User:Tommi/T2 Assessment
To view a nicely formatted version of this page in plain HTML, visit this page on Sergio, the server of the XPUB 2025/27 class.
The HTML page is parsed with Alejandro (see the Metassessment
section, below).
Most essentially, the characteristic and everlasting challenges of my (artistic, academic, professional, emotional) life constitute a perpetual multidimensional tension among different practices, obsessions, principles, stimuli, events close and far from me.
Every single daily choice I make is a step towards a greater clarity. Yet, it threatens the brittle equilibrium of my identity. This is worsened by being a curious and enthusiastic person that inhabits a burning world paradoxically full of thrilling opportunities.
The first two trimesters at XPUB have both broadened and enlightened my perspective on some of the many variables that govern the tension steering the path I choose to follow.
It is to nourish a more profound reflection that I wish to share what I learned through metaphors that relate more or less directly with instances, activities, experiences, projects carried out over the past months.
Therefore, while this page is intended to be a broad and curated list of such experiences, during the presentation of the assessment I will allow myself to be spontaneous and have this text as a reference, not a script.
🤷 The puzzle of identity
I consider my identity the summation of different variables that come together more or less mysteriously, a puzzle. Each piece falls into place or barely fits together with the others, thus forming a dynamic tension among all of them.
Over the past two months (since the 25th January 2026, according to my notes), I annotated pairs of opposed tendencies that reveal themselves as tensions in my life, in my work, and in my practice.
| listening | notetaking |
| advanced individual learning | collective learning |
| technical solutions | social practices |
| bodging | useful software |
| impulsive intuitions | long-term planning |
| crafting | documenting |
| making | absorbing |
| doing | reflecting |
| working | researching, brewing |
| vertical approach | horizontal “mingling” |
| thinking | metathinking |
| self-referential | meta |
On Thursday 26th March 2026, without editing or revising them, I engraved them on a slate of plywood, and laser-cut each piece in the shape of a jigsaw puzzle—please see The Making of
section below for a detailed explanation of the process.
As a result, this puzzle embodies a modelised representation of my actual identity. It is a physical, very partial, abstracted, and generalised version of tommi.space, the only other public item I dare to associate to a representation of my inner self, since I call it the virtual representation of my mind
.
Other tensions I thought of only after making the puzzle:
| serious, thoughtful | fun, entertaining |
| conceptual, theoretical | practical, crafty |
| creativity | production/organisation |
🧘 The balancing act
Marina (see below) is a meta-balance: a balance that reflects about balancing itself. The equilibrium is dynamic, not static. What this meta-balance does is the exact same of what XPUB does for me: it transforms a tension into an equilibrium.
Within the context of this master course, I am constantly re-evaluating the relationship between opposing tendencies that rarely find fulfillment in the extremes, but rather in a delicate balancing act.
What follows is a chronological summary of the key moments and reflections of Special Issue 28 and Special Issue 29 the linked pages gather a more comprehensive account of all my thoughts and the relative documentation.
🤖 Puzzling Machines
Since the very moment I started XPUB, I have been (over)thinking, possibly obsessing, about the making of Pöuli, and of the (currently very incomplete) website for the Special Issue 28. Wholly absorbed by my tooling hyperfocus, I lost track of time. All collective conversations passed through me. Before I could realize it, people were forming groups and started working on their project for the main event at Ubik.
So Tommi, what are you going to do?
Ehm… … … … …
…I will build The Metathinking Metamachine!
I genuinely had no idea about what that meant. In my head, I could not picture anything beyond the face of Niklas Luhmann, the inventor of the prodigious Zettelkasten system[1].
The intention was to address the theme of the 28th special issue in relation to my own obsessions:
- A Metamachine: a machine about machines, a software made to solve problems, and interact with, other software.
- Metathinking: the process of thinking about thinking, better explained in the linked article.
At that point, conceptualizing, preparing, and enacting anything that would actually do something useful, or produce a meaningful outcome was unfeasible and idealistic. So what then?
Thanks to Manetta’s and Marloes’ guidance and suggestions, I decided to base everything on irony and satire.
The one thing I was sure of was that I intended on focusing on a pseudo-spiritual and grotesque setting. I based all the performance on a spiritual seance to connect with the Gods of Tooling. Furthermore, while sharing my anxiety and my doubts about the performance with Martina and Claudio, I got to the conclusion that the whole performance should have been fun: I got very excited of performing some sort of nerd stand-up comedy.
