In the past few years my activities on this site - but I would say more in general, as the same pattern happened also on social media - have progressively shifted away from pure casual blogging and reporting of personal matters to a more focused discussion of scientific topics, always lingering around my research interests. 
I believe this rather unintentional but unavoidable drift has two main causes. On one side, I have aged! When I started blogging I was still in my late thirties, and now I am about to turn sixty. This coming of age comes with a heavier load of experience, much of which advises against putting personal matters on the public scene, as that may impact both the private sphere and the work environment. On the other side, blogs have come of age too - people find it much less appealing to seek an interaction with bloggers than to scroll from video to video on instagram or tiktok; and commenting has progressively moved away from intense back-and-forthing on blog threads to troll-esque droppings on facebook posts.

The shift mentioned above also had the consequence that my posting rate here has dropped significantly. That too was an unintended effect, and one compounded with the higher responsibility and workload that life pours on your desk as you move forward. Also, the smaller number of interactions in the comments thread with casual readers of this column reduced a bit my motivation, to be honest.

Still, I am here, trying to do my best to keep producing good content, for who wants to read it. And today I am thinking that perhaps I should make an attempt to let this column gain back some of the personal touch it has mostly lost in the past few years. For in truth, the real reason for blogs to exist is that the owner has a keen interest in keeping a diary - a place where to store impressions, emotions, half-baked ideas. Blog comes from b-log, or web-log (the abbreviation is credited to Peter Merholz). It is an online diary more than anything else - an online logging of anything from brain farts to rants to brilliant new ideas. And that is the fun of it, really. 

The fact that for a scientist there is an important social utility in reporting about his or her research activity is added juice, but it is only specific of scientific blogs - the ones you read on this site. The two things should coexist, and add value and support each other.

So that's it - my core dump from this morning: a reflection on the fact that blogging here still has a couple of worthy functions, even if nobody but bots read the column (but I believe there still is a significant readership, numbers say). A private one, to keep a diary, and a public one, doing science outreach.

Today it is time for a private one, in line with the above. The long-time readers (there are still maybe a few dozens) of this blog know that 14 years ago I parted from my wife. Although I certainly do not regret it, it was a painful decision for me, and one that inflicted significant pain on her too; and understandably, she was angry at me for quite a while. We had two children to manage but real interactions were very sporadic - I think I saw her in person only four or five times in all these years. And as our children are now adults, there are even fewer reasons to have any contact: just one or two emails per year, when there are financial matters to sort out.

Since today is her 60th birthday, and I still have feelings for her - of course of a different nature than 35 or 20 years ago, but still real - I decided she could take an expression of those, after all this time. In the past I had only allowed myself to send her a note when her mother died, but had got back a quite negative feedback. But from that unpleaseant exchange a few years have further gone by... So I tried again, sending her my best wishes for the anniversary. And I think she has grown too, as she immediately sent back her heartfelt thanks. 

So here it is, a quite uninformative, unnecessary piece of information for you, but a small b-log here for my own sake, in case I manage to grow old enough to have time to read back this column for memories.