2026-06-17 13:25:00
A week or so ago, I posted about my currently ongoing fitness challenge where the goal was to go down from the almost 90kg I was weighing to below the oldest measurement I had on record, which was an 85.3kg.
Side note: that’s the oldest but not the lowest, because I do have an 81kg on record, but that’s honestly not a healthy weight for me.
I know that day-to-day weight can fluctuate considerably, I know that body composition changes a lot when you’re dieting, and I know that weight will also change a lot depending on how much I’ll train because muscles are denser and generally speaking “heavier” than fat. As much as I enjoy being an idiot and doing random shit, I am not entirely clueless about all this stuff.
All that said, I hopped on the scale this morning, as I do every morning since I started this challenge, and I guess not eating pasta and pizza is working.
Now, this is just one measurement; I can be back up tomorrow, and it means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I’m still figuring out a workout routine that works for my brain, and it’s an enjoyable process. But the summer is yet to start, there are 100 or so days in front of me to get in better shape, and I need to keep training. I'll be honest though: this is such a fun experiment and I'm having a blast.
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2026-06-13 22:40:00
It’s 11.35am, 27°, clear sky with only a few tiny little clouds here and there. I’m standing at the same parking spot where I ended the previous walk, and I’m about to tackle segment number 5 of this 10-part loop.
Contrary to what I did up until this point, this time I’m gonna try something different: I’m going to write this post as I go, rather than writing it the following day. I’m typing this in a chat with myself, on Telegram. We’ll see how this goes. If I end up enjoying the experience, I might even consider making a private group chat for the supporters and do one of these walks “live” for the people who are interested in following along. It could be a fun experiment.
Ok, the route on my watch is set, off we go. Right away, we leave the parking spot behind us and we venture into the woods. Has rained quite a lot over the past few days so hopefully the trails is not a muddy mess.
This whole area is quite interesting because it’s mostly forest but every now and again there’s a cluster of rocks scattered around. More than once I went looking for climbable boulders, not for myself since I’m not a climber, but for my brother.
As always, we’re following the yellow and white trail marks, a reminder that we are on the right track. I always wondered if they picked the white and yellow because those are the colours of the Vatican and these walks are all about churches. I might look into that at some point. I never walked this specific trail before and walking on new trails is the main reason why I wanted to do these walks. I’m loving it. The ground is also so soft because of the rain. And it seems like we have picked up a passenger already.
If you are keeping scores, mark one for team Jesus. I was thinking that one cool photography related project could be to take pictures of all of these religious shrines that are scattered all over the valleys. Could be fun, I’ll add it to my list of potential random projects.
First intersection of the day. We are taking the right and going down. We need to reach a nearby town, go through it, emerge on the other side, then walk up to a ridge and most of the walk is gonna be up that ridge. I’m quite excited because I thought about walking that part of the valley for quite some time and I’m finally doing it.
What a lovely day to be out in nature!
And we have reached the first civilised outpost. We need to go through it and carry on in our journey down to the next village before we start climbing back up. But first, I’m gonna zip off my pants because it’s too warm for not wearing shorts.
Ok legs are free, so much better now. We can carry on and walk through Cepletischis.
If you’re interested in moving here, this one’s up for sale for the very high price of 15000€. Yes, I’m not missing a zero, that’s 15k.
As always, there’s a monument to remember the people who died during the World War. As I said before, these are everywhere.
And literally on the other side of the street, another small one. This one’s quite neat, never seen one before with a cross like that. It has a forced perspective of some sort.
We’re now on asphalt for a little bit. Not a fan of walking on the road but sometimes it’s unavoidable. We’re headed to wards the next village which I believe is gonna be the last one of the walk, basically till the end.
Another enjoyable aspect about these walks is how everyone is friendly. You say hello to all the people you encounter (which aren’t many) they smile and say hi back. It’s a simple thing but I appreciate it greatly.
