Against The Grain
Story of my life: I have nice ideas, but I spend way too much time focusing my efforts on their useless aspects. Example: privacy-awareness. I am a strong advocate of any de-Googling project and in the past few months I had some ideas for this website. Only one problem: today’s web technology is very different from what I used to know ten years ago (HTML + CSS = 🚀). I already had a certain number of issues while studying Hugo and customizing this website… But after some research1 and a dozen of comments on StackOverflow, now visitors can see in the homepage a nice(?) banner if they are using a browser different than Brave or Firefox – if you have read it, you should take it seriously.
Another huge step was switching the hosting platform: from Firebase (Google-based) to Vercel, an opensource project easy to configure. The migration was painless and I enjoyed discovering this new world.
BUT! It isn’t over. There is also some big news in the Blog section of the site: each page has a shiny new Comments portion! At first, I registered to Disqus because it seemed with no doubt the best and easier product to set up, but then I casually checked the uBlock report of the resulting webpage… 😱 I immediately regretted and again, for pure coincidence, I stumbled upon a project born a couple of days earlier: Cusdis)! You can try it yourself at the bottom of this page, it is lightweight, easy and functional! I’m still having some issues with colour customization, but eventually I’ll fix it.
UPDATE – 31/05/2021: the domain itself has been transferred from Google Domains to Porkbun. One more step done. 🎉
Printemps Emeraude 🎵
Have you ever listened to Alcest? Until a few months ago I wasn’t even aware of the existence of this amazing French band. Sound wall? Check. Dreamy atmosphere? Check. Cool cover arts (bonus points)? Check. Only a few times I bought the whole discography of a band in one time… this was the case.
Highs and lows are the norm, but I’m very positive about the next future, overall about the house we're going to renovate. We bought an awesome hammock and set it up between two apple trees. The other day I tried to use my laptop from there and it was perfect! I can’t wait to join a Teams or WebEx session from there.
About countryside, here is an unrelated bonus picture: the amazing view of the hill near Montechiaro D’Acqui, where we had a nice walk of thirty-and-something kilometres.
Gone, Still
Latest news: Bear announced a contest in partnership with Scribe, a newsletter with stories and poems published on Medium. When I read the prompt, I immediately started wandering with my thoughts, and in a couple of days my story was ready. I submitted it and I hope to get published (I am already a Bear Pro subscriber, I don’t really care about the prize). My only negative thought is about Medium in itself. I don’t like their “paywall” method, but I respect it. I hope to not have to become necessarily a paying member/subscriber to be able to participate in the contest — if so, I’ll just publish the short story here, for free.
UPDATE – 03/08/2021: apparently, I haven't been considered for the contest (because of Medium's subscription?), so here is the story.
It could be a few hours as well as a few days, you really don’t want to know 🤷♂️↩