Sometimes the world finds out about a famous person’s death. “Died from age”, the reporters say. I don’t understand how someone in their right mind can say such a thing. Age is just a number that shows how old the person is. It doesn’t impact anything directly but the amount of candles on a cake.

The more one lives, the more one has experienced — good and bad. By having a paper cut on my finger I might have let a couple of dangerous bacteriae into my body — nothing excruciating — but many such cuts are lethal. So is the story for any other disease.

People don’t die from age, they die from many little scars that pile up over time.

Part 2: Why our body succumbs to little scars

Sometimes I need to use Private Browsing in Safari. It’s obviously a misnomer because there’s nothing private about it, but it’s generally useful to get better deals.

Once I close that window and I need to reopen the website later, I have to search for everything again. Dear Apple, please fix this!

Most hotels give customers door tags with “Do not disturb” written on them. I don’t understand why. It’s obvious that no person ever wants to be ever disturbed. If you think that it’s something about cleaning the room, it isn’t: hotels give out these tags even when you’re staying for one night.

Plus, in hotels with actual keys, you give them to the reception when leaving. Therefore the hotel knows when you’re gone. In those with plastic cards, the hotel knows I’m in my room as soon I as open the door.

I am in one of these today, and there’s a button instead of a tag. The button works only when I have my card inside the slot (I tried the business card approach; everything works only when the card is in there), so I took a second card. And as soon as I come back from outside DND is deactivated so I have to press the button once more. This button would be super useful if it would physically block the door from being opened by hotel staff or anybody else with the key, but it just shines a barely noticeable LED.

P. S. Does the Ritz Carlton do this?

Lines on a circle-shaped square point to where the landmarks are. This kind of wayfinding is perfect for a lovely medieval village like Dolceacqua: it’s useful yet unintrusive.

Up close:

The Pigna Library happens to host events. There is a dedicated events block to get the readers to know about them.

When it came time to expand the “add” page beyond books, Ilya and I decided to kill the interface altogether.

To add an event, the librarian just writes what the event is. The plus sign received a beautiful frame to be on par with its friends — books.

See also: The interface is evil

Bad. Levers:

Bad. Buttons that are located in a weird place:

Bad. Buttons that make fingers bleed:

Good. Those that aren’t any of the above:

Excellent. Those that remember being pressed:

Obviously, all buttons should be responsive to touches in gloves. There should be no buttons on trains that go only through a closed space.

Added on May 29, 2020: Buttons should not be used during the coronavirus pandemic.

The more you know.

Music on hold sucks. I am interested in reading an article or watching a video, but instead I have to pay attention to when the music ends and the operator starting babbling.

The best system would be a nice sound (like Nice’s tram’s, no pun intended) every thirty seconds or so to let me know the phone system didn’t break and that I’m still in the queue.

I’m going to be in Genoa from June 27 to June 28, and perhaps a couple of other days in July.

The rest of the time I will be in-between Sanremo, France, Turin, and Bologna.

If you wanna meet, send me an email.