{maique}

Slow, then quick. That’s how this one went. Plenty to report: family, work, web stuff.

• 🩰 Ballet class on Monday, and I got to pick tinyMovieStar up from school and take her there, no mom this time (she was working late). I love these moments we get, just the both of us. I believe she does as well.

• 🥰 Every single day, when bed time arrives, tinyMovieStar will go to bed with her mom, listen to a story, request my presence, and a baby bottle with warm milk. I’ll prepare that, carry it over, and move to the room next to her’s, where I lie down in my bed. A few minutes later, every single day, she’ll come over, and say “Papi, you’re very lucky. I’m here to sleep with you, for just a little while. Then I’ll go back to my bed”. Most of the time she’ll stick around for a minute, two tops, before she steps down, bottle in one hand, teddy on the other. Looking back at me, in the dark, she’ll say “I love you”. I’ll say it back. We repeat that multiple times, until she’s out the room. When I’m really lucky, she’ll get to the door, turn around, and ask if I’d like her to stay a minute longer. When I’m SUPER lucky, she’s so tired that she’ll ask for a story, and fall asleep next to me.

• 🛴 My brother gifted tinyMovieStar a scooter for her birthday, over six months ago. She never paid any attention to it until last weekend, when she suddenly fell in love with it. It was parked at my in-laws, but we brought the darn thing home. It is now used to commute from the bedroom to the living room, on top of the usual bedroom-bathroom route. And, as added bonus, we now must explain why she cannot ride the thing to school, every day, adding precious minutes to our morning routine.

• 🎂 Mom’s birthday was Friday’s highlight. The 84th. Yup, Mom turned 84. Hard to believe. We went out for the mandatory birthday dinner, as weekday lunch is impossible to set up. We ended up at a Brazilian Rodízio place we like, but ate too much. I was then up all night, cursing myself for still thinking I’m 20. I also still think my mom is 50.

• 🎃 Halloween, that centuries days old tradition in the country! We now must celebrate it, of course. Kids cannot escape the constant Halloween references. Cartoons, stores, even at school. So, grandpa got a pumpkin, and carved it with tinyMovieStar. We do celebrate the holiday, but on a more traditional way: people use this day to visit their departed loved ones at the cemetery. A lot like Dia de los Muertos, but with none of the singing and being merry. Just the depressing bits, in fact. My father still does that, meeting his brothers (the ones still left), and visiting the other ones, in what we call The Graveyard Tour. We have skipped the day for a long time. This year we actually considered joining them, so that tinyMovieStar could meet some cousins, and the place where grandpa was born, but it’s a very long drive there (and back on the same day), and the crying part would probably leave her with very bad memories. We scheduled a visit for Easter. Happier times.

• 📷 Work has been slow for a couple of weeks now, but got two days (three in the end) in this week. Had to go to Estoril, for a conference. Enough to keep me entertained. Not much else. Still, on the first day there, by a very unfortunate glitch in communication (despite the mandatory WhatsApp group that was created for the event), I showed up hours in advance! Second day was a lot more interesting, but there’s a certain someone on the client’s team that I cannot stand, even from the safe distance of a WhatsApp group. I just stopped replying to their messages or, even worse, being a little passive aggressive. The rest of the people involved are already used to talking one-on-one, and skipping the group chat for most of the day. Other than that, it was good. I enjoyed the train ride there and back on the second day.

• 💨 Last minute assignment for the paper on Saturday, so I had to leave Halloween Weekend at the in-laws, drive back to the city, shoot a concert at a new (for me) venue, get in the car, drive back in the middle of the night, and get some sleep before waking up after a DST change, and editing the photos from the gig. Uff. Of course that, being the accomplished professional, I forgot part of the kit at home, and found myself cursing my brain the morning after, when I found out I did not have access to RAW files, and was stuck with JPG. Not ideal for this particular assignment.

• ❄️ DST ended, yes. We’re back in sad Winter Time. Hate it.

• 📥 Migration of sticker spotter is done. Well, almost. The photos are all here, but they are not tagged yet, so you can’t see them all when you visit that URL, or the tag. Imported 1200 of them, that’s how many I have to tag manually. Who believes this will be accomplished? Anyone?

• 🚀 And yet another step towards consolidating the entire array of maique’s online properties in a single place was taken! I’m now posting the occasional link I come across on the blog, instead of sharing it via the mrBatsu social.lol account. Hope no one objects to that. They will have the rocket emoji, and a “links” category, attached to them. There is one account that is still out there, alone. The photography quotes bot, on Mastodon. It will remain like that. I’ll add a few more quotes in the coming weeks. There are hundreds already, but it never hurts.

• 🍀 Vincent is always adding stuff to his apps, and Tinylytics has yet another cool feature: a webring. I had not yet enabled this one, so it was about time I took care of that. Followed the very well written documentation, and I was ready in no time. From now on, if you’d like to visit one of the personal sites that are part of this particular webring, look for the clover at the bottom of every page on the blog/site, and tap that. Enjoy.

• 🔎 I can still see myself throwing some money at Kagi, in the same way I did with Hey, back in the day. It’s something I definitely don’t need, but would be cool to have for a year. If I have to pay every month, I’ll soon give up. Probably. But if it’s already done, no way to turn back, I believe I would enjoy it. Hey did let you get your money back, and so I did. I don’t think the same will happen with Kagi. I’m not there yet, though…

• 🌍 Since I’m doing this test where I went all-in with Kagi, I’m also giving Orion a second chance. I kinda like it, but not as much as Kagi, so far. It does feel snappy, and allows both Chrome and Firefox extensions, supposedly. But I couldn’t get the first (and second) extension I tried to work. Even getting the supported 1Password extension to work involves a number of extra steps. Not the nicest experience. Also has the oddest shortcut ever to show/hide sidebar, at least on my Portuguese keyboard. Other than that, it’s a browser. It works.

• 📺 Patriot, as in the past couple of weeks, has been the one show I have watched. We’ve been watching a lot less tv these days, in fact. A lot less.

• 🎙 Managed to listen to a couple of podcast episodes, as I drove around on my own a bit this week. Manton was on The Vergecast: the poster’s guide to the new internet, so I listened to that one. Also Underworld, and Smartless, the Rachel Maddow episode, a nice one. Still time for an episode of Ruminate, 171 - The Aforementioned Jason. Core Intuition was on the playlist as well, with episode 574: Curating All the Answers.