That’s a dream house right there.
We’re about to reach Polava, a tiny tiny village with a Buddhist monastery that the Dalai Lama visited years ago.
And what a cute little village this is.
We’re still walking down but not for long because right in front of us there’s the ridge we’re gonna walk on for the next couple of hours. It’s almost time to do some cardio and start going uphill.
We’re over the bridge and it’s time to climb up. Hopefully the trail is not too slippery, but I don’t hold much hope.
Heart rate is going up! Which is good, need to get back into shape. The temperature inside the woods is amazing and it also smells wonderfully.
Time to score one point for team… Buddha? This was unexpected. I mean, I knew about the monastery but I wasn’t expecting to find one of these out in the wild. This is so cool.
Looks like the trail goes up through a dried creek. Interesting. The GPS says I’m right on track and the trail is marked but this is weird. I wonder how this looks on a rainy day.
As expected, this part of the trail is both steep and slippery, which is a very unpleasant combination. But we’re almost halfway through the climb so it’s not too bad.
Time for a mini break to rehydrate and this is a good excuse to talk about today’s sponsor: water. Feeling thirsty? Feeling dirty? Need to make pasta? Water is here to help you out doing that and much more. Since the beginning of time, water, always at your side. Also, a big thank you watch for warning me that “a climb is about to start”. Good job.
Ufff, that was tiring. This climb was not fun, it was so, so slippery. Anyway we’re now at the beginning of the ridge. The lovely town of Toppolo is 40 minutes away but we’re headed in the opposite direction. Also, so many goddamn ticks. I’m so tired of these damn insects.
But we’re finally at the sight of the first church of the walk, the church of San Martino (18/44). It’s very odd looking for being a church, it looks more like a building used by farmers more than anything.
I learned that the church was used as headquarters for the Austrian soldiers during the War of Independence in 1848. Very interesting.
Most of the climb is done, I still have some 100 or so meters and the rest is primarily downhill. Which, considering how slippery the trail is, is not going to be fun. But that’s how it is so down we go!
I was so close to falling on my back. That would have been very unpleasant. But on our way down we have a great view of Mount Matajur.
Another couple of points for our teams, we cross the road and it’s time to climb back up a little bit. It’s a lot warmer now and I’m sweating a lot. But that’s good! This is good exercise.
Every time I see one of these old shacks I think at how cool it would be to turn them all into tiny cabins where people can go sleep for the night. It would be so awesome and such a nice way to encourage a certain type of tourism.
This part of the trail is really beautiful, the pictures I’m taking on my phone can’t capture how nice the light is today. I really need to invest in a good camera and stop using the phone to take photos.
This descent is great, there’s a slight breeze, the trail is not too steep so it’s very easy to walk and not too taxing on my knees. And it’s a lot less slippery, which is something I appreciate considering I risked falling 5 times already.
And we have reached quite possibly the most beautiful church of the walk: the ruins of the church of Sant Egidio. This is not part of the 44 but I like this so much. It’s really in the middle of nowhere, at the top of a mountain. And there’s not much left other than what you see in the photo. Lovely place, I should come sleep up here one day.
Only 5km left to go, we’re at the final stretch, and this is now a very enjoyable stroll into the woods. I’m not taking many pictures because the view is mostly the same and there’s nothing exciting worth photographing. Except for the second church of today’s walk! This is the church of Santa Lucia (19/44) which from afar looks more like a garage than a church.
This descent is looooong, but according to my watch we have almost no meters left to climb (it actually says 10 meters but my watch can’t be trusted). I’m currently taking a quick break sitting on a rock. It’s so warm now.
We don’t have a lot left to walk, some 3 and a half km but I’m tempted to eat the apple I brought with me. At the same time I don’t want to take the backpack off my back because I’m all sweaty and the sensation when you put it back on is awful. I guess the apple is gonna wait to be back at the car. Ok, getting back up and we’re walking again. All of a sudden, out of the woods and straight into a field with tall grass
We’re about to get back into civilization for the final stretch of the walk. My feet hurt. Damn shoes! But I decided that I’m not gonna change them. Too easy that way. It’s a lot more fun to try make things work.
