2026-05-26 16:05:00
The stars are finally aligned again, and I’m back on the road for chapter 3 of this 10-part saga. Clear sky, not too warm, I have someone who can come pick me up and drive me back to my car, the calendar is empty, so we’re going for it.
Contrary to the previous two segments of this walk, this one’s quite lean on the churches department—we’ll only see 3 of them—but it’s by far the most challenging one from a physical perspective. That is, if you’re a sane person and you do these walks the way they’re intended to be walked. There’s an upcoming one that’ll likely be more challenging, but we’ll get there eventually.
For now, in front of us, we have about 16 kilometers to walk and roughly 1600 meters of elevation to gain. So we better get going. Breakfast is in—coffee and bread with Nutella + peanut butter if you’re wondering—and after a short drive, we’re back at the same parking spot where we ended our walk a few weeks back. Flip flops are off, hiking shoes are on, sprayed some SPF50+ on my face and head, and we’re ready to walk.
I say we, but it’s just me. Well, me and you reading this. I walked this one solo, but it is quite fun to do these hikes while keeping in mind that I’ll have to write this newsletter. I’m very much enjoying it.
We cross the road, walk through another parking lot, and we immediately see sings that tell us that we’re on the correct track. Quite a few trails run through here, apparently, I counted at least 4 different ones. But we’re here to follow the yellow and white marks (for the most part), so over the bridge we go and across the fields.
We’re not even 5 minutes in, and already there’s a steep stone stair in front of us. We have 1600 meters to climb after all, we better start sooner rather than later.
The initial part of the trail was a bit overgrown, and I was worried it was going to continue like that for quite some time because this is not a trail that sees a lot of traffic but, thankfully, that wasn’t the case.
I was also surprised by how varied the trail is at the beginning. We’re not even 15 minutes in, and we have already walked through fields, up stone stairs, and now we’re on a stone “bridge”.
And shortly after that, here we are climbing another stone stair, but this time built as part of the dry stone wall. Big fan of these walls, they’re so cool.
The forest itself is also quite nice here. The problem we have at the moment is that as soon as the warm season hits, the vegetation explodes, and sometimes the trails become an absolute mess.
15 minutes into the walk and we have now connected with a proper road, and we’re no longer on a trail. There are a lot of these roads around here. They’re service roads for people who have properties, but they’re closed to general traffic. Still, it’s quite rare to see cars on these and you usually only see mountain bikes. Actually, you usually see nobody on these roads.
We’re now almost at the first exciting part of this journey. The yellow and white marks take us right, but that’s the normal path. We’re going left because we have one of those pesky variants to take care of and, as you know, I don’t want to walk the same road twice which means I made some changes to the original route. The problem is, I am not 100% certain the trail I saw on the map exists. It’s there on the map, sure, but a lot of times I saw lines on maps that were not there in reality.
Thankfully for us, the trail is there—and it is steep—and we can continue forward since the first church is not far from here.
We have already gained enough elevation to see things from above, and the view is lovely.
And just like that, we’re at the site of the church of San Leonardo Abate (12/44) likely built around 1540.
The church is similar to many of the others we saw in previous walks, but the interesting aspect of this one is that it has the old bell visible on the outside porch. Apparently the was a bell tower that got demolished, and I guess they decided to put the bell on display.
I tried to take a picture of the inside, but it was too sunny. And in case you’re wondering, the church still has a bell outside.
This church is the one that’s part of the variant, so we’re now standing at the end of that part of the trail. Which means we need to walk back to the main path, so off we go in that direction. The weather is still absolutely gorgeous.
Out of the woods, across some fields, through a tiny, tiny village, and we’re now back on asphalt for a little bit, heading towards the next church, which is just right around the corner.
But first, no, not a Mary, we get our first Jesus out in the wild. There’s gonna be a few more, I think we’ll see more Jesuses and Marys this time around. I should probably start counting these.
