A birthday cake.

Posted a day (or two) earlier, fearing the weekend will be messy. Long, rambling.

  • 🍕 Mandatory cry behind us, we made our way back home. Weekend we had the usual family gathering, with plenty of food and entertainment. Got home with no mood for cooking dinner, so walked to the neighbourhood pizza place, and took two pies home. Everyone was happy. We are really privileged to have so many great choices within walking distance. We’d have the chance to eat out a lot this week…

  • 🎂 Birthday week. movieStar had her birthday party parties. First one on Friday, a dinner for friends; and again on Saturday (hopefully, as this update is out before that one), a family one. We got a babysitter for tinyMovieStar, and she was OVER THE MOON, as it was one of the girls from kindergarten, one she simple adores. She spent the whole week telling us that she was having a pyjama party with her, and eating lots of strawberry ice-cream. It was good. We went to a really nice shop in the area, one that sells a ton of cool stuff, from very expensive items to really small things. I told tinyMovieStar to go wild and pick something up for mom, and we came away with… three small sponges with sparkles. Yes. That is what her mom got as a present. We love her to death, so I guess that counts for something.

  • 🇺🇸 Jonathan was in town. A friend we met on the island. He’s a super nice journalist from the US (currently San Francisco, previously NYC), and he’s visiting the country on assignment for one of those luxury type magazines that sends you around the world to try out nice hotels. That’s how we met him, in fact. He spent a couple of days in Marrakesh on the way over, and came to visit an hotel in town, and another one down in Comporta… I drove him there, and picked him up two days later. He spent the final night with us at home, and flew out before we were even awake.

  • 🚌 Bus Monday, Bus Tuesday, Bus Thursday. Doing laps this week. Monday saw me picking up a stray jacket from the in-laws, and a quick drive by my mom&dad’s place, before getting back home. Tuesday I had work in the city, but on the other side of it, on a place not easy to get to with the available transit options. After that I had to drive our US visitor to Comporta, close to an hour and a half out of the city. And, come Thursday, I was back at it, picking Mr. Jonathan up, and driving him to the city. That turned out to be the nicest lap of the week, as the scenery is just gorgeous, and we drove through it in the daytime, ferry crossing thrown in for good measure.

  • 🖼️ Show opening. I’m not one to spend a lot of time talking, or thinking, about these so I’ll just leave it here: this year’s edition of Limited Edition is on. It’s a photo exhibition, and one of my photos is in there. We went to the opening of the show. I had to carry tinyMovieStar on my shoulders the whole time, and I was dead when we got back home. Got an incredible Thai massage from Jonathan. I kept going “Ouch, ouch,…”. Sweet tinyMovieStar was worried, and couldn’t get him to stop, as she was speaking Portuguese, and he wouldn’t understand that. So, finally, she went “STOP… Daddy”! I loved it SO much that she tried her best, and succeeded, to find English words that would get the message across. She does not speak the language, but found a way to do it.

  • 📷 Small assignment on Tuesday, and that was it for the week. Not a brilliant one. I had to say no to another last minute one, as I had already committed to the drive south with Jonathan. On the other hand, I got paid for some stuff I did earlier, so things kinda evened out. I did not work, but felt like it.

  • 📬 Installed Mailmate again. Saw it mentioned a couple of times on the Defaults List Robb is kind enough to be compiling with all the replies (over a 100 by now!) to the HemisphericViews prompt. I bought a license a couple of years ago, but gave up after a while, not even exactly sure why. I will try for a couple of days, but it just seems overkill for my needs, and a bit… well… ugly. So I gave up again, in a couple of hours. Wanna know what is now nagging me on the back of my mind? Again? HEY. Damn! Vincent and Gabz kept mentioning it, from time to time, over and over… Then I remembered: it’s extremely overpriced before taxes, stupidly so after VAT is added, I’d still have to pay for Fastmail (and I love that service), as I’d be using it as an email client. I would like that, but it’s still not worth €123 per year, not for me. Still, wouldn’t you know it, it’s installed again. Yeah, it’s confusing. I’m actually enjoying it again, very much, so I might just do something crazy and spend some money on this thing I can so well live without. I’m calling this a Dominik. EDIT: I did end up signing up for a year.

  • 🌐 RSS feed list. A couple of weeks ago Paweł Orzech asked about other stuff I’m subscribed, after Tokyo Times was shared in a post. I started looking for other feeds people might find interesting. Turns out I don’t have that many subscriptions to share. I follow a ton of Micro.blog blogs via RSS, those make up a large part of the feed list, and then there are a few classic follows, ones that everyone already knows about, a lot of app company blogs, and not much else… Anything Craig Mod makes: Roden/Ridgeline, kottke.org, of course, miniature calendar, On my Om, NEXTDRAFT, A Better Computer (YouTube), Werd I/O. Seems like I could use some help, I would appreciate suggestions of sites I could add to my Feedbin account. Feel free to email them. I do have a new email service I have to use, right? There is a “Reply by Email” button right there at the end…

  • ⭐️ Home page now has 10 posts. I decided to cut Tiny Theme’s default in half, trying to make it a little less data hungry. Footer now also displays the avatar of the Tinylytics webring blog you’ll visit if you tap the clover. Still pondering if I’ll keep it that way, I thing it spoils the surprise a bit. And, noticed the shoutouts embed was hard to read in light mode (sorry about that), so changed that as well. The whole blog feels a bit different, truth be told, now that I’m sharing a few more links than before (thanks, @jarrod), and the whole sticker spotter stuff is now included as well. Messier, but… Well, it’s my place, so… Sorry anyway, if that is bothering you.

  • 🍿 Could not escape a screening of Shalako, as my father-in-law was watching it, and I was in the room when it started. Boy, is that a BORING movie. I saw the movie included Brigitte Bardot, and Sean Connery, so I expected a lot more. But it was painful. It got to a point where we were just thinking about how much time we’d invested, we might as well see the thing through. Cyberbunker: The Criminal Underworld, later in the week.. Even so, it took me three days to watch this one. Not too interesting, so I guess that’s one reason.

  • 📺 Slow week, TV wise. Didn’t even watch anything until Wednesday. The news took over.

  • 🎙️ Swindled, an episode of What a Day, with a very cool clip of Obama (boy, do I miss this one!) on the current Hamas-Israel war, Darknet Diaries 139: D3f4ult. And the first episode of O Encantador de Ricos, about Pedro Caldeira, a famous Portuguese stock broker who ran away with millions. This would be a cool Swindled episode as well. As I drove so much this week, mostly on my own, I still had time to listen to one What It’s Like To Be… episode, and another one from Stuff You Should Know. Jan Erik Moström mentioned The Photowalk, and turns out one of the most recent episodes is a conversation with Craig Mod. That was it, I started listening to that one as well, but couldn’t make it to the end. Next week!

  • 🧶 Speaking of email, xMas Thread is ALIVE. Again. Let me explain: every year there is a birthday party in the kindergarten. The teachers have a full program with the kids. And, every year, parents are supposed to have something, a surprise, organized as well. The teachers have no idea about this, until the party day. There is only one person from the school staff that is included in the whole project. As you can imagine, setting this up, with every single parent, requires a lot of emails going back and forth. A LOT OF THEM. Usually we kinda sat back, nodding yes, or suggesting small tweaks. But, this year, we were selected to be a part of the organizing group, and that is not good. We’re in for a bumpy ride!