There’s a lovely view from up here. And a very nice breeze.
Second to last church of the day, the church of San Bartolomeo Apostolo (20/44). This is nested inside the small village and it’s a lot less bucolic than the ones we have seen earlier today.
Down the main road we go. Not fun to walk on concrete my feet are not having a great time now.
But thankfully we’re about to go back into the woods. We’re almost there, about 1km left to walk. I was worried I was going to walk on concrete all the way down. This is so much better.
We’re almost out of the woods again and almost at the site of the final church of the walk and the end of the walk.
And there’s the last church of the day, the church of San Giusto (21/44), nested in the middle of a group of houses. If it wasn’t for my watch vibrating I’d have missed it completely because the road runs underneath it. I lived close by for more than a decade and I never noticed there was a church here.
Ok, only a few hundred meters left to walk. We have a bridge to walk across (so many bridges on these walks), one I walked many times before since the closest supermarket to my house is nearby.
And we have arrived. And yes there’s another church in the background but that’s not part of the loop since it’s “modern”.
And there you have it, we’re halfway through this series. The next walk is likely going to be the most challenging one of the bunch. But that’s a problem for future me. As always photos from the walk are available on the shared drive folder and the data from my watch is available. See you next time!
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2026-06-12 19:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Carl Barenbrug, whose blog can be found at carlbarenbrug.com.
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A native Scotsman, albeit half German, living in the beautiful, cosmopolitan, and windy city of Edinburgh. I live with my partner and two Burmese cats. I’m a digital product designer, founder, and aspiring entrepreneur with a long-standing love for minimalism and rock climbing. But I’m also interested in fashion, architecture, tennis, cycling, football, and, admittedly, experimenting with AI tools too. Right now, I’m working in the field of chat communication, creative tooling such as 3D mockup production, and a bit of consultation when I have the time. Slowly preparing for a probable life where my skills are surpassed by robot while trying to figure out how to independently survive and thrive.
I think I created my blog around 2011, which was pretty much focused on design curation. Predictably named after myself, I was simply sharing aesthetic things I liked and it helped shape my taste at the time. My personal site has taken on a few different forms and functions over the years, but since 2020 it’s been exclusively a blog — a digital space where I can think in public. The topics vary a bit, but typically I’ll be yapping about projects I’ve worked on, perspectives on procedural design, and the occasional lifestyle story or social experiment. I don’t write as often as I’d like or once did, and I think the main reason for this is that I’ve stopped reading and listening to books for the past year or so. Reading seems to fuel my writing, but I’m prioritising creative output over consumption right now. I reckon this will change next year though.
My writing process varies depending on the topic. If I’m blogging about work I’ve done, there’s very little research I need to do. It’s just a free-flowing explanation of what I’ve made. Yet, if it’s more of a thought-piece, then I’ll make a note of the topic and some references that have inspired the thought because I also like to cite those if I can. I’ll then start drafting in iA Writer. I’ll usually leave it a few days or weeks and come back to it. When I feel like I have a decent post, I’ll share it with robot to proof and get some feedback — mostly grammar, structure, and light shaping. I tend to take a bit more care in what I publish on my blog than when I journal offline.
I enjoy silence or natural sounds if I really need to use my head. It’s really the only way I can truly focus. But sometimes I love to write with instrumental music (house or techno) if I’m running with an idea that requires a little less attention. In terms of the physical environment, space matters, but I’m pretty flexible. Normally, it’s when I’m home in my office or stretched out on my sofa, locked in by my cats. And I’ll only ever write on my laptop — never on my phone.