1 hour and 15 minutes in, and we have reached the church of San Zenone (13/44). Which, I’ll be honest with you, is everything but small. Consecrated in 1493, it’s probably the most luxurious one of the bunch I’ve seen so far.
And it has a nice view.
If you’re team Mary, it’s your time to be happy because look what we have here, just outside the church. This also doubles as a memorial for the fallen during both world wars.
We’re only 20% into this walk, and we have already seen 2 of the 3 churches we’ll visit today and the next one is waiting for us roughly 3kms ahead. So we leave civilization behind us, we climb up through the forest, and we emerge on another of those service roads.
I decided to try something different this time around since I was alone, and I recorded a couple of minutes of the walk. It’s unlisted on YouTube; hopefully, you don’t get bombarded by ads. The video is embedded below, or you can watch it on YouTube. Part of me was tempted to title it “You’ll not believe what happened on this trail”.
On our way up, we stumble on this interesting-looking tree. I have no idea what could have caused this. If you happen to know, send me an email. I’d love to learn more about this.
Also on our way up, in the middle of nowhere, stuck inside a retaining wall, another Jesus.
Finally out of the woods and back into civilisation for a little bit. We’re almost halfway through our walk, and I was planning to take a quick break after 2 hours, but the remaining church was not too far, so we keep going.
Like my dog, they’re also not massive fans of the hot weather.
We’re less than 200 meters from the final church, where I was planning to take a quick break, but look how lovely this spot is! There’s a bench—yes, there is a bench hidden in the tall grass—two big trees that provide some much-needed shade, and a swing! We’ve found our resting spot.
And since we’re stopping here, I'll use this opportunity to let my shirt dry a little bit.
This place is so relaxing, I contemplated taking a nap, but we still have 8kms to walk and some 800 or so meters of elevation to gain, so the nap will have to wait. Shirt is back on, backpack is back on, we’re walking again, ready to visit the third and final church of the day, the church of San Lorenzo Martire
(14/44)
We’re now done with the churches, and we can set our sights on the top of Mount Matajur, our next target. The official trail would not take us up there and walk around it but, come on, if we get that close to the summit, we might as well go up to the top. And so into the forest we go again.
I’m not sure who’s getting a point here between team Jesus and team Mary. I’ll let you decide.
I never walked on this side of the mountain. I walked this general area many, many times, but never walked here, and I’m loving it. I also found this interesting construction. It’s currently used as a shed, but I wonder if it was used for something else in the past. It does look quite old.
Time to record another short video, I think one day I should attempt to make a video of a full hike recorded in 60 seconds chunks all stitched together. Could be fun, I might do it the next time around.
We’ll be out of the forest soon, but first we need to walk through a lot of flowers. There are so many colours out here at the moment, between the flowers and the butterflies. What a lovely time of the year this is.
We have emerged, we’re now fully under the sun, and it is hot. I’m also starting to feel the fatigue a little bit. But we’re powering on because we’re almost there.
We also have a great view on a ridge I’m dying to walk, but can’t figure out the logistic of the trip. It’s a 30+ kms walk from one end to the other, I can’t take the dog with me, and I also can’t leave him alone at home that long. So this is a walk that will have to wait for a better time. But damn if it is tempting.
The summit is in sight, we’re almost there. That’s not the end of the walk, just the highest point, but once there, walking the final part is gonna be super easy since it’s all downhill.
And here we are, at the top of Mount Matajur, quite literally on the border between Italy and Slovenia. I hiked this mountain more times than I can remember, at all times of the day, during all the seasons and with all sorts of weather. I walked it with snow, with rain, with winds at 100kmh, at night, at sunset, at sunrise, you name it.
And on the other side, we have a view of lovely Slovenia. Way too many people up here today though, but that was expected. This is a very easy hike, and plenty of people come up here over the weekend.
We’re not gonna spend much time up here, but I might come back another time and take you for a hike with me from a different route. That could be fun. Today’s hike is gonna end down there, at the parking lot next to Rifugio Pelizzo.
