a bittersweet ending.

Rating: 💔🍂

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Evolution From Sloth

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve got a couple of minutes before yet another Teams call, and I’d like to write an appreciation post. I don’t usually do it, but I’ve really enjoyed working outside this past week.

I’ve literally built a stone wall! It’s only 40 centimeters tall and looks a bit wonky, but it’s actually quite stable! The more time passes, the more amazed I am by how I’ve changed in the last three or four years. I’ve slowly transitioned from a sloth to… I still don’t know how to describe it, but I’m much more active now.

I’ve spent my weekend working on the wall and the last part of the fence with my bluetooth buds in my ears. I’ve listened to Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, we.own.the.sky, Maliciouz¹, and the latest Witcher audiobook. Despite the physical exertion, it was truly relaxing.

Here’s the result to yesterday:

The first row of stones, mostly the largest

That’s a long wall indeed

Almost finished, I also made a large step for the stairs

Final result, after filling the back of the wall with soil. Quite happy with it!

For now, I love working on our happy island in the country.

🎮 nada

🎧 See above. I fell in love with we.own.the.sky ❤️

📖 Lost Man’s Lane. Not excited.

I just discovered their motto on Bandcamp: LOW + SLOW + LOUD. Love it! ↩︎

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Keeping On

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Since we moved into the new house, I’ve been working outside almost every day. There’s so much to do, but finally we can see some major changes.

The fence can finally be finished after months of waiting: the builder abruptly stopped answering my phone calls, and abandoned piles of garbage on our property. After waiting, and waiting,… I made some trips to the junkyard and got rid of most of that. Now I can build the last two gates and keep the wild boars away from the house.

About wild animals, it’s wonderful to see quite a few unexpected neighbors wandering around the house. Almost every morning, while having breakfast, we see from the windows:

A couple of squirrels
A mother roe deer with two fawns
Two hares

Sadly, at night we had for weeks the worst next-door companions: dormice. They got into our wooden roof about two months ago, and we fought a long battle to get rid of them. Now, after many sleepless nights and trips to the rooftop, it seems they’re gone… but we can’t be sure. These are the weeks when they should hibernate, maybe they’re just silent. We tried repellents, traps… I was really desperate because we asked anyone –I really mean it!–, but only a couple of people gave us sensible advice. Let’s hope for the best.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Look at that sneaky mf. He's a truly talented climber.

About the work the builder left unfinished, I ended up asking my father and my uncle for help. They’re almost eighty years old, but they offered without hesitation. They’re always happy to help, and I sincerely had some of the best moments with them: a warm day full of satisfying work, jokes in dialect, and a lunch together. These are just the best days.

🎮 –

🎧 I fell in love again with Aerosmith

📖 Still on Lost Man’s Lane

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Fahrenheit 451

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I had already read this book in my early twenties, and I recently found the audiobook, so I wanted to refresh it. Wow, this is more actual than ever. Bradbury was a genius, I think every writer-wannabe would give an arm to have his imagination or just his talent to predict the future.

Rating: ✨

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The Lady of the Lake

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been listening to the Witcher’s audiobooks saga since this spring, and I just love these books. Each one is better and larger than the previous, the characters’ choices are so well explained… I wish it could never end. I loved this book –the fifth one–, and I can’t wait to go on.

Rating: ❤️

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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I think I never read a book by Verne, so it’s better catch up.

That was a really amazing journey. I am impressed that in 1869 Verne was able to describe such advanced technology and distant scenarios with such precision. It is sci-fi indeed. I really liked it! It is a bit verbose when describing some characteristics of the various creatures, but it is very entertaining.

Bonus points: there are references to climate change, which are the oldest I’ve found so far!

Rating: 🤩

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My De-Googling Costs in 2025

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This will be a quick post to list the products I chose in order to avoid the usual Google/Microsoft/Apple products, mostly cloud-related. We can call them alternatives, but in my opinion they should be competitors. Obviously, the main feature I looked for is privacy.

Kagi - 5€/month

I’ve been using this search engine for a few months, and I would recommend it to anyone. It works perfectly (for now) and it has excellent features such as A.I. integration and translations (and proofreading!).

Posteo - 1€/month

Just a simple mailbox, compatible with POP and IMAP. I’ve used Tuta for a while, but the limit of the web application made me change my mind. I still have the account, though. It is an awesome service!

NextCloud - free, but hosted on Hetzner

This is my choice for personal cloud storage: a VPS running Linux and NextCloud. It has 40 GB of space, of which a little less is usable — I installed some other software too. There are apps for macOS and iOS, and potentially many customizations that I haven’t explored yet. Maybe that’s the best bargain among all.

On the same Linux server, I also installed:

GoToSocial + Phanpy as my personal social network, part of the Fediverse
Linkding as a bookmark manager … and I host this very blog, along with other websites.

The cost of the VPS + daily auto backups + 1TB of external storage is ~8€/month.

Mullvad ProtonVPN - 2€/month

I’ve been a Mullvad user for several months, but the Proton two-year offer got me — it costs less than half. I hate that I can’t use the client via command-line natively, but overall it is a good service.

So, the grand total is a little less than 200€ per year. Is it worth it? Well, considering that the largest part are hosting costs¹, for now it is well-spent money.

The worst part is the maintenance of the systems: every update can potentially break everything, and since the VPS is a single machine, it must be hardened. Also, every two or three years, it will be good to update the OS to the newer release — and that means re-creating it. Quite a pain for an IT admin, who already does that for work.

—

What Is Still Missing

There are two main points for which I need to find self-hostable options — probably they’re already available; I just never tried them.

Music Streaming

Currently, since I use Apple products, my choice is Apple Music — and I’m quite happy with the service. I have to find a lightweight product to replace it.

Photos

I tried Ente and it has lots of potential, but there are some issues while importing Google data. So, for now, I still use Google Photos to archive them. I’d like to change, but it’s not easy because of its quality. Dang it.

🎮 Still nothing!

🎧 Some old albums from Chevelle

📖 20,000 Thousand Leagues Under The Sea

I’d like to buy a server/hypervisor to install in the new house, so I could cut all of Hetzner’s costs. ↩︎

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Superman

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I had heard mixed opinions about this movie, but I liked it! It’s a bit slow, the humor is sometimes weird… but Mr. Terrific alone is worth the price of the ticket.

Rating: ☀️

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La Luna e i Falò

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The only famous book I know set in my area. I love reading about those years, so…!

It was an interesting reading: very close to our reality (both the place and the country) and yet so far in time – just a hundred years ago. I’ll read more books by Pavese.

Rating: ☀️

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Finally

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Finally.

We’ve been in our new house for two weeks now, and it is still strange driving here when coming back home at night. We wrote a to-do list of the uncountable things to do, and every day I’m working as much as I can to keep the pace. It’s not easy because some of the items are really complex projects (e.g. the gates of the fence), but with patience we’ll work them out.

I learned to do lots of new things in the last few months:

I repaired the electrical switch of a tree pruner
I built a stone wall(!)¹
I learned to keep my vertigo at bay when climbing ladders (or trees)

…honestly, I did so many things that I can’t remember. I’ve been silent on this blog for months, and you can imagine where I spent all my time and energy.

Now I have to stop writing because I have to cut down two dead trees and then organize the wood in the brand-new tiny woodshed I’ve built.

I hope that, with the cold season, more time will come to start writing again, but it’s better to have low expectations. Anyway, it feels good to wake up in the house you’ve been dreaming of for years.

🎮 Nothing!

🎧 In the last few days I discovered Sheev and I love them!

📖 Still La Luna e i Falò, I didn’t have the time to read!

To be honest, I did it three times. Now it’s quite straight. ↩︎

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The Quiet Girl

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Unexpectedly lovable. Recommended for a fall evening.

Rating: 🥲

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Thunderbolts*

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Maybe I should avoid Marvel movies, I know a little about the comics characters. In this case, I didn’t understand the antagonist at all.

Rating: 🤷‍♂️

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Oddity

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Unexpectedly creepy! One of the most scariest monsters ever seen, in my opinion… even if it moves in just one scene!

Rating: 🗿

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Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Maybe the movie where I appreciated Daniel Radcliffe more! Funny, but the songs are still the best parts — even until the end of the credits.

Rating: 🆗

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Lo Chiamavano Jeeg Robot

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yet another movie I had to watch for decades. Enjoyable, even though it is not my genre. It’d be nice if we made more films like this in Italy.

Rating: 👊

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Insomnia

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The rating represents my face when I read Directed by Christopher Nolan during the opening credits! I didn’t expect that! I’ve always remembered this movie’s trailer since it came out, and wondered how it was. The cast ~~duo~~ trio is explosive — at least in theory. It has unique vibes, à la Twin Peaks in some parts, but… something is missing.

Anyway, with this picture I’ve filled my missing pieces with Robin Williams, and I can only confirm that… he was very good.

Rating: 😯

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One Hour Photo

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I had this movie on the to-watch list for… ages. Finally, I did it, and… I quite enjoyed it! A bit unsettling in a couple of parts, but the final act is very interesting.

Rating: 🥲

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Take Shelter

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Watched this the night before leaving for vacation (after a few hours of sleep)… and I don’t have fond memories. Good actors indeed, but the finale is a bit of a cliché.

Rating: 😕

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My Anti-Boar Fence

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Today we’ve been cherrypicking from our trees, and it was wonderful now that the garden looks a little less like a construction site. I almost finished working on the anti-boar fence, and I think it is pretty good — at least it is as I imagined it.

I wanna do an exercise: write some kind of instructions for the project. I never did anything similar, especially on this blog… but hey, there’s always space for something new. Let’s start from the materials!

I’ve used:

225 cm “T” iron poles — about 70(!)¹
175 cm “L” corner rods — about 18 (I lost count)
180 cm tall fences, both straight and “flabby” — about 140 meters for now
Wire to stretch (and its buddies) — uncountable meters
Wire to tie — even more than the previous one
10x10 cm electro-welded mesh - 5mm wire — 15x 3x2 meters sheets
8 mm bolts
Drill
Pincers (your best friend in this adventure ❤️)
13 mm wrench
Spirit level
Sand or gravel
5 or 6 bags of cement
10 meters cord, or more, tied to a tiny stick

The procedure is quite simple, but repetitive a.f. depending on length of the fence. I wanted to keep it as large as possible, without fencing my whole property — I would have spent three times, and I already spent a lot.

The biggest issue is the terrain inclination: if you have a plain garden, setting up the fence is almost fun. Though, I did half of the work with a very unsympathetic slope, so everything was more difficult. In brief:

On a leveled terrain, a straight fence is the easiest (but not necessarily the best)
On a slope, it’s better to use the floppy one

Solid Foundation

Since the net and the wires will be in tension, the poles must be underground for at least 30-40 centimeters. Personally, I decided to use a manual drill like this one and dig the holes for all the vertical “T” rods. To get the line straight, I tied a tiny cord on the first pole and, at the end of the trail, I put the little stick in the ground; then, I followed this line to make the holes, about 2 meters apart from each other. I mixed the cement (by hand) with sand and some gravel and poured it in the 40-50-centimeters-deep holes.² With the spirit level, I assured that the poles were perfectly straight, and let the concrete harden for 48 hours at least.

These are the very first vertical poles I put down (before the cement). You can see the string at their feet.

Then, it was time for the angular poles: in the corners and in any changes of direction, the tension differs, and so the fence needs a strong support. So, we have to dig ~45° holes to insert the “L” poles. Once they touch the vertical one, we have to use a bolt to join them. If we need a hole on a different height than the default one, we can just use the drill with the 8mm bit. Then, we prepare the concrete for these poles, pour it, and let it dry.

Good news: we’re at one third of the work! We can let our drill rest.

My loyal companion of many holes.

Stretch The Wires

Next, the large wire must be tied at three heights on the vertical poles: on the top, on the bottom, and in the middle. Only on the top it is mandatory to pass it through the built-in hole of the pole: on the slopes and when the inclination varies a lot, I let the middle wire free. It is important to use pincers to tie the wire from the start (e.g. a corner) until the end of the straight segment.

When all the wires are set, they must be brutally cut with the pincers to insert the “stretchers”. Once the two extremities are inserted there, the screw must be turned in order to get the wires in tension — not too high for now. Now, we are ready to…

Release the Kraken Fences

This is by far the worst step, especially for the “floppy” fence. The goal is to extend the fence and tie it to the first pole of a “segment”, one with the “L” pole attached. The main problem is that the fence is 1,80 meters tall, rolled up in 25-meters-long coils, it is heavy, and the floppy one is a literal mess of wires,… It is very easy to get lost!

Solution: this must be done by two people. No easy way out. My dad helped me with this, and I can’t thank him enough.

Once the big roll is started, the goal is to anchor the beginning to the pole with many joints of the light wire. Then, while rolling it out on the whole segment, four of five knots are enough for each pole — the important ones are the first and the last of each sector. Finally, once the net is spread from the beginning to the end of the segment, it is time to:

Stretch it a bit more, as possible, by hand or using a long bar
Tie it up with the wire (see the next step)

That is the floppy fence just tied to the vertical rods.

As you can see up here, I also used those rectangular iron poles for a future gate — that will be another mess.

At this point, you should have the fence tied up to the vertical poles, and finally we’re at about 70% of the work!

You Will Hate Wire

Now it is time to knot the grid to:

All the “L” rods (three or four double knots per pole are enough)
All the tension wires (one single knot every 30-40 centimeters)

You have to make the light wire pass through the holes in the net and twist it with the pincers. It is not particularly difficult, but it will take so long! Maybe it’s me that I wanted to overdo, but I two or three-hundred-meters-long skeins of wire just for this step. 🧶 🧶 🧶

Once finished this… You’re done! At least, with a regular fence. Pfft. I wanted an anti-boar fence, so this would be just too easy for such animals to bend with their sweet snouts.

That’s why I added the electro-welded mesh. I cut it in “slices” of 50x200 centimeters, with the “teeth” pointing downward, and hammered it underground next to the fence.

A close-up of a corner. You can see the several knots and the cement at the base.

So the mesh is basically anchored 10 centimeters in the soil. Then, I made other knots to tie it to both the poles and fence — the strongest points are always the double knots on the rods.

And that’s really it, for now. In the next few days, we’ll enjoy a short vacation in Bretagne, then we’ll move in the new house.

The fence is almost finished, but we still miss the gates! We’ll see what we’ll build. 🛠️

🎮 I started the first Ace Attorney on the Miyoo Plus, but I’m just a few minutes in

🎧 A super metal-stoner album from France

📖 Still the same

I also followed this website’s tutorials on how to set up the grid. Obviously, theory is different than practice. ↩︎
I made a different test for two poles: I poured sand and cement powder directly, without water. It was spring, and they hardened anyway… but it took much longer. I think the concrete is better. ↩︎

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2025's First Half - Alternatives

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the last few weeks, I started using more alternative products for my daily routine in front of the computer. Here is a brief list with my opinions, hoping to help someone make a little change.

Kagi and Orion

Kagi is a new search engine which I switched to from DuckDuckGo. It is simple, fast, and has a cool integration with an AI summarizer. It also provide a super duper translation tool which I love.

They also develop Orion, a browser for iOS and macOS alternative to Safari. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks, and I think it is super fast and handy on mobile, but on desktop Firefox is still a few steps ahead. Too bad that the latter is horrible on iOS.

Linkding

For the self-hosting lovers, Linkding is a substitute for Pocket, or Wallabag. It is a bookmark manager to organize the links by tags. It has a clean UI and has handy integrations with SinglePage (a browser extension that allows to saving a web page in a… single file) and Internet Archive. It is also super lightweight.

Last interesting note: you can share your bookmarks in a public page. Here are mine (for now there are just a couple because I’m still testing it).

LogSeq… but not really

While reading about a simple markdown paper, I stumbled upon the complex world of LogSeq. I already use Obsidian, and I understood the differences between the two… but it is quite hard to change the mentality with how one writes down notes.

I’m still experimenting with work annotations, and I will keep on for the next few days… but for now, I think I’ll stick with Obsidian.

BookPlayer for iOS

I’ve found the best audiobook player for iOS, and it is very easy to send audiobooks to the device via AirDrop.

To be honest, I don’t like audiobooks very much, but while working near the new house, I started listening to The Witcher saga. It is awesome. I know these are big words, but… it could be better than Tolkien’s Middle-Earth saga. 👀

🎮 Thank Goodness You’re Here!, and I loved it

🎧 Some old Pallbearer albums

📖 Still on La Luna e i Falò and the backlog…

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Thank Goodness You're Here!

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the funniest games I’ve ever played – even if there are very few mechanics. Of course the humor is the best part, but the animation and graphic style are superb!

Rating: ❤️

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Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers

Sat, 31 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This movie is hilarious: its very own mix of animation styles makes it unique, and the humor for millennials is the best part. Some references (and crossovers) made me laugh more than they should!

Rating: 💥

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My Family and Other Animals

Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I had read Durrell’s book a few months ago, and I liked it very much. I loved this adaptation: the cast, the humor,… very well done!

Rating: 🐞

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Almost, Almost,…

Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m forcing myself to take a break from the frenzy of the last couple of months. I’ve been spending 90% of my free time working on our new home… which is almost ready! 🎉 It is already habitable, but we decided to take the things slow, and we’ll have first a vacation, then we’ll move at about the end of June.

Or, at least, these are the plans for now.

The construction site is almost closed, and we are facing the last real pain: dampness in the walls, coming from tuff underground –the house is old, it hasn’t good external foundation–. In the meanwhile, we ordered (and assembled) lots of IKEA furniture, painted many of the wood ones, and worked a lot in the garden. The latter is amazing, but it will seriously take years to transform it in the one we wish. It is still quite wild, even after three or four years we’re working on it.

The view from near the house, at the beginning of May

In the next few weeks, after a short vacation in Bretagne –we’re going back there after nine years!– we’ll take the big step. I can’t wait to finish(?) this story, to start writing again, and to sleep in our brand new second-hand bed — that is a story which will require a dedicated post. After the moving, I think I will write the whole story in some form, a tragicomical novel. Now it isn’t the time yet: we’re still in it, but we can almost breathe!

🎮 For my birthday, I got a Miyoo Mini Plus, and I’m organizing a good library!

🎧 Lo-Pan’s latest album… and their past ones!

📖 An Italian classic set in my area

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend S02

Sat, 24 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here we go with the sophomore!

*Still in progress* 🏃

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The Evolution Man, Once Upon an Ice Age, or What We Did to Father

Sat, 24 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I was attracted by the title, and then read Terry Pratchett’s introduction… it got me immediately!

It was a nice reading. Funny tone and one or two nice touches.

Rating: 🔥

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Sorry To Bother You

Fri, 23 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This was an unexpected movie! It lacks a good rhythm, but the main character and some crazy plot twists turn it into a surprise.

Rating: 😵‍💫

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Better Man

Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t say that I liked it. It is way too long, and it has a strange, narcissistic way to tell the story that I can’t stand too much. But hey, Live at Knebworth was one my very favorite albums of the teenage years, so…

Rating: 🤷‍♂️

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Testament

Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

That was heavy. I didn’t expect so much anxiousness. This movie left me a very unpleasing feeling, but… it’s good.

Rating: 😟

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Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

Sat, 10 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t know what to expect, and it ended up to be a lovely story with a cute plot, awesome characters, and overall a very cozy atmosphere.

Rating: 🙂

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Here

Fri, 09 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As my girlfriend told, “I don’t even know if calling it a movie”. The story is… sad, and even too realistic. The CGI sometimes is just too much, even though spectacular in most cases.

Rating: 😕

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend S01

Wed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We’re halfway through the first season, and it is wonderfully hilarious!

I totally confirm that: this series is just fun. I just don’t completely understand a couple of characters, but everything is perfect! The songs are awesome.

Rating: 💯

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I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve had this short story in the usual list for months, and I finally read it. Well… wow. It can transmit so many awful emotions in a few pages: pain, hate, distress,… Fasctinating, but terribly contemporary. Now I’m reading the rest of the stories of the collection.

The other stories are okay. The main one’s atmosphere is on a different level.

Rating: 🫠

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Blade Runner 2049

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I thought it was mediocre, but I was amazed by the plot, the tension, and the visuals (well, it’s a Villeneuve’s movie, so I had to epect it). What a sequel!

Rating: 👍👍👍

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God of War Ragnarök

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Finally I started this game! The first one was a masterpiece, the expectations are like 🚀🚀🚀

After three months(!), I finally 100%ed this game. As the prequel, I loved it. As you may have guessed, I love stories based on mythology, and Kratos’s Norse saga is amazing. Some quests are definetely fillers, as the one asks to find nine flowers across the worlds… but overall, it’s another Sony masterpiece.

Rating: ❤️🪓

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Mad God

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A 90-minute unsettling trip. It gave the vibes that only Tool music videos did. It is truly a work of art, but the viewer must be… in the right mood.

Rating: 🤯

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Kaos - S01

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Great cast indeed, and I loved the mythological premise. I didn’t like it, though. The main problems, for me, are a forced sense of humor and a bit too much gratuitous violence. Meh.

Rating: 😐

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Devs - S01

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I heard about this series on a podcast, and when I heard that it was created by Alex Garland, my mind immediately went to Men, which I didn’t like too much… but I was wrong! I liked Devs a lot! Other than empathizing with several characters which I didn’t think, I loved almost everything about it. Recommended to any sci-fi lover.

Rating: 😲

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Longer Days, Better Days

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Finally, spring has bloomed in all its splendor. In these last days, I’m also enjoying getting up earlier, partly because days are longer, but overall because the house cats act like crazy when they’re hungry.

There are lots of works to do in the new house, now that finally we finished pruning the trees. I’m dedicating my spare time to a fence against wild animals: the woods on our hills are full of roe deers, wild boars¹… ad wolves, in winter! So I started digging holes for metal poles, stuck in cement.

Working from here has its rewards

Yesterday, I got up early and worked in the countryside before starting my actual work, spending the first hours of the morning outside… and I loved it. I hope that this weather –not too hot, and not cold at all– will last for a month at least. The problem is the extreme hot during the summer days, we are forced to work in the morning and in the evening. But that will be another issue, for now I’ll enjoy these days with a perfect climate.

🎮 I’m 40 hours deep in God of War Ragnarök, and I’m loving it!

🎧 Oh GY!BE, here we go again ❤️

📖 I read I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, and… wow!

I have a (not so) fun fact to tell about those… Maybe another time. ↩︎

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The Thirteenth Floor

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I had this movie on the list (ah, the famous list) from a decade at least… Finally I watched it, and I understand all the comparisons with Matrix. The latter pushes everything much farther, but this one is more than appreciable. And it has very nice nineties vibes!

Rating: 👍

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The Holdovers

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Probably the best movie I’ve watched in 2025 so far. The duo of protagonists is awesome.

Rating: 🎄

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Squid Game S02

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Surely the plot is interesting and the crescendo is very well built, but… I just can’t stand some characters, and the finale follows the modern forbidden trend of the To Be Continued.

Rating: 🫤

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Random Prompts #7 - Liquid Gothic

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I took advantage of a rainy day to finally write a new story. Wrote and reviewed in a single day. I know it is forbidden, but as I wrote in the previous post, there’s no time to lose in these days.

Hervé couldn’t get rid of the images in his head, they kept recurring before his eyes. He was running on the muddy trail in the woods, damp up to his knees. The well was ten minutes away; there was plenty of time to rethink his guilt. He knew he was responsible.

His older sister had been ill for ten days with a high fever, and the chaplain was constantly at their place, blessing her and praying by her bed. Nevertheless, he had very little hope for her. He eventually suggested reaching the well of Saint Denis, whose holy waters were said to be remedial. Desperate, his dad sold their cow and two sheep, and got a whole silver sou, the largest amount the boy had ever seen. Hervé was given this huge treasure, and had specific instructions: reach the well –about five miles after the village–, offer the coin to the Saint, and fill up the costrel with water.

Unfortunately, some devil must have cast a curse on him! When he left home, black clouds were approaching on the horizon, almost touching the lush hills of central France. He didn’t care much about the weather, and started running. From their farm, he reached a hamlet with just a dozen of people –there wasn’t even a church–, then followed the unpaved road towards the larger village. Before he could reach it, heavy raindrops started falling, and within ten minutes he was cold and soaked. When he was a child, he often played in the woods in that area, and knew of a trail which could save him a few minutes. Impatiently, he abandoned the main road to get the shortcut, but he didn’t think how sludgy the footpath would be. The thick rain made his leather shoes stick to the mud, and eventually he fell face down. When he got up, he wiped himself as best as he could, and kept running. After fifteen minutes, he reached the well.

A tiny stone chapel had been built around the spring, several paintings and sculptures adorned the building. Hervé entered the wooden door, wide open, and kneeled while making the sign of the cross. The well was in the center of the building, with a rope and a bucket attached to a pulley. It was late afternoon, the sky was dark, and just a faint light entered from the windows. He stepped in and looked in the pit: it was totally black, no water could be seen. With his hand, he reached into his pocket to get the sou… but it was gone! He patted all his body, looked in every corner of the mud-stained clothes, but couldn’t find the silver coin, so small yet huge. It must have fallen when he stumbled. He considered going back to that spot, but the rain was pouring too hard for the coin not to be covered by the mud. It was his family’s whole fortune, and he wasn’t capable of guarding it.

There was no time for self-pity, so the boy took a decision without pondering too much on the consequences: if Saint Denis was good-hearted, he would understand his situation, and offer his healing help without any pledge.

The rope was twisted around a stone on the side of the well. Hervé untangled it and lowered the pail. After a moment, he felt it touching the water with both his hands and ears: the sound was muffled by the pouring rain, but his tact did not fail him. When the bucket was pulled up, it was full of water. He opened the costrel, a portable bottle with a cork, and filled it. Some drops fell on his hands, so ice-cold that made him jump. He chuckled nervously, thinking to himself, It is a well, the water is cold down there, you knucklehead. Despite those words, his skin seemed to burn where the drops had fallen; but there was no time to lose, so he closed the costrel and ran back outside.

