2026-11-05 19:00:00
Since I wrote about it, I kept thinking about the topic of webmentions, quoting, embedding, screenshotting, and the overall idea of connecting content on the web. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced this is two issues wrapped into one, and I suspect there’s no way to perfectly resolve the tension that exists at the core.
The first issue is a technological one or how do we make sure content that is related can get connected in a way that’s convenient and can scale across million of websites? The way I see it, that’s the issue webmentions attempted to solve, by building a system that allows websites to automatically send and receive links and make sure the web is maintained.
The second issue is more ideological and related to who has the right to do what in the context of other people’s content. Some people believe that since content is publicly posted, then it’s fair to be copied and distributed. Others don’t agree with that position. The line then becomes even blurrier when you start questioning what the difference is between including my post as a comment and quoting it in its entirety.
The first issue is one that can probably be solved. I’m confident we can figure out a way to automatically build links and connections on the web. Doesn’t seems like an unsolvable problem to me. The second issue, however, I think that’s just unsolvable. Because that's related to the way people see the web.
I think the point of personal sites is to be a node in a network. You don’t want the journey to end there. You want to help people move and go to different places, which is why I think linking is important. It’s also why I think embedding entire posts as comments is the wrong way to go. Because in doing so we’re not helping people discover new places.
In his post Greg wrote:
I’ve built a new blog, you’re reading it, that pulls in replies to all of my posts either micropub viewable elsewhere or simply cross-posted to other networks. I don’t really see any issue displaying them on my blog as they are public replies to my posts.
To come back to the original issue with webmentions, if I had them implemented here, Greg would receive a mention. And with an automated system, my post could then appear as a reply to his post. Is this post a comment to his blog post? It obviously isn’t. I am in part replying to a point he made, but I’m also talking about other things. I think it’s reasonable for me to be able to decide if something I wrote is a reply to his post or not.
What I’m trying to say here is that things are messy. Different people living in different societal contexts have different ideas for what’s considered right. And I don’t think we’ll resolve this issue anytime soon. I think treating entire posts other people write as comments is wrong. It’s their content, it’s their words, and the right thing to do is to link to their sites. But I can only speak for myself, and other people will have different ideas.
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2026-10-24 20:00:00
After hiking up to the end of the ridge, it was now time to scout the initial part. The starting point is some 25km east of where I parked the car last time around, at the parking spot of the Italian ossuary in the lovely town of Kobarid.
The plan is to walk my way up till the beginning of the ridge, reaching Starijski Vrh at the foothills of Mount Stol, the highest point of the entire ridge, at 1673 meters. The reason why I’m doing this hike is that I read conflicting information about the trail, with some people claiming it’s a slippery mess. So I wanted to come check it out before hiking the whole ridge from one side to the other.
And I’m happy to report that the trail is nowhere near as bad as some people were claiming. It’s not super well maintained, especially the middle section that’s a bit overgrown, but it’s on par with many of the trails I walk here in my area. So that’s good. There are some steep parts that are just a bit slippery, but it’s honestly nothing crazy and slipping here wouldn’t be the end of the world anyway.
The overall scenery is not much different from what I have all around me here where I live, and that makes sense since we’re still in the same overall area. Kobarid is less than an hour away from where I live, and that’s only because there are a few valleys separating us. If this were flat ground, I could probably be there in 15 minutes. I’m looking at the map, and it’s about 12km north of here in a straight line.
It took me about two hours to gain the roughly 800 meters of elevation from down to the parking spot to up here at the beginning of the ridge, and that’s even including the 10 minutes I spent walking around the ossuary and my quick detour to explore some trenches on my way up here. This can probably be done in almost half as much time on a normal day, I’d say. We’ll see how long it will take me when I come back to walk the whole thing.
The view from up here didn’t disappoint though. This place is exactly how I imagined it when looking at it from afar. Saw some sheep roaming around, enjoying the sunny day, and there’s a lovely view of Mount Krn, with its very distinctive shape.