Down the mountain we go, which feels so nice after having walked uphill for the entire hike. I could go on another 6 hours, but there’s no need to do that because we only have 1km left to walk. And just like that, we’re at the parking lot. I actually walked down some more to a secondary parking spot because there were too many people yelling and screaming at the main one. And the next chunk of this walk passes through here anyway, so next time we’ll start from this same spot.
And there you have it, we have walked from Pulfero sitting at 185 meters above sea level, up to the top of mount Matajur at 1643 meters and visited 3 churches on our way up. This was fun, and less tiring than I was expecting.
The data recorded by my watch during the walk is available if you’re interested in that type of stuff, and I have dumped all my photos on the shared iCloud album.
The only thing left to do now is eat a proper post-hike snack. See you next time!
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2026-05-22 19:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Piri, whose blog can be found at pketh.org.
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Hey, I'm Piri. I'm a software designer, engineer, and artist of sorts. I build Kinopio, and have been blogging about the craft of making software for 12+ years (:O).
I went to school in Toronto for biology and urban planning. There I learned that I liked illustration a lot more than writing boring reports and papers.
After school, I got a job at a startup as an illustrator, that turned into product design, when also turned into writing code so I could build the ideas in my head.
I can't remember a time when I didn't have some kind of blog. In university, I met a lot of new friends around the world by doing more angst-y cringe-y livejournal-y style writing.
I started designing pketh.org while on a flight to SF, paid for by Yahoo, for a job interview at Flickr (times sure have changed).
If you’re curious about the green design, I was inspired by the 1956 Jaguar D-Type, which I still think has such a unique prototype race car shape.
My posts are usually long essays that take about a week or two to write and produce, so I try and make them timeless.
When I have an idea for a post, I'll make a Kinopio space for it and collect thoughts, images, and URLs in it for a while. If after weeks or months it’s still on my mind, I'll start connecting and organizing everything into a rough outline.
From there I'll start pasting things in and typing it up in either IA Writer or TextEdit. When the draft is done, I usually have someone proof-read it and use that feedback to make final edits. Then the final HTML formatting bits are done in my code editor of choice, SublimeText.
Writing is like a muscle that atrophies when you don't use it. Mine's out of shape so the process is quite painful. When I finally git push a new post out to the world, I just want to lie down and never get up again. Probably related, but I end up throwing away 1/2 to 2/3 of what I write in a blog post.
If I had the time to write more often I suspect it'd get easier. I think I could get pretty good at it.
I prefer different places and tools depending on where I'm at in the process. I collect notes, inspiration, and connect related ideas wherever I am, usually on my phone.
I like doing the early writing stage in a coffee shop or in bed. Anywhere that doesn't make me feel like I’m doing “Real Work™” yet.
When I get really into it, I like to type on a desk with a good keyboard (I'm a big HHKB fan), on a screen big enough for me to keep my context windows (dictionary.app, Kinopio spaces, related web pages) next to my writing window.
My blog uses Jekyll and is published on Github Pages. The domain stuff is done through Hover. It's quite basic.
I might use something newer and nicer than Jekyll, but it would probably be compiled from markdown files the same way.
The current design is a bit of a Ship of Theseus that I've been slowly and gently updating it over years, so it's kind of grown on me.
I think the domain name is $20~/yr and I think that's it.
I'm split on blogs with paid content:
If writing is your job, then monetizing somehow totally makes sense. Quality independent writing and journalism is really important and should be compensated (I like Craig Mod's approach).
But for basically everyone else, blogging is a thing they do on the side for fun, and I think it sucks when people feel pressured to turn everything they do into a passive-income side-hustle potential-business-empire.
Skimming the depths of my RSS feeds, I realized that I’ve subscribed to literally 1000s of blogs. But sadly most have withered away over the ages.
