I’m Silvia, an eclectic gen X woman with many interests. I go straight to the point unless I get distracted.
Self-preservation within a society where information is passively consumed. A few months back, I put my brain on a diet . The thirty days I spent ignoring the news served as a reset switch. There will always be periods when it’s impossible not to be caught up in the world’s negative events, but now I feel relaxed about it. I can be more indulgent and kind to myself, while being confident in my…
A little slice of my life and my latest personal discoveries. Badge in hand, I reach the office building, go through the gates, and make my way to where my teammates work. The building is so large that the different areas are marked like big supermarket parking lots or car silos. On paper, I shouldn’t be able to cope with the situation. Big open-plan office, colleagues having video calls at their…
Wicked mind, misinformation, racism, fear, greed, inaction. These are the weapons of mass destruction. Whether long-range weapon or suicide bomber Wicked mind is a weapon of mass destruction Whether soaraway Sun or BBC One Misinformation is a weapon of mass destruct You coulda Caucasian or a poor Asian Racism is a weapon of mass destruction Whether inflation or globalisation Fear is a weapon of…
It's an early spring awakening, easily recognisable from the crisp air and the longer, brighter days. Walking towards the River Cam with a field mouse in a carrier bag, I quietly asked it to trust me, saying that I wouldn’t hurt it. The mouse jumps, somehow reluctantly, out of the trap. Understandably, because the trap is filled with walnuts. I’m glad it is now free and knows I wasn’t trying to…
Eating healthy is just as important for the body as good mental nutrition is for the brain. I’ve been talking about it for years, but I had never actually chosen to take an intentional long break from the news before. Previous attempts failed after a while, and during stressing periods I always go back to it. My 30-day abstinence from the news started on the 4th of November. I took the radical…
Once again I frantically looked for my phone in every room. The smartphone is not where I expect it to be. Happens all the time. A rush of adrenaline makes me look for it in every room, because I might have missed important messages or calls. Even though only a few minutes have passed. Cursing at myself, modern life, and everything in between, a pang of nostalgia hit me. Before the invention of…
A place where time flows differently. Past, present and future happen at the same time. No structure, no constraints. When I was learning to code and design websites back in the early 2000s, I had a site that I used both as a place to practice, and as a diary. Every page was different, and there was a calendar to navigate between them, which I updated manually. In 2021, after leaving WordPress to…
A baffling conversation from the past keeps causing anger, books to the rescue. One summer in the 90s, I was riding my bicycle home after a day at the swimming pool with friends. The street was gently curved, with a nice slope that made me go a bit faster than usual. I was enjoying the breeze, and had a big smile on my face. A boy I knew only a little, just enough to say “ciao”, was cycling the…
Redesigning a website is never straighforward. I tell you what prompted me to change so much more than the surface of my personal space. In late July, I was struck with fresh inspiration and decided to redesign my website. The plan was simple: base it on my work site and use my favourite colours. I couldn’t just import the posts from the old version, because I had to adjust their front matter .…
A short tale of heads, memory, and virtual farms. I was hanging the laundry to dry outside on a sunny morning, and there it was: a headless field mouse resting on the lawn. Then I remembered the camera had caught a dry-heaving cat the previous night. A domestic, well-fed cat with outside access is probably not that interested in eating its prey. In fact, my husband found the mouse’s head elsewhere…
If it sounds like an adventure, it might just be. I believe that books choose us. At least sometimes they do, which is usually when we need them most. I read rave reviews about Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library but I never really felt compelled to read it, until I found it in the “Read Local” section of my library. It’s the first time I borrow from the library, which is a shame. It’s also the first…
Considering the current situation in the world, here are the things I’m doing to take care of myself. As I gaze out at my garden from the window, I feel calm and connected to nature. A robin is flitting around, working on its nest in the ivy-covered fence. Meanwhile, a hedgehog is tucked away, hibernating in a small wooden house at the back of the garden. It makes me happy to know that while my…
Following up on my previous post, I'm sharing my new professional direction. During the peak of my perfect storm over the past few months, I was reminded of how much I care about accessibility. While I have mostly lost interest in the UX industry in its current form, accessibility is a subject that continues to stir big emotions in me: I want to help make the web a better place for everyone.…
Brief story of my perfect storm. I finished reading Normal People for the second time. In between, I saw the TV series. It seems I couldn’t let go of Marianne and Connell, some aspects of their story so similar to mine. It’s not the first time I feel so emotionally involved in a fictional story, and hopefully it won’t be the last. I don’t buy into the argument that Normal People is a millennial…
Today I launch my photography website for family, friends, and anyone who lands there to enjoy my pictures. For a long time after quitting Instagram in 2021 , my photos were nowhere to be seen. Sometimes I would post a few pictures on my blog but it never felt quite right. I thought there had to be a reason to publish one or more pictures, or a similarity between them to build a story. With…
The second of a series of posts in which I document my progress learning to play the ukulele This post is long overdue. I started writing it several times but I have never been focused enough to do it. As with writing on my blog, also my exercising has slowed down. The previous diary entry ended with strumming rhythms and changing between the C, F and G chords. I was struggling with both. Not…
We have become distracted and let technology companies build things that have no value, but there are ways to revive the internet and thus foster more competitive and meaningful environments. We need to rewild the internet Our online spaces are not ecosystems, though tech firms love that word. They’re plantations; highly concentrated and controlled environments, closer kin to the industrial…
If you ever thought ageing is the reason why technology seems more complicated, read on. Also, a guide to live in harmony with the world. The decline of the user interface Software has never looked cooler, but user interface design and user experience have taken a sharp turn for the worse. Form has taken over funtionality and substance, contravening the rules of good design. The evidence is in…
As a reminder of everything that went well while during the past four years, I published the sketches I made while following the Drawabox lessons. I tend to think about the past four years as a negative period of my life. In a way, it’s true. I was back in Italy, but not feeling home, and I had stopped doing what I like most: taking pictures, baking bread, knitting. I used to say that I was dead…
A couple of good design articles I recently read. Transforming the world: by design “Look at landfill sites,” says Pepijn Zurburg, co-founder of Dutch nonprofit What Design Can Do. “At one point, someone designed all that trash that’s in them. Everything that we made eventually ends up being a problem for us. Pepijn Zurburg and Richard van der Laken started a one-day conference, inviting experts…