Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Other


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It’s not depression, it’s just an overload of a-holes

Ever since I saw my father sink into depression and drag all of our family with him in his self-destructive attitude, I have blamed myself for not being able to catch the hints early on, and I have also started keeping my mind under observation.
Scared of losing it? You bet.

I have written in the past about the ups and downs of pursuing what could be described rather presumptuously as a creative career – be it writing, or teaching, or scientific research.
The condition of being constantly engaged, the mind constantly working on ideas, connections, developments, is in my opinion a big help in keeping dark mood at bay, but when it fails, it helps the dark moods to come on and do their thing.

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In the last few weeks, while battling with insomnia and other things, I noticed a curious thing: I’d be perfectly fine until sunfall, and then a sort of exhaustion would creep over me, stopping me from doing anything constructive.
Even reading a book becomes a fight, while a deep sense of unhappiness sets over my spirit.
It really got me scared. Continue reading →


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More shopping suggestions from Amazon

Amazon keeps suggesting me books, and I am happy to report the very dubious books and DVDs about the Fascist Regime are gone – and gone are the books about the Arabian Nights and the Tits & Sand movies, alas.

logoRight now, Amazon is pretty sure I need a writing handbook and/or a programming handbook. Which is not all bad: I have just accepted a suggestion from the latest mail and splurged 99 cents on a book about data analysis with Python, because after all environmental data analysis was my “real job”, and I like to keep up to date.
Also, turns out data analysis in Python is one of the most requested skills in tech jobs right now – not that they’ll ever hire an old guy lost in the hills somewhere, but let’s power-up, the CV, what?

The writing handbooks are a different thing: those I’d like to add to my collection, such as the one by Scarlet Thomas or the one by Philip Pullman, are expensive as hell. And the cheap ones are really a sorry lot – including the handbook about characters of that (supposedly) noted author that manages to get an example character’s name wrong on page one. Not good. Not good at all.

Curiously enough, no matter if it’s suggesting me programming books or writing books, now Amazon slips into the list at least a title by Ursula K. Le Guin, and one or more titles by Virginia Woolf.
Many of which I already have, having bought them on Amazon.
Mysteries of the Algorithm.


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Over 50.000

This is a brief post because something interesting happened while I was on vacation: not only this blog just surpassed the 50.000 yearly visits (compare that to the 45.000 visits over 12 months of 2017), but we are experiencing an increase in visitors that for the first time ever has caused Karavansara to get more visits than my Italian blog, strategie evolutive.
It’s true in the last few months, I have increasingly reduced my posts on strategie evolutive – not out of ill will, but simply because it seems to me I have little more to say over there – while Karavansara, on the other hand, is growing, and so now we have more than tripled the number of visitors.

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So, while I welcome the new readers (make yourself heard in the comments!), I also want to thank my old readers, for hanging on all this time.


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The case of the Belbo crocodile and other news

So, yesterday I announced I’d take five days off.
In the following 12 hours…

1 . I was hit with an urgent translation job for an important client (”I want it for yesterday”)
2 . I found out Project:GWANGI (don’t ask, it’s Top Secret) is live and I need to get some stuff ready by Monday.

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3 . Learned that the local police and wildlife service are hunting along the river Belbo, looking for a runaway crocodile – which, hot on the heels of the illegal car wrecking operation that was busted two weeks back along the same river, and the bit about the guy that interrupted a service in church shouting he was from the Vatican Secret Services and was dragged away and locked up in the loon bin, means those BUSCAFUSCO stories keep writing themselves.

And really, these are not bad news at all – paid jobs, story ideas, Big Things coming…
Sort of makes me think I should take a vacation more often.
But anyway, things are back to HECTIC as usual.
And it’s a good thing.
This writing business is crazy.

And tonight we turn the clock back one hour – which will mess my already messed up circadian rhythms.
Vacation, I said. Five days off, I said…

 


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Taking the afternoon off

What a week.
I’ve been bedridden with a fever, I was attacked in the night by a backstabbing Persian carpet, a client vanished with a job and a fistful of bucks that would have been good for my finances, and right now I’m stuck in my house because a car race is passing through my village, and I am going through one of my usual bouts of insomnia.
I wrote less than I planned, but I have racked up an arm-long list of calls I will try and cover in the next days.
But right now, 7000 words into a 10.000 words story, I think I’ll call it a day, and retreat for a while with a good book. After all, it’s Sunday all over the world.
Have a nice day, ladies and gentlemen.