It's been a few weeks since my disastrous fall that ended with me landing on the edge of the bathtub. My healing process is about 80% there, I think—the worst part is at night, as I try to find the right position to fall asleep and end up right in the one that hurts the most.

We're without our little dog Panna right now. We decided to leave her in Italy until Christmas, when we'll head back for the holidays, and while I miss her every single minute, the time without her lets us tackle that list of activities we'd otherwise have to put off.

Next Sunday, we'll be visiting Catalina Island, and I'm really hoping to snap some decent photos to share here once we're back.

The following weekend, I'll be in San Diego for TwitchCon. The weekend of October 24, we'll take a quick getaway to Vancouver—a city I rank among the most beautiful in the world, and one I'm happy to rediscover after nearly 20 years!

After a couple of weeks' break, I'll be in NYC mid-November for work, and Noemi will join me so we can spend a few free days together exploring the city. Or at least, the parts I still have left to discover personally.

For Thanksgiving, we'll do a short tour of the Grand Canyon—since not everything there is dog-friendly—and we'll make one last stop in Florida at the end of December before heading back to Italy for a couple of weeks.

In short, some pretty intense months are coming up, and I haven't even listed all the trips I'll have to squeeze in. It scares me a bit, this upcoming stretch—not so much because of the sheer volume of stuff to do, but because I don't want to hit the end of these three months completely drained. I'll have to pace myself well between the high-energy moments and the rest ones, recharging the batteries whenever I get the chance.

As I write these lines, I've found myself reflecting on the tragic state of social media lately. Just like Manu put it:

One thing that’s fun to observe, though, as a very passive and disinterested spectator, is how some patterns of behaviour seem to be platform agnostic. Which is just a very polite way for me to say that dickheads are omnipresent.

Hordes of people have been jumping from one platform to another, cheering on so-called digital intifadas for all sorts of cultural, political, social reasons, only to land on new shores and face the exact same problems—users disguised by confirmation bias, and above all, those dangerous echo chambers.

It doesn't matter much which platform you choose to use. Unless you're completely clueless, you'll know exactly who to surround yourself with and who you want to interact with. You'll inevitably stay cooped up in your own pen. That's just how it is now—no matter the platform, social media has become a ruthless, brutal place to dump your resentment. The important thing is to win. Win the conversation by any means necessary; it doesn't matter if you argue logically—the point is to win. With satire, with insults, with public shaming. It's me against you. Black against white. On every single topic. An endless loop of barricades where the meeting point doesn't exist, because there can't be dialogue between people who only want to hear their own side.

The truth is that no place is better than another, and no place is safe from any kind of extremist drift. If that's what you're looking for, then start a blog. Because, as of today, no social platform can claim to be better than another, and it never will be.

It makes me sad that it's like this. These days, I only use social media to share gaming stuff and post the little content I create. Everything else is left to this tight-knit circle of the blog. Everything else, you'll always find it right here. I hope more and more.

Rock and Roll will never die:

File rock music under the same bracket as death and taxes – it’s a fact, and a constant of life, albeit a far more joyous one.

🔗

I realized I haven’t posted here since my birthday. That feels like forever, considering how often I used to update my blog. But a lot has happened in the meantime, and I’m going to catch you up:

• Never in a million years would I have imagined calling myself a content creator… Yet, if we’re putting labels on things, I guess that’s what I am now. I started a podcast for fun, in Italian, called Modalità Carriera. It’s about Italians around the world working in the video game industry.

• I didn’t stop there. My passion for eFootball has grown so much, and my X account has exploded because of it, that I decided to start a YouTube channel in English. I just comment on the matches I play online and share some gaming tips every now and then. It’s a ton of fun, even though it takes up almost all my free time.

• We went to Las Vegas in July for a quick weekend and saw Lady Gaga at Levi’s Stadium. We also visited The Sphere, and hands down, it was the most thrilling experience of my life.

• Speaking of concerts, in early September, we went to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to see Oasis. Definitely the concert of a lifetime!

• I stupidly fractured two ribs after slipping in the bathtub at home. For a whole month, I slept like a mummy, stuck in one position. Only recently have I started getting back to normal.

