prealpinux

I’ve recently written about the drawbacks of self-hosting. In that article I talked about it from a generic and technical point of view.

Let’s get more personal now. 😉

Many years ago I was self-hosting Wordpress for my blog, but at some point I realized I was spending more time upgrading, customizing & fixing problems than writing something on it.

This situation was so frustrating that I decided to stop blogging many times because I had a sort of internal conflict. From one side I enjoyed blogging, but at the same time I didn’t have the willing to work on it from the technical side.

I even tried Wordpress.com but it didn’t appealed me at that time.

So I gave up my blogging activity for some time till I found a service that suited my needs.

Which blogging platform drew my attention? Hold on, in the next article I will tell you which service I’m talking about.

Self-hosting is great: you control the server, the software & your data. That’s all. Or not?

I think there is a lot understimation about the drawbacks related to self-hosting.

I self-hosted Wordpress for several years and during that time I had some issues while upgrading it, also theme and plugin conflicts where always behind the corner.

Wordpress is a great piece of sofware and very versatile. It is easily customizable, but this can also be a problem once we talk about compatibility. Something can break suddenly and if you are self-hosting you have to understand what’s going wrong.

What I experienced with Wordpress can happen with every piece of software you decide to install on your server. It can be Nextcloud or a Mastodon instance, no matter what you install, there may always be some problems while running your software.

Another issue while we talk about self-hosting is security. Server misconfiguration can expose your data to hackers, if you are not a security expert data breaches could be part of the game.

In my opinion self-hosting is great because you have full control of everything, but such power comes with great responsibility.

You need time to understand the software, install it, update it and fixing if something is going wrong.

All of this requires time and time is money.

If you are not a techie person (or if you don’t want to spend much time working on the server) then probably you should look for an hosted service.

Inspired by Manton blog post I’ve done a recap of the countries I’ve visited over the years.

• Italy
• Switzerland
• France
• Austria
• Germany
• Netherlands
• Spain
• Greece
• United Kingdom
• San Marino Republic
• Vatican State
• Principality of Monaco
• Principality of Seborga (that’s the only unrecognised micronation I’ve visited so far 😉)

Over the years I’ve tried several note taking apps and after using them I came to conclusion that many are overcomplicated for my personal needs.

All I need in my daily routine is a short list of things I have to do (or to remember).

I believe Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) can be useful for some people, but not for me (at least not in this moment).

Simplicity is all I need, so a smart To-Do list is perfectly fine.

When we think about smart homes we usually look into positive things like controlling lights, temperature, security and connected devices.

But are these smart homes truly smart?

A part from the enthusiasm for technology every smart device has its own app and configuration accounts (not talking about security holes).

A solution may be the new Matter standard, which was born in order to offer:

• Simplicity;
• Interoperability;
• Reliability;
• Security.

It's hard to say if Matter will solve all actual problems of our smart homes, but probably it will be an important step to the right direction.

Years of research have shown again and again that the way choices are posed affects our actions.

Source: “What Should We Watch Tonight?” On the Concept of Choice Architecture

I recently read an article that made me reflect on how often we are inclined (myself first) to use sophisticated web services and apps that propose to help us be more productive.

Sometimes alternative solutions are very easy and simple.

The blog post talks about how the author replaced note-taking apps by simply opening a new mailbox used only for this purpose.

This is certainly a creative solution that can actually be interesting for many people that don't need complicated features but only to keep track of their notes on the go.

I agree with postpsychosis, we usually tend to discuss without discussing. That's make sense to me especially because we are immersed in a society always online.

Lately I started to appreciate to wake up early in the morning. From my point of view it's one of my personal life hacks.

The reasons why I really like to be an early riser are several:

• I have more time for myself;
• I go to bed early in order to wake up early;
• I spend less time in traffic to go to work.

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.”

Sun Tzu

When we talk about security there are many good practices you can follow in order to minimize the risk of being hacked (strong passwords, 2FA, etc..).

One of them is being updated about past and present data breaches.

For this reason I use haveibeenpwned.com, a great free service that provides you information if your personal data have been leaked.

Knowing that one of your accounts have been compromised enables you to immediately take action (e.g. changing your password) giving you another layer of security.

At the beginning there were Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator and I've always preferred Netscape Navigator.

Then Mozilla released Firefox and I've chosen it as my favourite browser for years.

Recently I was forced to switch from Firefox to Brave Browser because I realized that a Chromium based browser is ligther and more reactive on my old notebook.

That's not good as I would have preferred to use Firefox, but Mozilla have created a very heavy piece of software.

Browsing must not be a pain...

Mozilla, if you're there, give us a shout!

I've always been skeptical about all that crypto enthusiasm that lead us to a sort of a crypto bubble.

I'm not against Bitcoin or blockchain, but I'm aware that behind the scenes there is much more speculation than we think.

Technology may be good, but the way we use it may be bad.

As I'm getting older I tend to appreciate more and more simple and essential things, both in life and technology.

Year after year I realized that tech companies tend to overcomplicate their products with tons of functionalities that only few people really use.

Selling a product as the best in the market is not enough if I've to spend months understanding how this product works.

A long learning curve will probably let those companies loose customers.

While there are some interesting applications for the metaverse (e.g. remote working), there are also a lot of risks related to this possible future web development.

Many companies including META are investing a lot of money to bring metaverse into reality. Reason is simple: metaverse is a kind of Second Life (do you remember it?) with steroids.

A virtual world packed with crypto wallets that will let you buy and sell virtual things and that allows big tech companies to take a step further on targeting ads to you.

I do hope to be wrong, but that's the kind of web we might see in the future.

There are several reasons that make blogging a good choice still Today.

Let's focus on three of them.

1. You can control everything

Colours? Themes? No problem, you can decide everything with no constraints.

2. Indipendence

If you are self hosting your blog then you're the boss. If you don't want to self host your blog a good solution may be a platform like Write.as / Writefreely that offers you a great way to blog without getting crazy.

3. Your data is yours

Make sure to do regular backups of your blog in order to avoid any problem in case of hacking or update failures. Future migration to other blogging platforms it's your choice.

I guess I'm not the only one who has seen many book blurbs without knowing their name.

They're on many books, promoting them (yes, it's marketing!):

A blurb is a short promotional piece accompanying a piece of creative work. It may be written by the author or publisher or quote praise from others.

Source: Wikipedia

If you are interested in book blurbing then you can read this article:

https://lisaferland.com/book-blurb/

AI technology has many problems (like every new revolutionary technology) and there are many boundaries to put on them.

Anyway I believe AI technology cannot be completely stopped, just regulated.

There are many decision to be taken by governments, but that's part of the game.

With the upcoming AI revolution and integration with Bing, Google & Co. the paradigm underlying search queries will change.

AI will reply to user questions with a natural language without the need of providing a list of websites as happened till now.

This may change the way we access the web, replacing the idea behind it forever.

Thinking is a good habit too.

That's why I'm mixing them together in this sort of microblog.

There is only one simple rule here: there are no rules!

If you want to become a blogger you've to remind yourself that it's a long jouney and not a short run.

Long term commitment is needed for your blog to reach an audience.

Keep it in mind!