In wait for the next enemy

A visit to WW1 forts cannot be complete without a walk into the trenches where the opponents used to live, spy and shoot at the enemy on the facing mountain or on the opposite side of the valley in between. Today the two flags are waving one close to the other, even though the European starred blue flag sits in between, as if it was a sign of a peace come for necessity, opportunity. In these days, looks like that the "enemy" has to be found elsewhere, very far from the fresh mountains where the Great War was staged.

Forte Campomolon

I already posted in August a picture taken on the summit of Mount Campomolon, on the border between today's Veneto and Trentino, Italy and Austria one century ago, where the remains of an Italian WW1 fort can be found. Now I've managed to process some shots I took that day with my SRL.

An ascent to one of these military cathedrals distributed along the natural borders drawn by the Alps tops is almost a metaphysical experience, provided you have an understanding of what really happened there long time ago. Every corner has a story to tell and it really does. These forts, no matter if they were on the Italian or Austrian side, were so accurately designed and carefully built as if they had never come to feel the scars of the falling bombs. Forte Campomolon destruction was ordered by the same Italian generals, as they couldn't leave it in the hands of the Austrian, on May 1916, the day that under the pressure of the Strafexpedition (the Punitive Expedition) they were forced to leave it.
On top of these forts the silence talks, no matter the wind. I have never felt the same while visiting a medieval castle or an ancient roman camp. Here the presence of all the young men that spent years killing each other is still vivid, even if there's not much left to see beside stones.

Fort Campomolon

What remains of Forte Campomolon, a WW1 Italian fort facing the former Austrian border, is just a round-about gallery dug into the mountain sandstone to help the heavy artillery climb up to the fort roof. The top of the mount has been now conquered by tall trellises carrying arrays oh huge drum-like antennas for long haul radio hops. Rubble and debris are spread everywhere. A stone hung on a wall celebrates an Italian officer who sacrificed his and others lives to defend this forgotten corner of the World.

Luckily, the strong winds blowing from the bottom of the valley conceal the hiss of the telecom cabinets cooling system. I can only hear my breath echoing in the emptiness of this circular gallery.

(Made and sent from my mobile.)

Having the right tools

Some pictures are better than others at inspiring deep thoughts or disclosing unexpected mind connections. The strange thing in all this is that you don't know where and when such epiphanies appear. If you're lucky this can occur just a moment before you decide to unveil your work and put it on display. For those, like us blog editors, who aim to put on the shelf both their pictures and inner feelings there can't be anything better.

I was uploading this picture of surgery tools I took last summer while visiting a World-War-I Austrian fortress, in Trentino, now turned into one of the best conserved and most instructive war museums in Italy, when a simple connection with my current job activity came up.

I've been using, let me dare to say mastering for years a design and verification methodology that used to give excellent results in the past time. As it always happens in every field of technical development, this methodology is now obsolete and no longer able to keep pace with the needs of modern electronic design. Having this in mind, years ago, I prepared myself in advance, attending presentations, courses and making short trials but never completed the step and made the grade. I kept on working with my good old methods, leveraging on the fact that mastering with it provided me the same quality levels of a weak grip on a new methodology.

I pushed this condition up to the limits, until I found myself alone in a dead-end, with a design environment that was shouting for something better, easier and safer. All my younger colleagues, although less experienced in "the method", were progressing on a field I was instead fearing to endeavor.

This evening, as I stopped watching again at the tools a surgeon living one century ago had at his disposal to attempt saving the lives of soldiers wounded by heavy artillery, I thought about the low level of self-confidence I had reached some days ago when I realized that my tools weren't good enough to carry on.

In such a situation, shoulders to the wall, I had to look at the new tools with a different sight, as if they were my parachute and, with some chances not to succeed, I started using them step by step although I knew that initially I would have had the same efficiency of a practitioner (incidentally this word, "practitioner", is used somewhere in the world to point out to what we, in Italy, call the family doctor).

After some highs and lows, today I completed my first evolutionary step and felt really happy at the end, when I saw that the system was working as expected. I don't know if this investment was really worth, i.e. if I'll keep on doing this activity in the coming years. I know it's been helpful in any case. Having the right tools is not an easy job. It's tremendously necessary.