Funkaoshi has been around for even longer than I've been writing – I consider the author my Toronto blogging senpai.
I really enjoy Alexotos' in depth mechanical keyboard reviews.
It's really cool and encouraging to see newer people blogging the same way we did. Lilly Ashton’s blog is worth reading If you're looking for something more personal and cozy.
Since 2018, I've been building Kinopio, a spatial note-taking tool to collect and connect your thoughts, ideas, and plans. You can use it to make sense of your thorniest problems and grow your coolest new ideas into plans. I hope you enjoy it.
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2026-05-22 00:20:00
I stumbled on this piece of code recently that made me laugh, cry, sigh in despair, and think of poor Sara doing her best to make the web a better place.
<div class="action-button button of-h mh-effect"
onclick=" window.open('https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&[email protected]','_blank',)">I guess people have forgot that mailto: is a thing that exists.
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2026-05-20 23:50:00
I find the trend of people posting about the way they use generative AI to be fascinating at an anthropological level. I do not remember the last time a piece of technology pushed so many different people into writing about the way they use it, or not use it, or abuse it, or misuse it. To me, this is way more interesting and intriguing than the technology itself.
I obviously do not know why so many people are doing so, and I suspect they must all have their own specific reasons, but I currently have three main theories but I’m sure there are more than that.
The first theory is that a good percentage is trying to capitalize on the trend in an attempt to become some sort of AI thought leader. Those people are insufferable. They usually hang out on LinkedIn, but sometimes they escape containment, and they remember that they do have a blog (and that’s often a Substack, unsurprisingly) where they can post these generic-looking blog posts filled with lists and it’s-not-this-it's-that statements.
The second theory is that techies are gonna tech. A lot of the people who have blogs are also into tech, and gen AI is an interesting piece of tech and so it’s natural that those people will end up writing about how they use AI.
The third and final theory is that there’s a group of people who feel the need to distance themselves from what AI represents. So those posts are not really about the technology itself, but rather a statement on the state of the world around them, and they want to make it clear if and how they participate in it.
This final group is to me the interesting one. Now, if you’re a techie, don’t be mad at me, I’m not saying you’re not interesting, because you are (if instead you’re an AI bro, click here. You're welcome.) I’m saying the last group is the interesting one because to me, it’s fascinating how people feel compelled to justify or explain to strangers on the Internet how they interact with a piece of technology. And it’s especially fascinating because it’s a completely pointless exercise in my opinion.
Let’s pretend you just landed on my blog for the first time (hi, welcome, nice to have you here) and you have no idea who I am. For all you know, I might not even be a real person. This entire website could be a psyop run by the Italian government. With that in mind, what’s the value of a post in which I tell you how I use or not use AI from a moral perspective? Would it make a difference if I were to tell you that I don’t use it? Or that I use it maybe once a day to answer a coding-related question? What if I told you that I don’t use AI at all, but in reality, this post was entirely generated by a swarm of AI agents while I was outside walking the dog, enjoying life? Unless you have prior knowledge of me and this blog, a post like that, in a vacuum, would be meaningless.
How about the opposite case, though? Let's now pretend you weren’t new here, and you had, in fact, been following this blog since 2017. If that was the case, you wouldn't even need me to write that blog post, because by this point, you’d have all the necessary information to make an informed judgment. And you’d also know that you could ping me via email or via DM and ask me directly if you had any doubt about anything related to this topic.
In both cases, a post stating my use of AI would have pretty much zero value. Which genuinely makes me wonder why so many people feel compelled to write about this stuff. If you wrote one of these posts, can I ask you why? Why do you feel the need to explain how you use this technology? Is there a specific reason? I’d love to know.
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2026-05-18 14:40:00
I’ve done all sorts of experiments over the years when it comes to my phone usage. From cutting down my screen time as low as possible, to not using the phone at all, to running it in black-and-white mode, and many others. But this morning I woke up, unplugged my phone from the charger, and I thought «I wonder if I can only charge my phone once a week».
