The existence of this website is quite clear to me (and it will be clear to you in the next chapter). The existence of the blog section, a bit less so (and it won’t be clear to you either). So I decided to write this note with a double goal in mind:

• Formalize the ideas in my mind for better clarity.
• Establish some guidelines for future notes and concepts in this part of the web.

Also, to illustrate what (if I don’t get bored) you might find on these pages.

I’ve split all the pieces of information into three main sections: Why, How, and When, listed from most important to least. This split helps me focus on one element at a time, aiming for deeper reflection (and easier changes in the future). It also gives the impression that I “thought” before writing it [cit. il tigre r24], leading the reader to believe this is a serious and worthwhile way to spend their time.

But first of all, I need to define the container for all this information: my Digital Garden. To be honest, I don’t have a formal definition of a digital garden in mind, but I like the mood it evokes when I think about it. Googling the topic, I found this article to be a good starting point, and this other one to be the most comprehensive take on the topic. From the latter, I’ve borrowed a definition of a digital garden that I’ll use as a reference:

It’s a different way of thinking about our online behaviour around information — one that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explorable space. [...] Gardens present information in a richly linked landscape that grows slowly over time. Everything is arranged and connected in ways that allow you to explore.

There are lots of definitions and variations on the theme, but in my opinion, after a while, we’re all just diverging in how we express the same core idea: “I like to put random but reachable stuff on my webspace.” Let’s get back on track.

Why

For a bit of valuable narcissism

It’s quite a habit of mine to write things down when they matter — also because, as you’ll learn, I have a terrible memory. So, I tend to record anything I find relevant, and I’m not at all jealous of my notes. I believe that if something I produce might be valuable, it would be a shame to be the only one who can use it (and admire its craftsmanship). This has been true for my school and university notes, but not only.

I love the idea of leaving something meaningful behind, especially my thoughts, mental models, and my way of shaping life. This seems like the best way to share them: the most durable, and the most in tune with who I am. At least, for as long as there’s money to pay for the domain and hosting. [ed. note: At the moment, I’m using free domain and hosting.]

I believe this could have value. I’m committed to sharing the best parts of myself and what I have done - ideally in a clear and useful format - with the hope that what I share might be useful to someone.

To Go Deep

Producing an artifact and writing things down is time-consuming and typically a slow process. However, this allows me the time to reflect deeply on what I believe is valuable in a topic.

Additionally, I don’t want to “just share my opinion.” In fact, my opinion, like anyone’s, is not particularly useful (or even totally useless) on its own. I would like to write with some sort of scientific approach, aiming to create something that could serve as a starting point for building a foundation of knowledge on a topic.

To each note, I’ll try to add documentation, references, data insights, or at least some citations, so that I can dive deeper into the subject and, in turn, you don’t have to simply trust me if the topic matters to you. It’s a win-win situation!

To Push Myself

Let’s be honest, at the moment I don’t have many relevant topics to expose to the internet, or at least not enough to justify the development of this website. But this is a great way to push myself to explore the world, learn amazing things, and try to be relevant (this could be linked to the first reason).

Additionally, the idea of “I do it so I can write about it” is a card I can play in the battle against procrastination - a sort of delayed public commitment. On the other hand, these notes will also serve as a way to align all the steps in my life, making things clearer for me, and hopefully, have a line derivative greater than 0 (or at least I’ll try to push it upward).

Why is “what” not present

This is my digital garden, so what I plant here depends on the season of my life and on what interests me at the moment. I hope that rationality, logic, and computer science will remain evergreen in my life.

At the same time, I hope that new themes will enrich my intellectual diet - maybe for limited periods, maybe not so deeply - but some form of exploration must always be present. That’s why I prefer not to define a specific main topic for this space.

How

With a not-so-serious tone

I can’t stand people who take themselves too seriously, especially when they feel the need to say something in an overly complicated way just to make it sound important. To me, language is simply a tool for sharing knowledge and facts between humans, and the best way to do that is the simplest one. When someone expresses a concept in a needlessly fancy way, the discussion isn’t really about the topic anymore, it becomes a performance about the person speaking.

"By loading an article with a plethora of scientific citations, a humanist can make another believe that his material bears the stamp of scientific approval."

Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Taleb

Of course, that doesn’t mean technical content should be dumbed down or stripped of its substance — it all depends on who’s listening reading. If I write about technical stuff, I’ll assume a minimal shared background. That’s for three reasons:

1. First of all, these are my notes, they need to be useful for me above all.
2. If you’re reading something technical, I assume you’re interested in the technical parts.
3. It’s just way easier for me to write that way :)

Trying to give some value

This is mostly linked to the first points in the "why" section. To keep it short, whenever I write an article, one of my guiding principles is, "How can this be useful to someone?". This is mainly because I believe this question is a good heuristic for determining whether something is valuable, helping me highlight the key points of the topic. Additionally, following the philosophy of "if you can’t teach it well, you don’t understand it well enough," I think it’s a useful tip for writing well-structured papers.

My Theoretical Writing process

I enjoy designing processes for tasks, especially when there's a high probability of repeating them. I believe it’s an interesting way to optimize and understand where the value lies. I hope to write enough notes to justify this formalization, but here we go. This process begins once I’ve found the idea (which, as you might imagine, is not a trivial task) and assumes that I have a sufficient level of familiarity with the topic.

1. Once the theme is decided, I start by outlining the main points. This shouldn't be a "linear" process; I prefer to write my outline on my smartphone whenever I come across valuable ideas.
2. When I'm satisfied with the outline, I set aside a block of time to dive deeper into each point, writing the draft of the article, rearrange them, and/or delete any that no longer seem relevant.
3. The next step is to search for the information I identified as missing during the previous phase, as well as explore additional articles to gain other perspectives. I do this at this stage to avoid external influence before writing the first draft.
4. Finally, I add the information and insights I’ve gathered to the draft, improving the clarity and grammar of the notes so that they are ready to be posted online without the risk of getting a call from my primary school teacher.

I came across a blog post that I found quite interesting on this topic

On the use of LLM

At the moment, I make extensive use of LLMs for tasks that I find particularly boring, but I don't believe this is a sustainable practice in the long run. My goal for these notes, and for everything I create in general, is to use them with a clear purpose and not allow them to influence my ideas or the way I express them. For my notes, I want to use LLMs strictly as a grammar consultant. In short, I only use LLMs during the fourth phase of my writing process.

Since I’m not a native English writer (though, to be honest, I also need this kind of check in my native languages), my typical prompt would be something like, “Highlight any grammar or clarity errors in this text,” allowing the LLM to correct snippets of my notes. This helps me fix my text and, over time, improve my writing skills.

When

The main goal of this section is to commit to at least one article every two months. While it feels like a challenging interval while writing this, I believe it’s a feasible time span. Feel free to ping me if I don't respect my deadline!

Some Reference

I want to end these notes with a reference to two pages that I found really interesting and inspiring.

• When I landed on Tania’s webpage, I found a peaceful space in the chaotic world of the internet, a place where content is king and noise is reduced to the minimum. I browsed through her notes pages and found the philosophy behind her article “Making the Internet a Better Place” particularly compelling. I got quite inspired by her, and the framework of my own space is heavily influenced by hers.
• I didn’t discover Mr. RIP through his blog, which I found a bit chaotic at first, but rather through some visual content. That’s where his philosophy of a “conscious life,” the FIRE movement, and how he applies it to his personal journey really caught my attention. His engineer-like way of seeing the world is very aligned with my own.

I hope that throughout my life path, I won’t forget these two pillars of thinking.

Meanwhile, in My Head…

While writing this article, my very first one, I often smiled thinking about my old self in high school. I used to hate writing essays, whether as homework or during tests. Nowadays, that same frustration has shifted to writing code documentation 🙂 ... which somehow makes writing this article feel like a pleasure in comparison!