Now we’ve got a week of “vacation” in Italy coming up. We’re going back for the wedding of two dear friends, but we’ll be back exactly seven days later. The time zone change won’t be easy to manage, but we’ll make the most of it with family, friends, and, of course, tons of food!

I was so busy living that I forgot my usual birthday post a few days ago. My relationship with the internet is gradually deteriorating; I barely open any social media except X. My only focus now is video games, eFootball, and YouTube creators.

Digesting hundreds of posts through my RSS feed is becoming a tiring task rather than a pleasant one, so I’m dedicating less and less time to it. The nice thing, though, is that there’s no rush to consume that kind of content, and I know I can return to it whenever I feel like it or maybe when I have more time to spare.

Last Friday, I took the day off, and we drove north. I attended the Limp Bizkit and Metallica concert at the 49ers stadium. Despite the awful acoustics and the cold Bay Area wind, I had a great time. We explored a bit of Monterey and part of the road leading to Big Sur.

Sunday was supposed to be dedicated to Carmel-by-the-Sea, but Panna started having tremors, so we decided to head back home immediately to take her to Urgent Care.
It seems to be a simple virus treatable with antibiotics, thankfully!

42 years old. When I think about it, I still can’t believe it. Especially because I feel half that age.

I found this post by ava about the parallelism between blogging and romanticism magnificent:

Blogging that’s personal and reflective (and not just how-to’s, portfolios or commercial) does this by offering a medium to express your inner life, thoughts, dreams, and struggles with a sort of intimacy and rawness that traditional publications and social media personalities lack.

Not to mention this subsequent passage where I thought she was talking about me:

Then also, blogging in more minimalist ways (like Bearblog) without ads and popup banners and newsletter modals feels more organic, a kind of original expression not filtered through editorial constraints and SEO optimizations. To me, it could resemble the Romantic longing for authentic, unspoiled experience, for lost innocence, for nature, for the past and a return to the natural and the immediate. I recognize this whenever some people choose to talk about it in terms of returning to a simpler, older web and indulging in nostalgia, even in design.

Apart from X, which I can’t abandon for work reasons, my relationship with social media is heading toward a perpetual sunset. I haven’t closed my accounts, but I’ve deleted many apps from my phone and I’m hardly using any of them. My concept of the Web is what I apply to my blog; I’ve never put any paid content, never included ads, or tried to profit from it, because I’ve always considered it a personal space to reflect who I am, not an intellectual violation.

🔗

For the second year in a row, I attended the opening event of the Summer Game Fest in person at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles (Inglewood, to be precise).

This year, I must say, the two hours spent in the company of Geoff Keighley were very exciting. Yes, that's the right word: at almost 42 years old, I got goosebumps again for some of the announcements made.

Beyond Resident Evil 9, in my opinion, the ones to keep an eye on are: Chronicles: Medieval, ILL, Mafia: The Old Country, Dying Light: The Beast, Atomic Heart 2, Stranger Than Heaven, Onimusha: Way of the Sword.

What left me quite stunned, considering this is a moment traditionally dedicated to third-party games, was the total lack of support for the Nintendo Switch 2 for practically all the games presented. Only PlayStation 5, Xbox, and PC. If this is really the case, I’d start to worry, and not just a little, for Nintendo’s new console.

Finally, online, many people were outraged about the lack of blockbuster announcements, the absence of Hollow Knight: Silksong, etc., etc. I, on the other hand, believe there was plenty of substance. The problem with the audience’s expectations is that they’re never satisfied.

I’ve always loved photography. Not in an all-consuming way, but I’ve always been drawn to being behind a camera, capturing a moment in time. Perfect, without flaws. It’s often led me to endless waiting or getting seriously pissed off because too many people were in the frame.

What’s always fascinated me about photography is symmetry, the clean lines of urban architecture, or a natural landscape that, more often than not, looked quite different in digital form compared to what my eyes saw.

Over the years, I’ve honed my skills a bit through courses, tips, and YouTube videos, reaching a decent enough level to bring home a handful of shots I’m proud of—ones that feel like they capture life itself.

And yet. Yet, I just sold my Sony a7R III after five years. Along with four different lenses and, perhaps, a piece of my passion (?).

In my decluttering process, one key factor is how often I use or engage with something. If I’m not making the most of it, it’s probably unnecessary, and I can let it go.