That was a thought half-asleep me had without realizing that what I was actually thinking about was charging it twice a week, not once. So starting the week with a fully charged phone and only plugging it in once until the next Sunday night.
I believe it can easily be done, and it might even be doable to use one full charge for the whole week, so not plugging my phone at all for the next seven days. Experiments are fun, and there's only one way to find out, so I’m going for it.
I have a Pro Max with a healthy battery that is currently sitting at 100%, and I have put it in low power mode to give myself the best chance. We’ll see how far into the week I’ll make it before I have to charge it again.
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2026-05-15 19:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with RMF, whose blog can be found at baccyflap.com/prs/blog.
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My name's rmf. My legal name's not terribly hard to find, but I like to keep it lightly buried just so my 2006 blog isn't the first thing you find when you search for my name. I'm a native of the Netherlands, where I reside. I live in a small city with my partner; she's an archaeologist and I'm a botanist, though I currently teach museum anthropology classes. I went from doing science, to teaching science, to teaching culture. I've never believed in restricting a whole human life to one field of study, so I'm having a blast.
My computer skills have always been self-taught. While I was in middle school I fiddled with Microsoft Paint and from there on I got to grips with ever more advanced graphic software (currently GIMP and Inkscape). In high school I liked to make videos with my friends which I edited in Windows Movie Maker, which lead to an ongoing on-and-off hobby of video editing (in Kdenlive). In 2002, I set up a WYSIWYG website which lead to me learning HTML and later CSS and, later still, PHP. Right now I do some graphics stuff for my job in education, such as making instruction sheets, posters and some other small-time stuff, but really, pretty much all my computing is done in my free time, for fun. I think that's a blessing - I don't have to work with anything I don't want to work with and do everything I do for the love of the game.
Beside that I make soap which is part hobby, part side job. I enjoy tinkering with technology, so I have lots of esoteric hifi equipment, some old games consoles, old calculators... if it can be tinkered with, I like it. I enjoy writing prose and poetry and have recently been getting into fermenting and pickling, though I am subordinate to my partner in that. She's the head of pickling and fermenting, I take care of the old electronics; she draws and paints, I write; and then at the end of the day, we cook together.
I started my website in 2002 and by 2003 I had a little update box to briefly communicate whatever I was doing with the site. That update box turned into a shoutbox of my random thoughts and as those got a bit longer and rantier every time, in October 2005 I turned it into a blog. Blogging was the thing to do at the time and so, at age sixteen, I figured I had enough to say to warrant a stab at the practice.
It was all coded by hand: no CMS or JavaScript, just handwritten HTML with the appearance of a blog. It was all over the shop, subjectwise. A fair amount of it had to do with palaeontology and/or me being an epic atheist - ups and downs. It was simply named 'blog' and it changed over the years with the design of the site but all in all, it was very simple. No RSS, no comments, just static HTML pages updated manually. The surprising thing to me is that I had an audience - I got somewhat regular emails about my posts.
I blogged until 2009. I did that classic thing of writing fewer and fewer posts and finally announcing a newer, better blog hosted at Blogger. I wrote a grand total of 4 posts for it, stopped for a year, and finally took it down. I lost interest and so, it petered out.
Cut to 2026, I'm reading a few more blogs than I had been for the past several years and I start to get the blogging bug again. Or perhaps the bug was dormant and now reawakening. I'd been considering it for a while but specifically, funnily enough, after reading your article about stopping the People & Blogs series, I got inspired to pick up the pen again.
Over the last decade I've written on and off for a couple of magazines and I had a regular column in a local newspaper for a while. I think my intrusive blogging thoughts started when that column went away - I like to write, it's something of a compulsive thing, and while the newspaper let me write practically whatever I wanted, it still had some constraints such as length, a certain form, and at the end of the day, some amount of harmlessness. It had to be a column - it could make the readers think, but not too much or about controversial things.
