I’ve been using this website as a platform to experiment visual solutions that might appease my aesthetic sense, and at the same time be more accessible for everyone.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
A gen X with a straight to the point attitude. Based in the UK, I play bass and design sound under the moniker Minutes to Midnight.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
How I mixed a rework of Ember Rev’s debut album, exploiting the subproject functionality in REAPER to save time and processing power.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
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.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
Today's the day Alien Pop is out. I co-produced, mixed and mastered Rythur's debut album. He's a friend of mine from the US, currently living in Colorado. I met him online on the fediverse some time ago, where we quickly bonded. His awesomely quirky (to me) approach to songwriting has always been a source of keen curiosity. When I heard the demos a defined thought formed: "this could become a great work with the right producer". I'm not sure if I was the right-est, but it felt good. And while...| Minutes to Midnight
First of a short series of posts, where I introduce my switch to an operating system released in 2013, running in a computer built the same year. I can't possibly explain all the fine details of how it works, it'd require a book, but I'll try to dig out the best impressions. As explained at the end of July, I found myself at the bitter end of a long process of detaching from modern computing. Apple in particular. As a pure experiment, I installed and ran Mac OS X 10.9.5 (nicknamed 'Mavericks'...| Minutes to Midnight
Enough with the whining. Silvia and I have decided to kickstart the process that will ultimately lead us to share a dual citizenship. We came back to the UK two years ago, after failing to find common ground with our home country, and settled in our former house once again. Not coincidentally, we managed to find a way to pivot away from our old jobs. None of the above was an easy feat, according to Westerner standards. It took time, and a great deal of effort. Now, it would be possible (and e...| Minutes to Midnight
Once again, I find myself kind of forced to stop reading the news, in any form or shape. Filtering the shit from the interesting bits is like trying to put a barrier to a fastidious tinnitus (which I have, by the way). After a long time applying a harsh set of filters on Mastodon, where anything caught in my extensive amount of 'cancelled' keywords would simply disappear, I tried showing the 'filtered' notification for a while. It only led to the trap of clicking, seeing things that I didn't ...| Minutes to Midnight
A Mastodon post by Denny Henke, made me realise something that is currently making me really angry. He said: A lot of Apple enthusiasts are disgusted with Tim Cook and Apple given the recent display of bootlicking. I'm going to keep suggesting that we are all free to walk away from Apple's services. Your next computer can use GNU Linux. And before you dismiss it, have you tried it? Folks, I promise you, it is possible to have great and productive computing experience over here. The Free Softw...| Minutes to Midnight
A year and three months later, a follow-up on leaving the web industry. I was supposed to have distanced myself from that by now, to speak about it lightly. Not true.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
I've been running an online journal since March 2002. Here is my list of favourite posts.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
Adding some flare back to the current uninspiring design of Mac OS wasn't enough. After spending a day using an old Mac running Mavericks, I realised how I probably need to find a tiny place somewhere in the past.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
Over the last ten years or so, a dominant theme has been nostalgia. While initially convinced it was strictly related to my personal struggle with ageing, I've now changed my mind. A constant in my journal, a constant in other people's blogs and posts on the Fediverse, the accompanying creeping malaise doesn't seem to only affect Gen Xers and their process of getting old. It's everywhere, online, offline, in personal conversations, in magazine essays, books, podcasts. It's like every facet of...| Minutes to Midnight
I undid it. Leaving Linux to go back to Mac OS after several months was something that I did not foresee. However, this thing is more nuanced, and it's not the end of the line. Technically, I had never left Mac OS, as I kept my MacBook Pro on Monterey (offline) for music production anyway. So, what happened? In a nutshell, it's pretty simple. I used Linux as a daily ride for months, on a 2015 MacBook Air, and I loved it. Until my eyes got strained, and the machine started to get progressively...| Minutes to Midnight
A gen X with a straight to the point attitude. Based in the UK, I play bass and design sound under the moniker Minutes to Midnight.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
I did it. Leaving the Apple garden for Linux has been easier than anticipated. A new era of personal freedom has finally started.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
Questa sera sei bellissima abbracciami anche se penserai che non è poetica questa vita ci ha sorriso e lo sai Abbracciami Abbracciami Troveremo il modo anche quando poi saremo stanchi --- Reply via email| Minutes to Midnight
I travelled to my home country yesterday, and for the first time in a very long time, I printed my tickets. All of them, train to the airport, flight. What did I notice? Ryanair don't apparently allow to print a ticket. At least from my point of view, I did not receive an email confirmation with an attached PDF ticket after the online check-in. Spam folder was empty as well. I had to screen grab that crap from my phone and print the screenshot. Maybe I should have used a computer instead of t...| Minutes to Midnight
Late evening in July 1985, on a small seaside town in the North-East of Italy. It was hot, but not as unbearable as it is now. Back then, I used to spend some time each day, usually at dusk, sitting in our courtyard looking at the sky and imagining how it would be to see the missiles flying above us, eager to reach their targets. It strikes me now how I used to think about the possibility of nuclear war: terrified and excited at the same time. Like an inevitability that I should at least have...| Minutes to Midnight
A gen X with a straight to the point attitude. Based in the UK, I play bass and design sound under the moniker Minutes to Midnight.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
So much has changed in how I manage myself in these dystopian days, not sure where to start.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
I just watched one of the creepiest videos ever — in terms of AI, robotics, and potential futures ahead. Like JP said in a few of his recent blog posts, 'I’m really happy to be on the back half of my life'. --- From their section 'The Master Plan': Today, we are seeing unprecedented labor shortages. There are over 10 million unsafe or undesirable jobs in the U.S. alone, and an aging population will only make it increasingly difficult for companies to scale their workforces. As a result, t...| Minutes to Midnight
I've been banging around this topic a lot lately: how shall I use technology? Particularly in the last six months. It is with a certain degree of acceptance that I'm getting to a point where I can safely say I'm done.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
An update on the amount of accounts and services that I have removed from my life, which translated in less noise and a direct personal control over online and offline things. --- While I'm in a slow process of erasing Google from my life (Android has been de-googled but PeerTube hasn't been setup yet—hence the wait), here is a quick and dry list of accounts that I have deleted so far: Adobe AirBnB Atlassian Avid Cloudflare Deviantart Discord Eventbrite Facebook Figma GitHub GitLab Instagra...| Minutes to Midnight
A gen X with a straight to the point attitude. Based in the UK, I play bass and design sound under the moniker Minutes to Midnight.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
As I wrote three weeks ago on this blog, being back to music production feels thrilling. This is a brilliant and complex concept album, in a language foreign to me, intense and with a punk attitude.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
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.| minutestomidnight.co.uk
Personal considerations about what visiting the UK meant to me, three years after my wife and I left the country.| minutestomidnight.co.uk