Home on Marco Dalla Stella

Week 19/26

Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since the last post. Will there be a lot of updates? Not really.

A lot happened, but most of it is not very interesting to write about. Or maybe it is, but I’m not that good to make it sound interesting.

Work

Since January, I’m an employee again at an IT company. In December I left my previous company after almost 10 years. Was it a hard decision? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely. It was becoming a toxic relationship: no one was happy.

Up to week 43

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Personal

In the last weeks there were some ups and downs, I had to deal with some anxiety, but it has been much better than week 39. The change of season and the switch from DST to Standard Time always takes a toll on my mental health.

That said, I’m not a hermit. I’m still enjoying going out with my girlfriend and friends. My agoraphobia kicks in only when I’m alone.

Week 39

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Personal

This was a hard week for my anxiety, probably due to the sudden change of season (the temperature dropped by 10 degrees, I think), and some personal issues.

How this affect my daily life? I’m agoraphobic, so I have huge anxiety when I travel alone, even on short distances. That’s very annoying, there are good times and bad times: fortunately, over the past decade, the bad times have become increasingly rare, I will survive this as well.

Week 38

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Personal

Another boring week, the weather in Italy has been nice but between work and personal issues I didn’t have time to enjoy it. I did some gardening on the weekend, so it was “work” plus “fun”.

I’m still going on with the “Gone” series: after “Hunger”, I started with “Plague”. I have to admit that, against my predictions, the series gets darker and more mature as it goes. As someone said “What would happen if Stephen King wrote Lord of the Flies?”

Week 37

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Personal life

Another boring week. I finished “Hunger” and started “Lies”. Like the other two books, it’s not that deep, but I started to care for a couple of characters, so I’m curious to see how the book goes. This third book is also interesting also because “religion” is the main theme: different views on faith fighting each other… I’ve always been fascinated with the concept, even if my “rational” mind refuses any sort of faith. I’m still resonate with Jiddu Krishnamurti when he said:

Week 35 and 36

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Personal life

The last couple of weeks have been pretty boring; not much has happened. I’m starting to get a bit fed up with some unresolved matters.

I finished “Gone” and, since I don’t have a real alternative, I started “Hunger” from the same series. It’s easy to read but boring—perfect for bedtime.

I’m doing more gardening; I enjoy doing something with my hands other than pressing keys on a keyboard. It makes me feel real.

Week 34

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Personal life

I turned 44 on Sunday 24, so now I'm officially older than my grandfather. It's funny thinking that me and my father are older than he was. He lived through the '40s to the '70s, saw a world war and the reconstruction of a nation… He probably lived more lives in his 43 years on this earth that I'll ever live.

Time is relative for sure. If you have a PhD in physics, sorry for the joke.

Week 33

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Personal life

Nothing much is going on. The weather has been quite hot here in northern Italy, so I spent most of my time at home. Luckily, the temperature in the countryside drops in the evening, so we could sleep without air conditioning.

We are having some trouble catching a mole that is destroying our garden. I’m trying some non-lethal methods, but I’m afraid the approach is not going to be effective.

Week 32

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Personal life

The week went smoothly, not a lot to say. I finished reading The Martian: nice book for an engineer (which I’m not), it reminds me of Robinson Crusoe. I’m now reading Recursion, quite tripping.

Work

August is a quiet and dead month. I’m spending my time maintaining minor software bugs, doing some research on my favorite language (Clojure), and I started learning Rust. I found this course from Google (Comprehensive Rust) and I’m going through it. Why not the official Rust Book? I have this complex, I’m unable to conform and I feel the need to take the “road less traveled”.

Week 31

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Personal life

I skipped last week, since I was on holiday. The weather was not nice to us, it rained three out of five days, but we had time to relax, eat good food, drink good wine (Friulano rules!), and spend more time with our dogs, without thinking too much about the troubles of our daily lives.

Work

I’m still thinking about my future. I’m digging into different directions:

Still toying with ML

I’m continuing my studies on ML, the only downside is having to deal with Python. I know there are a lot of different possibilities out there: Noj for Clojure, JuliaML for Julia, deeplearning4j for Java…

Week 29

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a summary of week 29, 2025:

This week went quite smoothly, but not really productive, with some hiccups here and there. Next week I’ll be on holiday, I hope to free my mind for a few days.

No news, good news?

So, I don’t have a lot to say about this week.

I dug a little deeper in k8s. I had to deal with it sometimes in the past, but there were always one or two persons on the team dedicated to the infrastructure. For this client, there is only one person, and he’s not constantly on the project, so I have to figure out some stuff for myself. Still, I don’t understand the reason for using k8s for a 200-300 users at max.

Week 28

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a summary of week 28, 2025:

This week was quite challenging mentally. I’m looking forward to my trip to Fagagna with my partner and my dogs in a couple of weeks. Nice places, nice food, and nice company: I can’t ask for more.

JavaScript and Vue.js

I have to use Vue.js on one of my client’s projects. I don’t like it: it’s messy, verbose, and counterintuitive. I don’t know why anyone wants to work with something like this. I feel much better with an event-driven framework like re-frame.

Week 27

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a summary of week 27:

Taking notes

I’m not really a neat person, so I need some kind of system to keep my notes organized. I tried different systems in the past, from Zettelkasten to BASB, but in the end, no complex system worked for me.

This week, I set up a minimal workflow to help me collect and digest the information I need.

As an old-time Emacs user, I’m using Org-mode, Orgzly Revived, and Wallabag to keep track of the stuff I came across online. I’m going to dig into this workflow in a separate blog post.

Summing up

Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It is perhaps a bit strange to start a blog by summing things up… but it is still a starting point.

Current status

I’m 44 years old and I’ve been a software developer for 25 years. 10 years ago, I started a consulting and development company. I thought it was the best way to do what I loved: solving other people’s problems with creativity, intelligence and elegance.

It turns out it’s not what I expected: money always gets in the way, so you end up doing stuff you don’t like or picking projects you don’t care much about. I think it’s part of the consulting way: being able to work on what you love is quite a luxury these days.

About me

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

My name is Marco and I’m a code alchemist, thinker, and musician.

Alchemist, ‘cause I think computer science is about transmutation: instead of noble metals, we try to obtain noble data. This involves science, philosphy, magic and a bit of faith. It’s a complex matter.

Thinker, ‘cause I choose to follow the statement “The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.”. I choose to solve those problems with my intellect and some wizardry called programming languages.