The site is built on Kirby CMS, where all my posts are published as markdown. The domain is registered with Hover and is hosted by Hetzner. I tend to follow Manu’s advice when it comes to such things, even if he insists he has no clue what he’s doing.
I probably would have moved to Kirby sooner. It’s a fantastic CMS, even for a basic blog. But I also use it for my portfolio, so I feel like I get a lot out of it. And as it’s modular, it can be as light or as heavy as you need it to be. No built-in bloat. There are other super lightweight blog-specific solutions out there that I like the look of, but not enough to convince me to change. In terms of doing things differently from a writing perspective, I think we naturally express ourselves differently as life happens. Looking back, I think some of my posts might have tried too hard to be intellectual, but I think I’ve generally maintained a consistent tone of voice, which I like.
I don’t monetise my blog, so it earns nothing in a tangible sense. But if it helps me connect with people, whether sentimentally or collaboratively, that’s good enough for me. The domain is $19 per year, Kirby is a one-off payment of around $115, and hosting is on a shared server, so I don’t pay anything for that.
These are all worth a look:
There are a few projects I’ve worked on that I’d like to share:
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2026-06-09 00:40:00
A few weeks ago, I was at my brother’s place, watching NBA, and amongst other things, I was teasing him about the fact that he’s putting up weight. Which is just a fact. But he’s also in his 40s, so that’s understandable. He pointed out that I’m also gaining weight (but I’m not in my 40s), and since it was a long time since I weighed myself, I decided to hop on a scale, and the number that came out was 89.6kg. Now, I’m 190cm tall, so being almost 90kgs isn’t really a tragedy but I told him «I’m gonna get back into shape» just so that I can keep continue teasing him and he won’t be able to say shit back. Isn’t brotherly love wonderful?
I gave myself the “extended” whole summer (so till the end of September) to reach two goals. The first goal is to be lighter than I was 10 years ago. I had a smart scale for more than a decade, and the oldest measurement I have logged is 85.3kg, recorded on December 21st 2015. So I need to be below that by September 30th. The second goal is to be in better shape than I was 10 years ago. Now, this is a bit harder to quantify, but I’ll let my brother determine if I reached this goal or not.
I did take a “before” picture at the beginning of June. It’s my intention to take an “after” one on September 30th, and we’ll compare and see if I made any progress whatsoever.
Do I have a concrete plan for how to achieve these two goals? Absolutely not. Do I have a personal trainer guiding me through a training program? Hell no. Am I following a diet prepared by a nutritionist? Nah, what’s the fun in doing that! We’re in the “vibe” era, so I’m gonna vibe training and vibe dieting, meaning I’m doing things my way, trying random shit, going for silly walks, training however I want, and having fun in the process. Gonna be a fun summer.
And since we’re talking losing weight, I’m gonna mention two of my blogging pals here, one mr Kev and one mr Luigi, both of whom are going through a similar challenge (for more sane and normal reasons, unlike myself, who is fueled by spite). I believe in you guys!
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2026-06-05 19:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Barry Hess, whose blog can be found at bjhess.com.
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I’m a programmer-type from rural Minnesota. I grew up on a farm near a small town. Now I live in a bustling city of 27,000 people…surrounded by farmland. In other words, I’m still in rural Minnesota.
I studied computer science at a small private college, which led to my 26-year career programming computers. First it was at an insurance company, then it was at a SaaS startup, and now it’s for myself at a little company I run with my business partner.
My hobbies are mostly typical: reading, watching movies, and the occasional video game (meaning Fortnite). My favorite sport is baseball, though I’ll watch the occasional other sport. I also try to do a little woodworking, cooking, and, well, blogging. Blogging is a hobby, yes?
I decided to start a blog in 2004. Personal blogs were popping up all over, and I was enjoying meeting new people through the comments section in these blogs. I also have a couple non-blogging friends that were doing their thing on Xanga. The blogs I followed were either friends, friends of friends, about the Minnesota Twins (baseball), or about U.S. news and politics.