So why did this happen with photography?

After some reflection, there are a few reasons. First, laziness. It never even crossed my mind to grab my mirrorless camera for a quick walk around the neighborhood, to explore nearby streets and come back with a decent shot, even just of a sunset.

The second reason is definitely tied to my smartphone. My iPhone 15 Pro Max takes ridiculously high-quality photos. And isn’t the secret to a great photo all about what it conveys to the viewer’s eyes?

The third, and maybe final, reason is the weight. Never knowing which lens would be best, I’d end up carrying two, sometimes three, only to finish any outing with a sore back or, at best, a good sweat.

Have I sold off a passion? Does letting go of a camera I loved—and still love—make me less of a photographer? I’m not sure. The fact that anyone, anywhere in the world, has the chance to take a life-changing photo gives me hope. But it also makes me think about how the quality of so many of our passions has dropped, just like the quality of a good photo.

The theme for this month is Renewal. In this late spring, I decided it was time to give PC gaming a chance. With some spare change, I treated myself to the luxury of exploring this fascinating world that encompasses all games after over 15 years, with a machine equipped with a GeForce RTX 5090 that could last for many years.

I decided to renew my thinking about a fundamentally open system, which, with a few tweaks here and there, can easily withstand the test of time and survive at least an entire generation of consoles.

My good intention of renewal, however, has miserably failed. At least for now. Ordered from the NZXT website at the beginning of April, my new gaming computer arrived just over a week ago.

For me, a geek and lover of any technological gadget, it was like Christmas Day, finally happy to be able to say I could try something different in this crazy world of gaming.

And yet, for the entire past week, I’ve only been greeted with BSODs (the dreaded Blue Screen of Deaths of Windows 11). I’ve reformatted the computer multiple times, searching for as many useful solutions as possible, yet nothing seems to work.

The day after tomorrow, the computer will be returned to the sender, from whom I’ve requested a full refund for a machine I no longer trust. Once I receive the refund, I’ll proceed to purchase a machine with similar specs but produced and pre-built by a different brand, in the hope that this perpetual bad luck that haunts us, where everything has to be difficult and complicated, will finally leave us alone.

More often than less, I've been feeling like Ashley lately.
Although I know I have something to stay, still:

So I’m writing this post—not as a declaration that I’m going to blog every day (I probably won’t), or that I have a new master plan (I don’t). I’m writing it as a gentle reentry. A reminder to myself that taking up space, even imperfectly, is still worth doing.

And if you’re reading this and nodding along, just know: you’re not alone. You don’t have to write every day. You don’t have to have the hottest take. You don’t have to prove anything. You just have to be real. That’s enough.

I’m starting here. And if you’re trying to find your way back to something too, I hope you’ll start with me.

🔗

At work, things are starting to speed up.

I’ve had very little time to dedicate to my blog and to reading my beloved RSS feeds, and I’ve spent all my free time playing video games.

This past weekend, however, Noemi decided to commit to finding a second-hand bike. We have many cycling paths that go from Marina del Rey north to Santa Monica and south much farther, all the way to Redondo Beach.
On Sunday, we found one for around $80, and while the frame was in excellent condition, the bike needed a major tune-up.

The man who sold it to us is Ukrainian and has lived in the area for 45 years. He suggested we go to a Community Bike Center for help. Not knowing exactly what that was, I asked him a few questions, and he pointed me to this fantastic place: Bikerowave.

Bikerowave is a volunteer-run, DIY bike shop collective located in Mar Vista, serving L.A.’s cycling community. They provide space, tools, and equipment to effectively teach people how to build, repair, and maintain their bicycles. They are a not-for-profit, all-volunteer, member-run organization. Their goal is to empower cyclists with the basic knowledge to maintain their ride and help them connect more easily with the cycling community.

On Monday evening, we went there, and with Boe’s help, I learned a lot about how a bike is built, where to make adjustments, and how to fix it myself without needing a shop next time.

I’m not sure if there’s anything like this in Italy, but in the two hours we spent there, we understood—if it wasn’t already clear enough—how possible it is to bring objects back to life that others consider outdated. And through the power of community, great things can be built.

Even for someone over 40 like me.