It’s been over a month since I last updated this place. The other day I tweeted a hint as to why:
“You’ve not updated your blog in a while.” I know. But I’m always writing. The thing is, not everything has to be published.
— Riccardo Mori (@morrick) June 2, 2015
Still, since I have received a few concerned messages about my silence, I figured I could give a quick update regarding this hiatus. The short answer is, I’m fine, I’ve just been busy doing other things. The more articulate answer is, There are a few reasons behind my not publishing anything since the end of April.
- Vantage Point magazine takes up a fair amount of my time. Working on two issues per month is hard. I knew it when I self-imposed this periodicity at the start, and although I’ve been a bit behind with the schedule, I’m confident my (few) readers will understand that I always try to put quality before anything else and I don’t want to rush an issue just for calendar reasons. Each issue has a theme, and sometimes finding one can be surprisingly difficult. Lately I’ve practically scrapped an entire issue because I was not satisfied with the chosen theme and the articles written about it. I’ve also had to rewrite an episode of Low Fidelity, the sci-fi serialised novel that’s a recurrent feature of the magazine. By the way, if you’re a subscriber and you’re enjoying Vantage Point, please spread the word, help me expand my readership and make this endeavour worthwhile since I’m still operating at a loss and the magazine is still basically at the labour-of-love stage. Thank you.
- The (film) photography bug has bitten me once again, and hard. I’ve been shooting more, reading more about photography, spending more time on photography sites (damn you, Japan Camera Hunter), looking for new old gear, even discovering interesting YouTube channels on the subject (gasp!). I also managed to restore both a camera and a lens to a functional state, and that took time as well:
Canon A‑1 with 50mm f1.4 lens
- I’ve been trying out Textshot+, an interesting app by Lionheart Software — the creators of Pushpin, my favourite iOS client for Pinboard.
- Speaking of Pushpin, I’ve also been working on updating the Italian localisation (something long overdue, I know).
- Perhaps this will sound strange, but another reason I haven’t published anything tech-related here lately is that I haven’t found anything in tech worth being enthusiastic over. New stuff is introduced all the time, and maybe it’s just that I’m having difficulties with keeping up with the pace, or maybe it’s the maddening pace of the debate surrounding whatever’s being introduced that I find more alienating than ever. Since nobody seems interested in slowing the hell down, well, I did. There is less and less time to process information today — the tech world online is perpetuating this breakneck pace, where, say, a product is announced or introduced, and before you can even take a look at it yourself, a dozen sources are already throwing their opinions in your face. Sometimes the noise of all these opinions and speculations flying around is just too overwhelming and one needs to tune out.