Albeit the path leading to the performance has been extremely stressful because I was terribly confused and overwhelmed by the novelty of my first Special Issue and its many inputs, I am incredibly proud of it, for a series of reasons.
- It was my first
performance
. I never realised that I would actually define myself as anartist
and this performance marked a watershed moment in my self-identification as one. Actually, the way I comfortably call myself ispseudo-artist
. - Even though I learned it the hard way, I deeply understood the collaborative nature of XPUB. I have been doing many projects with others, but I did not commit to any collective project to develop with others. I found out that I must actively pursue an intertwining of practices with my fellow students.
🏠 Our Digital Home
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🪁 XXPUB
- XXPUB :
- Extra XPUB;
- XL XPUB .
⁂ FediForum October 2025
What
FediForum is the global virtual unconference about the Open Social Web (ActivityPub, ATProto, and friends).
When
From 17:00 until 22:00 on the 7th and 8th October 2025.
Where
In Rotterdam, in the XPUB Studio on day 1 (October 7th), and in Varia on day 2 (October 8th).
FediForum requires a ticket to join, but the university covered participation for XPUB students + guests. You are most welcome to come and join us in person!
How
Open and free participation (only in person attendance)!
We will be connecting collectively to the virtual meeting. No previous knowledge or skills required: the topics discussed won’t just be technical, there will be a lot of discussions about the evolving meaning of social networks, and how open protocols can make them more human and truly social
.
On day 2 we will be cooking vegan dinner all together!
FediForum Track @ SFSCON 2025
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Code as Critique
I was kindly indvited by professor John Boy to join the workshop Code as Critique: Relearning Technical Practice in the Ruins of Big Tech, followed by a keynote by the one and only Christine Lemmer-Webber, co-author of the ActivityPub protocol, among many other things.
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💾 Introduction to Local-First
Where: XPUB Studio / Aquarium
When: Thursday 4th December 2025, 17:00
Who: Guest lecturer Tobias Bernard, GNOME and Reflection developer (among maany other things)
What: Tobias will guide us and introduce us to the concept of Local-First. We’ll explore together the concept of collaborative, peer-to-peer and encrypted software. We will also play with Reflection, a native GTK app that Tobias is co-developing with the p2panda team, aimed at collectively editing text simultaneously. The app essentially consists in local, offline, and encrypted version of Etherpad.
The event is open to the public!
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🧠 Federated Knowledge @ 39C3
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FOSDEM 2026
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💕 I Love Free Software Day 2026
I Love Free Software Day is the annual celebration of Software Freedom, focusing on gratitude and appreciation towards those who work to make Free Software, be it developers, maintainers, translators, or anyone who contributes to the ecosystem.
The 2026 edition was titled Mantainers Matter, to highlight the often invisibilised work of maintaining software, not merely adding new features.
Internet Archive Europe, Amsterdam
The 2026 theme immediately made me (that is Tommi) think of Bonfire, a federated software co-designed with different communities, and recognising on maintenance work as care work.
Therefore, I invited Mayel de Borniol, one of the core maintainers of the project, to host a presentation at the Internet Archive Europe, Amsterdam, on Saturday 14th February 2026.
We opened the event with a reading of Ada & Zangemann – A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream, both in English and in Dutch.
Kiki was very kind by volunteering to make the fantastic poster for the event.
Snackbar Frieda, Rotterdam
On Friday 13th February 2026 I hosted my workshop Knitting Our Internet at Snackbar Frieda, in Rotterdam.
Nodes on a Web – Unconference
Reticulum Workshop
🏕️ DWeb Camp 2026
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🪚 Tools I made/prototyped
🐙 Pöuli
💃 Cassandra
🦡 Eleventy-powered SI28 website
💆 Maziness
🕺 Alejandro
(See below)
🤔 Magic words
🧪 The making of
The making of my T2 assessment is also a meta-assessment (or metassessment of simplicity), because of a combination of two factors.
- In a way, it is how I assess myself. By preparing the assessment presentation I am reflecting on what I am proud of and where I failed, inevitably evaluating myself.
- Most importantly, it is about the making of the assessment
⚖️ Marina the scale
As I kept thinking about the way to best present my reflections over the first two trimester of XPUB, I was looking for a device to represent a constant, precarious, dynamic equilibrium, or better juggling with many different thoughts crowding my head. I started looking for an old-style scale, also in honor of my grandma’s passion for antiques.
