Wait… are you asking “what are those characters?” Well, that’s supposed to be “Hello world” in korean, I jut put it there to test unicode url in my brand new blog :D

…and yes: obviously, this is my first post, and since I somewhat like the korean alphabet, I found that using that as the title was somewhat fitting :)

This is not really noticeable from this very very simple page, but I actually spent quite a bit of time on the backend. It’s still missing styles, rss, a working pagination, javascript goodness and a bunch of things… but at least now the basics of the blog are there, I can start writing content, and then I’ll just integrate the missing features (you know… minimum viable product :P)

Also: for now I’m using a crappy .co.cc domain, but as soon as I’ll be able to host something meaningful here, I think I’ll switch to something better

It’s been more than 3 years since I first had the idea of running my own blog, why did it take so long?

Well… aside from my usual procrastination problem, this is due to the fact that I decided to create it from scratch, and I decided to impose on myself some very weird requirements

Like the ability to automatically redirect the urls when an user does a typo, or keeping semi-automatically an image of my mug for each post (a bit narcissistic, but this way I hope to preserve a log of the mood in which I was when writing these posts, and in the long term I’ll be able to see how I changed… like in those fancy timelapse videos)

For now, I’m also hosting this directly on my home internet connection on a Debian squeeze, running on arm (and I had quite a bit of problems with my hardware setup, but I think I’ll write about it in another post)

So, I’ll progressively add more info about myself, what I’m working on, what I find interesting, and possibly my unrequested opinion on the issue du jour :P

I’m writing all of this in english, and I plan to refrain altogether to write in my native language (Italian) for several reasons:

• Most of the content on the internet is in english, and it has a bigger audience.
• People who restrict themselves only to their native language imho are crippling their access to knowledge… in particular, in the IT field, being proficent in it is almost a must, and I think that if you have the possibility to directly engage with the english-speaking world/community/whatever you should do so. You could say I’m doing it out of a personal principle.
• I’m planning on making a life abroad… sticking to my native language doesn’t make sense.
• The only things for which speaking to a strictly italian audience may make sense is for internal politics topics or similar issues, but given the sheer idiocy of the current state of italian society, I think it’s better to ingnore all of that and work on what we can actually improve.
• Obviously, also to get the hang to write some somewhat long prose in english (I don’t really have problems communicating, but I’m not really fluent: I periodically stop to think for the best word to use, and I also think that when writing I just structure too many sentences in first singular person form, and split the text in an ugly and self-centered way, native english people probably find my writing style childish and less clear to follow).

This last point, will apply only if I’ll be able to keep up with this habit :D We’ll see.