He avoided running –it wasn’t the case to lose the holy water too– and reached his house safely after about one hour. The rain didn’t let up for a minute, and despite the cold, his hands kept feeling strange. When he entered home, the chaplain was there, and immediately took the receptacle.

While trying to warm up near the fireplace, the boy kept an ear to the other room, where Agace lay in her bed. He looked at his hands, which had strange black spots where the water from the well had wet them. After some suppressed noises he couldn’t get, a scream broke the silence. It was his sister! Hervé ran to the bedroom and stood by the door, deeply confused by what he saw.

His parents stood against a wall, completely frightened, staring at the bed. On it, Agace was twitching painfully, screaming with all her lungs, despite nobody was touching her. In the corner of the room, the chaplain –almost a shadow, in the feeble candlelight– was holding the rosary so firmly that his knuckles had whitened. Hervé never saw a more terrorized face. After a while, the man whispered, “Te impero, spiritus malignus, ut exis ab hoc loco!” and raised the crucifix with little conviction. The boy looked again at his sister, and only then noticed the marks on her arms. There were black spots all over her forearms, and new ones appeared on her shoulders before his very eyes. They were similar to the ones on his own hands, but… they were shaped like handprints! Black imprints were appearing on Agace’s whole body, and in the meanwhile she was shifting violently on the straw mattress. It was… something holding her, yanking her. Hervé instinctively stepped forward and grabbed her hand, but an invisible force hit him, like a hammer in the chest, and was thrown back against the door frame. His mother screamed, and when he got up again, his fear grew even more: his sister’s body was sinking into the bed, one limb at the time. Her legs had disappeared in the wet linen sheet, and her left arm was being drawn downwards. Her eyes were wide open, she was completely awake compared to previous days: she was aware of what was happening, but nobody could comprehend. At last, a black hand-shaped mark appeared on her mouth, and her voice was muffled. With a final tug, she disappeared in the straw mattress, leaving the room in total silence. Only the heavy breathing of all those present could be heard. They all stared at each other, and at the bed.

When the boy asked what had happened, his father said that Agace had only been wet with the water he had brought. Not even an instant passed, and Hervé had an intuition: the pledge. Without giving anyone an explanation, he quickly wore his shoes and sprang out the front door. The rain didn’t stop, and the road was barely visible. He passed the hamlet and then took the shortcut through the woods. He focused on remembering where he had fallen, retracing his previous steps, and when he reached the supposedly correct point, he kneeled down deep in the mud. He rummaged and scavenged everywhere, but could only find stones and bits of wood. When he was about to give up, after maybe five minutes, his fingers grasped something flat and metallic. He immediately picked it up and cleaned it as best as he could, rubbing it against his shirt — there it was, the silver sou! He got up clumsily, completely covered in dirt, holding the small coin in his hand with all his strength.

When he reached the church, only the occasional flashes of lightning illuminated the surroundings. Inside it was pitch black, so he stepped cautiously, and kneeled in reverence. He leaned towards the opening of the well, straining his ears — silence.

“Agace?” he called with trembling voice. No response.

Then, he opened the hand holding the coin, and noticed that it was bleeding because of the excessive strength. He cleaned the coin once more and kissed it, while murmuring a prayer; then he stretched forth his arm, and dropped the coin in the blackness. He couldn’t hear any sound when it should have hit the water. Maybe it was covered by the heavy rain, but he wasn’t so sure.

Time passed. First, he kept staring at the void in the well, but after a minute or two, that stillness became unbearable. He sat against the stone wall, and waited. He kept praying, even if his thoughts were not directed to Saint Denis. The boy could sense that there was something else, much older than the stone church and the saint to which it was dedicated. He was lost in his thoughts, exhausted, and eventually dozed off.

When Hervé woke up, he was startled and scared because it was totally dark, and he couldn’t remember where he was. After a moment, he recalled everything, and calmed down. Outside, the storm was gone, and the sky was of the color that precedes dawn. He got up, and approached the well one last time. He looked down, and saw nothing. The boy let out a heavy breath, and stepped towards the exit. Then, he heard it: a distinct whisper, a sigh, from inside the well.

He immediately ran back and called, “Agace!”

There were more sighs, a girl was crying down there. “Hervé? Is it you? Where are you? Where… where are we?”

The boy lowered the rope and helped his sister out of the water. It was difficult because she was very weak, but they succeeded. When she stepped out, he drew her in a hug, and cried with relief. When he let her go, the first sunlight fell on the chapel stones and lit them up.

“What is it?” asked Agace, seeing the worried look in her brother’s face.

“Uh — Nothing, I’m just tired. Let’s go home,” he replied with little conviction. He couldn’t tell her that her body was full of black hand-shaped imprints.

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Flow

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I really appreciated the mysterious and post-apocalyptic scenario juxtaposing the environmental message. The characters have a very good development, despite the lack of any dialogue. Fascinating!

Rating: 🪞

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Life and Time Management

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

About a month ago, my almost-centenarian neighbor spent two nights at the hospital for of a light check-up. When he came back home, he was exhausted because of the deep changes in the habits. Since then, I agreed to help his family as I can, by simply keeping him company.

When possible, overall in the morning, I come to his place and work next to him. Sometimes he sleeps, other times we chit-chat about the same subjects… I’m happy to stay with him because he’s a wonderful friend and neighbor –the best one could wish–, but I can feel his tiredness. He’s improved a lot in these days, but sometimes it’s hard to keep the positivity.

Working from the neighbor’s house completely broke my work routine. I can’t listen to the music while working, I have to mute myself every five seconds during the calls, I have to constantly use the mobile hotspot,… And also, these weeks have been extremely busy for all the spring works in the countryside. Trees –lots of trees!– had to be pruned, furniture had to be bought (I don’t want to visit IKEA for at least two months!), stones had to be ordered for the sidewalk,… Too many things!

Needless to say that I hadn’t time to write any more stories with the random prompts… But I admit I’ve been lazy: I’ve used those few free hours I had to play God of War Ragnarök (which is impressive!). I could have written something, but I was… tired. Good news(?): tomorrow it should rain so I can work on it.

In general, the last four weeks flew by, and I have the awful sensation to have accomplished nothing. I’m satisfied to have just… done what I had to do, I guess. 🤔

🎮 God of War Ragnarök

🎧 A wonderful post-rock album by the members of This Will Destroy You

📖 Same as before! No time even to read 🥲

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Rams

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

For the first half, maybe two thirds, I really appreciated the rhythm and the atmosphere. Then the finale… 😬

I found out that Hollywood struck again! Why are these remakes needed?

Rating: 💔

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A Real Pain

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The cousin everyone needs — sometimes. A great performance by Kieran Culkin! But the finale is… meh.

Rating: 🫂

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The Substance

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A bit too much. The message it wants to deliver is direct and clear, but the gore is… wow.

Rating: 😶

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Random Prompts #6 - Broken Mercury

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As Spring approaches, more and more works in the countryside need for my spare time. These also are the last weeks of renovation works at our home, so there will be a moving, and many other projects in the meanwhile. I think that the schedule of the random prompts will change from weekly to something like… one after the other, as soon as I can.

It was well past teatime, and the three people were sitting in a tiny room in the Leman Street Police Station. They were on the second floor; from the window, only a few distant carriages could be heard. There were very few passersby at that hour.

The Inspector mumbled, looking at his notepad, then asked, “To recap, Professor Draycott, are you confessing a murder?”

The white-haired man exhaled a long, frustrated breath. He had been sitting there for hours. “As I told you, I haven’t touched anyone. But yes, I firmly believe that I killed Mr. Grimshaw.”

The two policemen glanced at each other. The Inspector was losing his patience. “Sir, please understand that what you’re saying is nonsense. You admitted you had broken him, and that poor man lost his mind. Can you repeat the whole story one more time? What did you do precisely?”

“Nothing you would easily understand, I’m afraid. That fool, Mr. Grimshaw, surely had a great knowledge in some arts you deem forbidden — and so do I.”

“When did you two first meet?”

“You could say I had been stalking him for months. You are aware that he was Grand Master of an order, aren’t you?”

“Yes, it’s a private association. It sounds like a sect, but it is regularly registered. We already interviewed some of the members.”

“From what I saw, that was not entirely true. Well, I had been seeking an audience with him for a long time, I thought that my discoveries deserved a place in that order. I wrote to him dozens of letters, sent him extracts from my studies, and even took the liberty to mail him some notes I took on his research. Finally, three months ago, he invited me to his manor in the Cotswolds.” His expression hardened. “I really don’t know why I wanted to be allowed amongst that crew of ignorant clowns.

“Did you show up? Did you go alone?” the Inspector asked.

“To my surprise, it was a private meeting. When the carriage drove me down the lane there was a fog so thick that it was hard to see any details. Despite that, I could sense that his estate was immense, even though I could see only a boulevard lined with tall cypresses. I walked up the unpaved road for what felt like an hour, in total silence and with no buildings in sight. Eventually, four or five dim lights emerged from the dark, along with the outlines of an impressive stone chateau.

“I knocked on the massive wooden doors, and the butler –Fenshaw, if I recall his name correctly– welcomed me. Strangely, I could see no other household; that house must have kept busy at least seven or eight servants. I’ve been accompanied upstairs, to Mr. Grimshaw’s study; he was sitting next to the fireplace, studying an old tome. He had me sit on a leather armchair, and offered me a glass of port. We talked for about an hour, at first with enthusiasm, but after a while it became obvious that… our ideas were vastly different. After a while, I left.”

The Inspector tapped the pen on the table. “Mr. Draycott, I must insist that you provide a more detailed account of the facts. Please be collaborative.”

The man ran a hand through his hair, itchy, “I—I would rather not remember that conversation, that’s all.”

“Why? Did he threaten you in any way?”

“No, no. We talked about our own ideas, and… found them deeply dissimilar, despite founded on the same principles.”

“Will you be more precise? Your freedom depends on this interview!” intervened the Captain, raising his voice.

Draycott let out a sigh. “We talked about the principles of alchemy and our studies on the subject.”

The two policemen shared a quick glance, but let the man continue. “I read almost everything Mr. Grimshaw had published about alchemy, and I profoundly respected his work — until that night. When I finally told him about my discovery, which I believe to be substantial, at first he listened with presumed interest. I started to be dubious when I saw a slight smile on his face, he looked almost amused. At last, he burst into an almost incontrollable laugh. He mocked me shamelessly! That filthy, insolent cretin!”

“Please control yourself! Do you think your tone is appropriate for a University Professor?”

The man’s face was red, veins pulsing on his forehead. He was lost in that awful memory; after a moment, he came back to his senses and looked at the policemen. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. You must understand that I have studied those topics for years, even if considered blasphemous by many, and lately, I’ve been deeply disillusioned by a man I thought to be a genius. Instead, he refused to even consider my thoughts about the alkahest.”

“And what would that be?”

“Alkahest is –pardon me, was– believed to be a substance capable of separating, or disintegrating, any other element. It was first hypothesized by Paracelsus, centuries ago. A myth by all means — until a decade ago. I humbly allow myself to declare that I finally discovered its secrets.” The officers raised their brows, but he continued, “That night, I’ve been sharing my innovative findings to Grimshaw, hoping to impress him. His servant was in a corner of the room with us, so I spoke sotto voce, but I’m sure he can attest his master’s inconsiderate laugh.”

“So what did you do after his poor reaction?”

“To be honest, I was so shocked that I can’t clearly remember. I think I humiliated myself by stuttering an explanation, but after a short time I got up and left without a word. Or maybe I said something, I’m not sure. As I told you, the butler asked if I wanted to stay overnight, but I refused, and left — I’m afraid I spoke harsh words towards him, poor man.”

“Yes, we already questioned Mr. Fenshaw; he confirmed that you were troubled. He also told us some words you spoke before leaving Mr. Grimshaw’s study. Can’t you remember anything?”

Draycott touched his forehead, striving to recall anything except the rage he could still feel. “No, I’m sorry.”

“The attendant claimed that, while walking away, you whispered something inaudible. He could distinguish the very last words, though: ‘…on your own skin.’ Does that sound familiar?”

The interviewed blinked his eyes. “Oh, I guess that makes sense.”

The policemen leaned towards him. “What do you mean?”

“I already told you that I’ve… murdered Mr. Grimshaw — indirectly, I mean. I must have decided to do it then.”

The Inspector couldn’t handle it anymore. He asked Draycott to make a break, and he and the Captain exited the room. Ten minutes passed. When they entered again, everybody was calmer.

“So, Professor Draycott, what do you mean when you declare that you killed indirectly the victim?”

Draycott took a deep breath. “Very well, I’ll try to be as clear as I can. I ask you to be broad-minded, and wait until the end before making any comment.

“I told you what the alkahest is. What I discovered is that it is not a substance, a tangible element. It is deeply intertwined with our essence. You see, our soul is based on a delicate balance of a few key elements as sulfur and mercury. What I did is… simply to cause a rupture in Grimshaw’s equilibrium. By introducing the alkahest, you can slowly dissolve one of these constituents.”

The policemen were listening closely, but the Captain was clenching so hard that his fingers had whitened. He let out a question. “Introduce? Did you have any further contact with—”

“Gentlemen, please. I asked you to let me finish. No, I hadn’t met Grimshaw after that night. I didn’t mean injecting with a needle: alkahest is not solid or liquid.”

The Captain’s face was reddening. “So how do you—” The Inspector put a hand on his shoulder. “Please go on, Mr. Draycott.”

The latter nodded, “Thank you. I think that the easiest way to explain how to inject the alkahest in one’s body is that you have to… cast a spell on that person. I’m sorry, but the method would be complicated to describe, especially in case of skepticism. Well, I confess that I did that — and I was clearly successful given the consequences.

“If the harmony of our inner elements is broken, there can be unforeseen outcomes, untested until today. For Mr. Grimshaw, the intention was to dissolve the mercury in his essence. You see, mercury has always been connected to duality because of its peculiar behavior: its fluidness makes it different from almost any other element. It is believed to be a maintainer of the order, one could say that it isolates us from our inner chaos.

“I acted on impulse, driven by rage. I couldn’t imagine the exact consequences — except that now he’s dead, of course. As I told you, we hadn’t met after. By removing the mercury from Grimshaw’s body, I can only assume that the poor man must have gone insane. Did he behave strangely?”

The policemen looked at him, speechless. A few moments passed, then the Inspector took the floor. “Ahem, yes. About three months ago, after the meeting with you, Mr. Grimshaw was reported to act unnatural by his acquaintances of the order. He couldn’t control the tone of his voice, he spoke nonsense… or stared at the void, ignoring anyone else in the room. They also claim they had seen him for the last time a couple of weeks after, and his servant confirms that: since then, the man stayed in bed. He suffered from a high fever and increasingly violent hallucinations. He attempted twice to take his own life, and then he was tied in bed. Eventually, he was found dead last week, still in his bed. His tongue had been bitten off, and choked him.”

Mr. Draycott went pale, stood silent for a minute. When the Inspector cleared his throat, he quickly came to his senses. “It worked,” he whispered.

“Pardon?” asked the Captain.

“It… It actually worked,” the man repeated. “This means my theory was right! My studies are correct! I’ve discovered the actual secrets of the alkahest!”

The Inspector looked at the notebook, and at his colleague. Then he shook his head. “Sir, I think you should go home and take some rest.”

Draycott suddenly stared at them with astonishment. “What do you mean? I have killed a man!”

“We all know you are an intelligent person, Professor. Even if you have studied highly questionable matters as the ones you claim, you can’t seriously think that they can harm a person in that way. Or that we can believe you’re responsible because of a spell!”

Mr. Draycott was indignant. “…I had to imagine it. You’re no different than Grimshaw, attached to your ancient preconceptions.” He got out of his chair furiously and grabbed his coat. He headed towards the door, but before turning the knob he turned towards the officers and added, “Probably the only way to convince you as well would be to make you feel it on your own skin.”

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What We Do in the Shadows

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I always arrive late on many cults, and this one is sensational. I loved it! Its humor is amazing, and I can’t wait to see the TV series. I hope Petyr won’t die there too. 😢

Rating: 💯

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Guns, Germs, and Steel

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It will be a long ride, but interesting too.

*Still in progress* 🏃

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The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the very few non-fiction books I’ve started! Let’s see how it goes.

That was a fascinating reading. It is incredible what we’are capable of… when our brain does not work as intended — or better, it works slightly differently from how we expect it to. Super-recommended to… anyone curious. Also, the author’s style was very… comforting, I wouldn’t know how else to describe it!

Rating: 🤯

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Random Prompts #5 - Owned Sauria

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Wikipedia’s entry about sauria gave me the idea to insert dinosaurs in a story for the very first time, and then… well, you’ll see.

Mike suddenly felt nostalgic about his last birthday; he perfectly recalled the moment he had received his father’s present. His parents and he were in the kitchen in their terraced house; it was Saturday morning, the sun was shining in the bright blue sky.

“Your grades were definitely better this semester. You finally earned this thing, young man!” When his dad stepped aside, there was a wrapped box on the table, slightly larger than their microwave. When the kid approached it, he immediately realized what it was: its corners were the ones he had seen countless times on the holographic TV. Also, a couple of friends of his showed him that very same shaped box when they got it. He had been wishing for it for so long! As he touched it, even though he expected it, he made a little jump as something moved inside.

“Go on!” his father invited. With trembling hands, Mike unwrapped his gift and revealed its contents: an iron cage with small, oblong holes all around, so thin that not even a finger could pass through. There were iron handles on two sides and on the top to lift it. On the front, there was a metal plate depicting a three-fingered footmark of a reptile. Below, the inscription “DynoTech”. On the right, a button emitted a blue light. The boy’s gaze was lost in wonder; he turned towards his parents, unable to speak a word, with almost teary eyes. At last, with a heavy breath, he pressed the blue toggle. A holographic image of a young man appeared a few inches over the cage, suspended midair. He wore a polo shirt, which had the same stitched logo as the metal plate. With a big smile on his face, he opened his arms boastfully, “Hi Mike! I’m Jim from DynoTech. All of us want to congratulate you on your fourteenth birthday! Aaand… for your new very special friend, of course!”

“The message is custom, it just cost a few hundred bucks more,” whispered his father, thinking he wouldn’t be heard. Mike’s mother had an apprehensive smile on her face. They were both almost fifty years old, but the expensive cosmetic microsurgery made them look like in their late twenties.

Jim continued, “This little guy is a Compsognathus longipes, which could seem tiny, but I assure you it has sharp tiny teeth, so always pay attention! Remember: it is a real dinosaur!” The video went on for a minute or two, explaining the necessary care the new pet needed. At the end, a tiny window, just two inches tall, opened on both sides of the cage to reveal its contents. The youngster kept jumping up and down, trying to peer inside. Eventually, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped: in the center, there was a quail-sized reptile, not dissimilar to a crocodile, but with much smoother dermis. Its neck and tail were very thin and long; and it was a biped, with two larger hind legs and shorter arms. It had sparse, tiny reddish feathers all over the body, and was all coiled on itself: the beast was clearly frightened.

Jim reappeared after a moment, “Isn’t it beautiful? It is a male. What will be its name?”

Mike looked up for a minute, thoughtful. “Compy!” he exclaimed, without too much fantasy. Nobody expected that, but the hologram reacted to the name. “Compy, you say? It’s very nice! So, let me implant a tiny chip in his neck –don’t worry, it won’t hurt him– with this information, just as with your other pets.” There was a buzz inside the cage. “Okay, done! Remember the recommendations, Mike, and enjoy your new friend.”

The blue light stopped pulsing and turned green, signaling that the cage was now unlocked. Mike’s mother immediately stepped forward, “Wait! Take it outside, or you’ll stain the marble floor.”

He didn’t mind her and pressed the button. It was a very special moment, his first contact with his own dinosaur — nothing else had ever mattered more. The cage door opened, and Compy looked at him with tiny, black terrified eyes. They just stood there for a few moments, staring each other.

While lost in that dreamy instant, he actually didn’t hear his father murmuring, super excited, “…It even reacted to the name… Totally worth the price!”

In the following months, the relationship between the two was… complicated. The dinosaur had been placed in a special electrical fence on the garden terrace, and Mike spent as much time as he could with it. He tried to teach it some tricks, like jumping or sitting on command, but with poor results. Compy didn’t like to be petted, let alone play ball like their old dog did. It was scared when the boy approached with some toys as his portable drone or his hoverboard. Soon he was perplexed about how playing with its new friend.

DynoTech assured that their dinosaurs were genetically accurate, but also rendered harmless towards humans. They had the fangs and sharp teeth everyone wanted to see, but the chip implanted in their head prevented them from attacking in any way humans and other pets, such cats and dogs. 100% guaranteed, or immediately refunded.

Because of that, the boy’s parents soon stopped to worry about the ancient reptile on their roof. They even automated the delivery of DynoTech’s special food, and after a couple of months the animal stopped receiving almost any attention.

Pet dinosaurs were a trend, an expensive one, and only the elite boys showed them off. It was cool to tell the others you owned a dinosaur… but it was boring as hell. It was just a matter of time before someone came up with a solution. At school, Mike heard for the first time about the newest thing: dinofights. Every Thursday, the boys gathered in an abandoned warehouse near the harbor, and forced their pet dinos fight against each other. They were genetically forced to avoid violence towards humans, but there were no restrictions on other dinosaurs.

After hearing about that, it wasn’t long before Mike sneaked outside, passing through the woods behind their house. He held the cage by the side grips — Compy had grown, it was now the size of a large chicken, and the metal thing felt heavier than when he first got it. He had clumsily disguised the cage with cardboard. At first the dino kept squeaking, scared, but after a few minutes it calmed down and curled itself on the bottom. The youngster went round the hill, passing through tall oak trees, and emerged in the suburbs. From there, the harbor was just a ten minutes walk.

The warehouse was owned by one of the teenagers’ fathers, and would have torn down the next year — there was plenty of time for their new entertainment. When they all arrived, most on hoverboards, they all slipped inside the building, and opened some beer cans. In the center of the room, Mike saw that two or three DynoTech fences, as the one installed on his terrace, had been modified in order to form a patched up ring where the animals fought. He saw some dried blood stains on the floor, and started feeling something was wrong about that. His friends had brought three other cages similar to his, and put them next to the electrical enclosure. Mike peered inside them, and suddenly felt sick: those animals were all compsognathi as his, but also completely different. They were full of scars, one was missing an eye, and another had its tail crooked in a terribly wrong way. They were angry and scared, and the first thing that came to his mind was that they needed a vet.

One cage was opened; the one-eyed dino was picked up by its owner, without fear, just as he lifted a chicken, and put inside the ring. “Come on, rookie. Let’s see what your dinosaur can do.” Mike was still sickened by his thoughts, and it took one second or two to realize he was referring to him. With trembling hands, he opened Compy’s cage, and saw his friend’s eyes full of terror. He hesitated, and his friends mocked him. ‘Boo-ooh, Mikey’s scared!’ Feeling dreadful sorry, he grabbed Compy and put it in the ring. The poor beast was confused, it ironically never saw another dinosaur. Its opponent seemed to ignore it, unwilling to fight, but one of the kids took a taser from his pocket and started zapping the fighters, first one and then the other. They jumped and squeaked, frightened and confused, as the small crowd incited them making animalistic sounds. Eventually, the one-eyed dinosaur dashed and snapped his jaws at a few millimeters from the other’s snout. Compy retreated, but the kid with the teaser couldn’t leave it alone.

“Stop it!” Mike shouted, but that just made them laugh louder. He tried to snatch the weapon from the kid’s hands, but the taller boy kept it out of reach. In the meanwhile, Compy had been hurt, there was blood on his neck. Mike panicked and stopped being lucid, his instinct prevailed. He kicked the kid with the taser in his balls. Hard. The boy made a feeble, high-pitched scream, and let the hardware fall on the ground. Mike immediately kicked it away, grabbed Compy, and almost threw it in the cage. In a few seconds, they were outside the building.

The boy was all nerves and felt sick, confused about what had just happened. He ran towards the woods, breathless, without looking back — nobody would follow him, but he was already thinking about the next day, at school. Better not going, for his own’s sake. As he took the tiny unpaved trail, he was about to stop to catch his breath when he stumbled upon a root, hidden by the fallen leaves. He tumbled over and lost grip on the handle. The cage rolled down a slope for twenty or thirty yards, and slammed on a tree. Mike stood up after a few moments, dizzy. He quickly checked if he was ok, then approached the cage. His eyes widened when he saw that the door was open, and the interior was all covered in red — there was no trace of the dinosaur.

While running among the trees and the immense beds of fallen leaves, for the first time in his life he truly understood the meaning of regret. He wanted to punch in the face his past self from two hours before so badly. He kept following blood traces left here and there. Compy had run away, and the woods were silent except for the wind and distant traffic. He had seen some red spots on the underbrush, but the last one had appeared ten minutes earlier; now, he was wandering without a clue. He shouted the dinosaur’s name dozens of times, but there was no response nor squeaks. Eventually, he sat heavily next to a tree, and started sobbing.

He was feeling awful, like the worst person in the world — even shittier than his friend with the taser. How could he possibly believe that dinofights could be fun? Did he even think? Now probably his pet was mortally wounded, if not dead yet. And it was all his fault.

While crying it out, he didn’t hear a slight movement on his left. A reptile was standing just fifty feet away, looking at him with attention. It wasn’t Compy, it was at least twice as big. After a few moments, the animal decided to approach. Then Mike heard its legs on the leaves, and moved his gaze. His heart skipped a beat when he saw that it was a totally different dinosaur, at least four feet long from nose to tail, with much sharper teeth and fangs. It was a velociraptor! The boy was about to scream, but there was a whistle, so the beast stopped and turned around. Mike stepped away from that large dino, both scared and surprised because they were unavailable — from DynoTech or any others. As far as he knew, the compsognathus was the only one for the public because basically harmless.

