0 0
Reflecting on something that should have happened a lot to me, while it never did.
on Sep 7
0 1
Reflecting on the amount of time that I spent without writing new music.
on Aug 31
0 0
I didn't realise how this August marks four years since I deleted all my corporate social media accounts.
on Aug 28
0 0
As (para)social media keeps reducing its appeal on me, including the definition of 'Fediverse', I'm also finding the concept of indieweb, in its current techno-ideological form, uninteresting.
on Aug 26
0 0
As (para)social media keeps reducing its appeal on me, including the definition of 'Fediverse', I'm also finding the concept of indieweb, in its current techno-ideological form, uninteresting.
on Aug 25
0 0
I accepted an offer for a permanent job in one of the most prestigious British institutes. To get there, I had to first understand I'm not cut for the web industry anymore.
on Jun 28
0 0
Stumbling on a post by an American author that I highly respect reignited my doubts about a dominant growth at all costs culture from the US.
on May 3
0 0
Follow-up to a previous case study on how I automated my static website publishing workflow. This time, a lean Shortcut script is allowing me to write webmentions in seconds.
on May 2
0 0
Inspired by Neil Clarke and Ethan Marcotte, I moved my list of crawlers to a Jekyll YAML data file, and now use it to compile both the .htaccess and robots.txt files.
on May 2
0 0
I quickly created a JSON feed for this website.
on Apr 28
0 0
I was interviewed by Manuel Moreale for the 34th edition of his weekly newsletter People and Blogs.
on Apr 23
0 0
I’ve been slowly withdrawing from the decentralised social network. While the reasons I told myself were all related to mental health, they’ve suddenly changed.
on Apr 20
0 0
My name is Simone Silvestroni. A gen X with a straight to the point attitude, I use a mix of instinct and academic learning to juggle between art and technology in equal measure. Based in Cambridge, I work in sound production and web design under the moniker Minutes to Midnight.
on Apr 19
Minutes to Midnight - Looking from a distance
0 0
A draft of this post languished in my computer for longer than two months. Pessimistic, self-deprecating, depressing, bad. So, I wiped it out, and started from scratch.
on Mar 27
Minutes to Midnight - Release: ‘After 1989’
0 0
A concept album about my grandfather, who escaped Germany in 1945, while I made the other way round, looking for answers.
on Mar 15
Minutes to Midnight - Leaving Netlify
0 0
Tomorrow marks the first week after migrating all the websites I share with my wife Silvia, from Netlify to Mythic Beasts. Very happy about the quick transition, and grateful to Leon Paternoster for the brilliant suggestion. Here’s something I’ve noticed since.
on Mar 8
Minutes to Midnight - The Accounts Graveyard
0 0
A personal process of disinvesting from the corporate internet, started last year, is speeding up considerably in 2024. It’s fuelled by a desire of reducing digital noise, and severing my contacts with a tech world that isn’t appealing anymore.
on Mar 7
Minutes to Midnight - Living in a corporate bubble
0 0
Sanctimonious post about something that, strangely enough, just occurred to me: normal people can easily turn into soulless sellers, casually dropping ridiculous corporate jargon while taking money out of the same group they call community.
on Feb 29
Minutes to Midnight - Read later
0 0
My latest post generated a few emails from people suggesting alternatives to my semi-manual Instapaper solution. The back-and-forth convinced me to describe how I use read later services.
on Feb 22
Minutes to Midnight - A Kafkaesque digital relationship with ourselves
0 0
Words are crucial to build a sense of online community, however many of us have been using them straight out of a soulless corporate lingo in order to sell ourselves as a product.
on Feb 9
Minutes to Midnight - The permanent commodification of arts
0 0
I think the streaming industry was never conceived on a decent business model. Its level of gaslighting is astonishing, and successful.
on Feb 1
Minutes to Midnight - How I learned to stop worrying and merge personal with work
0 0
Over the last few weeks I’ve introduced changes to the website. While the design has received relatively minor tweaks, and a new typeface, structure and language have substantially shifted.
on Jan 31
0 0
I’ve been running an online journal since March 2002. Whether personal or work-related, I write about what interests me. I have a list of favourite posts, an archive by tags, and collections of case studies, both sound design, and web design.
on Jan 22
Minutes to Midnight - Giving context to a blogroll
0 0
Garrit Franke’s recent post, titled “Roast my site”, motivated me to write about something that has always bugged me with personal sites: the grocery-style blogroll.
on Dec 17
Minutes to Midnight - I stopped using Feedbin for RSS
0 0
When my Feedbin annual renewal approached I decided to look at it objectively, and check if a cheaper alternative existed. Turns out I had it already.
on Dec 5
Minutes to Midnight - ‘Love Field’ featured on ‘Turn Me On, Dead Man’
0 0
On the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, Todd Gardner featured my song in a special episode of his podcast.
on Nov 22
Minutes to Midnight - Disconnecting
0 0
I’m quietly cutting on the habit of being always connected. Fighting my tendency to add ideology to tech choices, I’d decided to confront things from a different point of view.
on Oct 5, 2023