Another thing that seems to never be missing during these walks is paragliders up in the sky. There’s a takeoff location not too far from here and the guys in the sky today were flying so low that I managed to easily exchange greetings with a few of them.
The plan for the day was to walk as little as possible on top of the ridge. I only wanted to check the uphill part and then see the scenery from above and check the conditions of the trail. And everything is in perfect condition, so there’s nothing more left to do on my checklist. It’s only a matter of deciding when to come walk this whole thing.
I came back down through a trail that runs on the north side of the ridge. The first part comes down through a very steep section inside the forest and then it connects with a service road that gently descends back down to then reconnect with the beginning of the trail I walked on my way up.
These areas are primarily pasture lands, and in fact I had to go through more than a couple gates on my way back to the car. Animals here are usually pretty chill; they’re used to people, but one cow in particular was not happy to see me there and so I made sure to quickly move past her. Last thing I need is to be chased by a pissed-off cow.
And about an hour and a half later I was out of the trail, and back at the ossuary. This was a very relaxing hike, I have to say, and I should probably explore more of this part of the country. There’s another ridge that runs parallel to the one I want to walk that also looks quite interesting. And it’s a lot shorter, so who knows, maybe I’ll go walk that as well.
As usual, the data recorded by my watch is available if you’re interested in that kind of stuff. And if there’s anything you want to know about this or any other walk I did just send me an email or a message. I’m always down to talk hiking and walking around.
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2026-10-23 02:25:00
I was perusing the always lovely website of one mr. V.H. Belvadi and stumbled my way onto a post titled “Webmentions, copyright and privacy” and from there quickly landed on Kev’s post titled “Privacy and Webmentions”.
I find the topic very interesting because it sits at the intersection of two things I care much about: web based technology and human interactions. And so I’m gonna spend a moment thinking in public about this.
The first issue I personally see in this overall discussion is the way Webmentions are framed. Quoting from Kev’s post:
To my mind, a public post on an open platform like Mastodon is precisely that: public. The Fediverse is decentralised by design. When you reply to someone, your message doesn't remain isolated on your home instance; it federates across countless independent servers
That to me doesn’t really square well with what Webmentions were designed for. If you open the W3C Recommendation for Webmention, you’ll see that right at the top the Abstract reads:
Webmention is a simple way to notify any URL when you mention it on your site. From the receiver's perspective, it's a way to request notifications when other sites mention it.
So the focus is on sending and receiving notifications. It says nothing about federating content. Down below in the document, the example they provide for a potential flow is even more explicit. The focus here is on getting notified that someone mentioned your content, so that links can be automatically included to provide ways for people to bounce around different locations that are somewhat interconnected.
This is the web after all, and the web is all about linking pages. So unless I’m completely misunderstanding this document, the whole discussion about federating content has not much to do with webmentions. But I might be completely wrong; I’m far from an expert here.
Scrolling through the replies to Kev’s post, I also saw a few perplexing—at least to me—ideas. For example, Ralf wrote:
As you wrote, your blog is just another Fediverse instance. If people don't want to appear somewhere in a worldwide federated network with their public posts, they shouldn't post publicly into a worldwide federated network.
Why are we restricting this reasoning to only federated networks? Doesn’t this also apply to, quite literally, all the web? If I post something publicly on my blog I should not then expect to have some agency over how my content is treated? Can people simply host copies of it at will? That doesn’t sound right to me. You can quote it, sure. You can even link to it. But I don't think we're cool with the idea of people simply grabbing copies and hosting them elsewhere.
Then we have this exchange, also screenshotted below. Funnily enough, this exchange has an extra reply if you follow that link above, compared to what’s included inside Kev’s post, which makes this whole discussion about embedding vs linking even more confusing.
So, I get what Kev’s saying when he writes «If someone was to post to Mastodon and expect that post not to show up on other parts of the Fedi, they're naive.», but at the same time we all know that the Fediverse is confusing even for tech people. So brushing that complexity aside by simply labelling people as naive is convenient, but doesn’t change the point Evan was making: if I’m a normal user and I’m signing up for a service, I post something, and I then delete it, I’m expecting that content to be actually deleted. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Then there’s a whole long discussion about the GDPR implications, which I’m not gonna get into because GDPR is a mess, it’s a constantly shifting law, and I’m not a lawyer. But it’s certainly interesting to think about that as well. One interesting part, though, was Kev’s description of the situation:
Mastodon.social isn't harvesting data from Fosstodon.org, nor vice versa, nor this site. They're all connecting over protocols as they were designed for the open web.
By this reasoning, I could set up my server to connect to any other server, submit GET requests over HTTP, which is a protocol designed for the open web, and get all that content? I don’t think that’s a reasonable assumption, and I’d also get into trouble for stealing all that content since I’m not a massive AI lab, and instead I’m just a random guy.
The main problem I see here is that some technologies carry with them implicit expectations. And that’s obviously problematic because different people can have very different sets of values and norms they live by. So I might set up webmentions to automate me sending you a ping to let you know that, hey, I wrote a blog post about something you wrote, with the expectations that you’ll display that on your site as a link.
But you, on the other side, might see the ping and be like “hey, this person has replied to me, so this is a comment that can live on my website, under my content”.
Who’s in the wrong here? Me? You? Both? Neither? I personally don’t know. What I do know is that I’m gonna publish this post, and then send an email to both Kev and V.H. to let them know I linked to their posts.
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2026-10-18 00:40:00
We’re down to the final four segments, but we only have three walks left to do. The plan for today is to walk segment number 7 and also attach to it the beginning part of number 8. 23km, 870m of ascent, 1250m of descent. Next time, we’ll finish 8th and attach 9th to it, but that’s a problem for future me.
I’ll be honest with you, I’m kinda tired of these walks. Especially because this second half stretches across trails I walked countless times before. But I also want to walk the whole loop and visit all these churches, so we won’t stop here.
But we’ll move fast this time around. There’s no point in taking a million pictures at this point. The scenery is mostly the same, the overall area is still the same, so we might as well use this as an opportunity to do some cardio training.
The humidity is very high early in the morning, but it’s gonna get warm fast. The trail is gonna take us down for a bit, then back up, then all the way down next to the Slovenian border, all the way back up again, and the final stretch is gonna go down again, to the final church of today’s walk and also my car, since it’s parked right next to it.
First stop is gonna be the church of San Giovanni Battista (29/44), and on our way there, we see the church of San Paolo Apostolo far in the distance. It would be part of this segment of the loop, but we visited it on my previous walk, as I was walking all the way back to my car.
The church of San Giovanni Battista is in an amazing location, and out of the 44, this one’s probably the one I’ve seen the most throughout the years. There’s a lovely short loop that I often walk with the dog, and the view from up here is great.
Almost exactly an hour in, and we have reached the first POI I have marked on the map. I’m pleased with the pace so far; this is enjoyable.
I’m starting to walk down the trail I mentioned a moment ago when all of a sudden a formidable foe blocks my path: a herd of goats. Well, maybe herd is a bit of an exaggeration since it’s only 6 of them. But these were just out on their own—and were shitting everywhere—and not only did they have no intention to move away from the trail, one of them was not in the mood to let me pass.
Love goats, they’re fun. But can also be jerks, and the last thing I need is to find myself fighting a bunch of goats on a rocky trail. Plus, there’s a very convenient alternative trail just around the corner, so better to leave these alone.
Down, and down, and down we go, through the woods, without ever encountering a single soul. That’s honestly the best part about walking these trails: it is incredibly rare to see people. It’s just me and nature. And goats, I guess.
Through a couple of small villages we go—not a single human being in sight—and around the second church of the day, the church of San Bartolomeo Apostolo (30/44) that sits maybe a few hundred meters from the Slovenian border. We’re just a bit more than 2 hours in, and we have already walked half the distance. But we still have most of the uphill part to walk, so we’ll see if we manage to keep up the pace.
Up, and up, and up we go. And up and up the heartbeat also goes. But on our way up with pass next to the third church of the walk, the church of San Tommaso Apostolo (31/44).
There’s a house for sale literally right next to the church if you’re interested. Also another one for sale maybe 30 meters before it. If you like quiet places, this is the location for you. In the middle of absolutely nowhere. We’re not even a quarter of the way through this uphill section, so we better keep going.
Less than three hours into this walk—and almost 16.5km—we have reached the fourth church of the day, the church of Sant’Antonio da Padova
(32/44).
This is another one I have visited a bunch of times before, so no point in spending time here considering we still have the last uphill stretch to finish. I knew this was the last challenging part, so it was fun to keep pushing, and I think I peaked at 168bpm. But it’s gonna be almost entirely downhill from now onwards.
We take a quick detour to hit the fifth church of the day, the church of San Nicolò (33/44).
I wrote about this one in a previous edition of From the Summit. Another one of those churches I visited a lot over the years because it’s another place I walk often with the dog.
This would have been the final church of the day, and the normal route would take me west. But we’re going east, and then cut down through the forest to reach what would be the first church of the 8th segment. As predictable, this alternative path takes me through a trail that is overgrown but, oh well, who cares.
And just like that we have reached the sixth church of the day, the church of Sant’Abramo Eremita (34/44).
Wonderful location, with Mount Matajur always in the background. I have to admit that a few of these churches are placed in lovely locations; this is like the perfect spot to just chill and read a book on a sunny day. I might come up and do that soon; I ordered a bunch of new books just the other day.
Final stretch, only a bit more than 1km left to walk and then we’re done for the day. Risked falling on my back on a very slippery and steep part of this final stretch but thankfully I still have good reflexes. A bit more than 4 hours in and we have arrived at our final destination, the church of San Leonardo Abate (35/44).
I have to say, going fast made this walk a lot more fun. I might do it again. I’m glad we’re down into single digits; I can smell the end of this loop. And after that, we can focus on walking other places and see things that are not churches! As always, if you want to stalk my walk, here is the data recorded by my watch.
See you next time.
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2026-10-16 23:35:00
Back in early June I blogged about my summer fitness challenge. The two main goals were to lose some weight—from 89.6kg to 85.3kg, the oldest measure I had on record from late 2015—and also to get back into a better shape than I was a decade ago.
The weight goal was easily quantifiable; I still have the same exact scale I was using 10 years ago and so it was only a matter of jumping on it every morning and track the progress. As for losing weight, I didn’t really have much of a plan other than not eating like an idiot and moving more. And I guess it worked. I’m now hovering around 82kg, going up or down depending how much I decide to eat—or not to eat—any given day. Last time I was this light I was probably in my late teens. And I think this is the perfect weight for my lifestyle, so I’m planning to stay at this level for the foreseeable future.
As for being in better shape, that’s a bit trickier to evaluate. My legs are definitely not as strong as they were back when I was in my mid-20s, but I was also playing A LOT of basketball back then, while now I play exactly zero. I do walk and hike a lot more though, and I overall feel much better.
So, success! Both goals achieved. Now what? Now it’s time to start another challenge, and this time it will span 12 months. And that’s because even though I do feel better, I’m nowhere near satisfied with myself and my body. There is so much room for improvement, and I realised that I need to have stupid challenges to keep myself motivated. So this is what’s on the menu for the next 12 months.
First, I need better cardio. I have never trained it in my life, and my cardio sucks. The realistic goal I currently have set for myself is to run a 5k in under 25 minutes and with a < 150 HR. There’s also a trail I hiked recently that I’ll go hike again next year, and the goal there is to do the first part in less than an hour. It took me almost two last time.
Next, I need to build at least some upper body muscle mass. I hate training upper body, especially because none of the activities I enjoy doing involves upper body strength, but it’s nice to have a balanced body and so I need to take care of that. This is a goal that’s harder to track, but I do have a reference body I’m aiming for, and I am taking progress photos at the beginning of the month, so at the end of the 12 months we can compare and see if I managed to get there.
Lastly, I want to improve overall flexibility. I am doing some stretching regularly, but I’ve always had a goal in mind, going back years, and that was to manage to get in full lotus position. So we’re aiming for that in the next 12 months.
This is gonna be fun. I don’t plan to constantly write about this because there’s not much to say on a regular basis, but if there’s anything you’re interested in, feel free to email me and ask.
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2026-10-03 14:45:00
For the past decade, every time I went up to the mountains here in my area, I got the chance to look at one particular mountain ridge standing there silently in the background.
It spans roughly 30km, east to west. On one side, the Slovenian one, there’s the town of Kobarid. On the other, just more mountains. I’ve considered walking this ridge for years, every time making a different plan for how to tackle it. Some people do it in multiple days, sleeping either outside or in one of the various huts that are scattered all around. Other people split it in chunks, walking one section at a time. None of those options is either appealing or available to me at this moment in time. The only option I have is to park my car on one end, walk the whole thing in one go and have someone pick me up on the other side.
As I said, it’s roughly 30km and some 2200 meters of ascent. It’s nothing crazy, but at the same time it’s not a walk I can go do completely at random. It does require at least some preparation, and part of that includes walking the two sections at the beginning and at the end, while the middle part is just one long crest so I’m not worried about that.
To make my life easier, I could walk this west to east because that means doing only ~1800 meters of ascent, but what’s the fun in doing that? 2200 is way more appealing than 1800. So the plan is to end the walk on the Italian side, touching the summit of Mount Mali Varh for last and then descending to the little village of Micottis some 1000 or so meters below.
The various maps do show a trail that goes up to that summit, but I learned not to blindly trust maps because more than once I reached places where trails were supposed to be there only to then find myself standing in front of either an impenetrable wall of vegetation or absolutely nothing. Speaking of maps, I recently learned about the existence of hiking.waymarkedtrails.org, which is a fantastic resource if you hike around Europe.
The plan was to go up to Monte Testa Grande through the CAI trail 710, walk the final km or so of the ridge, and then come back down through that trail I spotted on the map. But during my preliminary search, I learned that the trail I want to walk on my way down for sure exists because they run a race on it! It’s the Ultra Vertickal Contesa and much respect to the people—and their knees—who go up this trail at that pace because it’s an enjoyable 37% of average slope and it looks something like this:
And yes, as soon as I saw 37% I knew I had to go check how bad it looks and yup, it is bad. And nope, the trail doesn’t zig-zag its way up to the top. It’s basically a straight line. The people running the race do turn to the right near the top because the finish line is at the summit of Mount Contesa, which is the second to last peak of the ridge.
Being up here, walking the final bit of this ridge made me even more convinced of my plan. We’ll walk this whole thing in one go, and it’s gonna be awesome. The view is amazing; you can see the sea in the far distance on one side and the Julian Alps on the other.
Descending down through the CAI 710 was also quite the experience. The trail is incredibly vertical in certain sections; according to Alltrails it’s anything between 50% to 60% (the uphill section peaks at 64%) and not very well maintained. I think I spent almost as much time coming down as it took me to go up, which is unusual. But the scenery was lovely.
The trail ends—or begins, depending on the way you want to look at it—in the village of Monteaperta, so the only thing left to do was to walk my way back to the parking spot where I left my car.
Very happy with this first preparatory walk. The ridge is nice, going up this stupidly steep trail was an experience, my cardio is shit, but we’re working on that, and I’m now even more convinced I’m gonna walk this whole crest one of these days. And I have a potentially quirky idea for how to share that walk, but more on that later.
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