“Don’t be afraid, she’s very obedient,” a voice said. The youngster looked behind the tree he was sitting next to, and saw a tall man with a long brown beard approaching. He wore technical apparel, he might be a soldier, maybe a hunter… but with a dinosaur? Looking closer, Mike could see that he was holding another tiny dinosaur under his arm.

“Compy!” he exclaimed. It was unconscious, and the kid’s eyes widened.

“It’s yours, uh? He’s been through some adventures, I see… Don’t worry, I patched him up and gave him a mild tranquilizer. Wanna tell me what happened?” He was kind, and Mike felt he could trust this strange savior. The boy explained the whole story; in the meanwhile approached the fellow, and noticed that he had put a bandage on the dino’s wound.

After hearing all of it, the man replied, “You’re young, and we all made some mistakes.” He held the tiny dinosaur to the teenager. “What it counts is that you understand what you did. You don’t own animals. They can be your friends… if you’re worth.”

The boy looked down, feeling guilty for the poor beast in his arms. He couldn’t change the past, but surely he could provide Compy a better future.

“I— I think I got the lesson. I acted as an asshole. I shouldn’t have.”

“Yeah, that’s the point. Take care of your buddy, but don’t blame yourself too hard. Just don’t forget the past, or you might let both of you down again — and it’ll hurt much more.”

The man whistled, and the raptor approached them. Mike instinctively jumped back, but the bearded man put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Look, Nancy can be very sweet if you are nice to her.”

He gently took the boy’s hand and put in front of his companion, which was as large as a dog. The animal understood, and pushed her head under Mike’s palm. He was petting a velociraptor!

They wandered in the woods for a while, then the hunter –his name was Robert– guided him towards the trail leading home. They felt mutual sympathy, they both saw that encounter as fortunate. One learned an important lesson, and the other imparted an equally important message.

Before they parted ways, the bearded man said, “As you might have guessed, Nancy shouldn’t be here. I got her from a friend, I want to train her to hunt. You won’t tell anyone about us, right? I am convinced –no, I know– that dinosaurs can help us in many ways. We must be smart to understand how… and to respect them. Don’t forget to use your head, but always ask your heart first.”

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The Wild Robot

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I had low expectations, but I was totally wrong! Very nice, with well-written characters.

Rating: 🥲

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Random Prompts #4 - Indistinct Slovenia

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I used a bit of imagination for the term “indistinct”, and eventually came up with the old trick of the fog, already seen in countless tales. I wrote it in a day, and I like the subject. In the future, I might rewrite it, or maybe expand it!

“But mom…”

“No cuts, no buts. Shut the door and play inside,” ordered Alja, her finger pointing to the bedroom. Blaž and Nina abided unwillingly, their eyes low. The little boy whispered, “We ain’t kids anymore, we wouldn’t get lost.”

The mother caressed their heads and squeezed them in a gentle hug. “Kids, I’ve already told you that this fog is… not like the others. You wouldn’t just get lost. I’ve told you nanny’s story a hundred times. I wish she were here to describe it to you with the tone she used with me.”

The wooden cottage stood next to one of the many western Slovenian lakes, with crystal blue, placid waters. On its shores, there were just a few sparse houses. An unpaved footpath, which ran all along the pond, connected their house with the neighbors’ farms, not closer than three or four kilometers in any direction. Outward, there were woods of oaks all around, as far the eyes could see; far northward, dark pines covered the lower Alps, whose peaks disappeared in the clouds. In that area there were other bodies of water, closer to villages; only a few people lived on this lake though.

“It’s just… strange thinking that there’s someone out there,” replied Blaž, the seven years old son.

“Yes, I know. But you ain’t paying attention to the details. Have you counted the moons between the latest mist?”

“Mom! Every morning there is fog from the lake!”

“Yes, but — Come here, near the window,” she said, trying to gather what little patience she had left, “Look. See that the fog hasn’t raised from the water, but from the woods?”

The children nodded.

“Well. Have you counted how much time passed since the last of these hazes?”

They looked at each other, and shook their heads.

“It’s been thirteen moons, as always. You know that this is the megla iz jame, the mist from the cave.”

The little Nina, two years younger than her brother, was skeptical, but she could sense an unsettling feeling in her belly. “Let’s go visit the cave — the three of us! The vile can do no harm to us all… can’t they?”

Her mother’s eyes widened. “Don’t speak silly words! They don’t want to be disturbed. These are their days, when they step outside their underground homes to walk in our world.”

“But you said grandma—” started the little boy.

“I think you didn’t understand that properly. Come, have a seat near the stove. I’ll bring some cookies and tell you the story one more time.”

The kids were delighted by the idea, and rushed near the cast-iron appliance; the floor boards quivered under their steps. The house was tiny, it consisted of one room, not too large and neither too small: it was a living room, a kitchen, and in a corner there were two beds. The toilet was outdoor. The cottage was completely made of wood, and the stove was the only heat source. It was a late February morning, and the fire was on since dawn.

Anja made appear a plate of biscuits from a hidden spot that the kids had yet to discover, and she approached the low table. She had prepared the kettle too, and sat on the rocking chair — that was the place where stories were told.

“Alright. As you know, my mother Špela lived in this very house, which had been built by her grandfather. From when she was very little, her parents recommended her to fear the megla iz jame: every thirteen new moons, the vile come out of their subterranean village to hunt some hares, pheasants, or deers. As you and me, they need some food every now and then. Their hunt lasts three days, and it is a good idea to stay inside our homes. In the past, several children had gone missing after they went out in this mist. The vile took them, and they got lost in the underground maze of caves — or worse!

“When she was a bit older than you, my mother was well-aware of the danger of the fog, and would never go out. Incidentally, during the third day of the vile’s hunting, their young puppy ran outside as my grandfather opened the door. Nanny Špela cried in horror, certain of not seeing it again, and made a terrible mistake: when her parents couldn’t see, she sneaked out and went to look for her doggie.

“She wandered for the whole afternoon in the wet mist, shouting his name, ‘Bobi! Bobi!’ but she never got an answer. She had already cried most of her tears, when she realized she could no longer find her way home. She had left the path hours earlier, drawn by some noises, and now couldn’t find it again. She walked and walked in the woods, until her feet hurt. She saw countless oak trees and high mossy rocks; despite believing she was good at recognizing landmarks, she soon realized she was lost. As the evening approached, fear equally grew in her.

“Dusk had fallen, and the air was thick with bluish fog, chilling her to the bone. Grandma, damp as a fish, was already planning to sleep between the roots of a big tree. However, as she was patching up an improvised bed, she heard something. It was a voice, it was someone singing. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, but she decided to follow this sign from the heavens. She stepped on cautiously –she didn’t want to fall down a slope– and, after a couple of minutes, saw a lighter tiny point in front of her. She approached this luminescence, and in front of her appeared a tall rock with a huge opening — it was the cave in the woods not far from our house, where the mist arose. The light was inside, and indeed there was someone too.

“Grandma was no fool, she knew that something was up. The hunt was ongoing, she had to be on guard. She silently entered the grotto, careful to not be heard. Hidden behind the wet walls, she stretched her neck to sneak a peek. There was a large opening with a tall dome-shaped ceiling, covered by stalactites. In a corner, a fire with a strange hue was going. In front of it, a young girl of about her age was skinning a bunch of hares. She was dressed with a brown cloak, holding a long, curved knife, and was humming softly. Nanny Špela stood there for a while, studying the child: she couldn’t see her traits because of the light behind her, but was sure she hadn’t seen her before. She seemed… wild. She was wondering how that daughter got in that cave and where she was from, and while in these thoughts, she noticed that the fire… was not an actual fire. The girl suddenly dropped the animals inside the flame, and they disappeared without a sound. Looking more carefully, it was a magic flare suspended in midair! Grandma gasped, and even that feeble whisper was enough to reveal her presence. The latter suddenly turned her face and immediately found Špela’s terrorized gaze. She rose, standing at least a palm taller than grandma, and approached her with swift, circular movements, keeping a certain distance. Her blade was pointed at the intruder.

“She spoke some words in an incomprehensible language, but my mother didn’t know how to respond. Instead, she raised her arms, showing her empty palms. The armed girl waved the weapon, pointing grandma’s coat. She didn’t understand at first, so the tall girl grabbed her arm and got her up. The wild daughter pointed the cutting edge on the chest, and started thrusting the coat’s pockets. In that dangerous position, grandma was able to see the girl’s features: she had dark blonde hair and very dark brown eyes, maybe black; her ears were of a peculiar shape, almost pointy. She also saw that the knife was covered with complex inscriptions; days later, when she described them to the village elder, he’d say that it was runic language. Even if she wasn’t aware of that, a clear idea came to her mind: that girl wasn’t like her. She was a vile, a spirit of nature; she was a huntress, and grandma could have ended like one of those hares!

“Luckily for her, she had brought with her a tiny wooden toy. It was a small horse made of birch tree, with the head, tail and legs roughly outlined. She had made it a couple of weeks before to train her pup to find truffles: she soaked it with lavender oil, dug a hole away few hundred meters from home, and hid it in there. If the doggy was able to find it, then it had a good nose; otherwise, it would have not been a good truffle dog.

“When the huntress found the wooden horse in grandma’s pocket, she stopped for a moment. She quickly cast a glance at her, then took a step back. She observed closely the toy; my mother said that, for a fraction of a second, she could see a slight smile on the girl’s face. Then she brought it near her face, and sniffed it. She made a weird face, maybe because the scent was very strong, then got back to stare at it. Every now and then, she stole glances at grandma, but her whole attention was on that tiny object. Then nanny Špela, understanding that interest, repeated her, ‘You can have it,’ pushing slowly her open palms towards her. After about a minute, each one unsure what to do, the wild child moved her head, indicating the opening of the cave. Grandma immediately understood the signal: she was letting her go. Without asking twice, she made a slight thankful bow, and began walking backward; her hand on the walls, without losing sight of her. Once she was out, she turned around and started running as fast as she could. Luckily, it was the end of the third day of the megla iz jame, so the mist was slowly vanishing. After a while, she decreased her pace, and after an hour the moon became visible enough to brighten the woods. She eventually heard the faint noises the fishes do in the lake when catching mosquitoes on the surface, so she could find the lake. From there, it was easy to get home. Her parents were already resigned that they wouldn’t see her again, and when she stepped in, they burst with joy. And guess what? That silly dog had already found his way home by his own! She ate a big bowl of oatmeal, and told the whole story. She went to bed, and never stepped out ever again during the hunt. As your great-grandmother told her with grim tone, she’s been very lucky.

The biscuits were gone, a few crumbs still on the children’s laps; the morning had flown by."…And that’s why you will stay inside for these three days. Is that understood? I know you knew, and you wanted to listen to the story again… but you better take these things seriously."

The children nodded, thrilled and mesmerized by the telling, “Yes mom, you don’t have to worry!” They both were obedient and, during the days of that inauspicious fog, they stayed inside, safe.

The third night, though, little Nina went to bed, but didn’t sleep. After all the candles were blown out, she waited for at least one hour in silence, and then got up. She opened the farthest window of the cottage, just a little, and put a tiny doll made of hay on the windowsill.

“You can have this too, if you wish.”

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The Great Escaper

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A little absurd, but it’s based on a true story, so I guess we are absurd. Micheal Caine is lovely as ever.

Rating: 💔

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Nosferatu

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I liked very much the photography and the atmoshpere, but there are two main issues in my opinion:

It’s not scary at all
The monster is so huge that is almost hard to take seriously

Also, I didn’t like the unnecessary revision of Dracula’s plot. So… Meh. A good supernatural thriller.

Rating: 🥸

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Watchmen - Chapters I and II

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A nice adaptation that does not change the finale without a good reason (yeah, Snyder, I’m talking to you). The graphic style is a bit weird, but overall… It’s Watchmen, so it is based on a masterpiece more actual than ever.

Rating: 🙂

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Murmurs of the Soul

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It is the first time I want to write a post dedicated to an artist, or a music band, that meant a lot for me. There’ve been a few moments in my life when I got so obsessed (in a good way) with some musicians that I listened to their discography lots of times. I want to dedicate this opening to The Smashing Pumpkins, the great rock band from the ’90s.

Let’s jump back in time twenty-and-something years (porca vacca!). In my teens, I was 80% of my wake time in front of a monitor, PC or TV with a game console. On a couple of games magazines, I read about an online forum called GamesRadar administered by the the editors. I decided to join, and fell in love with some sections; the music one was not my first choice, but with time I learned to appreciate it.

There were threads about any genre (ah, I remember looking with fear at the one dedicated to metal!), and after a while I started buying online compact discs from the coolest website in ~~the world~~ Europe (RIP). Since I had a 56k connection, I often bought the music blindly, after reading some reviews on internet. There was no YouTube, at the time — impossible, huh?

Obviously, I started with a bang. One of the first CDs I got was Mellon Collie. It was a double disc, one of very few I own that felt like crafted with love, and I scrupulously listened to all the tracks from the first to the last — Dawn to Dusk, literally.¹

Like many first listeners of the band, I got a weird impression by Corgan’s nasal voice. I loved the sound wall of distorted guitars, the heavy rock riffs, and overall the drums! I fell in love with the obvious singles as 1979, Thirty-Three, etc., but some special seeds started to slowly blossom. Three or four songs left me something more than “good track vibes”.

Tonight, Tonight

The opening of the album taught me to appreciate a slow, instrumental (orchestral!) introduction. The iconic piano chords of the song before have a special place in my heart, and the explosion of arches confers this song a delightful crescendo. And then, the contrast with William’s voice. Nice, but also dreadful in some way. One may think, ‘Why to ruin this melody with this voice?’, but then it becomes clear that this is one of the features that make the Pumpkin’s sound unique. Also, here we can hear Jimmy’s talent with drums: simple yet powerful hits.

Porcelina of the Vast Oceans

This song (with Mayonaise, which we’ll talk about later) learned me to appreciate a slow pace towards a powerful climax. It would become much clearer with post-rock albums, years later, but Porcelina started it all: at first, I didn’t like it, couldn’t understand it. Then, I gradually became fond of it, and now it’s one of my favorite.

By Starlight

The closing of the second disc has a poker of strange tracks: lullabies, they sound almost like experiments. By Starlight immediately struck me, and I often happen to whistle it without no apparent reason.

Muzzle

Maybe my personal favorite: rough, simple (three chords), and angry. I listened to it hundreds of times, while driving alone (or at least, I have vivid memories of this — don’t know why). In general, it reminds me of my first 20s, so I love it.

And I knew the secrets in your spires

And I knew the emptiness of youth

And I knew the solitude of heart

And I knew the murmurs of the soul

The original formation: Jimmy, Billy, D’Arcy, and James.

After Mellon Collie, I bought other classic Pumpkin’s records. In order:

Siamese Dream, another masterpiece
Adore, clearly more modern but awesome
Gish, maybe my least favorite of these²

I fell in love with the first two, and in those years Zeitgeist was published. I listened to it ad nauseam, and finally decided that –a couple of tracks aside– it wasn’t good as the old ones. With time, I elected Siamese Dream as my personal favorite, maybe because it had more “late teens vibes”, or because it’s “a great work like Mellon Collie, but easier”. It contains one of the best rock intros ever written, and its CD has a simple yet powerful logo that I finally decided to get tattooed.

That’s one of the focal points of my 20s: when I decided to finally get a tattoo (I was right twenty), I opted for the logo of a music band — I won’t tell it yet. After three years, I got the second tattoo, and I chose the “SP heart” of the Smashing Pumpkins. Was it a good choice? If I think at the musicians per se as people, no: I often don’t like them, they made weird decisions, and sometimes they appear almost bad. But if I think of the music… Then I made a perfect choice.

I saw them live in Milan in 2011 –not a memorable concert– and I felt dizzy all the time. Despite it wasn’t the “right” formation (James and Jimmy weren’t there, not to mention D’Arcy), it was nice. Maybe I didn’t the feel the same overwhelming sensation I got other times (e.g. with Queens of the Stone Age), but it’s been an amazing experience.

About their post-reunion discs, so after 2000… Meh. I understand that Corgan wants to keep the Pumpkins’ name active, and their sound is constantly evolving… But I can’t appreciate them as much as those damn masterpieces. I’m always happy to listen to his experiments, but each year I have a Pumpkins phase when I have to re-listen to the old classics. And I love them.

Then, there is a final anecdote. My ex-girlfriend didn’t like the Pumpkins’ sound; because of this scorn, sometimes she hid my CDs somewhere at my place — under the sofa cushions, behind the furniture, etc. Eventually we broke up, and months later, I opened the cooker hood in the kitchen to clean it up… and the Mellon Collie CD dropped in my hands. I hadn’t realized it was missing, and that was a heartfelt moment.

Hidden Gem

A final note about “hidden” songs that were not as celebrated as they should. This is the case of A Song for a Son, from their EP Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, distributed for free via internet (à la In Rainbows, following the trend started by Radiohead). One of the best songs both for lyrics and melody, greatly underrated.

Only the owners of the record can understand this joke. GO BUY IT. Now. ↩︎
Probably the true fans will hate me. ↩︎

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Men

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Some of the most tense scenes I’ve seen; Garland really takes his time. The first half of the movie is great, then so many questions arise. Overall, good!

Rating: 🥶

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Tiny Pleasures

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This week has been cold and rainy. Just a few hours ago, luckily, the sun began to shine. One of the small pleasures of living in the countryside is to get out and just stand still, sitting or not, letting the sun warm your body. Until June, at least; later, it quickly shifts to dangerous.

From the work perspective, it’s been the toughest week of the year (I suppose I can say that!), but there were satisfactions too: big opportunities, some good feedback from the customers, good reputation left around.¹

I feel mixed feelings: overwhelming and pressure because of the job and other tasks I assign to myself (e.g., the weekly short stories), but also little moments of relief. In the new house, we’re putting down the parquet, and each time I enter that door, I appreciate that environment more and more. I finally found a good reading pace, without falling asleep each night after a page and half, and I’m enthusiastic for finding M. R. James’s prose: it’s vivid, funny (in its own way), and teaches me something in every short story I read.²

The most peculiar moment happened this morning: my girlfriend told me she hadn’t slept well because she couldn’t stop thinking about moving to the new house in the next months… and she doesn’t want. She loves staying in his little hamlet — and so do I. If anyone reading this is interested in a country house, newly renovated, in Northern Italy… 👀

Finally, a good resolution for the next blog posts, in order to avoid the usual “rant list”: to write something with a topic. Until now, this year I’m quite good at completing the goals. Let’s see how it goes.

🎮 Just started Gof of War Ragnarök!

🎧 Listening to the new Mogwai’s right now. Good!

📖 The same two as before

And some awkward moments too, obviously. ↩︎
I’ve found a nice BBC TV movie from 1968 based on one of those ghost stories! ↩︎

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Random Prompts #3 - Concerned Dalmatian

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Panic.

That little thing vanished. How? It was right there two seconds ago. You are staring at me, with that inquiring gaze that I… I can’t really comprehend. I know you trusted me, and suddenly I feel ashamed of my futility. I had a simple task, and I failed it. Greatly. No, it can’t be. It must be somewhere. I won’t disappoint you. I can’t.

There, I run towards the corner of the room, maybe it has slipped towards the kitchen. I’ve made hardly two steps that a thought pops in my mind: the sofa. It must be there. Oh, silly me, you always made the most incredible findings under the sofa. And instead… no. Only clumps of dust.

The tension grows, a shiver runs down my neck. I have to find it again. I rush myself from room to room, slipping on the parquet. You yell at me something about the scratches I’m leaving on it, but I ignore that. I let you down once, and it won’t happen again.

I plunge under every piece of furniture that comes in sight, but I can only find rubbish. A couple of times, I stop and wonder what the heck is doing the most diverse stuff in those corners. Maybe I had dropped that, or perhaps it was you… It doesn’t matter now. I have to stay focused.

While I run, I think how many times I’ve already saved that poor thing from thousands of perils… That time it was gonna drown into the pond; I reached for it at the very last moment, it was all soaked when I grabbed it. You were there, and were so happy after.

All those adventures we had in the fields, far from the infernal machines… How often it liked to dart in the tall grass! But I always found it before it was too late… and you were there too, every time, and were so joyful.

I have so many good memories of your smiles — I need to make you happy! I have to find that! After searching all the floor, I try the door –how can it be gone outside?– and it’s closed. I groan of frustration, and look at the stairs. It is impossible that it climbed over there. It is so tiny! Another cry comes out of my mouth as I run around in circles.

You see me pondering, and call me. More miserable than ever, I approach you, feeling myself lost — and I see it. It is right in your hand. But… It was gone! Did you find it? I know you didn’t throw that — What’s its damn name? Ball! You hadn’t thrown the ball, I’m almost sure. Yes, you made a fast movement, but… I’m starting to doubt everything. Even… you? I’m tired. I lay my head on your leg. But you’re smiling again, and that’s all that matters.

You reach out to me with your hand and caress me. “Silly dog.”

This week, the story was shorter than the usual because I’ve got lots of things to do, so I wanted to keep it short. Also, it was the very first time that I didn’t prepare some sort of scheme on my notepad: I just sat down and started typing. I had some kind of very simple plot in my mind, but I didn’t want to add complexity. Did I like it? Dunno.

Also, until the end the identity of the narrator had to remain hidden. Did I succeed? 👀

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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Lovely, as everything by Aardman!

Rating: ✂️

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Get Smart

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Quite solid, nice cast and funny gags. One of those movies I think I already saw, but I’m not sure.

Rating: 🗿

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St. Vincent

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Not very funny, not very moving… but Bill Murray is Bill Murray, so it’s ok.

Rating: 🅜🅤🅡🅡🅐🅨

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Killer Frequency

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I started it because I was intrigued by a comment on Reddit. Seems interesting! And it’s developed by Team 17 (Worms ❤️)!

Abandoned because of lack of free time 😑

Rating:

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Time for Us

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This year started on a personal rush where I wanted to try to optimize time and productivity. All good for now, I already wrote a couple of short stories with decent outcomes (didn’t I?). What I have to focus on, in the next weeks, is the time spent for (and with) my partner.

Now, it is a little absurd, but to put it simple: she doesn’t like me writing. I can understand that: when I’m doing that, I am in my own world, and of course I don’t want to be distracted. Since I work from home, every day is plenty of distractions: pets, neighbors, housework,… Just to mention some. Often, I have to work before or after the “contract-based hours” to catch up what I left behind during the day. Sometimes I’d want to tell here to pretend that I’m not there from 9AM to 6PM. But I know that is not fair.

In the evening, for the last year and half, I have the pledge (partner approved ✅) to keep company to my almost-centenarian neighbor. The remaining hours of the day that my girlfriend and I spend together… are not many. We live in the same house, often in the same room… But I feel I need some space, or time, for myself.

So, here is one big (first world) problem: manage the time for us. This morning, she clearly said to me: “I shouldn’t tell that, but I don’t like when you write.” As a temporary solution, I proposed her to write in the working hours, and she accepted, even though not satisfied.

That would mean to cut out time from a task and the other during work… But I guess it can be done. Not all days, of course. And the main problem that occurs to me is the thousands of possible distractions: emails, phone calls… It is true that there’s the “Do not disturb” mode on every device I use, but it is not the best.

That’s where the Pomodoro technique could be handy. We’ll see how it goes. 🤞🍅

Then, after we’ll move in the new house, hopefully things will change a bit along with our patterns. About that, here is a sneak peek of how it’s coming along!

Not bad, not bad!

🎮 We finished It Takes Two, and we loved it!

🎧 I’m still catching up all the albums by Mastodon… So great!

📖 Stil the same

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Nightbitch

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Amy Adams is always astonishing; the plot is interesting, but… meh, I guess this won’t remembered as a classic.

Rating: 🙂

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Random Prompts #2 - Magnetic Central American

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As second random prompt, I got Magnetic Central American. I did try to invent something funny, but this story’s tone eventually turned much more brutal than I expected.

My greatest regret is the lack of depth of the characters, mostly because time ran out, but… I can only get better at it, right? 👀

Balam was just seventeen, a strong youngster with the huge will to live common of his age. Though in those days he was feeling an emotion much stronger than the others: anger, for that great unfairness. He had been chosen for the yearly Mayan bloodletting because of his name, which meant jaguar, the greatest warrior.

The ritual consisted in the slow removal of a person’s skin, using a wooden knife with an extremely sharp blade made of obsidian. The dermis had to be stripped while the victim was alive because it symbolized the god Xipe Totec being born again from death. Of course, the sufferer had to remain conscious for the whole time. Or tried, at least.

The boy had attended several festivals in the past, and was always shocked by the violence. He couldn’t show any frailty, but the spectacle made him feel sick. Each time, the victim tried to stay silent and focused, grateful for being chosen for that role. Every time, though, loud screams of pain exploded after a while.

The shaman, raising the macuahuitl, first made a slight cut on the outer forearm, and slight red rivulets started flowing. Then, after two other light slits, perpendicular to the first, proceeded to take off the skin like gloves. The red flesh pulsed while the victim clumsy tried to stay still. After the hands, it was time for the back: the leather was spread like a pair of wings, and eventually cut away on the shoulders. Almost anyone resisted until that point. The chest was another thing. A long cut was made from below the Adam’s apple to the navel, then it was slowly torn apart. This was where many fainted because the fat tissues sometimes were hard to detach, and the long knife was needed. The victims that resisted, showing a staggering threshold of pain, always fell off when both of their wrists were broken to represent the god’s — the wooden part of the knife was used for this, swung as a mace on the reddish flesh. Eventually, with the help of a couple of men to hold up the passed out, the shaman would make a final wound on the scalp, and removed the dermis from around the whole head. The skinned body, laying in a huge puddle of blood, was placed on an altar, sitting like Xipe Totec in the holy depictions, and let die slowly.

At the first lights of dawn, the shaman approached the shed where Balam was kept. He took a piece of the sacred burned wood and started drawing celestial signs with the piece of charcoal on the boy’s body.

“Do not fear, young warrior. After the travel, your body will be renewed.” While tracing the lines on the skin, the K’uk’ul Tz’ikin could feel something unfamiliar below the epidermis. There was something powerful in him — much more evident than in the past warriors. That was a good sign: the cycle of life would finally return to normality after the poor harvest of the past year, after the god Xipe Totec will be pleased by that blood offering.

Deep in his heart, Balam knew that wasn’t his destiny. He felt fear, sure, a wave of panic washed over him when later he was brought to the top of the main building of Tazumal, the great pyramid of gods. It was one of the largest temples ever built, where the greatest Mayan rituals were celebrated. Anyway, the boy was calm because he somehow knew that the sharp, black blade would not reach his skin.

It was a clear day, he could see up to the mountains to both North and South. The large paved roads, the sacbeob, were full of people coming to celebrate his death. At the base of the monument, thirty meters below him, they must have been five hundred at least.

He was standing next to the altar waiting for the K’uk’ul Tz’ikin, the feathered bird which would have guided him in his travel towards death. In other words, his slayer.

The shaman was already in the room placed on the top of the pyramid, painting his face and torso to get prepared for the ritual. When he approached Balam, he avoided the boy’s gaze. The old man had told him before that ‘pain is temporary; pride is eternal’, but the youngster’s eyes had a flame inside that unsettled him.

They were alone on the great balcony; two other novices were standing in the inner room. The K’uk’ul Tz’ikin approached the stairs and, while kneeling before the Sun, started reciting a prayer for the gods. Then Balam lost consciousness. Or better, he was still standing on his own feet, but he lost control of his body. It was a sensation he had felt just once in his life, about ten year before, when he got lost in the forest.

He had been sent to get some neem leaves, but he couldn’t remember where was the clearing where the plant grew. After more than an hour spent wandering around, he got lost. He was both afraid and angry, like in that exact moment. Suddenly, he heard a voice, “K’uxi’ in k’i’ik’, ch’ak.” Let me drive you, son. Then his legs started moving without him to command them. They knew the way home, he thought without feeling any fear, and he reached the field with no hesitation. He just trusted his legs. He never knew what happened, and eventually forgot about it. Now, the same sensation entangled his own body, not just the legs. His flesh and bones stopped moving according to his thoughts; he was a spectator, not much different from the hundreds down there.

He started walking towards the shaman, about ten meters away. Seeing him moving, the crowd gasped in awe. Puzzled by the rumble, the old man turned around and saw Balam in front of him: he looked much taller now, and his eyes –perfectly white, almost shining– were gazing at him. The boy wasn’t tied, there was never been the necessity. The man tried to get up on his feet, but before he could understand what was happening, the youngster kicked him in the shoulder. Hard. He fell on the great stone steps of the temple, but luckily he could grab to a protrusion, and stop the fall. The two assistants came out as they heard screams raising from the audience, but in the meantime Balam reached the macuahuitl, which the shaman had dropped. The black obsidian stones were sharp as razors.

There was indeed a light in Balam’s eyes. He whispered, “Nimitz mictlā, nimitz tlālōtl.” I am life, I am death, but nobody heard that. The shaman had climbed the stairs, panting, just to see a fast swing and the heads of the two men falling on the ground. He gulped, shocked in front of such blasphemy. After slaughtering the two kids of about his age, he stopped and looked down. Following his gaze, he seemed to ponder the blood puddle at his feet. He kneeled, reaching the viscous liquid still gushing out of the cut throats.

As he went down, the shaman approached, looking for the right words to calm him down. The boy was transfigured into a tlatikpak, an actual warrior, but that behavior was impudent at least. As he stepped closer, mentally praising Xipe Totec, his eyes widened. In front of him there was the most incredible event he had seen: the red blood was flowing towards the boy’s left hand and up his arm. The red river crossed his shoulders and soaked the macuahuitl. The weapon attracted the fluid; it… it was magnetic. Balam was keeping the blade raised vertically towards the sky, whispering inaudible words. The blood kept climbing his body and disappeared between the wood and the obsidian. Eventually, all the fluid was drained, a few small spots still moving on the floor like liquid mercury.

The boy rose, his eyes now clearly shining their own light –they were on the shaman–, and slowly lifted the macuahuitl. The two were quite distant, the old man was impossible to hit, but his instinct made him retreat. After a couple of steps, though, he felt that moving was suddenly difficult. His body was so heavy! He tried to shift his weight away from the boy, but his limbs were stuck.

Balam was perfectly still, his arm lifted. After a while, the old man started moving towards him with clumsy steps. His body was fighting with his mind, which was commanding it to run away. He had no control over his body. A headache started to grow, more and more, until the pressure before his eyes became intolerable. Suddenly, a strong pain stung him. His vision blurred, and a huge black spot appeared in his vision field. His right eye had popped out, and a blood rivulet was flowing midair towards the sword. He opened his mouth to scream, but no words came out, only other red fluid flying to reach the wooden weapon.

In a matter of seconds, his drained body slumped to the ground, as a huge red spiral disappeared between Balam’s fingers. He stepped towards the stairs, and the crowd cried once more: at the top of the pyramid there wasn’t a young man, but a god. A wrathful god. He couldn’t feel anything, but the thirsty obsidian blades were guiding him. As he descended the large steps, keeping the weapon raised, the screams grew in intensity, as thousands of red strands soared in the air.

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Joyride

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Olivia Coleman is great, but this boy may be even better.

Rating: 🚗

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It Takes Two

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I started playing it with my girlfriend, and we are really enjoying it! The mechanics are very interesting, we –as humanity– need more games like this!

This. Game. Is. Pure. Gold.

We loved that, and the mini-games are such fun!

Rating: 💯❤️

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To Olivia

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

An unexpected Roald Dahl! Very upsetting and sad sometimes, but overall it was a nice view.

Rating: 😤

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Becoming Astrid

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A happy sad story. The emoji ficts perfectly.

Rating: 🥲

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The Hustle

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A very funny silly movie (in the good way) with a strange couple.

Rating: 👍

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The Right Tool

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This week has been productive for my intentions to optimize my time management. I wanted to use again the Pomodoro method… and I partially succeeded. It is hard avoiding distractions. Emails keep arriving, the phone rings when it shouldn’t,… and working from home (among a million perks) has some disadvantages: housework, for example!

Anyway, I managed to write the first short story with random prompts in a couple of days (of which I’m quite proud!). I hope to be able to keep this pace, and maybe write more than one per week.

I know that writing doesn’t require a specific tool, and pen and paper should be the best option… but I fell again in the pit of writing apps. Obsidian is always my first choice, but I tried again Paper and iA Writer. I want to avoid subscriptions (ptui!), but also can’t bear that many paid apps don’t allow a trial period (I’m looking at you, iWriter). For this article and the next story I’ll try iA Writer. But it’s so expensive.

In our new house, I finished painting the walls, and now we have to think about the railing on the staircase. Since we want it made of wood, it is a thing I personally could work on… But there are so many other things to do!

🎮 Still in love with It Takes Two

🎧 Some Mastodon, who I don’t appreciate enough

📖 The same two books I’m really liking!

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Random Prompts #1 - Foul Latinist

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As I wrote in the latest post, I decided to use random prompts every week to write very short stories — as an exercise. For this first one, I had only a couple of days because I wanted to finish it before Sunday… but I did it. The prompt was foul latinist.

He was sitting on an expensive Victorian armchair, in a living room elegantly adorned with analogous furniture. The warm dim light, coming from a couple of abatjours, could make the lounge appear like a tearoom from another century. The huge amount of books, cluttered on every square inch, instead made it look more like an antique bookshop.

Sitting in front of the policeman, on a sofa covered with questionable green cushions, was the householder, Edmund Hawthorne. His sparse, white hair, his checkered light blue shirt matched with the brown waistcoat, and more than all his thick glasses, certainly could make him a more than believable librarian… but his fate, coupled with his passion for History, made him a university professor.

His eyes, two isles in a sea of wrinkles, were unsettled by the man’s words. He put his teacup down on the coffee table, between two piles of books, and cleared his throat: “I understand I might appear to you as an old fool, Mister… McQuay. You are at least fifty years younger than me, and I can totally relate your feelings.” He adjusted his round glasses. “By the way, I insist that you should give credit to this… gramps, how I think your generation would call me.”

Officer McQuay’s temples were pulsating so strong that his vision was almost blurring. He never had much patience, but this man was a real challenge. Now he could fully understand why his damn colleagues insisted why he should respond to the call at the Police Station. It’s a good ol’ professor, he has some ups and downs sometimes. You’ll like him. Yeah, that’s what they said… while laughing. Pricks.

“Ok Professor, let’s make a recap.” He opened the notebook again. “You’ve been harassed several times by an unidentified person—”

“What do you mean unidentified? I’ve been telling you all evening—”

“I mean,” he raised his voice, “that you’ve never seen him or her directly, so there hasn’t been any visual identification. Is this correct?”

The professor grumbled something and moved on the sofa for a few moments, then finally yielded and relaxed his shoulders. He nodded reluctantly, “Correct.”

“Good. You claim that in the past few weeks there had been various incidents. In order… Oh God, where do I start?… Yes, here. On March Four, one of the University janitors called you because at least two hundred iron nails had been spread behind a tire of your car.”

“Yes,” exclaimed the Professor, “that was an obvious act of vandalism. But it was so clunky that Mr. Slade believed that I had dropped a whole box of nails.”

“And… could that be true?” asked the officer with inquiring eyes.

“You tell me why I should bring a whole carton of nails at work!” answered Mr. Hawthorne with even a more questioning look.

“Maybe you forgot,” replied the other, but before the old man could reply, he changed the subject. “You also said that eggs had been thrown agains your car — multiple times.”

“Quite correct. Right here in my driveway, I’ve found my car covered with broken eggs. The detail you missed is that the eggs were rotten. Badly.”

“Are there any witnesses of those happenings? At the University, there’s the janitor, but here…”

“No, alas.” The Professor took a deep breath. “My neighbors did not see a thing. I don’t understand though: usually it is a quite crowded road… It must have been him, as with those kids…”

“Please sir, do not jump to conclusions. As you said, you never saw the guilty. About the episode you mentioned,” he stopped to flip through the pages, “Ah yes. I report the exact words: ‘When returning home, I came across a pack of very impolite teenagers busy to chop my hedge with big cutters. As soon they saw my shocked and upset face, they ran away.’ Is this correct too?”

“It is correct indeed” nodded the Professor. “Luckily, I recognized one of the young rascals because I often met him and his mother at the grocery store, when he was still a child. Mrs. Williams’ been very kind and understanding when I called her. It was then that my suspicions became true!”

“Sir, let’s make a step back. You claim that the lady reported that,” he read twice the name, “Professor Walter Braight had paid her son to commit that act of vandalism.” He took a pause and looked Mr. Hawthorne in the eyes. The old man nodded with a slightly upset look.

The officer continued: “Please note that we didn’t hear Mrs. Williams yet, so everything you told us will be cross-referenced with her answers.”

“I couldn’t ask for more.” He nodded again.

“Well, tell me again: why would Professor Braight would be so mischievous towards you? This is a very inadeguate behavior for a– eighty-two years old man.”

Prof. Hawthorne adjusted himself in the sofa, which seemed getting more and more uncomfortable, other than horribly colored. “Walter Braight hasn’t always been like this. I’ve known him for twenty years at least, and he’s always been recognized as a master in his study – Latin language and Roman culture.” The academic took a pause, while the policeman wrote down ‘latin doc’.

“We’ve never been even competitors in any way… until a couple of months ago, when the University named a lecture hall after me. I think he took it personally… a lot. Since we are the two eldest teachers in there, our names were the most likely ones.” He took another pause. “Now, I can’t tell you for certain –at all–, but I’d bet that he really wanted that acknowledgment. I can understand him.”

“Did he ever talk to you after that day?”

Hawthorne laughed, “Ah! He didn’t even look me in the eyes once! As I said, I could relate to that. After many published works, renowned among the scholars all around the globe, I appreciate the gift from the University. God only knows how many sacrifices cost us those studies. Walter has been a teacher for five or four years before my arrival, and probably he expected the honor should have been granted to himself. I think he is just… prideful, that’s all.”

“His reputation would suggest he should be enough grown-up to avoid such distasteful pranks.”

“Certainly. But there is some evidence I –we– can’t ignore. Apart the kind Mrs. Williams, I already told you that I’ve found something else. The inscription on the dog’s bowl is quite indicative — and questionable.”

“Well, anyone could have done it…”

“It was in Latin, for the Lord’s sake! It said ‘Nimis alte surrexisti. Longa erit tua ruina’ It means ‘You have risen too high. Your fall will be long’. Come on, young man, is it this a message anyone could leave?”

“I said you should not jump—” started the officer.

“What I said is clearly something you haven’t been listening to! And does this fact sound so normal to your ears? I used to keep the dog’s bowl in the front porch, a very few meters from where you’re sitting. Is it ordinary to approach so much a private property?”

“As I already told you, unfortunately there are no security cameras pointed at your house…”

“Cameras! Cameras, cameras, cameras! Do we depend on technology so much? Can one use his own brain?” shouted the Professor.

“Sir, I ask you to calm down, you’re not helping.” McQuay stared at him gravely –and mostly pissed–, but waited patiently that the elder man stopped moving on that strange sofa. The headache was still there, embracing him.

“What… I want to point out,” continued the teacher, “is that I started to worry when the threats started to concern Bungle.”

“Who is…?”

“My dog, of course! About a week ago, someone made that awful inscription in the bowl. Then, tonight, someone hidden in the trees behind the house was calling him. They wanted to kidnap the poor beast… or worse!”

“I’ve already checked the woods, and I can assure you that no one was there.”

“Of course! Half an hour must have passed, and that old fellow must have seen you arrive from a mile!”

McQuay closed the notebook and exhaled sharply. “Mister Hawthorne, I totally understand your point of view.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well,” his hand squeezing the notepad, “even if you don’t believe me, I’ll do my duty and I’ll stay around tonight. Every now and then, I’ll pass here and take a look. Don’t worry if you see my flashlight from the windows, ok?”

“All right, officer. I… I thank you for your time, but I ask you one more time to think out of the box.”

The man giggled, but didn’t reply. The headache didn’t need to be fed. He approached the entrance, and finally said, “Professor, you and Bungle can make sweet dreams. I’ll be around, and you can call the 911 if you need — but please, don’t.” He whispered the last part, while touching his hat.

“Good night, agent McQuay.” Mr. Hawthorne closed the door and shook his head. That silly man didn’t take him seriously. He could only hope for the best.

It was almost ten o’clock… he had missed dinner with all that hustle and bustle! He wisely decided to eat just a couple of biscuits with an infusion, then went to the bathroom. When he got out, while changing into a more comfortable pajama, heard a thud. A light noise, very delicate, but unmistakable. He strained his hears, and after a few moments there was another one. It came from the bath window. Someone was throwing cobbles on the glass. He had let the light on, misleading anyone outside to believe he was still in the bathroom.

That had been a long day, and the evening was particularly stressful. He couldn’t handle it anymore. The Professor opened the window and yelled to the darkness, “For God’s sake, Braight, when will you stop?”

After a few moments of silence, something moved among the fallen leaves, and a weird noise slowly started to grow. At first it was a guttural sound, a growl of an animal, but it quickly turned in an almost hysterical laugh. Then an old voice shouted, “Numquam!”. Never. Another screeching laugh, and then a couple of running footsteps in the darkness, towards the woods.

At last, there was a third thud, much farther but also much louder than the others. Then, silence.

After a minute, when the intruder seemed to be gone, a final, feeble, noise sprouted: a whine full of pain.

Hawthorne wanted to smile, but he was too tired. Instead, he reached for the telephone in the living room and pressed tree buttons. After a couple of minutes, he grabbed a flashlight and went out from the kitchen back door. It was a starry night, but there was no moon. No wonder that silly man couldn’t see a thing. He approached the trees and found the Latin professor, unnaturally twisted in the underwood, lying on the underwood. He had a contusion on the forehead, but he seemed fine.

“Stay still, foolish old man. An ambulance is coming. I hope you’ve learned a lesson… despite our age.” He turned around, but after a few steps couldn’t help himself but adding, “Remember: sapientia vincit iram.” Wisdom overcomes wrath.

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The Old Curiosity Shop

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Well… That was a sad movie. I never read any of Dicken’s books, but if his average characters are like the grandfather here… well, username checks out.

Rating: 😔

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Another New Beginning

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This year started… well… better than I expected, I guess. I’ll try to make a recap of the last weeks with different paragraphs. It will be short, but a bit confusing.

This will be the first of my 100 posts to offload. I was never consistent when blogging, so let’s see if I can make it to the end.

Renovation is slowly proceeding, but it is going on. It is my main source of stress, but actually making some work with the help of a relative helped. Also, the house is almost habitable, so seeing it gives me hope. It won’t be ready before 2–3 months MINIMUM, but it’s something.

I’m more and more conscious of the stress I may be causing to the ones living around me, but reading a simple book helped me to make some small improvements. It won’t be always easy, but I’m confident that it will be always more and more easy to get better towards others.

I’ve read a lot during these holidays, and I guess I’m… grateful for it? That’s another point regarding the previous paragraph. They say it helps to say it aloud. We’ll see, I’m quite skeptic.

I’ve started again trying to use the Pomodoro technique. Working from home, I’m well-aware that I’m easily distracted. I’m trying to use this method better, I hope to have enough willpower to keep doing it – if it actually helps (I’m using it even now to write this blog post).

I want to write a short story so bad. The problems are mainly two:

I don’t have much free time
I currently lack of inspiration Since I’m a geek, I worked on a Bash script to generate a simple random prompt: an adjective and a noun. Then I will have to write a short story, probably really short. Anyway, I hope that it will be useful as an exercise. I still don’t know if to do it daily or weekly… let’s start with the latter, since I wrote that I don’t have the time.

I think… that’s enough for now. If the afternoon will allow it, I want to spend the next two hours writing, so… better start thinking.

🎮 My girlfried started playing It Takes Two and we’re loving it!

🎧 Uhm… In this moment, Shotgun Sawyer. Nice!

📖 Two books at the same time! A forbidden practice, for me!

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Wicked

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I may have a controversial opinion about this movie, but:

It’s too damn slow
The are just a couple of songs that remain in the head at the end, and it’s a problem for a musical: they’re too fragmented, and long
TO BE CONTINUED?!?! After 160 minutes?!

Rating: 😑

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Collected Ghost Stories - M. R. James

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Spooky season is never over (sung in Daft Punk tone 🤖)

*Still in progress* 🏃

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The Whale

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

That was a punch in the (huge) stomach. It was beautiful, but also awful. We need more movies like this.

Rating: 💔

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The Father Christmas Letters

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It is moving to see how much love Tolkien put in these fantastic letters to his children. The characters, the drawings, the amazing personality he put in the details… A recommended reading to everyone, one letter every so often.

Rating: ❤️❤️❤️

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A Panda Piace… Capirsi

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This was a well-timed gift. A brief comic book with some explanation on how to understand anxiety, fear, etc… And some suggestions to manage our bad habits. A very nice reading. ❤️

Rating: 🫂🧠

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Leggere Fa Male!

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A nice collection of short stories about bad things happened while reading… Probably the one i preferred is Swain’s. Plus, reading Blackwood is always a pleasure.

Rating: 🤔

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Krampus: Diavoli Custodi

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A very interesting reading about a particular tradition in North-Eastern Italy. I already wrote about it, and this book deeply explores the roots of this custom.

Rating: ★

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Aladdin (2019)

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I fell asleep at two thirds. I don’t understand why they had to add new songs. Or start making live action remakes.

Rating: 😡🏜️

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Through Insomnia and Good Neighbors

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

December has been a full month. We’ve been to a very short vacation in Northern Piedmont, here in Italy, and we enjoyed some good hikes despite it was low season. Because of this, many mountain huts were closed and part of the charm was gone. You know, it’s nice to walk in the nature and all… But a good lunch in a hut with traditional dishes is probably the part I prefer.

This is a classic Walser hamlet on the Alps. Cold and lovely!

There, in that cozy –and extremely hot because of the heating– apartment, I started having some troubles with insomnia. That was the last thing I needed: since a few months, I realized aware that I’m always more and more short-tempered. I don’t like being it, and I try my best to avoid mouthing off, and counting to five before answering someone… But sometimes I can’t control it.

The cause is the renovation of our house, which is NEVERENDING! Honestly, I don’t know where to turn because the carpenter just doesn’t come at work. It would be nice to fire them, and change them with other ones, but it is not so simple…

Luckily, this month has been very positive too. The good neighborly relations we had in this little hamlet are growing in real friendships, and this is probably the best thing could happen to my girlfriend and me. So, things are not good at all… but not so bad either.

Christmas is approaching too damn fast, and I hope to find four of five days of coziness to maybe sit down and write down a short story. It’s been a while since the last one… but a lot more since the last article on Godsip Club. I would blame the renovation in this case too, but it’s also my fault. If I really wanted, I could write much more. Anyway, I decided to pass more time with friends, and work did not help in these weeks.

One last positive note, and a suggestion I want to give to everyone who likes rock/metal music: listen to Doom Charts’ suggestions (e.g., the monthly rankings), you won’t regret it!

🎮 Dead Island 2

🎧 Those Doom Charts above… and some Christmas oldies.

📖 I finished the first Dirk Gently’s novel, and I quite liked it!

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Smith of Wootton Major

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Very sweet, but also short alas!

Rating: 24x🍰

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Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I had high expectations because I had read Hitchiker’s Guide first, but I enjoyed this bizarre novel. I can’t say I completely understood all the twists, but it was fun!

Rating: 🛋️

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Cold Comfort Farm

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not sure how we stumbled upon this movie, but I’m really glad we watched it. It was very funny, and I think I found my favorite monologue by Ian McKellen!

Rating: 👍

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NOS4A2

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

At about 30%, it is interesting, but a bit slow.

Still relevant until the end.

After two months (and half), I finally finished it. Well, what to say? In my opinion, the story is catchy but with two main flaws: it is overly verbose (almost 700 pages!) and even too complex. There are too many repetitions, redundant inner thinking,… Even in the very very final part! Overall, though, it’s a nice thriller with a good villain.

Rating: 🚗🚗🚗

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Dead Island 2

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I have very good memories of the first Dead Island (it was one of the few games my girlfriend enjoyed watching me playing). After a few hours, the sequel seems fun enough! On PS4, the graphics are quite good, too!

After a few months, I can declare I abandoned the game. It was fun, but a little repetitive.

Rating: 👍

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The Duke

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Very enjoyable, I loved Jim Broadbent’s character. The finale is a bit stretched, but it’s based on a true story, so it’s super-forgivable.

Rating: 👌

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Silent Hill

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Wow, I really enjoyed it. Fantastic atmosphere, solid gameplay (even if the inventory is clunky)… I see why it is so much appreciated.

Rating: 👩‍⚕️🧟‍♀️

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Silent Hill, Finally

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When I was about eleven years old, my brother and I bought Metal Gear Solid for PlayStation. No need to say that I was mind-blown by the story, the graphic, and the characters. Maybe that was the very first videogame that made me think “This is more than just a game”, which then happened with The Last of Us and other games.

Other than that, I clearly remember the CD case of MGS because it contained the demo disc of another game by Konami: Silent Hill. I recall playing it with my brother until the end, when a group of weird children assaulted the player with knives, and he fell unconscious. Black screen. WTF! That scene traumatized both of us so much that we never played the full game. Also, since then, I always had a reverential fear towards the whole series.

Until… I finally decided to try the games, a few weeks ago. Since I own a PS4, I went on the PlayStation Store, and… there are no Silent Hill games! 😤 So, I was aware of OpenEmu for macOS, and I gave it a chance.

It just took twenty-five years.

First, the emulator itself is awesome: it’s super-fast, and it has a handy management of savegames¹ and screenshots.

When I powered on the game (the North American version), I was thrilled to hear again the mandolin theme during the opening sequence. That was enough to give me chills. Then, when the game started, I thought the controls were a bit clunky, as with the first Resident Evil… but no! The movement is pretty fast and well-managed; the only big flaw for me, compared to modern games, is the inventory, which is very slow to browse.

The story itself is very interesting, but in my opinion not very well-narrated. There are pagan rituals, drug trafficking, very weird happenings… Everything I like! I got the sense of what was happening and the background, but… when the credits rolled, something was missing. Maybe it was me, but when I read the plot on Wikipedia, I asked myself: “Where the hell did they get some of those details?”

Anyway, that was literally a hell of a ride, and I hope to enjoy some other classics I have never played. At this moment, it occurs me only Ape Escape, another game whom I loved the demo, but I never tried the full experience. Maybe it’s a midlife crisis, but it’s nice deep diving in the past sometimes.

Here are the stats of my run.

I admit I used GameFAQs for a couple of enigmas… Too much time!

🎮 Well…

🎧 An amazing album by Cortez

📖 Still on NOS4A2, about 75%. Dang, it’s long.

To be honest, even if you can just save the game with a key on the keyboard, I also saved using the old –emulated– Memory Card… because I felt nostalgic. ↩︎

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In Fabric

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

DAFUQ. DID. I. SEE.

Fun in two or three scenes, but terribly slow. Creepy, but not scary at all. Worst movie for Halloween. :(

Rating: 👎

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Barry - S01

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Unexpectedly good, and I never heard about it! Both funny and sad, with great characters. Can’t wait to see the next seasons.

Rating: 8x🔫 + 1x🦷

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Getting Into ListenBrainz

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, while reading about Libre.fm, an open source alternative to Last.fm, I (re)discovered ListenBrainz, a similar project by MusicBrainz, which is an online database for music releases. I know they’re a lot of names but, in short, I was fascinated by ListenBrainz, and I decided to create a profile to have a history of what music I listen to.

Until May 2020, I had a Last.fm account with thousands of scrobbles¹, but I rarely used since 2010 or so. Also, the website had changed a lot from the first years, and it did not make sense to me to keep my data there. So, one day… I deleted the profile, but I didn’t download my stats because I thought they’d be useless to me.

In fact, my music tastes changed a bit, and too many years have passed with no scrobbles. I thought that a fresh new start would be good, since I love listening to music at every hour of the day. In the past years, I had already noticed ListenBrainz (LB from now on), but didn’t give it too much attention. Last week, however, I finally signed up.

The Horror

Only after I had logged in, I found out that there was no way to scrobble data from Apple Music, the app that I use for the homonymous subscription! On LB there are supported plug-ins for Windows and Linux, for other media player; there’s also the option to actually use your Apple Music account to listen the songs through their website… but if I listened to a song from my Mac, that didn’t appear not listed on my profile. I looked in every corner of several search engines, but I couldn’t find anything.

Eventually, without thinking too much, I started an experiment: a Bash script to send my scrobbles.

Years ago, I had already found a very good resource for AppleScripts, and there were some for the old iTunes² too. They work perfectly also for Music.app, so in a few minutes I was able to get the playing track. Luckily, AppleScript scripts can be called by Bash using the osascript command and, with some help from StackOverflow, I was able to use this data to build a JSON file. Then, using curl, the info is easily sent to the LB API, and the song appears on the profile!.

I added a few checks to manage various cases that can happen (e.g., the music is paused, the app is not open, the same song has been already scrobbled), and in a couple of days I think I’ve built a quite stable script. While working on it, I learned some new flags for echo and grep (I guess they’re infinite), and the Bash’s trap, without which I don’t know how I could live before… I’m pretty satisfied!

Here it is, in case you want to try it: ListenBrainz macOS Scrobbler for Music.app.

I’ve also found a way to incorporate it in an actual “app” using a workaround, but I prefer to run it manually:

$ ./scrobbler.sh
Music not playing. Waiting.
Scrobbling Foo Fighters - Wind Up (The Colour And The Shape)
Sleeping 30 seconds.
Same song as before.
Same song as before.

The Joy

I posted on Mastodon that I was working on the project, and I tagged MetaBrainz’s profile. I’m glad I immediately gained their attention, and I hope that someone will find it useful.

Maybe this script will be handy for 0.01% of their user base, but for me, it will be more than enough. I’ve always wanted to contribute to some open source projects, but I know only a little of the modern programming languages.

In the future, it would be nice to write a proper macOS app… we’ll see!

🎮 No time for that!

🎧 Dust Prophet

📖 Still on NOS4A2

It’s the term they invented to denote the playing of a track. ↩︎
I would’ve never imagined that I could feel nostalgic for an app name. Why the heck did they changed to the boring Music.app?! ↩︎

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Boys from County Hell

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I thought it was a dramatic movie, instead it ended up to be one of the funniest and unexpected movies I saw lately. Maybe it’s because I had low expectations, but I really enjoyed it. And nice soundtrack!

Rating: 🙌

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Hereditary

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Not surprised to discover that the director is the same as Midsommar. A bit too haunting, but I liked it.

Rating: 😈⛽︎

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Speak No Evil

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t expect a thrilling episode of Escape To The Country! Wonderful places apart, I liked the tension across the whole movie, and I particularly loved James McAvoy. I still have to see the original movie, and I will!

Rating: 6x🧸

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The Amulet

Sat, 19 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Nice idea and good atmosphere, but the finale is just mediocre.

Rating: 5

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Pizza and Friendship

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This will be my first post written using BearBoost by Robert Birming, we’ll see how it goes.

The prompt I got was: “Write a blog post about the podcasts you listen to regularly”. Well, that’s quite easy: generally, I don’t like podcasts. Maybe I’m the only person on Earth. 👀

If I have spare time at home, I prefer reading a book, playing videogames, or watching a movie. Or, even better, listening to some music – old or new, it does not matter. Podcasts are strange, for me: you can find any topic you like, and I bet there are many ones that I’d appreciate… but they just don’t fit my habits.

Except for one.

It is a podcast with a cool name: PowerPizza. It is obviously about pizza, but the hosts mainly talk about series, movies, books or videogames. What makes the show special, though, is their relationship: they are very good friends, and the listener can totally feel it while listening.

The best part of the cast is not about the content, but listening to them talking. It feels like sitting at a table, listening to three friends of yours discussing – and you have constantly a smile on your face because they are funny. It’s the feeling you get while watching How I Met Your Mother.

When I used to go out more often with my closest friends, it was nice to just listen to them joking/fighting/discussing/blaming/mock each other. It felt home.

This is real friendship.

And this is what I get whenever I listen to PPP, a.k.a. Power Pizza Podcast. It is not a podcast about anything in particular, it is just about friendship.

Probably it is also because I miss the friends I mentioned above: one moved to the other side of the globe, and about ten years ago everything changed for all of us. But we’ll discuss that another time.

About PowerPizza, I started listening to it approximately one year and half ago, when we moved in this countryside hamlet while waiting for the renovation works to finish. Since then, each time I take the car, I put the show on¹, and time flies.

The show currently has ~300 weekly episodes, and I started from 250 going back. When I figured out that it hadn’t much sense, one hundred chapters later, this summer I started listening from the very first one. As of today, I am at number 42.²

🎮 I played one hour of Night in the Woods… interesting!

🎧 I’m currently trying to explore SUNN O)))’s world. It’s complicated.

📖 Always NOS4A2.

Interestingly, that’s when I learned that podcasts are best when heard at 1,25x speed. ↩︎
The nerdiest number among all! Is it a coincidence? ↩︎

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Migrating This Blog to Hugo

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, I wanted to challenge myself with an exercise: migrating this blog from omg.lol’s Weblog to a “classic” Hugo website, whom I became an aficionado.

Why?

…one could ask. Well, probably because I was a little bored and organizing the Medialog was becoming quite a pain: too many lines of code for every image. With Hugo’s shortcodes, it would have been much easier to organize the pagination.

Also, as I wrote previously, I wanted to implement a mechanism to automatically edit the blog images with dithered ones. Simply, with Weblog –for me– it would have been too difficult.

Anyway, Adam has all my respect and I love his projects. In my opinion, omg.lol provides all the tool one could ask to live an “healthy” digital life.

How?

I exported my Weblog data (super easy and organized!) and, with sed and the “replace” tool, fixed the front matter to match the TOML syntax. Since posts is one of Hugo’s default taxonomies, the menu was ready in a few minutes.

Then, I immediately focused on the Medialog section, and I discovered the real Hugo’s potentiality, which I haven’t used properly in my other four projects that use it! It was easy to create a page in the _default section to manage different markdown files, one per entry. Also, the old Weblog’s CSS was 90% perfect as it was.

I managed to add customized Opengraph cards with the titles of the posts using Aaro’s tutorial, and it was super easy. Last, I focused on the dithered image generation, for which I used ImageMagick and a Bash script.

Why, again?

I don’t know. 🫠

🎮 Still on Far Cry 4 in my spare time

🎧 Some classics from R.E.M.

📖 NOS4A2

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Apartment 7A

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

So boring that I don’t want to bother finding a strange rating. I liked Julia Garner, but not as much as in Inventing Anna.

Rating: 5

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Cuckoo

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Interesting idea, but the third act feels just… weird. It’s a shame, the first ten minutes had so much potential. Maybe it’s my fault, but I didn’t understand the bad guy’s reasons. 🤔

Rating: 🙁

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Allgäu - Lots of Love

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This September, my girlfriend and I had a seven-days vacation in Southern Germany, in Allgäu. It is a lovely region because, first, people are very friendly. Second, it is heaven for hikers or lovers of MTB. Imagine a plateau at about 800 meters above sea level: if you look at the north, you can see gentle hills and large pastures. At the south, you can see the Alps, and you can reach them in 10 minutes.

This post will be a little different: it will be a mini-guide with a couple of suggestions. It’s the second time we visited this region, and now we can say that we really like it. If you prefer the countryside than the city, you’ll love it; otherwise, better avoid planning vacations here.

East and West

Both the times, we stayed in two different places, at about one hour driving. In the western part of Allgäu, a nice base for hikes on lower hills would be near Oberstaufen or Oberreute. They are villages almost on the border with Austria, and there are many trails across it. You can just walk, or take a cable car to reach the top of the mountains. Also, there are dozens of paths towards northern green hills.

The view from the north of Oberreute

Tip: if you are around there, you should eat at Fezzo. Really.

Then, after two or three days at least, you could move to the East, near Füssen, and visit the countryside there. Of course, you can’t avoid visiting Europe’s most popular castle, Neuschwanstein, but I warn you: the visit itself lasts less than thirty minutes, is very expensive, and you’re not allowed to make even a photo inside. It is indeed beautiful, but also overestimated in my opinion.

If you want to visit a real castle, you can hike to Hohenfreyberg for free, and it is six-centuries older.

In both areas, there are cable-cars that allow you to visit the Alps and walk at ~1800 meters on very well-marked paths. Super-recommended!

A photo of a green panorama taken from a great height. Every building and road is very small.

Walk, Walk, and Walk

As I already said, hikers and bikers will find beautiful tracks. We used Bergfex app to find routes, and there are dozens, for both beginners and experts. Also, check out Outdooractive, which has some extra feature.

In a week, we walked an average of 17 kilometres per day! We usually suffer the elevation difference in trails, so these sweet hills are just perfect.

Snow? Even Better

The first time we’ve been there was before Christmas 2022, and everything was covered in white. There are lots of well-marked winter trails, and we loved the atmosphere – and the silence. In the woods, you can just hear the trees cracking and the birds chirping.

For me, that is a vacation. And I fell in love with this place.

🎮 I started Far Cry 4 because I never played it, and I’m quite enjoying it

🎧 Luna Sol by Vita Mors

📖 Still on NOS4A2

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The Clovehitch Killer

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I heard about this movie from a grumpy podcaster (Lorro, I love you) and I couldn’t agree more: this a well-studied psychological thriller.

Rating: 7-

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Blink Twice

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Very slow start, nice second act. The conclusion is cool, but the very final scene is bad. I loved the photography!

Rating: 5x📸

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Exhuma

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A nice horror! Maybe a little bit of Korean background knowledge is required, but finally some fresh air!

Rating: 7x⚰️

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Longlegs

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Unexpectedly good! Three very good main actors and a couple of scenes with shivers! A bit disappointed by the final scenes, but overall this was very fun. Great Nic Cage!

Rating: 8x🪆

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The Blair Witch Project

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Finally I caught up this classic. I liked it because of the atmosphere, and I appreciated its cuts… but the end is quite disappointing. Mysterious, but it lacks something. I normally appreciate the lack of jumpscares, but… I expected them!

Rating: 7x🪵🪨

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Deadpool & Wolverine

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Lots of fighting scenes and cameos. I got what I expected.

Rating: 6x🐩

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Far Cry 4

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

After about a week, I’m enjoying it! …And finally stopped using the bow as main weapon.
I abandoned it because it is very cool… but there are too many things to do, I don’t have time for that.

Rating: 🐅

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Persepolis

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Touching, delicate and graphically delightful. I need to read the graphic novel, which is on my list from too much time.

Rating: 🥲²

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Io Capitano

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

One of those films you are glad to watch, but you refuse to believe. A sad story, beautifully narrated. Great performances!

Rating: 🫂

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Houdini - Melvins

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I just noticed that this record came out almost thirty-three years ago, and last weekend I put it on a few times. It is just immortal. Maybe the easiest(?) of the band, excluding the last two songs (the drum machine in Pearl Bomb is the worst idea ever). If you like rock in general, you should listen to this record at least once or twice. It is powerful.

Rating: 💣

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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Funny, but with a strange rhythm — almost everything happens in the second half. Good sequel, even if sadly Monica Bellucci always dubs herself in Italian.

RIP Bob 💔 Rating: 7x🕷️

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Trap

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Not bad, I quite enjoyed it. Maybe better than Shyamalan’s latest works as director. Overall, I liked it except the weird shots during the dialogues. Whyyyy?

Rating: 🎤🎤🎤/5

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The Dark Forest

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

My expectations were too high. I loved The Three-Body Problem, and here I found again some very interesting ideas, such as the Wallfacers and the Wallbreakers. Anyway, there are two main flaws: the lack of rhythm (which affected the prequel too) and of a real story. We always have the feeling that something is going to happen… but it never does.

Rating: 💧💧💧/5

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A VPS, Finally

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This rainy Sunday, I finally got my first VPS. I’ve always wanted to self-host my blogs and maybe some other services, and I wanted to use one of my Raspberry Pi. Unluckily, the renovation is taking me much more time than expected, so in the meanwhile I decided to get a VPS.

First, I opted for Hetzner in order to have the data hosted in the EU (not a big deal, it’s mostly a conviction of mine). It’s quite cheap, too. Then, I got Rocky Linux as Operating System because I loved CentOS, and I am very familiar with it. Last, as Web server, I installed nginx. I had never used it(!), but I heard very good feedback about it, so it took me a few moments to decide.

I spent a few moments to harden the OS (it’s my job!) and I won’t give many details here because I’m a bit paranoid. 🤓 But generally I:

Changed the SSH port
Granted SSH access just to a non-admin user
Disabled root login via SSH
Left only the necessary TCP ports open (literally three, for now) on both the OS firewall and the Hetzner one

In an hour or so, my static websites were already there, and then I spent the next morning to fight against some nginx configurations. I noticed that, when accessing http://ip-address, the response was OK, but when using https, the first website in alphabetical order appeared!

Then, after a few hours, while feeding the cats and preparing tomato sauce (that’s another story, I’ll write about it), I found an amazing answer on Stack Overflow which addressed precisely my issue. Never happened before. 🥲

Now I want to install some more software, e.g. Pi-Hole, but I think I prefer running most of them on a private network… on the Raspberry Pi, after moving in the new house. We’ll see when that’ll happen. 👴

🎧 A wonderful track I discovered in The Bear OST

📖 Always The Dark Forest

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Predator

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t remember if I had watched the whole movie in the past, and I was inspired by a podcast to give it another chance. The reviewer said this film was almost perfect. Well, it’s not my genre, but it’s damn fun.

Rating: 💥

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A Quiet Place: Day One

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I loved the first A Quiet Place, and I liked the second one. I was curious by the prequel idea, and I was not disappointed. A few scenes were maybe too much to be convincing, but overall it is a good movie. Maybe the main characters are a bit slow to grow fond with.

Rating: 😼

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The Bear S03

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I loved the first two seasons, and this one keeps very high standards along with the usual, amazing soundtrack, but… There are just too many unanswered questions! All the episodes are very entertaining, BUT… ‘TO BE CONTINUED’ at the end should be banned from any media.

Rating: 🫥

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As Lightweight As I Can

Sat, 07 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

After my first tries with Weblog’s customization, I decided to work on something similar to LowTechMagazine’s approach to pictures: since their whole website (which is Hugo-based, by the way) is hosted on a solar-powered machine, every kilobyte counts.¹ Since I don’t care having high resolution images on my blog, I thought: What if I dither them?

Until a few weeks ago, I think I never heard this term, even if I had already heard about Floyd-Steinberg using image-editing tools. So, after some research and a few questions to ChatGPT, I created a simple script that swaps the src of an image in a <figure> HTML element with the same one, but with (or without) the _dithered suffix.

So, if I put filename_dithered.jpg on this blog, a nice button appears in the caption that swaps it with the original image. And also, if the user clicks on the dithered image, the original one is zoomed full-screen.

Of course, I thought about error handling: what if the dithered version of the image, or the non-dithered one, does not exist? A <div> simply appears, telling that the alternate version of the picture does not exist.

Here is the script.

Was it simple to make? Quite.

Is it useful? I don’t know, but surely this blog is pretty light. Of course, I can always get better.

Look at this cutie sleeping. She’s just 12KB. If you click on her, her chonkiness prevails, and she grows up to 92KB!

Her name is Dana. She’s really lovely.

Don’t Forget To Squoosh Your Images

One final note: the original image is compressed too, using Squoosh, a formidable web app that allows to quickly compress pictures. Light images make the browsing experience faster, and everybody is happier. In my opinion, every pic on the internet should be squooshed.

🎧 Some more Gojira

📖 The Dark Forest, about 80%

This may be a reference to The Bear’s “every second counts” slogan in Season 3. ↩︎

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Robot Dreams

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Loved the style and the story. For the first time in my life, I think, I wanted to punch a dog. At least there was a happy ending.

Rating: 🙂

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Ex Machina

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Very cool story, 8-10 years ahead of recent times. Amazing performances and settings, loved them. Browsing IMDb, I discovered that the director was also Sunshine’s writer. No wonder!

Rating: 🤖🤖🤖🤖/5 on a Turing test

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Tweaking Weblog - Pt. 1

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Maybe my favorite feature by omg.lol is Weblog, this simple engine to create blogs and whole, cool websites. It can also host files, so it is a mini-CMS, or better a mini-database for text files that works perfectly.

Lately, I’ve played with it quite a lot. Here are some of the changes I made.

The Medialog

As a personal space to keep track of the media I consumed (books, movies, videogames, tv series, and maybe other). I took inspiration on memo’s medialog¹ : it is simple and just does its job. I just added the rating, it was already perfect.

This was also the occasion to learn some more CSS (damn flex boxes, now I start to understand and how you work). I added the “spoiler” feature and some other functions, and now it is a proper archive which will I’ll populate over time.

It would be nice to understand if it is possible to paginate the number of items in each page… We’ll see!

The “Reply by Mail” Link

I had already written about anti-spam ways to share your email in websites… And then I made in a slight different way. 🙃

The link calls a script:

<p>
  <a href="javascript:msg('bWFpbEBleGFtcGxlLmNvbQ==');">Reply by email ✉️</a>
</p>

…which dynamically creates the right mailto: link with the post title (here below it is expanded so you can’t see the variable):

function msg(encoded) {

var address = atob(encoded);

window.location.href = "mailto:" + address + "?subject=Reply%20to%20{title}";

}

The email address is encoded in base64 in the link, but the “double jump” makes quite difficult for scrapers to find it.

For most technical users it may be very basilar or simple, but building a custom solution made me feel like Hackerman.²

IndieWeb’s h-card and h-entry

Inspired by Flame’s post, I set up a h-card and h-entry templates for Weblog’s pages and posts. I like the concept of IndieWeb, but at the moment… I wouldn’t know how to add comments or webmentions. I’ll think about it, but in the meanwhile it is a small step in this direction.

The One and Only CSS file

Weblog comes with two templates (one for the pages, one for the posts), each with its own stylesheet. A few days ago, I had an idea: What about to save a single .css file, as for ‘robots.txt’?

I tried, and it worked flawlessly! And then… I figured out that the exact example was published but Adam a few months before. A bit more research would have helped, but I’ll just say that, at that time, I didn’t follow the newsletter yet. 🫠

Overall, for anyone interested, I’m keeping the Weblog configuration in a Git repository.

The page disappeared, at the time of publishing this article, but I admit I stole good part of its CSS. 👀 ↩︎
That was not a typo. ↩︎

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Worse Than Animals

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, I happened to be in an unexpected situation that I didn’t know how to manage. It wasn’t just something practical as “I have to build something” or “My car broke down”. There was a stranger needing for help.

It started a quiet morning, browsing on Mastodon. On the local timeline, I noticed a strange, sad post: “A last cry for help”. A person was asking someone to listen to a problem he or she couldn’t solve, and maybe give some suggestions. I sent a private message: “I don’t know if I can help, but I’m all ears if you wanna talk about something”. Then, things took an unexpected turn.

She, a totally unknown girl, told me an episode of abuse and betrayed trust. Obviously I won’t give any details, but we exchanged about forty messages where she told about a filthy man who abused her and then kept texting her, blaming her.

I was taken by surprise and, at first, honestly didn’t know what to tell her. After reassuring her that this is a common subtle psychological tactic, I thought that talking with some more expert people than me would be the best (last year, a new help line was established against stalking). We agreed that the best thing to do was talking with someone she trusted, and with whom she could not maybe “fight” this man, but at least stop being frightened. I think that she just had to sort her thoughts, and I’m glad if I could be helpful in any way.

What unsettled me was the abrupt sense of responsibility that I got that peaceful morning — it was like a little earthquake. Last year, my girlfriend and I unwittingly followed the news much more, and we were astonished by the number of acts of domestic violence. A report from 2023 show that the police had more than seventeen-thousand calls for this reason.

Why are we so insane?

As my almost-centenarian friend says, we are worse than animals.

As a bonus, here is a peaceful picture I took that same week, while hiking with some friends.

The view from the Monte delle Figne

🎮 …nothing! I have to finish Blasphemous

🎧 After the Olympics, I often listen to Gojira

📖 Still on The Dark Forest (about ~70% of the eBook)

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Jules

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A delightful Ben Kinglsey. Probably one of the best performances by an alien.

Rating: 🙃🛸

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Abigail

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Interesting plot twist (if you haven’t seen the trailer), but once the action kicks in, it gets quite predictable. Slight spoilers below. The explosions of the vampires are the coolest part!

Rating: 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸/10

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The Watchers

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Meh². I liked the folklore theme and the background, but not the depiction of the creatures. Also, the final scene is like… 🥱

Rating: 🧚😐🧚

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Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

One of those classics whose just the memories can move you. Tornatore, Morricone, great performances… Everything is right.

Rating: 🥲💯

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The Last Bus

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Sad, with slight good vibes. I’m not sure if this should be seen with the partner. Probably it was sponsored by English tourism office, but they didn’t spend much on the screenplay.

Rating: 😐

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Growing Vegetables and Friendships

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This year, our almost-centenarian neighbor allowed us to grow our vegetable garden right next to his one, a few meters from our temporary home. It meant so much to me! First, it is way handier than last year, when we made it in our future terrain. Every day or two, I had to go there by car and let the water slowly flow to the plants with a drip system. There were gazillions of mosquitoes.¹

Overall, though, I really appreciated the gesture because it meant that our neighbor… grew fond to us! Almost every day, I still spend an hour with him to keep him company. Now, in summer months, his grandchildren visit him much more often than in cold months, but he always smiles when he sees us.

A few months ago, we planted the tomatoes, zucchini, green chilies, and some salad. He immediately gave us some suggestions, and still today, still asks how are our plants. When he goes to the garden, each morning (remember that he’s 97-years-old!), he compliments with us on how well the tomatoes are growing.

I’m also glad that, in the last few weeks, he also got to know my father, who helped to fix his lawn mower. They both love meeting new (and good) people, and this was a fortuitous event.

During the last year, spent in this small village, I had the confirmation that growing friendships, even unusual ones, is just priceless.

A bonus pumpkin plant in the vegetable garden, survived from last year!

🎮 🫥

🎧 Sacri Monti

📖 Still The Dark Forest, which is getting much better!

Honestly, that was the occasion when I started listening to podcasts. There were also some upsides. ↩︎

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Making Bricks Red Again

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This last month, I’ve been busy with probably the best manual work I’ve done in our new house: cleaning our vaulted brick ceilings.

The carpenters didn’t come to work (I don’t have enough bad words for them), so I spent a few hours to make the best of the bricks. They were covered with an old plaster work, so I had to find a way to remove it. There were also a lot of grout to remove, and I didn’t have any experience.

First, I tried to remove it with an iron brush. It worked, but after they weren’t very clean. They still hadn’t the “brick red” color. Then, I used a power tool with the same brush attached, and it was just perfect! The main drawback was the huge amount of dust it made, but I bought new googles and mask, and I threw myself headlong.

See the results! 🍾

A photo collage of the ceiling before and after the work

Indeed, I learned something new, and I also have material for a few blog articles… But the problem is that I never have time to write, so that’s it for today! 🏃💨

🎮 Nothing, a bit of Sly Raccoon for PS2!

🎧 I just discovered some Italian Medieval dark beekeeper folk!

📖 I started The Dark Forest (The Three-body Problem #2) – so boring in the first 15%!

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Cheap, Good Privacy Solutions

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while that I wanted to write a brief recap of the alternative solutions I use for privacy. I tend to avoid Google products, but I also keep an eye on the price. One always can’t have all (privacy and a good service), but I think I’ve found some good compromises.

Email: Tuta

I’ve been a ~~Tutanota~~ Tuta customer for some years, and I still have their old fee: €1/month. It was very convenient for the quality of the application, but the current fee (€3/month) of the Revolutionary plan is more than acceptable. Also, the free account is enough if you, like me, tend to not archive emails.¹

Note: I recently found Posteo as an alternative, and it is very interesting for the same cheap price!

VPN: Mullvad

One of the best products, they really take their job seriously. The fee is simple: €5/month. They have clients for any Operating Systems, and it just works very well.

Their browser, a Firefox fork, is awesome too. Not perfect for everyday use, but overall excellent.

Photos: Ente

I’ve looked around a lot for a good Google Photos replacement, and I think Ente is currently the best not-self-hosted option. It is very simple to set up, and the prices are fair (currently, you can also have 5GB for free for a year!).

To be honest, I’m not still using it because an important feature (for me, at least) is missing, but I think I’ll give it another chance soon.

They also provide maybe the best Two-Factor Authentication App for iOS. Check it out!

And then, quickly, the essentials…

Firefox as web browser, instead of Chrome
DuckDuckGo as search engine (even if it depends too much on Bing, which is evil), instead of, you know… Google
Obsidian as note-taking tool instead of Keep

…There would be much more things to say, but that was a good start. These may not be the best options, but they are indeed good, and cheap.

🎮 nothing!

🎧 Some more TOOL

📖 Finished Solaris - wonderful!

Also, as a bonus, their spam filter is very strict and efficient! ↩︎

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My Solution Against Spam

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

If you have a website, the problem of sharing your email address in a “safe” way shouldn’t be new. The mailto: links are just too easy to detect from bots and crawlers, which are always more super-efficient. I have no idea about the technology they might use, but it’s always the same game of the cat and mouse to avoid spam. Everybody hates it, and so do I.

For my website, I opted for a double solution. First, a simple JavaScript alert that, when clicking on the email button, just shows the address. The trick is that, in order to write the email in plain text, I put it encoded¹ in the script:

<script>
    function decodePopup() {
    alert(atob("V3JpdGUgbWUgYXQ6IG1haWwgQCBleGFtcGxlLmNvbQ=="));
    }
</script>

Then, to call the function on the link:

<a href="javascript:void(0)" title="email 🐌 example.com" onclick="decodePopup()">…</a>

This is the pop-up:

If you notice, the title tag shows the email almost in plain text, but I’m confident that, for now, it is enough. As double solution, it also shows the email when hovering on the link:

To be honest, I wanted to show the snail emoji in the JS pop-up, but I’m still working on it.

Is it an elegant solution? I don’t know. Is it handy? I couldn’t say. Did I spend too much time working on it? Oh, yes.

Finally, here is the StackOverflow question that helped me a lot.

🎮 Really enjoying Dredge

🎧 10,000 Days by TOOL – again

📖 Still on Solaris because I fall asleep while reading – it’s not the book’s fault!

I’m aware that base64 is not encryption, but it’s better than plain text — and it’s easy to decode with JavaScript. ↩︎

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Not the Best Start

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Just after the latest blog update, one of my future neighbors verbally assaulted me for foolish reasons regarding the construction site. I don’t want to go into detail and I don’t want to name names, but I was quite offended: I always seek dialogue to solve problems, but this time it was impossible.

After two years of zigzagging problems to finish the renovation, a person I’ve known for ten years can’t just start bedeviling us. I hope that this tension will wane with time. I won’t spend any more words about it, but let me say this in Italian: M., se mai leggerai queste parole, sappi che sei stato un po’ stronzo.

Anyway, good news: we ordered the parquet and the tiles for the house! Things slowly keep on rolling. 🎉

(Busy)²

Going back to the bad news, I did not write anymore. More than one month ago, I started writing a sequel for a short story of mines, but I suddenly stopped. The main cause is work, but it’s also true that Spring brought a lot of things to do in the country!

I bought a sexy lawn mower and succeeded to use it in quite steep slopes. Sadly, I still have to use a backpack brush cutter for the rest of my terrain (which are approximately ~3-4 hours)! Sometimes, when looking at the actual mess of the garden, I just can think: What have I done? But I am optimistic: when we’ll live there, we’ll have plenty of time to improve the terrain itself and our “quality of life”.

We also sowed little plants in our vegetable garden, but the weather here has been… quite a bitch. There has been a hailstorm, and the temperature is lower than the usual. It seems late April instead of early June.¹ Fingers crossed. 🤞

Some Good Vibes (’na gioia)

Luckily, there are also some good news, other than the slow progress to the house renovation.

My fiancée gifted me a book about relationships. When I saw it, I immediately felt both insulted and guilty — I thought it wasn’t necessary! She confirmed that, but also that “we can always improve”. Then, with a little curiosity, I read the book and I understood that:

My reaction was quite common (and predictable)
Dang, women and men are so different that I… don’t even know how they can live together 🤷 Jokes apart, there is always something to learn², and overall I’m glad I’ve read it.

Then, about technology, I’ve found a fantastic Bash script to generate a photoblog, and I decided to move there my photos. I deleted my Pixelfed account (I never completely engaged with graphical social networks) and published the photoblog on my website.

Maybe I’m just becoming old, but I like the idea to avoid too many (and often unnatural) connections that Instagram or Facebook invite us to create: there is just too much garbage. There are so many problems with fake news, political groups, and now the AI,… I prefer to live on my digital island, and connect with some potentially less harmful way.

Last but not least, last Sunday we’ve been to a friend’s place to eat some polenta at a town festival, and we’ve met some of the kindest people we could imagine. His mother-in-law and her cousin, in their amazing 100-years-old country house, stole a little piece of my heart. Here is a pic from the walk we had that morning:

🎮 Started Dredge because of its vibes

🎧 My Diligence

📖 Finally started Solaris by S. Lem

Well, at 30 minutes from here, it already feels like deep Summer 🔥 ↩︎
Pro Tips for men: 1. Say you’re sorry. Always. 2. Listen. Always. …And for women: 1. Don’t make feel your partner guilty of something. 2. Ask politely for help, if needed. But be direct. ↩︎

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Book Review: Damnable Tales

Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last year, one of the Christmas gifts I’ve received was Damnable Tales, a collection of horror short stories based on British folklore.

I can’t tell it in other ways: I. LOVE. IT.

Since when I started writing, I’ve started making research on folklore. Needless to say, this one in particular is the most renowned because of the mixture among Celts, Romans, Christians,… and the previous inhabitants, sadly obscure. What we know about them is what they left: barrows, chromlechs (the stone circles as Stonehenge), mystical burial mounds, and some traditions we can’t truly understand.

I still have to read one or two tales from the book, but at least 80% of the content is pure gold if you, as me, like the English countryside. Lush soft hills, misty trails on rock cliffs, scattered farmhouses, stone cottages,… They all are in those pages, and they are particularly valuable because they are from writers from XIX and XX centuries: they feel genuine. There are also some big names as Algernon Blackwood!

The topics vary from ancient gods, fairies, monsters, ghosts, witches, curses,… Almost always supernatural, and super-entertaining. Also, there are lots of references of the famous fire rituals I’ve written about on Godsip Club.

What I love most, though, is the feeling you get while reading: if you’ve been in the the British countryside for a few days, you’ll feel familiar sensations. So, if you can relate, make yourself a gift and get this book – one of the best, unexpected gifts I had.

The alternate version of this image does not exist. Scroll on!

🎮 Played a bit with Tunic, seems cute and nice

🎧 Ufomammut’s new album ❤️

📖 …I think you guessed it

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Unrequested Mid-May Update

Sat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The past two weeks were quite intense, mostly for work — private life is ok, but we are always stuck in the renovation limbo.

About work, I’ve been to a cool event from a famous European Cloud Provider (there aren’t many, so it’s easy to guess it) in the Italian Big Apple. Every time I travel to Milan, I hate it. It’s sad, but it’s factually dangerous to move with trains because of pickpockets, and there is always so much traffic by car. That’s one of the main reasons because I want to spend my life a in the cozy countryside.

About that, I am building weird relationships with my neighbors: they need help, but they tend to become a little oppressive when asking for help. A few weeks a go, I had watched Baby Reindeer, and a couple of times I felt as I was in the show. 👀

About vacations, we’re planning another trip to France, this time to Aveyron, for which “charming” seems a reductive adjective!

Finally, in the past few days, I decided to install a lightweight OS on an old laptop my mother gave me, with limited resources (1 dual-core CPU, 4GB RAM, an SSD I installed). At first, I tried HaikuOS, but I found out there are too many bugs when mounting NTFS external disks. Then I tried OpenBSD, but at the boot of the graphical interface, my keyboard was unusable because, when I pressed any key, it was repeated endlessly. Finally, I tried Arch Linux, and I spent a good four-five hours to install it and make it work as I wanted. I feel both successful and failure, because I thought I had quite a good experience with Linux, but there is always something new to learn. Anyway, now the laptop has:

✅ VPN which connects automatically at login (the easiest part)
✅ rclone and a handy alias to synchronize the Keepass database
✅ custom aliases at login¹
✅ Lightweight XFCE desktop environment
✅ Blazing fast boot time, the best part! Much faster than with Mint
✅ Mullvad Browser, which I recommend to anyone
✅ Auto-mount of external disks
✅ Guake Terminal 💚
… and some other things I probably forgot.

🎮 …nothing, but I’m currently installing Tunic

🎧 In love with Domkraft

📖 Still on the Damnable Tales

I wonder why it is SO DIFFICULT to find a standard among ~~/.xsession,~~ /.xinitrc, ~/.bashrc, and others valid for all distributions. Probably it’s my fault, but every time I spend way too much time for this. ↩︎

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Break Away from the Smartphone

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This month, for my birthday, I decided to make some decisions on my social footprint. I’ve been out of the Meta socials and X for years, and I’m quite happy with the fediverse. Lots of people see this decentralization as a positive step back from Web2.0 to move towards the good ol’ Web1.0, and I agree.

I want more, though.

The iPhone was announced in early 2007. Before that, in my opinion, life was simpler — and therefore, better. The introduction of a smart phone, with which we could do basically anything, made emerge some critical points.

Don’t misread these words: I love smartphones and their capabilities. I just don’t like the way the social networks turned into their main purpose.

Maybe it was Twitter’s fault. And yeah, in general, Facebook worsened the situation. It seems cool to read anyone’s thoughts in real time, on the train or in the bathroom, but… is it really?

I agree that everyone should have their opinion on this matter, and I’m glad I might have found the right tools built for my taste. After a couple of years spent on Mastodon, enjoying its feeling, but not at all the experience with the mobile clients, I think I got some kind of epiphany.

I love the freedom that the fediverse offers, but I need to live it just in front of the computer.

Probably it’s a consequence of the decentralized/federated structure of the actual platforms that use the Activity Pub protocol, but it is quite a pain to follow accounts from multiple instances. And, if we would go back to only one, huge instance or social, the old problems would emerge again.

But it is thanks to this “defect” that I started to appreciate (again) the way I can follow/comment/stay up to date with the people I want:

Web browser, for social networks
RSS reader, for news and blogs Just those two.

That’s why I am enjoying my new OMG.lol’s account: it provides “basic” (but healthy) features for this philosophy.

And now, the hardest part: I want to try to uninstall all the social media apps from the smartphones. I’ll start with deactivating immediately the notifications, then we’ll see.

Browse like it’s 2005.

Bonus: on Thursday, we took a break, and we went to down the river at ~20 minutes from home. It was beautiful, mostly because there was no one around.

Will we succeed to go there more often, this year?

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Memory Lane

Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I was on vacation. I grabbed a book, and took the opportunity to visit a green park near here. In the last few years, it had mostly remained closed to the public: access was prohibited due to some integrity issues of some old walls.

When I got there, lots of memories came back to my mind. When I met my first girlfriend, it was there that we came to spend some time alone. I still remember quite vividly some emotions of those days – probably only the good ones. Also, I recall my shyness, clumsiness, and fear. And our first kisses, which I think are some kind of rites of passage for a human being.

Then, when I saw the exact spot where “our bench” used to be, my heart sunk a bit: it wasn’t there anymore. The whole area had been fenced because of the aforementioned integrity issues.

It was over there, under that tree.

I couldn’t avoid comparing this situation with our life, feelings, and similar.

In my memories, even if hidden, that bunch of square meters were some kind of holy, untouchable place. They were linked with a person with whom I had shared some special moments, despite the fact we eventually departed.¹ Seeing the area falling apart… made me feel a bit sick.

Time passes, things change, the end of anything is unavoidable,… But all these things are obvious, I don’t want to write about them even if blogs are made –also– for this.

What I actually ask myself in such situations is: Will the other person ever have similar thoughts? Or better, Will she think about me when seeing the same exact spot? …Or am I the only expert over-thinker here?

I don’t like living in the past, but I’m glad to have some occasional trips into memory lane.

🎮 Nothing new

🎧 Dang, I just realized I was listening to Van Morrison when I sat down to write this… Now it all makes sense.

📖 The book I had brought there

I still have to write about those feelings. I think they deserve a special category in one’s experiences. ↩︎

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Bashing the Weekend

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last weekend was so rainy and empty that I decided to start writing a Bash script. The need was simple: I wanted an easy way to post on the social networks my latest blog post. I couldn’t find anything similar on the web, quick and easy. I had already saved the XML file of this very blog on my laptop a few days ago, when I got the idea. So, what better motivation that rainy days?

I could have used fancy languages as Python, but the fact is I love Bash. It’s simple¹, and so powerful. The sed and awk combo² solves half of the issues a system admin will have in years. So, after downloading the RSS with wget, the complicated part came: parsing the XML.

Long story short: Python would have been an easier choice.

But I didn’t care, and played it simple: why bother parsing all the <title> tags when you only need the second one? The first is the blog title, and the second one is the last post – at least, with the handful of websites I’ve tested.

Then, after a little sed magic to get the Publish Date of the given post, I wanted to facilitate the posting on Mastodon using the beautiful toot. At first, I got an error on my instance, but then I tried on another one which runs an older version, and everything worked… So I integrated toot, along with the possibility to post with various visibility options.

Then, there was another little learning step I had avoided until today because I didn’t need it: getopts to get the multiple parameters managed in a correct way. Well, that was better than I expected!

And finally… I published it on Gitea, in case anyone will need something similar. I added some comments to make it more comprehensible, but it is quite straight-forward.

There it is, made with https://carbon.now.sh/ + https://squoosh.app/

🎮 Really enjoying Dave the Diver!

🎧 Italian pride: Ufomammut

📖 Halfway through the Damnable Tales - wonderful!

Not, it’s NOT. But I use it on a daily basis, and I want to master it… one day. ↩︎
To be honest, I will add StackOverflow to the cocktail. ↩︎

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Less Effort, Unexpected Results

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In these days, a group of users from our Italian Mastodon instance is starting to put together a zine with several writings from the users themselves. I love the idea, I haven’t been doing anything like that since the middle school journal.

I couldn’t resist, and I quickly wrote a very short story about an idea I got a few weeks ago: a man wakes up with nails in his bones. Also, I just had come to know about the figure of the settimino¹ (which I translated septimin in the story) in North-Western Italy. So, I had to put it in.

At first, I wrote it in Italian, then I got an unexpected positive feedback, and I translated it in English, too. I have to thank one of Livello Segreto’s users, who helped me with some corrections.

I am curious about any opinion: is this story actually better than the much more complicated ones I usually write? This one literally took less than a day. The others… oof.

If you want to spend 5 minutes with a weird-folk-horror(?) story, you can find it in the links above… and if you do, please, let me know if you liked it!

🎮 Meh, just played Dave the Diver a few minutes

🎧 Still trying to understand if I like Dark Matter

📖 A wonderful collection of Damnable Tales

It is based on men really existed, and some were quite famous. ↩︎

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Makeovers No One Will Notice

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Working in IT, I noticed that often the best makeovers are the ones users almost don’t notice. When using computers, in general, big changes many times lead to big issues.

The same is valid for my websites: since I’m not very good with JavaScript or newer technologies (dang, I feel old), I tend to use just HTML and CSS. In the past, I successfully implemented scroll indicators and frames that appear depending on the User Agent of the browser… Maybe it’s not much for skilled web developers, but for me it could take hours and hours — much more time than I’d like to spend. 🥲

Long story short: last week, I discovered an awesome handcrafted font by Tom Chalky and I immediately thought: “This could fit perfectly on Crooked Ink!”. After some considerations, I finally got it¹ and replaced the good old Sentient, which had already replaced the beautiful Crimson Text.

It is awesome because of its imperfections: when zooming, I love noticing the little swirls, the asymmetries,… its crooked look. Look for yourself:

Isn’t it… appropriated?

Finally, after four years, I might have found the right font for that blog.

Since I was there, I reworked the menu and footer with the Sans Serif version of the Volume font, included in the package. I also spent a few minutes to find the right amount of characters per line in the short stories, for both desktop and mobile, by setting different font sizes. Then, I tried (without success) to add a bit of “padding” to the scroll indicator, and I fixed the width of the bar itself. I also changed a bit a few pages, but… not the actual content, the stories themselves.

Then, after two hours or so, finally I pushed the commits and I asked myself: who were these edits for? For the readers, or for me? Will anyone ever notice some little details? Should I have better spent these hours by editing some stories?

And, overall: did I spend way too much time to customize that blog? (This is the only question I can positively answer, with no doubts)

Easter Egg Hunt

For the curious, I hid an Easter egg somewhere on the website. The first sentence from Something Wicked This Way Comes. Are you nerd enough to find it? 🥚

🎮 Trying the Doom Eternal campaign – nice 😈

🎧 Today is UPCDOWNC day

📖 I started Armada by E. Cline, the author of Ready Player One… we’ll see!

To be honest, this morning at 6AM, laying in bed, I figured out that I could just “steal” it from the website where I had found it, using the browser’s developer tools. But I am an honest person. Am I? 👀 ↩︎

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Two Years Into Renovation

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“In a couple of weeks, it will be two years that we’ve bought the house and started the renovation works. Up to this day, we still can’t see the end.

It is not a normal situation, and I am aware that we’re not the only ones after the Superbonus mess (it even has a Wikipedia article!). What is certain, though, is that we are particularly unlucky. All the people/institutions involved in this project had some faults:

Architect(s)
Engineer(s)
Bank
Builders (including electrician and plumber)
Government, of course

Eve-ry-one.

The first week, five builders eviscerated the house. It was really fast and impressive. Then… Disasters started happening. I don’t want to complain, and maybe I’ll describe the long story in a different post; anyway, once in a while, it’s good to write down something about this topic.

Fast-forward to March 2024: lots of rain fell in the last few weeks. During the external works, the tuff stone that had been uncovered was deeply soaked. Builders haven’t come for a few days, so the site was semi-abandoned.

Last weekend, while taking care of the trees (it’s pruning time), I noticed that the water wasn’t dried yet. Luckily, I had bought an electric pump a couple of years ago for the well, so I plugged it and dried the pool.

This was from last Saturday.

After a few minutes, most of the water was gone, but I am still worried about the potential problems that it could cause. A small work for managing the water flow was already planned, but we decided to anticipate it to avoid further issues.

The concern is that digging has to be done very near the house, and an excavator can’t work there because of the tight space. We must do all by hand, and I want to help as much as I can to speed up the works.

That is the main issue: two years is way too much time for a small house like ours. We are lucky to have found another temporary place to stay that is even better as the new home (if I could go back in time, maybe I’d have searched here a house on sale).

Overall, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the things I feel I can’t control. Yes, I could have changed the builders, I could have demolished the old house and build a new one on top of it, I could have bought another home,… or I could have moved abroad. And, when all will be over, there will be a 25-years mortgage to start paying.

But I keep thinking that, in life, there are no wrong choices. Every other big alternative I could have made, would have brought to possibly worse consequences.

As I heard someone saying, just yesterday: “If one is happy, he/she’s half done”.

So, when is the estimated delivery date for the house? At present, maybe the end of the summer (of the current year, presumably). Stay tuned for other exciting renovation news. 🥲

🎮 Finally finished also the Ghost of Tsushima DLC. One of the best games I’ve played.

🎧 The Downward Spiral for its 30th(!) birthday.

📖 Still on Mysteries –meh, for now– and Maus.

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Obsidian as Work Diary

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I use Obsidian to organize my notes for Godsip Club. It is handy to use hashtags, notes properties, hyperlinks,… It’s free, and it is open source. There are also tons of community plugins, which help to customize the experience for every need.

For the last nine months or so, I’ve been keeping a Vault (which is an Obsidian folder) for my work. I keep daily notes, grouped by months and by year.

We have several customers, so I use hashtags to separate #Customer1 from #Customer2 and so on. It is also easy to keep track of the #TO-DO activities, and the #TODAY hashtag helps to raise the urgency of certain points.

About that, in the Search field, I recently discovered the right syntax to find multiple hashtags at the same time: e.g., #TO-DO OR #TODAY.

I still have to find out how to properly set up a method to keep reminders for certain days, but… it’s easy, it’s lightweight, and it is an awesome software.

🎮 Finished the main story in Ghost of Tsushima – IN LOVE with that game!

🎧 The new EP by Pelican

📖 Finished Black House (nice) and started Mysteries and Maus

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Enthusiasm

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On Wednesday, I woke up as any other day — happy, I’d say. After a few minutes, when I picked up my smartphone, I noticed a notification on the Teams app (I disabled push notification for this in order to preserve my mental sanity). It was a message from a group chat, regarding a test installation of a product for a customer in Central Asia, definitely the farthest opportunity we had.

They were thanking us for our time, but the product did not meet their expectations. The fact is that we didn’t even finish the tests properly. I took it too personally, I was really sure that the product was good for them. Long story short: I got a fever for two days, I’m quite sure it was psychosomatic. I got no other symptoms, and it was quite fast to drop.

Finally, this morning I woke up with something I was missing since a while: enthusiasm. In the last few weeks, I couldn’t realize anything good¹, and today I feel like reborn.

Maybe it is springtime (yes, it is quite early, but trees already have gems), or maybe a good night of sleep… but I can’t wait for this afternoon. My girlfriend and I are going to start the toughest part of the year: the cleaning and caring of our land, around our new home — no, we don’t live there yet.

We all are enthusiast for this Spring. 🦖

We have plenty of half-dry trees, which we are trying to save by cutting the dead branches. This year, we also have to fix lots of lumps of earth flipped by wild boars, a real plague in ~~Northern~~ Italy. I’m against hunting, but it is true: the only way to repel them is by killing one. Last year, we found traces of a fight in our property: blood and boar fur. Probably, a wolf (yes, we have them too, in winter) slayed a baby. It’s harsh, but they didn’t come back for the rest of the season.

Woah, I got off track, and that escalated quickly! This was a positive post, but it also reflects my thoughts on our new home: we are enthusiast to move there (in a few months?), but it is easy to think of all the work we still have to do.

🎮 Ghost of Tsushima

🎧 Stone Temple Pilots

📖 Still on Black House

Probably it is an exaggeration, but that was the feeling for me. ↩︎

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Find My Way

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“In the last few weeks, I tried a few times to sit down and find an idea. I want to write a story, possibly a fun one – I recently read a book from Terry Pratchett, and I’d love to explore this genre. I tried to write down some thoughts for a plot, but… I’m struggling.

First, I always end up thinking about something mysterious with possibly some inexplicable facts, as with my first stories. Maybe it’s just easier for me, or it’s harder to focus on something else… but I’d love trying something new. I still haven’t started writing, though: I’m just writing brief thoughts.

Second, after almost four years writing fiction stories as self-taught, I’m starting to doubt about my method. I always take “dotted” notes, in an ordinate way, and literally link them to put the ideas in sequence. Then, I recap everything to see if I missed some important points, and finally start writing.

Working like this is fun, but it takes some time before the fun starts. It is because of this struggle that, in the last days, I’m asking myself: Should I try to change this method? Perhaps I’m too lazy to do that, or too proud(?), but something tells me to keep using the usual system.

I’m writing this down to put my thoughts in order, and possibly have a good idea. The common sense already suggested me to read something about it, or watch a tutorial on YouTube, but in this case it is correct to admit that… I’m too proud for that.

My notebook, quite chaotic. Those are some ideas for Menkvi

Is it writer’s block? Meh, it could be. But do I consider myself a writer? Not at all: mostly because I’m not good at editing my writings, and when I write –the fun part I was speaking about– I became way too much obsessed to finish.

So, one may ask: why the hell do you want to write so much? That’s a good question: I think I had some good ideas. I don’t think I’m able to share with you the same emotions those stories gave me in my head, so I want to try to write them as good as I can. Also, I think someone could enjoy them: even if he or she may be 1% of the potential readers, it is good to share them online.

🎮 Ghost of Tsushima – amazing!

🎧 Some recommendations by Chelsea Wolfe

📖 Still Black House, finally intriguing after ~100 pages!

P.S. The title is from a song by Nine Inch Nails. Too bad the album is not that great.

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WTF Kojima!?

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, before start working, I took ten minutes for me, and watched the new Death Stranding 2 trailer. Well, we all knew what to expect from another Kojima game: surreal scenarios, ethereal plots(?), great action scenes, some hidden clues,… But what about the AXE-GUITAR?!

HELL YEAH!

It’s too early to even try to understand the story, but it is promising indeed. I had finished the first game, and found it fascinating: it had its own pace, an entertaining story, an innovative gameplay,… and it was not boring as one could imagine. It was great.

You know what? I want to play it again.

Now, the sequel promises to be bigger and better. Also, it seems different. The atmosphere is quite dramatic, but I think there will be lots of secondary characters to cheer up the tone – as Otacon tried in Metal Gear. I have great expectations, I know that Hideo puts his own soul in each game he writes. A true artist.

One of the best Easter Eggs.

🎮 …🦋

🎧 Not totally my genre, but some good ol’ YOB

📖 Just started Black House from S. King and P. Straub

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Good Company

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Every time I write about the recent months, I have to admit that one of the best things happened to me is to have known a 97-years-old man. Since he lives in the house next door, and he is alone, I go visit him almost every day.

I’ve always had a great compassion for elderly people, especially if they are alone. Overall, if they are widows, I feel sorry for them. When I was a kid, I often spent afternoons with my grandparents, who lived near us, to not let them alone. Nowadays, I feel the same for this person not related to me.

We currently live in this little hamlet of about ten people, maybe twenty during the summer. This man used to have many friends his own age around here, that have passed away. He’s the only one left. His wife has passed away too, maybe ten years ago, from what I understood. I think he’s enormously strong for not giving up: he’s lucid, he knows what exercises to do to avoid several aches, he always has good advices… He just needs some company.

I have a soft spot for these situations. And when I think that he’s not the only one in this situation at all… I feel guilty in some way. We should do something to not let old people alone. Luckily, technologies as video calls help a lot, but… the human touch is irreplaceable.

🎮 Nothing

🎧 Porcupine Tree

📖 Still with Stories of Your Life, exquisite for now

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A SAP Nightmare

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For the first time after years, during this last week, I encountered real obstacles at work. A small background: I work in an IT company, we resell several products about cybersecurity, backups, network protection, etc. Lately, a customer had the need to backup SAP databases running on Windows. They needed to write a full set of scripts to manage SAP tools with an external backup software. In brief: I had to manage this, but I never worked with SAP. 😰

Now, speaking to IT administrators, I hope everyone will agree that managing scripts is much easier on UNIX/Linux, with Bash. So here is the first complexity: batch scripting. Then there is the main problem: SAP on Windows. I’m not a big fan of Oracle/SAP products running on this OS, but it’s my duty to do what I’ve been told.

I start reading the documentation of the backup software and… here we go!

Day 1 - Drown

First, I had access to a SAP test machine so messed up that I couldn’t even run a “local” backup on the server itself — but I couldn’t know. I didn’t know the environment, and I was super-afraid to launch any commands. I spent the first day¹ of this adventure trying to understand the correct paths and the actions needed to perform various backup types.

Again: I worked a very little with SAP, and never on Windows. I was panicking a bit, but didn’t give up.

Day 2 - Asking for Help is Good

There is a SAP proprietary tool called “BRBACKUP” that can just copy the database to a different folder. I tried it, but it returned a very strange error that I could not find in any dark corner of the web:

BR1826E Null database file name found in DBA_TEMP_FILES for file Id -1
BR0314E Collection of information on database files failed

After one day trying to figure out what was the root cause, I asked help to a colleague of mine. After a brief analysis, we both agreed that the issue was upstream our backup software, so a SAP technician had to help us. Luckily, we found a very kind consultant who worked for the customer, and at the end of the afternoon, we figure out that, simply, the SAP installation on the machine was faulty. The technician was kind, and provided a new server for the tests.

Day 3 - Little Steps

Finally, on this new machine, the local save using “BRBACKUP” worked! 🎉 From there, it was quite easy to test various backup types (offline, online, archive logs), and configure the backup software. At the end of the day, I even had written a short documentation of the necessary steps to configure and run this backup.²

Days 4-5 - Scriptium Leviosa

And finally, the fun part: scripting. I love writing and testing scripts because they can be quite complex and, when properly tested, they simplify IT admins life so much. As I said, I prefer Bash, but Windows batch was a nice challenge (I hate PowerShell, maybe one day I’ll learn it); in a couple of days, the package of scripts was ready to be delivered, among with the documentation. 🚀

I mainly love scripting because, while writing them, I am allowed to put on my earphones and listen to some high-volume music. I love focusing with music while writing, both for work and fun (e.g., for my blogs).

And luckily I was able to finish the work week by completing the SAP backup task in time, or I would have passed a terrible weekend. Maybe it’s because I work from home, but for me sometimes it’s hard to stop thinking about work duties.

But this weekend I already passed too much time in front of the computer, so it’s time to take a walk in this cold January. 🥾

🎮 Started Nobody Saves The World, simple but intriguing

🎧 1000mods 🤘

📖 The first two chapters of Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang — wow!

At least I can say this was not my only task in these days, but surely my biggest concern. ↩︎
We still had to test restore, but we were confident. 👀 ↩︎

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Let Things Flow

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Just after a few days, reading back to my previous post sounds a little too tragic. If there is something that I have learned in 2023, it is to let things flowing – don’t try to change what you can’t. The renovation of our house is the greatest example: we moved to a cozy apartment a few months ago, while waiting for the end of the renovation works… and we love it. It’s a little cold, but we are grateful for finding this little gem.

Here I found an unexpected friend, who I visit almost every day. People think that I get bored when speaking (often about the same topics) with an elder, but I’m very happy, mostly because I like to keep him company. His son lives near here, but I feel we need sitting there, with a glass of wine, chit-chatting.

I also had an unexpected boost of followers on my Godsip Club’s Mastodon page thanks to the amazing work of FediFollows, so I got a renewed enthusiasm to keep on posting there. I still love studying and writing about folklore, etc., but as I already said… lack of feedback is unnerving. So, a big thank you to everyone who reads me.

On the subject, I just published a new article about a myth from the Italian Alps: we went on vacation on the Dolomites, and I found fresh new material on the alpine lore!

In brief, surely I’m not so optimistic about our long-term future, or our planet’s… but are plenty of things I like to do, trying to do some good, in my little. At least, I can say that these things make me feel good. Maybe sometimes I can’t see a sense to keep on doing them, but it doesn’t mean there is not at all.

🎮 …nothing new.

🎧 Mars Red Sky, a super power trio!

📖 I’m reading Old Peter’s Russian Tales, a beautiful gift!

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David Lynch's Reality Punch

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While browsing the web, a few minutes ago I came across this image, referring to 2024:

It made me smile, but also got me down.

I know I am not the only one hoping for a better world. There are many people spreading wise words, but no change is seen… since I was born. When I was eight or nine years old, I remember lessons at school about global warming and pollution. There has been time to solve these issues, or at least trying. Probably, though, there is not enough economic interest to change the things.

These are the last years, for me, to be able to be a father, but I am sincerely scared of a potential baby. Despite the fact that I am a little selfish, that I need time for myself, I’d probably like to grow a little mini-me… but I am ashamed of the world that I am leaving for him – that I cannot change.

Or better: I would love to change the way the things are going, but it is impossible. I am cynical, but it is true: we can’t change the world. Even if we would try to do something important, all across the world, in my opinion, nowadays, we are:

Coward
Unable to organize properly
Powerless, if someone wants us to sit sill

I am almost ashamed to publish this post, but it is my thought – and I hope I’m wrong with all my heart. We are living in a strange moment, in which only an external fact could change the way we are destroying this world. Yes, just like in the comic Watchmen.

🎮 Finished the main quest in Cult of the Lamb, really nice

🎧 Dopelord!

📖 J.R.R Tolkien’s Father Christmas Letters – lovely

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Music and Memories

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I love music. I love listening to it, playing it (badly), trying to write it. When I do anything, I try to do it with music in the background. Even if I’m not a musician, I can say that music is my life.

One of the traits of music that amaze me every time, though, is that most songs recall me a series of memories. So easily. I experience it continuously, almost every day. I bet everyone remembers the songs on the radio when we were kids, or the first record/cassette/LP/CD that we bought.

Now, let me tell you my personal experience with some moments of my life.¹

Early Beginnings

When I was about six or seven, I usually went shopping with my mom at the tiny mall in the nearest city. There, there was a section for music and video games. A couple of years later, I would have bought there the PlayStation, but at that moment, my attention was caught by a cool and funny cassette cover. There was a shark wearing braces, and I thought it was hilarious. It was Eat the Phikis by Elio e Le Storie Tese, an awesome Italian band that a child could not appreciate at all. They are very skilled musicians with an awesome sense of humor, but their songs are full of double meanings and some bad words. I probably had heard about the band because of the main single of the record, La Terra dei Cachi, very popular at the moment, but I didn’t appreciate their music at all.

A huge shark? You immediately got a kid’s attention.

So, my very first purchase in music wasn’t very lucky! But my second one, my first Compact Disc, was completely different. La Donna, Il Sogno & Il Grande Incubo was way catchier for an eight-years-old kid. It had a cool “3D cover” which moved when tilting the case, it had a heavier sound and themes (the main single was about Spider-Man!).²

The Adventure Begins

When I had the Christian confirmation, my mother’s hairdresser gifted be a beautiful album: All That You Can’t Leave Behind by U2. That was mind-blowing: I was twelve, and I played it in my little stereo a thousand times. I remember using that mini Hi-Fi to create the first compilation for my middle schoolmates, and listening on that to Beatles and Rolling Stones’ greatest hits with my parents. Also, until high school, I listened a lot of Italian pop and… Robbie Williams. I really don’t know how I happened to be obsessed with his songs. Probably I must have heard She’s The One in some TV spots.

Then, when I was about sixteen or seventeen, my friend Andrea, a true punk rocker, asked me: “Can you download (👀) the new album by Green Day? It’s called American Idiot”. I didn’t know anything about them, and I started listening to something. Also, my other classmate Manuel told me: “You should listen to Deep Purple’s Made in Japan, the greatest live album ever”. A few months before, my cousin Marco borrowed me Queen’s Greatest Hits Collection.

Damn, those boys changed everything.

Briefly, I started to search info on the internet about a gazillion of bands, and for about ten years I have bought ~400 CDs from the old Play.com (may it be blessed!) which, at the time, had ridiculous offers for music!

This website was gold for me. 🥲

I think that my first important discoveries must have been: Green Day —> Offspring —> Grunge —> Radiohead (no idea about the connection!) —> the English alternative scene of ’00s —> David Bowie and the other Bigs of the ’70s —> who knows…

Strange(r) Things Have Happened

When I was nineteen, and I got my first job, then, I had an internship at the company for three months, at about 200 kilometers from home. In those days, casually, I had also met my first “serious” crush. Every weekend I was back, so we could see each other.

One of the most vivid memories of those months is the album by Foo Fighters, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. I remember listening to it on an old laptop, in my awful hotel room, while texting to my not-yet-girlfriend. Each time these songs kick in, especially Home, I go back to that hotel room. This is a real superpower of music: the immediate flashbacks that can make you experience.

Another example with that girl: when we broke up, one night I listened to Muse’s Origin Of Symmetry, and I thought I couldn’t be able to enjoy it anymore. Luckily, I was wrong – damn, that album is so good.

Anyway, when I speak about music, I cannot but thank my brothers. Since I was very young, rock and grunge music have blasted out of their Hi-Fis. It’s because of them if Pearl Jam are probably my favorite band. I remember when they bought CD singles (damn, I hate them so much, their case is too thin!) from Aerosmith, Counting Crows, or Skunk Anansie. One of my very first “music memories” is the single CD of Guns N’ Roses’ Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door playing at my house.

Nowadays, I still have my CD collection, but I mostly stream music. I love keeping the discs mostly because of the moments they recall me. The important thing isn’t the high quality speaker to enjoy the music; it’s the organ that listens to it – the heart.

🎮 I bought Cult of the Lamb, but I have no time to play it!

🎧 Damned memories!

📖 Finished The Master and Margarita and I loved it!

I know nobody asked, but this is my blog. ↩︎
Hanno Ucciso L’Uomo Ragno was about Spider-Man’s murder, and it still is a super cool song. ↩︎

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Working From Anywhere

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Twice a week, if the work routine allows it, I follow my girlfriend to the town market. I carry my laptop with me, and it often happens I need to connect to a customer site via VPN. Since it’s not a big city, but it’s quite crowded at that time, I prefer to search for quiet places — also because I have to use the phone or MS Teams. Then, I connect to my hotspot, and use a VM and a VPN¹ to connect to the customer who called.

For me, this is a blessing. The freedom to do the heck I want, and to be able to connect from anywhere. Sometimes I have to make up for the time I missed, but I’m more than glad to work maybe an hour in the late evening. It is the fair price to pay.

In the near future, it would be nice that more and more people would be able to find job positions as this. I’ve been lucky –my company has this remote work model from more than ten years–, but this should be the ordinary in IT.

We must not be slaves of the computers; we should create business models to optimize their potential and our productivity.

🎮 The Callisto Protocol – meh, it could be much more refined.

🎧 Karma To Burn

📖 I finished The Three-Body Problem, and I loved it!

I’m a bit obsessed with security, I prefer to not use the VPN directly from the laptop’s OS. ↩︎

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My Last Subscriber Is Gone

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For this Halloween, I tried to be productive on both my websites: I wrote a short story for Crooked Ink, and an article on European folklore on Godsip Club. About the latter, I delivered the newsletter to the followers on Friday evening, just after work. I published it on the social media too, and got some boosts and likes. When I woke up on Saturday morning, I noticed an email notification on the smartphone. It was from Tutanota app, a provider with which I’m trying to replace Gmail. I use it mostly for the accounts linked with the websites above, so I hoped that it was a new follower or a newsletter subscriber. It was the opposite. With sorrow, I noticed that the last subscriber of the newsletter had unsubscribed.

Meh.

In about a year and half, only five people had signed up, but it was more than I initially hoped for! Alas, slowly, everyone clicked the “unsubscribe” button… but it’s fair. At the moment, the Godsip Club newsletter is read only… by my family, but it is not what I wanted. I understand that nowadays it is hard to get visibility, but this way keeping a newsletter becomes a useless effort.

I’m just happy to keep the blog(s) available on the web, for anyone interested. We’ll see if things will change, but this situation recalled me a meme I saw the other day on Mastodon:

Ouch.

[sighs deeply]

🎮 The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. Beautiful!

🎧 *shels – I love them.

📖 I started The Three-Body Problem, nice but different from what I had thought – for now!

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Lack of Feedback Is Unnerving

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Workin’ On A Dream

One of the last days of 2019, after going to bed, while half-asleep, I had a vision: a kid discovering a translucent object, floating midair. For the first time in my life, I felt the impulse to wake up and write down that image. From that, after a few days, my very first short story would be born.¹ By chance, I got the idea to create several connected fictions, and the whole Parallax series came out.

In the first months, I was thrilled: I had found out that I liked writing and telling stories, and my audience (my mom, my eldest brother, and my girlfriend, plus a handful of kind friends) were encouraging. So, I registered my first domain², and built Crooked Ink with Hugo. It was fun, but also a bit stressful since a few concepts were totally new for me: markdown, static websites, git, … Eventually, my tiny collection of short stories was ready, and I was quite proud of it. I was so pompous that I also opened a page on BuyMeACoffee.com — zero donators to this day, except the same supportive brother from above. Then I asked myself: how do I find people interested to read my stories?

First Punches to the Face

I already wrote about my experience on Instagram. My girlfriend suggested me this social because it was the trend of the moment, but I regret almost every minute spent there. The only likes I got were for the photos of the vacations that I posted; whenever I published an image to announce a story, I couldn’t notice any visit to the website. Long story short, I deleted that IG account.

I tried to join some Italian communities, or forums, for creative writing, and finally I received some feedback! I was so happy that some stranger finally had read one of my stories, and provided a constructive opinion, along with suggestions. I didn’t want to be said “bravo”, or maybe just “nice job” (and this is still valid), but I wished to know what the reader liked and what he or she did not.

Other than the quality of the comments (a “bad” comment is always better than no comment at all), I found extremely hard to get any feedback at all. From what I could observe after posting about my stories on social media, the large majority of people doesn’t (like to?) read fiction on the web. Probably they didn’t like my stories, and I’d be okay with that. From the analytics, though, people don’t spend much time on a web page,³ they just don’t read the whole story.

I also submitted a couple of stories for some webzines: most of them rejected me, and it’s ok, but I got published by one! Did it generate traffic to my blog, anyway? Not at all.

This is the average situation… But maybe everyone uses uBlock Origin or similar. 🫠

Evil Eye on Me

I tried Twitter (yet another deleted account, but for other reasons) and then Mastodon to promote Godsip Club, a new website born from my a new hobby. All my experiences with social network to advertise my writings have simply been total disasters. Now and then, I notice some sporadic page views, but they’re mostly on the “About” and “Stories” page. I think that, on this planet, maybe twenty (thirty?) people have read a story on my website since it is online.

With time, I’ve become accustomed to this idea: people do like to read, but they probably don’t have the time to read online stuff as short stories. I myself prefer reading a book, but not on websites. I really can’t complain too much.

Overall, I learned that writing for oneself, not for the others, is the best thing one can do. Or better, I still would love to know other’s opinions, but I keep writing because it makes me feel good. It helps to let ideas flow out, it is a relief valve for the stress, and it occupies my time in these months (years), while waiting for the renovation of our house to finish.

I dream of sitting in the countryside of the new house and keep writing at the sunset, maybe on a hammock, while the birds are chirping. We’ll see how many more times I’ll complain here, or how many words I’ll write, before this picture will become true.

The inspiring view from the –alas, unfinished– house. August 2023.

🎮 I just started Weird West, seems amazing!

🎧 Some more amazing ASMR playlists

📖 Still Dracula 🦇 (there’s surely lots of bromance here!)

P.S. In case any of you are curious (👀), I just published my latest short story named Saw Things.

This is the English version of Cirapé, which I translated about six months later. The original is in Italian. ↩︎
Actually, I had a cringe website in 2005, when I was just 16. 🙃 Only Internet Archive can handle that awkwardness level. ↩︎
Web analytics can also tell how much time a user spends on each page… and I don’t like it, that’s why I switched from Google Analytics to the super-recommended GoatCounter. ↩︎

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Go Visit Dordogne 🇫🇷

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Two weeks ago, I was ranting about vacations. Today is my last day away from work, and I totally enjoyed the latter days; as always, I just needed to step away from the routine. For one time, I’ll just stop whining and will go straight to the point: you should visit Dordogne.

France has a lot of charming provinces, but this one has it all:

Dozens of castles to visit or just admire while moving from and to…
Lots of tiny, wonderful medieval villages with stone houses, ramparts, and so on
Many sport activities to enjoy: MTB, kayak, canoe, trekking, …
Delightful BnB locations in ancient, renovated places

There are many villages like this one, and they all are lovely

It is the second time we visited Perigord/Dordogne (~20 days in total), and we still have a lot to see. Our days were quite simple: first, a quick stop to the local boulangerie to get a pain aux raisins or au chocolat, then a visit to a series of villages. After a quick lunch –usually with bread, tomatoes and chèvre¹–, we spent the afternoon with a trail.²

We also managed to visit some underground caves, as the ones in Lacave and the majestic Gouffre de Padirac. I’m not a big fan of speleology, but I really enjoyed them, especially the latter one.

We also discovered a castle with a room full of ancient paintings about mythology, so I found a lot of material for Godsip Club.

As a bonus, my girlfriend organized a canoe trip on the Dordogne, the river that gives the name to the area. 50 kilometers in three days, sleeping in a tent, just the waterway and us. Despite a thunderstorm, which luckily hit us in the night, and some strong headwind, it has been a delightful adventure! As always, at the beginning I am always whiny about the unknown, but then I’m always grateful for her “crazy ideas”. It must be hard to live with me. 🥲

So, in brief, if you live in Europe, consider Dordogne as a destination for your holiday. It totally deserves one visit — or more!

The infamous canoe!

🎮 Nothing 🫥

🎧 A French radio, of course.

📖 Just started Dracula 🦇

If you like fresh cheese, you have to try Rocamadour and Cabécou! ↩︎
For the first time we used AllTrails, and we liked it! ↩︎

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Unused to Vacations

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Here it comes again. It’s that time of the year just before my vacations, in which I’m quite uncomfortable to leave. I am so mundane that, after a few months, I get used to a routine and I struggle to break my habits. Luckily, my girlfriend learned to “manage me” and, therefore, to take the lead in these circumstances.

In 2023, the renovation¹ and the moving stopped us from our usual “quick travels”, but next week we’re planning to go back to Dordogne, in France, to enjoy some more tiny medieval villages. ~~My girlfriend~~ We are also planning to paddle for about 60 kilometers on canoe, we’ll see. 🚣

In these last few weeks, we’ve been busy (among the other things I already ranted about here on the blog) to clean up the old apartment we stayed until six months ago. We fixed every hole left by nails, cleaned all the windows, and white-painted the walls. Well, that witch² of the owner still complained that there the flat was not “liveable”. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. That has been the drop that made me overflow, and I resisted overreacting.

After that, the tension inside me was just too much. I needed to speak aloud about all the problems I were keeping in my head. I had to let them flow out (with also anger tears, to be honest) in order to have a more ordinate vision of the actual severity of the troubles. Well, the conclusion is… that life is a witch (with a b), but I’m quite lucky, so I can’t complain too much. Real obstacles are another thing.

“A drawing of a man letting his problem flow out”, by Bing Image Creator

Since life is short too, anger is the last option to choose; sadly, in the daily routine, I tend to forget this. I am quite calm, and stress usually doesn’t affect me too much, but things were getting worse, lately. I need some kind of motivational poster to hang behind my computer, for when I’ll come back home. Maybe I need to be grateful for what (and who) I have, but really wouldn’t know who, or what, to thank. This would be an interesting subject for the next blog post — after the vacations!

🎮 Just re-played a couple of hours of Firewatch

🎧 Pedestrian Verse by Frightened Rabbit

📖 The whole Scott Pilgrim series again (always nice memories)

About that, no carpenter has been sighted at the worksite in the last four weeks. 😑 ↩︎
You can replace the “w” with a “b”, you get the idea anyway. ↩︎

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The Algorithm of Hell

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve never been a prolific user of social networks, especially Instagram. You could say that I don’t care about followers, and that’s the truth. On my personal account, my followers are barely the people I know in real life, and I like it this way. Whenever I tried to open a social account for project of mines, however, I always stumbled upon the huge difficulty to build a fan base or, using more down-to-earth terms, to reach a little potential audience.

Not For You 🎵

Since we were already in the ’20s, when I started writing short stories on Crooked Ink, I decided to open an Instagram account because it was (and still is) the most popular social media. Ah, I can only smile when looking back to my ingenuity. 🥲 I was writing stories, and Instagram users used to watch photos (Reels didn’t exist yet, I think). How to do? I thought it was simple: adapt to the user base. If they like pictures, just post pics.

I had been warned that it wouldn’t be simple¹, but it was the only idea I had. I started posting photos from our vacations (we had started using a reflex camera, we got some remarkable memories) and added some quotes from famous authors as captions. Then, I started following some “dark”, or “moody”, photographers, and they followed back. Every four or five posts, I inserted an image with a quote from a short story of mines. Nobody was interested, and I never got any feedback. When I tried to follow some of the… book influencers, however… I was baffled, at least, about their content.

Now, excuse the outburst, but how in the world this must be a so obvious oxymoron? Most of these “book influencers” (at least, the ones I found) are girls or boys who take very complicated selfies while pretending to read a book. Then, in the caption, they might write a review of their opinions. Ok, I thought, it’s a social based on photos. But the worst thing is that I did not receive almost any feedback when I tried to interact with comments (and I swear I tried several times). Maybe I was just unlucky, but…

(Almost) every time I try to use a social network.

Long story short: after a couple of years of inactivity, I just deleted Crooked Ink’s Instagram profile.

Further Down the Spiral 🎵

That was just one of my misadventures. Now, let’s focus on an account with quite big numbers. My girlfriend, who currently has 13.2K followers (!) because of her wool creations, took a break from Instagram for a couple of years when we decided to buy the house we’re renovating. Last month, she decided to get back with the business, but everything was changed.

At first, she sadly noticed that her stories were viewed by less than 1% of her followers. After publishing some posts or videos, the situation didn’t change at all, and she slowly became to be depressed by this situation: what are thousands of followers for, if they can’t see your content?

She saw several stories from other artists complaining about the same flaw: no matter what they do, their reach is extremely low compared to last year. So, here is the big question: how does the algorithm work? Some say things get better when buying ads to promote your posts… but this just makes things worse! Instagram and Meta are just becoming like those fake free apps… that work properly only if you buy in-app purchases.

This is not the world I want to live in. People like my girlfriend, who want to reach an audience who can appreciate their art, don’t have to struggle in invisible mazes that one can’t solve.

Luckily, there are some social networks as Mastodon that still give me hope.

Fight For Your Right 🎵

I am doing my best to help her with her passion: first, I introduced her to Mastodon, and for now she is noticing smaller numbers, of course, but much more interaction. She doesn’t love technology or computers at all, I don’t know if she’d have ever heard about the fediverse without my guide.

Anyway, I took this a bit too much personally, and I made my duty to find a loophole in the algorithm.

Here are the key points I found, which confirmed my view:

Instagram really hates bots
Instagram loves money, but will rarely give you something back (not even visibility)
Instagram rewards you if you’re Meta verified
Instagram rewards you if you try the new things

Well, these are more than enough, for me, to quit this social network once for all. Actually, at the end, I’ll keep my personal account just to keep in contact with some friends. As always.

In conclusion, if you’re interested in growing your Instagram account (which I find quite disgusting, at this point, but whatever), I recommend a very cool project that uses Android emulation to bypass bot detection.

But honestly, for your health, consider using a different social network.

🎮 Death’s Door (trying to finish it at 100%)

🎧 The Night is for Dreamers by Din of Celestial Birds

📖 Scott Pilgrim #1 and #2 (re-read after twelve years) ❤️

My girlfriend, a needle felting artist, at that time had more than 10K followers, so I knew she was an “expert”… though she already hated Instagram at the time." ↩︎

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My Favorite Neighbor: An Almost-Centenarian

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A few months ago, while waiting for the renovation to finish, we moved to a very tiny village, a hamlet of… less than twenty people, I guess? My girlfriend and I have never been so happy in a place as we are here. Of course, there are many cons, e.g. extreme humidity when it rains (visible even on a ream of paper that wrinkles!) or definitely lack of room… But the silence and the tranquility of this place are priceless. We really do hope to enjoy the countryside as much as here also in the future house.

Our “landlord”, if we want to call him that, is a ninety-six years man who lives in the same building, in a separate apartment. He wakes up every morning at 3 or 4AM, has breakfast, and prepares himself. When he stands up, he always grabs his walking stick for a moment, but then he could drop it, as he starts walking straight at an impressive speed! What is also very fast is his brain, luckily for him. He understands almost everything, and this is my great luck: we can converse a lot.

I’ve always been a chatter, especially with my grandparents. When I was a teenager, I lived on the same block as them, and after school, I often went to play with my younger cousin, who lived also there. While waiting for her, grandma and I had conversations about this and that – these are among my favorite memories about her. I LOVE¹ listening to old stories, especially real ones from the past, from the people who lived them. So, you can imagine my pleasure when I discovered that my new neighbor loves to talk.

Every week or so, we spend about half an hour chatting about his health, the life in the village, his customs, the house we’re renovating, some news, … When I get confidence with someone, I may tend to be a little chatty, but that is perfect with his tendency to repeat the same stories. 🤣 Jokes aside, I might be long-winded, but I consider myself a good listener.

I enjoy listening to elders’ stories, recommendations, anecdotes, … even legends from the woods around here, sometimes! I also really like to hear them speaking in dialect because I’m not very good at it – I can understand it with almost no issues, but speaking it fluently is another matter. For me, it’s important to learn as much as I can from these people because there is a lot of knowledge that will just… disappear with them.

I know it will sound silly because I’m just thirty-five, but in my view, most of the young generations (my contemporaries too) don’t care much about what elders can teach us. Also, they don’t care about the lore they hold, often just in their memory, and we risk losing. History repeats itself², and we should not play deaf. Now, this will sound even sillier, but paraphrasing a music album: it could be so much better if we’d listen more often.

🎮 The beautiful Death’s Door

🎧 Orion by King Buffalo

📖 The Forest by Edward Rutherfurd

I’d emphasize it even more, if I could. ↩︎
It’s the second time I use this term in this blog, I must seem so moralistic! ↩︎

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Dream Pals

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In the last post, I mentioned that now and then I dream about a very old crush of mine. It is absolutely true, and I have an hypothesis about the cause of my weird dreams. Often, I ask myself: Why do we dream about someone in particular?

⚠️ Important premise: I often struggle to remember my “daily” dreams, so I’ll refer about the ones I remember more vividly – the ones that often keep me awake a few minutes after waking up. ⚠️

A Blast From the Past

My romantic side likes to think that, when we dream about a person, she or he is dreaming about us, too. Unluckily, my romanticism has always been tending to zero, so I lean to avoid such thoughts.¹ More realistically and simply, I reckon that people we dream about have been relevant for us. Or, better, their words or their actions have been.

I happened to dream about someone who I spoke with in the last few days, as the constructors who are working at our future home.² Much more often, anyway, it occurred to dream about people I had met in the past weeks, or even years. Sometimes, I dream about my teachers from elementary school, or neighbors from twenty years ago, and I truly miss them after opening my eyes. Of course, because mine is a scumbag brain, I also dream about my ex from more than ten years ago, but this is not the time to talk about it yet.

My brain approves this, and likes old style memes too

Also, an aspect that I consider quite relevant is that I often don’t recall³ dreaming about the person I love most, and who I spend the majority of my day with: my girlfriend. I find it quite strange, but this leads me to consider a potential aspect of the situation: maybe I mostly have dreams about people I have unfinished business with. It is one of the best explanation I can find about the most of the dreams I can remember.

Self-Healing?

Other times, in dreams, people who are close to me lecture me because of some bad aspects of my attitude, often from the recent past. I think that, in these cases, my own conscience wants to give me some kind of advice, as “You should stop being an idiot”. I know that sometimes my reactions are exaggerated, but I often realize it too late, maybe after a fit of rage. I like(?) to think that it is some kind of self-healing, or something similar. Or probably, it could totally be my sense of guilt. My brain might want to give me also some good advices, who knows – it’s a scumbag indeed, but not that much.

But then.

Sometimes, I happen to dream about my grandmother, who passed away about ten years ago, and she hugs me. Or maybe I dream about one of my brothers, who I seldom see or chat with. In these cases, I just wake up with my eyes wet. I don’t know what to think about it. My rational thought starts wavering, and my romantic side, from zero, rises up violently.

Darn. I wish the messages from life were simpler to decipher.

🎮 Nobody got time for that.

🎧 #3 by Aphex Twin (I’m a bit obsessed)

📖 The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

In my brain, there is also a similar situation for religion and prayers. I’ll write about that, too. ↩︎
These weren’t happy dreams though, at all! 🤣 ↩︎
Please remember the premise. I know I should train remembering better! ↩︎

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My Book of Regrets

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

[Suggested, homonymous, soundtrack] 🎵

Do you have any regrets? Certainly I do and, while writing this, I realized that many of mines have something in common.

I remember to have heard somewhere “It’s important to not have any regrets”, but I think everybody has some. It’s inevitable, they must have. Or… How do they live?

Since I have memory, my life was made of choices: I tend to overthink everything, and I am used to pondering a lot before taking any decision. This always had a reasonable impact on my social life, especially regarding sentimental affairs. I can’t even try to realize how many mental journeys I have done, every single day… It’s just my way to process the changes in my life: I ~~like to~~ imagine conversations before they happen.

Oh, Love

The first regret I have memory of is from elementary school: I had a huge crush on a little girl, we were engaged “as kids”, and I was totally in love. After five years, she changed city and went to another school. I am a bit ashamed to say that I never completely went over it. I still dream her, once every one or two months. We didn’t live so far, and if I weren’t so damn shy, I could have gone to her place and tell her my feelings, but… decades have passed since then. I mean, I had years and years to make a quite simple leap of courage, but for me, it always seemed impossible. So, this is a huge what if in my life that still haunts me. I got used to living with this shadow.

As I said, I’m quite ashamed of that: I am in my thirties and I have a stable relationship which lasts from more than ten years with another person (and so does that girl), but the regret of not having said something, at the right time, still bothers me.

Maybe I just missed an occasion… Or maybe I could suffer some kind of abandonment trauma, that could explain my other recurrent dream: my ex. Yes, I said that. I wish it wouldn’t happen, but it does: every month or so, I also dream about my ex. That’s another story that maybe I’ll cover in another post, but for now I’ll skip it because it is not related to regrets – it’s about selfishness.

In brief, also in this other occasion, the gone opportunity to tell what I felt really made me feel bad… And I think that, sometimes, it evolved in a regret.

My daily routine.

Work or Study?

I am aware that I was, and I am, in a privileged position even because I can write this on a blog: I know I’ve been lucky, I don’t want to sound superior at all. Not every kid can have the range of choices I had.

When I was nineteen, and I had just finished school, I had the intention to continue studying at the University, but I didn’t really have a clear idea about the path I wanted to follow. I signed up for Electrical Engineering, even if I suspected it could be a tough challenge, but honestly, it didn’t appeal to me. Long story short: I was lucky enough to find a good job in IT in late 2007, just before the economic crisis, and ended up to never start Uni. I had the opportunity to attend lessons while working, but I was making shifts, and I’ve always been too lazy (other than shy), so I avoided that.

Well, as you can imagine, another regret is not having studied at a University, maybe moving to another city, like many friends of mine did – and I envy them a bit.

Going back some more years, when choosing the high school, I was afraid of Latin as a subject, so I didn’t choose the lyceum when I was thirteen. I went to a “lower level” school without Latin, and surely it influenced a bit on my resume, in the long term. Anyway, even if there is a small regret about this school choice (mostly given by personal pride), I’m definitely happy with this pick, and here we come to a core point of my thought: you can never know the consequences.

For example, if I hadn’t chosen the “lower class school”, I’d never met my actual girlfriend… But it happened seven or eight years after the choice itself!

Every choice is a bet, but not a drastic one, as if playing Russian roulette. I think that all the options we can choose will bring a lot of joy and happiness, but surely will also bring unexpected gloom, maybe in the very long term. Or perhaps in the opposite order. We will all suffer, in some way, but we’ll be happy too, because life doesn’t change because of single choices. If we’re not content now, it’s just a matter of time. Maybe the choice isn’t even relevant for that.

Words Not Spoken

My real regrets, anyway, are for the people who aren’t here anymore. Departed friends, or relatives, are the ones who really make you think I should’ve talked with him or her one more time, or more often. Sometimes, I happen to think about that message I haven’t sent to a friend, to hang out after some months we were working in separate cities, and I feel bad because it’s too late.

Or worse, recalling the last, horrible weeks of my grandparents, I think that one more visit wouldn’t have costed anything to me, but it could’ve been a spark of joy for them.

I wouldn’t call these remorses, because I think I did nothing wrong… but I didn’t do anything, too. That is the bug that is slowing, constantly, crawling in my head. I already stated that I overthink everything, and sometimes a regret evolves in guilt. Guilt of having done nothing. Am I the only one who feels like this?

Well, I’ve been like this for years, and it became a quite ordinary way to think, for me. I’m not happy with it, but I guess there’s much worse.

If I can find a moral in all this: just say what you think and feel to the ones you care. Don’t be afraid to speak, but rather the opposite.

🎮 Trek to Yomi (it’s longer than I expected!)

🎧 Eternal Return by Windhand

📖 Still The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke (wonderful!)

For the first time, I opened up a bit since I know that a handful of people will read this (and probably they don’t know me). This was quite personal stuff, but without too many details – and not too much awkwardness, I hope.

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My Two Cents About Passwords

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR: I recommend using KeePass and MFA authentication.

In the last few months, maybe since Apple launched Passkeys, I’ve read a lot of blog posts about password management. I have my own opinion and, overall, I know there are a few best practices I read about when studying for IT certifications that I’d like to share.

Since I also read some misinformation (even if for good), I would like to write down my own thoughts.

1. Avoid the Cloud (When Possible)

A colleague of mine, when talking to customers, says: “The cloud is just someone else’s data center”.

It is an extremism, but in the end it’s quite true. When you store your data on a Cloud service, of course, the (huge) advantage is to make it available everywhere (e.g., from your phone’s apps)… but on the other end, you expose the data to a series of vulnerabilities that mostly depend on the Cloud Provider.

First, your data should be segregated from other customer’s data, and inaccessible both from them and the Provider itself. Does it always happen? Experience gives us a more than clear answer: no. So, when putting anything on the Cloud, you must be aware that it could be compromised.

You could be upset if anything would happen to the pictures of your pet, therefore, one thing you should NOT want to place in the Cloud is your sensible passwords! I mean that you should not opt for a password manager that stores the data on the Cloud, and you should prefer one that lets you control your data – in a local file on your computer.

It doesn’t matter if a company seems more secure and promises 100% safety: history repeats itself. Also, think about the way you often access the passwords: the browser extensions. Each one you install is a potential series of vulnerability you expose your data (and yourself): you extend the attack surface that can be exploited by an attacker.

One of the priorities with computers, in general, should be to keep the attack surface as reduced as possible.

So, in my opinion, a software that lets you keep an encrypted local file containing your passwords¹ should be preferred.

I can totally relate. Totally.

2. Store Your Data in Multiple Locations

Of course, if you have a single file containing all your passwords, you have to be sure not to lose it! Make sure to copy it on several locations. My advice is to back it up regularly –once a month?– on an external disk to be kept detached from the computer.

A good option could be to copy this encrypted file to the Cloud, and then access it from other devices. Even if it should be compromised, an attacker couldn’t do any harm if you…👇

3. Study a Good Master Password

By “Master Password” I mean the password used to protect the encrypted file. You have to make sure that this password is a well-studied one. Here are my suggestions:

Use Passphrases

The password must be long (14 characters minimum), so using a series of words is an easy way to obtain this goal. But.

Use Numbers and Special Characters

Words are not enough. Dictionary attacks can easily guess very long passwords. Use special characters to add some salt. Use them not only between the words, but also to replace some letters in them. Utilize numbers too, but avoid dates or simple sequences as 1234 or 0000.²

Bonus idea! Use mirror sequences, such as 0?!_something_!?0.

Use Something You Really Like

In the text of the passphrase, put a reference to something that you love, and you know you’ll always remember. For example, if you are a fan of Quentin Tarantino, a good password could be a reference to your favorite movie from him.

Keep It Simple

The password must be quite easy for you to remember. After all those concepts, it could seem impossible, but let’s wrap it up. Do you really like Pulp Fiction? Then your Master Password could be 0=Ez3kiel-25;17=0.

It’s 17 characters long, and it is quite simple to remember, if playing with sequences of character as 0= makes sense for you.

Do you love Paris? Then try something like -=-Eiffel$Tow3r-=-. Note that just the first letter of each word is capitalized, and the last vowel is replaced with a number: it could be a simple mind trick to… create your own cypher!

Once your Master Password is quite complex, you can (almost) safely rely on your password manager to generate all the complex passwords of just random characters, perfect for most websites.

4. Multi-Factor Authentication? Yes, please.

Of course, an additional precaution does not harm: whenever possible, add MFA with an OTP, which is a random series of digits that appear on your personal device (smartphone). By doing so, if a potential attacker gets your password, she or he still needs the OTP code, which is quite impossible to hack. So, to access the website, they would also need something you have (the phone), other than something you know (the password).

For Android, I’d suggest Aegis; for iOS, Raivo.

For an even more secure scenario, I’d keep my OTPs and passwords separated. Most password managers can manage both, but in case of compromise, you lose all at once.

Also, make regular backups of the OTPS, too!

Conclusion

As you may have understood, I recommend KeePass: with a single encrypted local file, your passwords are potentially safe, you just need a good Master Password. Then, you can copy this file in any location and be cautiously serene.

And add MFA. Always!

P.S. I know that I sound very grumpy and faithless towards the Cloud, but working in cybersecurity made me realize that we should simplify our approach to technology.

🎮 Trek to Yomi

🎧 Some post-rock, such as Pelican

📖 The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke

Real geeks could even encrypt a plain text file using OpenSSL –or, even better, age– containing the passwords. It is a bit of an extreme example, but for me, it is safer than a cloud SaaS application. ↩︎
I bet everyone used one of these as unlock codes for some device. 👀 ↩︎

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My First Open Source Tool

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Often, because of necessities given by my work, I happen to write Bash scripts. They’re quite simple, I’m no expert, and I tend to automate simple tasks. I work in backup and data protection fields, so I often copy files, check integrity, calculate times, etc. But in the last weeks, for the first time, I wrote a script that I wanted to share with the world: not because it’s super cool –at all–, but because nobody else provided a tool for this purpose.

⚠️ This will be a quite technical post, you may get bored. ⚠️

Nobody Else Will Be There 🎵

A brief introduction to better explain the scenario.

As some of you may know, many companies in several areas rely on magnetic tapes to store their backup data. As audio cassettes and VHS were read by specific recorders, so are enterprise storage tapes. The tapes are often organized in large libraries (called no surprisingly Tape Libraries) that can contain more than 2,000 elements and dozens of Tape Drives, the ones that read and write data when cartridges are mounted. The most widely-used standard is called Linear Tape-Open, or LTO. Every three or four years, a new generation of LTO tapes and drives is published: using the same format, the capacity of a single tape is doubled, if not more. For example, LTO-1 could store 200 GB, and LTO-9 can hold 45 TB! 🤯

For years, LTO tapes have been amazing: quite affordable and reliable, they’ve been a more than valid solution for long-term backups. LTO-9 technology should have been launched in 2020, right when the pandemic hit. There had been delays, but eventually it arrived in late 2021 — right when the semiconductor shortage hit. But. There was a marginal note, when the first libraries were delivered to the customers: each LTO-9 tape has to be optimized¹ the first time it is mounted in any tape drive.

45 TB on a single tape is quite impressive… but you should see the roadmap for the next generations!

“Ok, so what?” one could ask.

When reading one of the several documents explaining the process, it becomes clear that the optimization of a tape requires from twenty minutes up to two hours for each single tape. So, when a “virgin” LTO-9 tape is loaded in a tape for the first time, the optimization process starts automatically. The tape drive becomes unresponsive, and the only option is waiting.

“Ok, but what’s the problem?” is the next question.

The problem is that some customers buy very large stocks of tapes, even more than 1,000. So, to prepare all those tapes, in the worst case, it will take 1,000 * 2 hours = 2,000 hours.² Whaaaat?!

“Ok, but… Don’t the Tape Library vendors provide an automated tool to perform the optimization in the background?”

That’s the point: no, they don’t.³

Angry Chair 🎵

Personally, I think that it is not fair and modern Tape Libraries should have a feature like this, especially two years after the technology came out. So, because of my job, I was obliged to write a script to avoid to manually move all the cartridges in the tape drives, one by one. By chance, I had the opportunity to work on two different enterprise Tape Libraries, both from Quantum and IBM, and both of them had a gazillion tape drives. Then I thought: it would be nice to parallelize and automate the load/unload of the several drives.

And then, after a couple of tentatives, I was able to find a quite elegant(?) solution with just Linux tools (mtx). I tested it on both libraries and… it worked better than expected! Occasionally, it still “loses control” of a drive, but it’s not a big issue: it just needs to be relaunched.

Then, I decided to publish it on a public repository, so any sysadmin with this particular need can use it. I know it is for a very specific problem, but it also avoids a big pain… but I still can’t realize that I had to write it: as I already said, it should have been built-in in the expensive Tape Libraries.

Maybe I took this matter too much to heart, but I hope that this simple script can be useful to even just one person. As the meme says, it ain’t much, but it’s honest work.

🎮 Alan Wake Remastered (almost finished!)

🎧 Red Eyes Unravelling by Flies Are Spies From Hell

📖 The October Country by Ray Bradbury

Each vendor uses a different term: calibration, optimization, … but they refer to the same process. ↩︎
From my experience, the average requested time is 30–40 minutes. ↩︎
As far as I know, in July 2023, only one of the main vendors has a built-in function to provide this procedure, but I may be wrong.” ↩︎

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Soul Food

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Here in Northern Italy, for my girlfriend and me, these weeks are that period of the year when the fun starts: it’s time for Sagre! 🍖💃🕺

A “sagra” is a local festival, and each village or city has its own. Of course, it’s not an exclusively Italian tradition at all. Usually, you can find typical and local dishes instead of “average” street food like sandwiches. Or better, often you can find both.

Last weekend, we ate:

Ravioli al plin (small meat ravioli closed in a particular way, “with the pinch”)
Calamari fritti (fried squid rings), since we were less than an hour from the sea
Friciula piemontese (a fried dough), a.k.a. Heaven on Earth. With a slice of pancetta between two friciule, you get the best sandwich ever. And a cholesterol extra dose.
…Rane 🐸 Yes, fried frog legs! Here in Piedmont, they’re quite popular, but not everyone likes them.

To be honest, it was that the first time that we ate frogs, and they surprised us. The taste is something between chicken and fish… but obviously, they’re fried, so they’d be tasty in any case.

The best is when you visit a village you didn’t know before, and it’s beautiful! Or you just find nice glimpses like this church below, in the village of Merana. We have a simple rule: the tiniest is the village, the better is the sagra experience… and it has been true, until now.

The view from the car parking in Merana. See the tiny tower on the left? That’s the target for a new trail we just found.

What we seek in these experiences… is the experience itself. We don’t just go there to eat. We like meeting new people – better if elder people, with stories to tell from past years and events. This is one of my favorite places to ask about the lore of the regione: even if we are just a fistful of kilometers from home, the dialect changes, and so often do the traditions.

Sagre will go on until late Fall, and the specialities will slowly move towards mushrooms, and then chestnuts. We are quite gluttons, and we like to spend ~~almost~~ every weekend moving around the area. Our car is even called sagracar in such trips. 😎

+++

Autumn Into Summer 🎵

Last week, luckily, I had plenty of free time.¹ I could focus again on Godsip Club, and I was able to browse my Obsidian vault to get quickly some information about the Midsummer solstice. If you are interested about bonfires 🔥 or in wheels 🛞, then check out this article: Midsommar.

I also changed the font to Merryweather (non-Google) because I am trying to distance myself from Google as much as possible, especially with the Fonts. Too many websites are using them in the worst way: in the CSS, they refer to an external stylesheet and the font is not even downloaded on the device…

But I’m getting too nerdy for this post, which was normal just a few paragraphs above. Better stop for now.

🎮 …nothing 😬

🎧 QOTSA - In Times New Roman…

📖 Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

Ha, it’s strange to read this sentence after the week after 🔥 ↩︎

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Movin' On Up

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This weekend, I spent a couple of hours migrating the posts from the blog I was keeping on crooked.ink here on Bear (thank you, Herman, for this amazing platform!). I’ve been thinking about that since I’d seen some post on Hacker News, maybe a couple of years ago, and finally I made up my mind.

I want to keep Crooked Ink as a simple collection of short stories, and a blog there is kind of a limitation. Also, since I started Godsip Club as a second blog, I don’t feel comfortable to write anymore on the first blog. So, the simplest thing to do was to separate my personal blog from the rest. I really like simplicity, so Bear was the perfect choice!

The only rule I want to keep from my old blog is the titles of the posts or chapters: each one will be a title of a song, or an album. If possible, I’ll also add a link. Also, I’d like to write a bit more about (boring?) tech stuff and ~~life~~ problems (mostly because caused by the house renovation).

Quiet Houses

In brief, buying a 200-years-old house to renovate was a mistake.

Or better, it was a terrible mistake to do after the pandemic, when Italian government (and maybe E.U., honestly I never understood it completely) decided to give bonuses for renovations. Just look for “superbonus” and “chaos” on the web, and see the results. It is a huge mess that hit everyone in construction sector as a jab by Mike Tyson, and customers too.

I am one of the many people who are still waiting – after years – to finish the works on the house. In my case, everyone involved had some faults:

The bank (it’s always the banks)
The government
Our architect
Our construction company
My girlfriend and me, of course

The title is because the building site is depressingly quiet: in 430 days, workers have been going there about 70. 16%. It shouldn’t be like that.

Just the other day, there has been the umpteenth meeting with the company. The final goal to finish the work is the end of 2023. Time will tell.

The situation is not the ideal, indeed. There is a lot of work to do.

(What A) Wonderful World

Alas, this situation slowed and discouraged many aspects of my life and other projects: I (almost) stopped stories writing on Crooked Ink, and I don’t have much enthusiasm to publish articles for Godsip Club, even if there is no lack of material. As I mentioned in the last article, I even had opened a Mastodon account for the website, but two months have passed since the last update. 🙈

The last big news, though, is that, a couple of months ago, we¹ moved in a hamlet so tiny that doesn’t even count 20 souls, on a hillside. We took this decision for two main reasons: we are nearer to the new house/construction site, and we can pass the hot summer months in a cooler place — and with fewer mosquitoes. The best aspect is probably the position: we already found five or six beautiful trails on the hills around here, without taking the car.

One of the many wonderful views around the village.

In the woods there are some ticks and, in the last couple of weeks, it rained really too much violently, but this place is quite a heaven. The second-best aspect of all this? Our new home will be on the very next hill, just five minutes by car, or less than one hour on foot. Also, as a bonus, the neighbors are amazing!

The places around here are so undervalued that we are also planning to create some geocaches to spread their beauty. The last ones we created, a fourteen-long series based on X-Files trivia, was quite a success. 😎

As a last thing, I’d like to list what I’ve been reading/playing/listening to, in the last period. I don’t know if it can be useful to anyone, but if you see anything in these lists, it means I’d really suggest it to my best friend.

🎮 Alan Wake Remastered

🎧 A Cheery Wave From Stranded Youngsters: Vol. XII

📖 Wohpe by Salvatore Sanfilippo

To be clear, as we, I always refer to my girlfriend and me. ↩︎

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Disco 2000

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Last month¹, I finished a video game called Disco Elysium. It really blew my mind. Not because of the ultra-realistic graphics, or the fluid gameplay (it doesn’t have either of those), but for the immersive story indeed. A story that can be shaped in a huge number of ways, full of secrets and funny details. Each dialogue option can shape the experience, so every “new game” is a new experience. I really loved it.

One of the details I remember most is a quote, from the final moments of the game. It is from a character that… haunts the Detective Du Bois, but I really can sympathize: I, too, have my personal Dolores Dei, so I could relate much more than I wanted. Once understood her role, her words were a punch in the stomach:

Real darkness has love for a face. The first death is in the heart.

Damn.

Official artwork for Disco Elysium. If you like RPGs or dice games, you should definetely try it!

And All That Could Have Been

In these months, because of the impossible and infinite renovation of our new home, I really needed to dive in other worlds and think about something else. I have read as much as I could, and video games helped, too. Unluckily, I haven’t been in the right mood to write something, even if I’d want to. The last year and half has been a never ceasing rollercoaster; the more I think about it, the more I see myself as perfectly still, stuck in a bubble. Friends get married and have babies, wars are started and billions of people change their daily habits because of the global pandemic… But, in some way, I’m still there, as if nothing changed.

I know it’s just a phase, and in a few months all of this will be over, but I can’t help but sigh when thinking about the near future.

From @idiarideibambini on Instagram. Translation: “God answered my prayers. He said no.”

I See a Darkness

Okay, I’ll just stop whining. About Midjourney and the other AIs that went viral in the last few months², I’m glad I was right in the previous blog post:

Should we be truly excited by this?

I’m happy about the “No AI” movement on ArtStation and on other websites, because things ~~were~~ are getting out of control. It’s OK to play with AI, to use it to even create whole imaginary worlds. But. In less than a year, people are getting paid to… write prompts? Excuse me, what? That’s way too much. Maybe I’m too old-style.

I can’t avoid suggesting a website called Web3 Is Going Just Great, and this is a very good example of how quickly new things, in these days, are praised… and then quickly cursed or condemned.

Purple Rain

On a more tech-y point of view, I finally started using Dracula theme on many apps, and I am really enjoying it³. I don’t really like purple as main color scheme, but for writing, for both work and hobby, it’s awesome.

Also, I changed Crooked Ink’s font to Sentient, trying to avoid Google Fonts’ beautiful Crimson Text. I like it quite a lot, and I also made the text larger, so it should be easier to read on mobile devices. Comments are welcome!

And finally, about Vampires or similar beings, I just finished reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I read it in English, and I think it may be the hardest book I have read in this language so far. It was tough, but it’s been also one of my best experiences with a book. It’s a wonderful dark tale, with exquisitely well-written characters and some remarkable locations. I liked it so much that I inserted a small Easter egg in this website, based on that. Who knows if someone will ever find it. 👀

I read that a movie has been made from this novella, and to find it (in Italian) was absolutely the hardest task, much more than thinking about the egg! It’s a Disney movie, but I don’t understand why it is not included in Disney+ or any other streaming service.

Poster of the movie based on the novel. It’s so rare I couldn’t find a decent scan of the Italian edition.

Traveling Solves Everything

Luckily, since October, we made a couple of trips, and we could enjoy both Normandy and Bavaria. Since we can’t do much to speed up the renovation, my girlfriend and I will try to enjoy these months by… traveling as much as we can. Or we’ll try, at least. It’s ok to read, play video games, or hang out with friends⁴, but the only real solution to unplug from reality is good ol’ traveling. It helped in the past, and it seems to be the only solution for the next future.

Also, I really hope to write something very soon. I feel like something is unlocking in me, but there are still too many distractions. Furthermore, I still have to review my latest story, which I’m not proud of. I tried to create an account for Godsip Club on Mastodon, but even there, I can’t be as constant as I’d like.

Abandoned church in Northern France, in a little fraction of a village called… “Cold Ass”. Seriously!

Actually, it was almost three months ago. Lately, I don’t have much time to write. 🙈 ↩︎
Latest news from the other day is GPT-4 announcement, we’ll see where it’ll end. ↩︎
Solarized Dark, this is a goodbye, not a farewell! 💔 ↩︎
They’re so bored to hear us laming about our new house… we’re sincerely sorry! ↩︎

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