Posts

Belgium in the Rain I’ve been listening to Lølø for years. I had never been to Belgium, and I had never been to a concert outside Italy. It seemed like the right occasion. Then the overthinking kicked in. My brain is great at postponing: wait for the right moment, the right company, the right weather. Meanwhile ticket prices kept climbing and Belgium seemed off the table. I slept on it, hoping for the intercession of the God of the day after, and for once it worked: legs of the trip cut, two days off work, hotel booked with a VPN from the United States, twenty euros saved. ...

It’s been a year and a half since my last post of this kind, more than enough time for things to change. And indeed they have: after a lifetime as an Android user, I decided to take the plunge and get an iPhone, which forced me to rethink some of my apps. Having a MacBook already, I could have gone all in on the Apple ecosystem and used their apps for everything. I preferred to keep a certain independence though, trying to stick with the apps I already used or, where that wasn’t possible, going for open-source and cross-platform alternatives. ...

I love to travel. Not exactly a great revelation, I know. It’s one of those ordinary truths almost everyone shares, but for me it’s different. It’s not just the charm of seeing new places or tasting foods with impossible names. It’s more about losing myself in unknown alleys, doing everyday things but in a new context, feeling both foreign and at home It’s the only therapy that truly works for me. It makes me feel good, incredibly good. Actually, thinking about it, it might be the only thing that makes me truly happy. And that, I must admit, scares me a bit. ...

A bit over a year ago Hemispheric Views launched the default apps thread. Inspired by the wave of posts that followed, and by the time of year that somewhat leads us to make lists and assessments, I decided to compile a list of my default apps. ✉️ Mail Client: Proton Mail Proton has been my main mailbox for just over a month. So far I’m satisfied, although the accessory services have several shortcomings. ...

In previous post I introduced you to Ledger by showing you its basic functionality, how movements are tracked, and how to query it to extract useful information. I also mentioned how the potential of this software was much wider. Today it’s time to show you how to use it to track your investments. What is a commodity From an economic/financial point of view, the term commodity indicates a good whose value does not vary according to its source. So the euro can be seen as a commodity because a euro is always worth the same regardless of who we receive it from. The same applies to a gold bar or a barrel of oil. Apples, on the other hand, are not really commodities because their source also influences the quality of the product. In Ledger, commodities are defined in a broader way and can be seen as the unit of measure of transactions. In the first post I told you that within a Ledger journal money movements between accounts are tracked, but actually the concept can be generalized as it is possible to use transactions to move things from one account to another. ...