I started telling this to all my classmates. In a quiet Saturday afternoon, during a walk with Lea, she brought me to De Majum, an adorable thrift shop in Delfshaven. Not five minutes since I was inside the shop, I found exactly what I needed.
I sent Nonna Gorix this picture, and I called her to ask her the maximum price she would put on this scale. She told me not to pay more than 20€, and that I could negotiate the price down to 15€. Eventually, I managed to buy it for 10€, especially because it did not have any plates. Victory!
I cleaned it and I added some pieces of wood at the bottom to calibrate it, as it was totally off-balance.
The only step left was to find a name for it. I named it Marina
as my godmother and former scout chief, as historically she has been my reference point for pondering decisions and finding the right equilibrium, both spiritually or not.
🧩 Making the puzzle
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Inkscape
I first created the shape of the puzzle in Inkscape, taking advantage of [github.com/Neon22/inkscape-jigsaw the inkscape-jigsaw extension], kindly suggested by Michael. I changed the colour of the stroke to red, because it is what the laser cutter interprets as a path to cut.
I wrote the key words in each puzzle piece, in black (what the laser-cutter interprets as path to be engraved) and I converted the text to a path, to avoid potential inconsistencies.
Engraving and laser-cutting
The thickest material the laser cutters at the WdKA Digilab can cut is 6mm. In the WdKA’s shop I could not find anything with that thickness, so I got a 5mm-thick MDF slate of 600×600mm. Big mistake, because MDF contains a loot of glue and it is not possible to cut it with a laser (probably because it would get on fire). After learning this, I bought a 600×600×5mm plywood slate.
I imported the SVG in the software, and the laser-cutter did everything by itself.
I realised that the default settings for plywood (65% power, 100% velocity) of that thickness made the engraving very light, but I wanted it more visible, so I changed the engraving settings to 100% power and 60% velocity.
Using the leftovers
The final puzzle is 600×400mm, so I had a leftover slate of 600×200mm. I used it to make a promotional banner for the Fediverse I am very proud of.
Meta-procrastination
By documenting this process and writing this very page, I am meta-procrastinating.
Meta-procrastination is to procrastinate by exploring and reflecting on the act of procrastination itself. It is the highest and most poignant form of procrastination, as it is potentially endless, and it self-reproduces.
Alejandro
Alejandro is a Bash script made to quickly and simply parse a Wiki page in a plain standalone HTML, and add some styling to it.
Actually, not particularly quickly
: I planned to spend a few minutes working on it, but I ended up procrastinating and refining it for several hours.
Naming
This tool is named Alejandro
because it is the title of the song by Lady Gaga I was listening to while I was creating it.
Code
#!/bin/bash
PAGE_TITLE=User:Tommi/T2_Assessment
TITLE='Tommi’s T2 Assessment'
BASE_URL=https://pzwiki.wdka.nl
WIKI_API=$BASE_URL/mw-mediadesign/index.php
PAGE_URL="$WIKI_API?action=render&title=$PAGE_TITLE"
OUTPUT=~/public_html/t2.html
STYLE="@import url('$WIKI_API?action=raw&ctype=text/css&title=User:Tommi/T2_Assessment/style.css');"
PAGE=`curl --location $PAGE_URL` # Using curl is better than wget to store the content in stdout. Nevertheless, absolute links to resources must be transformed at a later time.
# The following is a very basic HTML template from which data is read.
CONTENT="<!DOCTYPE HTML><html lang=en><head><title>$TITLE</title><meta charset=UTF-8><style>$STYLE</style></head><body><main><h1>$TITLE</h1><article>$PAGE</article></main></body></html>"
# Saving the HTML content parsed by MediaWiki to a local output file
echo "$CONTENT" > "$OUTPUT"
# This regular expression goes through the output file and prepends the wiki’s BASE_URL to all absolute links
sed -E --in-place 's/("| )\/mw-mediadesign/\1https:\/\/pzwiki.wdka.nl\/mw-mediadesign/g' "$OUTPUT"
Improvements
- Some variables should be passed as arguments, instead of hardcoded
- Some variables should be stored as environment variables, instead of hardcoded
- The HTML content template could be read from a template file
- ↑ Zettelkasten on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten