C-list Blogger Since 2004.
Systems Mechanic, Conference Wannabe. Hot chili, mild takes.
he/him || they/them
Not Building My Own Thermostat — I Went With TadoX, Here’s My Impressions
When my wife and I started looking for the house we wanted to buy, we have been looking at both second hand, and newly built homes, as both of those end up with a different set of tradeoffs. At the end, we decided the right trade off was to get a new build — and it turns out that almost all of the new builds being sold are sold "on plan", with contracts drawn up well before the house is finished.
Reflection On My School Days
This is an extended, long-form version, of something I mentioned in passing on Threads. Just in case you think I keep repeating myself. Despite the awfully silent 2025, for reasons I explained previously, I've been writing this blog for over 20 years. Almost all of that is in English (though the original posts were in Italian), almost all of that is in long-form (though there were a few short, near-microblogging posts, from the time before…
Will We Ever Get An European Payment Rail?
Preamble and full disclosure. The topic I'm writing about in this post is somewhat connected to my employer, Meta Platforms (i.e. the parent company of Facebook and WhatsApp), who dabbles in payment rails in certain markets, and has dabbled on a larger basis before. I am not involved in any of those products, have no insider knowledge of their internal work, or their communications with the various regulators, consortiums, or…
https://flameeyes.blog/2026/02/13/will-we-ever-get-an-european-payment-rail/
The Blog’s Most Clicked Articles in 2025
I'm not a big fan of the whole "wrapped" meme from services — a lot of things for me don't quite line up on a calendar year basis, so I don't find that particularly compelling to look at. I also find it fairly silly to "wrap" an year at the beginning of December for any service that doesn't have seasonal patterns — the reason why Spotify, the ur-wrapper, releases theirs well before the year's end, is because for many people,…
https://flameeyes.blog/2026/01/30/the-blogs-most-clicked-articles-in-2025/
Market Segmentation: EcoFlow Delta 3 Plus
One of the things that seriously annoy me about being on the Internet, particularly around the communities heavily influenced by Doctorow and Stallman, is that most of those members, confronted with business decisions influencing design and implementation of devices and services, can only respond with one of two discussion-terminating memes: enshittification or defective by design. I find these answers annoying because they…
https://flameeyes.blog/2026/01/16/market-segmentation-ecoflow-delta-3-plus/
As For Why We Left London
Nearly exactly five years ago, after my wife and I left our first flat in London, I wrote a post explaining the reasons we left. I thought it would be a good fit to explain why, five years later, we left London altogether and now effectively live in the suburbs. So first of all, I have to say I don't regret…
https://flameeyes.blog/2026/01/02/as-for-why-we-left-london/
Where Did Flameeyes Go?
Hint: not far at all. If you're one of the handful of readers of this blog, you probably noticed that I've been awfully quiet for quite literally most of 2025. Unlike the previous time I took a sudden hiatus, the reason this time is a happy one: my wife and I decided to move out of London, and get our own place, given the…
I posted an update over onto my fundraiser's page together with this week's steps!
Comes with a picture of the trike I have posted about before!
https://step.diabetes.org.uk/fundraising/diego-elios-fundraising-page
Welcome to my Diabetes UK One Million Step Challenge page! I’m stepping up for Diabetes UK this summer to support the 5 million people in the UK who live with diabetes, day in day out. And you can too, just by making a donation. Did you know someone is diagnosed with diabetes every two minutes? Diabetes UK are on a mission to create a world where diabetes can do no harm by funding vital research into life-changing treatments and providing support to help people to live better with diabetes. But they need our help. No matter how much you can give, it will make a difference. So please donate today.
This is the time of the year that I usually remind people who are okay with Adobe and Amazon, that you can get a discounted Creative Cloud Photography Plan via Prime Day.
But then I forgot that the 20GB plan I use was discontinued this past January.
Still, at £110/yr it's worth buying *now* rather than waiting for the 20GB to be completely dissolved and having to pay full price for it.
The start of this challenge had a bit of a weird timing for me, since we just moved, thus I actually did most of the steps *in* the house.
But things will shape better soon, particularly since they just finished paving our pedestrian walkway, so walking out of the house is a *a lot nicer.*
https://step.diabetes.org.uk/fundraising/diego-elios-fundraising-page
Welcome to my Diabetes UK One Million Step Challenge page! I’m stepping up for Diabetes UK this summer to support the 5 million people in the UK who live with diabetes, day in day out. And you can too, just by making a donation. Did you know someone is diagnosed with diabetes every two minutes? Diabetes UK are on a mission to create a world where diabetes can do no harm by funding vital research into life-changing treatments and providing support to help people to live better with diabetes. But they need our help. No matter how much you can give, it will make a difference. So please donate today.
