English on mzll

The joy of repainting my house

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 01:22:22 +0100

We repainted the entire house. All of it. I spent two months boxing up books, paintings, toys, digital devices, more books, and candles and mugs and pen holders and desk photographs and dozens of miscellaneous knick-knacks, and glasses and goblets and bottles of wine and liquor, and documents, various speakers and lamps, only to spend two weeks with the house in disarray and me working in the dust and catching first allergic rhinitis and then tracheitis. Finally, now that they’re finished and the house is starting to feel like a home again, I can finally say I’ll never do it again. Ever. You’d better sell the house, if I have to think about it again in a thousand years. That’ll be the right time.

My new keyboard for work and traveling

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 01:22:22 +0100

For almost six years on my desk, in addition to the monitors and the current Mac, a mechanical keyboard IQUNIX F96 Coral Sea – now out of production, this one – has stood stable and proud.

Damn, work

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 01:22:22 +0100

A dear friend of mine is no longer working. She was laid off last May 2025 and hasn’t been able to find a new job for a year. A whole year without work. She was a copywriter. Today, her job is done by an LLM. Bad, but sufficient for the vast majority of clients of mediocre communications agencies in Italy.

What iOS gives me

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sat, 23 May 2026 01:22:22 +0100

I read Kevin Wammer’s latest post with interest: he switched to Android a few months ago with a Pixel 10 and talks about all the apps he’s installed – replacing some he used on iOS – and how he’s using them in his new ecosystem.

The failure of a public pledge

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sun, 17 May 2026 01:22:22 +0100

I haven’t lost any weight—I’ll say that right off the bat. Or rather, I’ve lost just under 1 kg (~2.20 lbs). This public commitment I made to myself didn’t go as I’d hoped. I kept up with my swimming sessions, the occasional brisk walk through the traffic of the Neapolitan suburbs, and some home strength training, but nothing that actually helped me lose weight. I think I need to consult a nutritionist and start a structured, serious program: I just need to find the time.

Stochastic falls

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 01:22:22 +0100

I left the company where I had been working for the past (almost) year. There are various reasons for this, but they all boil down to two main issues.

When I travel for work

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 01:22:22 +0100

I’m back to traveling for work. My old project and my new job will require me to travel more often, much like I did in recent years, when four out of every 14 days I spent 800 km away from home.

Dotfiles and nerdy stuff

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 01:22:22 +0100

I need to replace my work Mac within a few weeks. ¹ My work laptop is synced with my personal one for everything that involves iCloud. I have pretty much the same apps, and I use Homebrew for everything I can. So, with the switch coming up, I’ve been thinking about rebuilding my dotfiles for macOS.

Slop and translations

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

AI has recently been used on this blog just to improve the graphic design: I’ve asked for help on several occasions to fine-tune aesthetic details that would otherwise have taken me forever. But never when it comes to the content. And that will never happen because, since this is a personal blog, writing using soggy stuff generated by an unconsciously system would be really stupid.

New needs and new possibilities

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

I had a PDF in English, so I asked Claude Code to translate the text into Italian and convert it to EPUB. Done – it works and reads well. It took me less than 5 minutes. Things that, I don’t know, might not even have occurred to me to do before.

The Gratitude Subscriptions, March 2026

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

I won’t go into the reasons why you should use a password manager. I’m assuming that if you’re reading this blog, you’re nerdy enough to already have one. Right?

Put full post in your feeds

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

If you have a blog and you’re not making any money off it, for crying out loud, just put your full post in the RSS feed – let us read it without having to use some gizmo tool to view it in its entirety. We’ll check out your website anyway, we probably already know it, but – for heaven’s sake! – forget about the stats and just let us read your content. If we read, it’s because we like what you write. Leave that to us.

We need the illusion that we matter to someone

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

It’s impressive how writing a blog and feeling responsible for your readers – no matter how little you know them – can make our brains stick to promises we’d normally break without a second thought. Kev Quirk wrote about this recently, discussing his weight and his desire to lose weight.

Du-ddu-ddum

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

Maybe, for the first time in my life, after trying dozens of them and reselling them or sending them back because they hurt or bothered me behind the ears due to the temples of my glasses, maybe I’ve found the over-ear headphones that, in addition to having an exceptional sound for my expectations, don’t hurt behind the ears: the Major IV by Marshall. What a treat. And what a hell of a basses.

Digital DIY

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

Even the most foolish entrepreneur today thinks he can replace consultants, technicians, lawyers, and accountants with a credit card and a subscription costing just twenty dollars a month.

The Gratitude Subscriptions, February 2026

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

In February, my gratitude subscription was expressed with a donation ($10) to Johan Sanneblad, lead developer of Notebook Navigator.

7HE INB0X

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 01:22:22 +0100

In my professional experience, I’ve often dealt with corporate communication. Many users don’t know what an email is, don’t know how to write, don’t know how to reply, or – even worse – sometimes don’t even realize they need to reply. The inability to communicate within an organization, both internally and, above all, externally, is a hurdle that absolutely must be overcome.

G pleasure

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 01:22:23 +0100

One thing about AI is that I use it. I use it for work, but also for personal stuff.¹ And there’s nothing wrong with that. I also wrote about it here (in Italian): I don’t remember how to do some things that I now do with a calculator, and sooner or later I’ll probably forget how to do things that I now do with an LLM. All in all, it’s not a big deal. The serious thing is that I had distanced myself from Google.

The Gratitude Subscriptions, Jenuary 2026

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:22:22 +0100

Over the past two years, I’ve started this my virtual subscription to projects for which I express deep gratitude. Projects related to applications I use, or blogs I follow, or podcasts I listen to, and so on. I wrote about them for 2024 and 2025.

We're always talking about blogs, anyway

lg@mzll.it (Luigi Mozzillo) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 01:22:22 +0100

With a toot¹ on Mastodon in which he appreciated this post, my dear friend Nicola made me think about how little I put into promoting my professional blog on these shores.