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Programs are guests.

Summer 2026 season updates I am looking out of the window of my hotel room.

SeaweedFS, FreeBSD and a rather deep rabbit hole At this point, reading my blog, you could be forgiven for thinking that I have become entirely about IBM midrange systems, COBOL and offline-first computing.

Cobolito/400: a tiny data appliance in the IBM 5280 lineage I wrote an essay about Cobolito/400, a tiny data appliance built as a tribute to the IBM 5280 and to a style of computing where records, screens, media, and operators still had visible relationsh…

GixSQL, COBOL and FreeBSD This is more of a small bookmark for my own sake, rather than a full article.

Spring 2026 updates Servus from … a random hotel.

Where my data lives: storage choices for Project Quiet Ground I decided to write this because it’s one of the fundamental blocks that led me to shape Project Quiet Ground the way it is.

Project Quiet Ground: the prequel I’m sitting on the sofa in the offline outpost.

Flying Solo One of the things I like most when I fly solo is having all the space to myself.

Flight record about MinIO I wanted to leave a small flight record for my future self about what happened to MinIO.

Data first, programs as guests Some ideas don’t arrive suddenly.

Winter 2025/2026 season update Servus from… South London!

A note to the occasional reader I want to leave a small note for the occasional reader who lands here.

The Offline Outpost, a tech insight In the post Life of an in-betweener, I wrote that the offline outpost is a place that partially exists and partially imagined.

Quietly Here It’s Christmas Eve here at the offline outpost.

Sustainability and responsible computing When we talk about sustainability in computing, the conversation often stops at datacenters, power usage effectiveness, and renewable energy sources.

(very) late autumn 2025 update Servus from Tara’s offline outpost!

A Love Letter to FreeBSD Dear FreeBSD, I’m still the new person here, learning your ways, stumbling over the occasional quirk, smiling when I find the small touches that make you different.

On Debian, Rust, and the Unix Spirit An article by Giorgio Rutigliano crossed my feed this week - Debian e Rust - written in Italian, thoughtful and well-argued, describing how Debian is embracing Rust more deeply in its toolchain and base system.

End of Summer 2025 Updates Servus from Tara’s offline outpost.

Bright Spot in the Logbook After a couple of months in my hiatus to focus on flying and staying current with my pilot duties, there’s a little thing I want to share.

Kubernetes on Bare Metal or VMs?

From Clouds to Classics: Revisiting IBM i As I enjoy a short hiatus to focus on flying and staying current with my pilot duties, somewhere between jobs and between flight lessons, I’ve found myself drawn back to the kind of engineering that first made me…

Introduction A couple of months ago, I had an insightful conversation with my former manager, the Cloud Director of a major European telecom company.

Life in Rochester, Minnesota Recent events brought my thoughts to Lake Michigan and a period of my life unknown to most.

🪐 Life of an in-betweener A patchwork story of culture, belonging, and the search for home They say you can only be from one place.

Planet Papalla Sometimes I say I’m from Planet Papalla.

Late Spring 2025 Updates Servus from Tara’s offline outpost!

Useless Projects: Living on My Terms and Finding Meaning By day, I build systems that scale.

Liberation day, 80th anniversary: Bella Ciao Today, April 25th, we celebrate Liberation Day in Italy.

I may be a bit late, as usual.

FreeBSD, Workstation and … Home - Part 2 🏡 🌸 (continued from Part 1) In March 2023, I started traveling again, but this time between my houses in Milan and London.

FreeBSD, Workstation and … Home - Part 1 🏡 🌸 This article has been on my mind for months, yet it never seemed to fully take shape, until now.

Random Updates from a Late Winter Servus from my offline outpost!

🎄 Santa’s Air: Final Countdown 🎄 The cockpit is alive with soft, familiar hums as I settle into the captain’s seat of our Airbus A320—my sleigh for tonight’s mission.

From Gitea on Linux to Forgejo on FreeBSD There is no solid reason why I moved away from Gitea.

My Dell R710 saga In early Summer 2024, personal circumstances made me decide to leave my apartment in South London.

The day I took over company’s GitHub With the turmoil I’m experiencing in my private life, I failed to realise what was going on in my professional life.

The Hermit Project - Update I tried being a hermit in the Alps this week as a test for a period of seclusion.

Easy way to backup up git a repository (in a pipeline) From previous posts, you probably understood how paranoid I am about having multiple copies of my data in an open format and how much I am concerned about vendor lock-in.

The day I felt for 1'000ft This is an unusual post for my blog.

Ubiquiti gateway upgrade, QNAP and thoughts I installed my Ubiquiti USG a long time ago in Milan.

Firmware-like OS, SLAX and NomadBSD A friend explained that they use Linux on the desktops and -obviously- on the servers at their workplace.

Liberation Day, aka April 25th April 25th, aka Liberation Day, is a national holiday in Italy.

The Hermit Project - Part 6 In the months since I started the Hermit Project, I learned that other people feel the same about how the Internet has become.

The Hermit Project - Part 5 I couldn’t believe I could write a script that ran on the first attempt. note has been almost perfect since the beginning.

The Hermit Project - Part 4 Innsbruck is beautiful at Christmas time.

The Hermit Project - Part 3 In the previous episode of “The Hermit Project”, Tara installed FreeBSD on a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and is thinking about becoming a digital hermit.

The Hermit Project - Part 2 Back to Part 1, I was thinking about creating a basic command line only Linux, using my GPD Pocket mini-laptop.

The Hermit Project - Part 1 I promised I would start talking about my Hermit Project.