So the blog suddenly popped into my head as a perfect fit. Whatever topic I want, whatever length, whatever form. And so in 2026, I picked up blogging again. I did write a CMS and some code for an RSS feed - other than that, I tried to keep the form of the blog as close to the original as possible.
And again, to my surprise, there are people reading this blog. I'm clueless as to how they're finding it, buried in a subsection of my site as it is, but I'm getting emails again. A grand total of two people suggested I give the blog a name, which I did. It's now called 'bakelite & roses', a name I explain at baccyflap.com/prs/blog/2026/?m=03#1773065697.
My inspiration comes from whatever happens to me. So far I've written about umbrellas, tamagotchi, deadly accidents, CD collections and some other stuff - that's the most liberating thing to me, getting to write whatever the hell I want. I like it to be interesting, to have some novel (to me) observations in it, but other than that, it's just whatever occurs to me. It's comparable to the columns I used to write in that sense - I write them quick, maybe give them a quick read later on, and then just post. I'll often read them to my partner who will usually describe them as 'cute', which is good enough for me.
I write wherever. Back when I had deadlines I'd slack off right until the final hour and then just use whatever's to hand. I've written a few on my phone but I suppose I mostly write on my laptop, just because it's faster. I'll do it at home, on the go, at work, wherever inspiration strikes.
My site's hosted on a buddy's server. He runs a small IT company so he takes care of the domain too - it's an old arrangement and we're sticking with it. I pay him, he pays the bills.
The blog itself is written in PHP - when I restarted in 2026 I finally wrote a backend, still pretty primitive but it makes my life a bit easier and crucially, it enabled me to provide an RSS feed. I type a post into a dirt simple little CMS and hit 'post' to add the post to a JSON file, which the RSS feed also pulls from. I may provide the source code at some point, when it's not as hokey as it is now.
Well, I started it in January, which is pretty close to today, so I think I'm all good. I guess, looking back at my old posts, I do sometimes cringe at them. I added a disclaimer to those posts, just to distance myself from the bad ones. But I didn't remove them - they still reflect who I was at the time and in some weird way, who I am now. I wouldn't be honouring teen me by removing any of it and looking back I guess I could say I'd wish I'd written better stuff... but you know what, that's what I wanted to write at the time and as confident as I was of my own intellect at the time, so I am now about the public's capacity to contextualise these posts. There are wonderful, thoughtful posts in there, but also some dubious stuff, and some garbage. So short answer: I think it's perfect, wouldn't change a thing.
I pay my buddy €100 a year to cover his costs and so he can write me a bill which is good for his company. It generates precisely nothing, which is how I like it. People can do whatever they want with their blogs but for me, it's just a bit of fun in my free time. No Patreons and Ko-fis for me - I know everyone wants to turn every aspect of their lives into a revenue stream these days, but for me, it's just a way to reach out.
Of all blogs, the one I've been reading for the longest (22 years!) is Pharyngula. Out of all the 'new atheist' types, PZ Myers is one of the few who did not turn out to be a dirtbag. He stuck to his progressive guns and has as sharp a pen as ever. For the sheer dedication of the author it's worth a read, whether the range of topics is up your street or not.
I'm currently working on a podcast, a bit of a personal project that has been taking more of my time than I thought it would. Currently in the outline stage, it'll take some time before I can finally start recording. It is driving home to me that making a podcast is, at the best of times, an effortless thing that very few people know how to do well. I honestly don't like most podcasts but one I've been enjoying, one of those podcasts that springs up on you and just keeps on giving, is Bread & Bananas, a podcast about Kampung Gelam, an old neighbourhood of Singapore, made and presented by three inhabitants of said neighbourhood. And if you're wondering why on Earth this would be a topic of interest to anyone outside that neighbourhood... well, just give it a listen. It's chill, it's thoughtful, it'll surprise you. Six episodes so far, a new one every couple of months.
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