Online I generally use the handle bjhess. That was what my college gave me for my first ever user account. Toward the end of college I was looking for a domain name, and unfortunately there was already a techy person with my first and last name who grabbed that obvious option. (They still have the domain to this day!) So bjhess.com it was, and the name stuck.
I blogged via b2evolution and WordPress in the early days, probably at Dreamhost. In the early 2010s I switched over to a self-hosted and customized install of Scanty, and I ran that for a long time. In 2022 I switched to an HTML-only site. That lasted about a year before I and my colleagues built Pika.
I don’t have a system or process for blogging. My inspiration is generally from interesting things happening in my life. That can be a vacation, a recent discovery, an experiment that I’m trying, or a feeling that I’m feeling.
Most of my posts are written in a single session, with a couple rounds of editing for grammar, tone, and flow. There’s only been one occasion where I asked others to read my writing before posting. I’ve recently tried the “weekly update” format of posts, which to this point has been me adding links and notes to a draft leading up to finalizing the post on Friday or Saturday. I’m toying with updating the draft post daily throughout the week before publishing, but then if I’m doing that I wonder if I should…just post those daily updates daily?
Inspiration comes and goes, but I generally prefer to have quiet while writing, whether that’s natural or simulated via headphones.
Aside from that basic need, I don’t strongly believe that physical spaces influence my creativity. However, I’ve been noticing that my office is in a state of constant clutter…and I’m starting to believe. Now the question is whether that clutter impacts the mind or whether the cluttered mind leads to a physical manifestation? A little of both, I think.
Today, and for the rest of my life, my blog is hosted at Pika. I write my posts directly in the web editor.
I would start my blog on Pika, naturally!
I believe pretty strongly that most bloggers probably would be better off not rolling their own static site generators or CMS installations. For those that want to play in that world, though, there’s nothing like it. For the rest of us there are a number of small, independent blogging platforms that make things quite a bit easier. They all tend to play nice together, offering exporting and importing options if you ever find a different platform to be a better fit for your style.
If I were paying for my Pika account, it would be $60 per year, and my domain is $13 per year. Not bad for a favorite hobby! I pay $9/month for Plausible analytics, though I’m not entirely sure why. As a programmer, I think it’s mainly that I want a place to look to see any weird happenings to make sure nothing is amiss. If traffic to my blog disappeared, I’d be curious if I did something wrong technically to cause it.
All’s fair for monetizing. I don’t do it, but I know affiliate links and such make sense in some contexts.
Let me dial up my feed reader here. Okay, for a selection…
I’m not sure how Chris Glass keeps his daily photo journal going, but it’s great. Rafał Pastuszak does fascinating things at Untested. Adam Keys is usually thinking. Since Luke moved away from my area, I like to read what’s going through his mind on recursion. I travel vicariously through MacPsych. Maique gives me all the photo inspiration. Holy cats, Jamie Todd Rubin is an avid reader. Brendon Bigley provides cool video game news. Annie lends me insight. Davey and Jamie share lives well lived. I also like to keep up with Derek Sivers, Hugh Howey, Craig Mod, and Cabel Sasser (I still need to read the 2025 snacks rundown). Oh, and, boy howdy, Mike Monteiro.
Any of the above who haven’t been interviewed would be a great option to interview next!
I won’t be shy–I’m working on Pika and I would greatly appreciate it if you gave Pika a look. Our biggest project at the moment is The Pika Pulse, which will be a great help to discover Pika blogs. I think that’s a good thing for the readers of People and Blogs!
Mostly, though, I’d like more people to blog. I want people of all ages and backgrounds sharing their experiences at their own domain online. Whether you do that via Pika or any other setup or service (yes, even WordPress), I’ll be excited! See you online!
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2026-06-04 19:00:00
It’s amazing how much life can improve with the help of 20 milligrams of chemicals a day.
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