Neon sign reading “BAR” in pink and blue colors, hung on a window with red LED strip lighting along the edge and a silhouette of hanging foliage in the background.

Into the new year. Slowly.

  • πŸŽ‰ NYE was spent with the usual gang, plus another couple with two-year old twins. She’s Portuguese, just back home after 15 years in Argentina. Husband from Argentina. A really nice couple, and very talented with empanadas. I ate too much. We all did. The kids went to bed way too late, and that threw the whole week off balance.

  • 😡 Tuesday (this week we’re calling it “Monday”) arrived, and it was time to forget all about excessive drinking, eating, and sleeping, and get back to the usual wake up time, and fight to get the little one dressed and out of the house. It didn’t work out as planned, sleeping schedule should be back to normal by… March? We then went to a couple of stores to deal with some returns (day off for movieStar), and back home. Editing photos. VERY Exciting.

  • πŸš— This week I also had to visit my mechanic, a couple of things have been nagging me. He didn’t find them important, and told me to come back another day to have them properly checked. He did order the mirror that is broken. I had to run some errands after that, and ended up in IKEA. Not thrilled, but it was mostly painless. I will have to go back soon, movieStar did not approve one of the items purchased.

  • πŸ‡ΉπŸ‡· We finally met our friend from Istanbul who’s visiting. We had a wonderful late afternoon/dinner with her, and the three kids who are traveling with her. Took them to a couple of our spots, and they seemed to enjoy their time, and the food. Mission accomplished. Still hope to see them again before the fly out.

  • πŸŽ₯ This week there was a special homage to an old friend, at the Cinemateca (Film Museum/Art House). He’s a director but, most importantly, father of a couple of close friends of ours, and a very important figure in my late teens/early adulthood. He lives close by, and we still see him often. I stopped by, hang for a bit, and walked back home. Didn’t stay for the movies, but had to go there.

  • πŸ“Ί Finished the short Stonehouse. The Crown is back on. Slowly.

  • 🍿 I’m on a roll! We watched a few this week. Barbie. Finally. Loved it. Ricky Gervais: Armageddon. Did not like. At all. The Killer. Lukewarm. Hell Dogs. Love these Japanese movies.

  • πŸ“š Picked up The Last Resort again.

  • ⭐️ M.b Importing static content. Neat trick. I kinda got it to work. As with most things these days, not 100%, and no way I can figure out why it will not perform to that level.

  • πŸ“± Turned ON notifications on Gluon, and OFF on the official Micro.blog app. They are just not reliable, not after this many years. Gluon’s notifications even have the incredible, and revolutionary feature of taking you to the actual conversation they refer to! I’m using Gluon almost exclusively now. The M.b app isn’t great, that’s the truth. For a service with so many moving parts, and an app that can be used as a full ActivityPub client, it’s very basic. Glad Gluon, and Vincent, are around. Sorry about the rant.

  • 🐰 bunny.net has CDN, it has storage, it has fonts. And it’s cheap. Perfect to play with. I’m using it to serve Atkinson on the blog, and wanted (for a while now) to have a way to easily send files over, and get a link back, ready to paste into a post. Not that I need it, mind you, but for the challenge. Yes, it’s a challenge for me. I tried before, and gave up. The Shortcut seemed impossible to tweak. This week I decided to try again! I did it. Using Dropshare to upload inside a Shortcut, and a few issues solved with the filename, but I did it! Of course things can’t just be perfect, so I now have an IP from Hong Kong trying to load a file every minute! That has (with the help of many) led me to learn a bit more about the whole CDN. Tricky stuff, for my untrained skills. This will be an ongoing task.

  • πŸ“† HEY has released their Calendar app. Well, not really the app, because Apple won’t approve the actual thing, but web version for now. There’s also an Android app out already, if you use that. On the web (laptop) it’s fine. Nothing spectacular, but full of little ideas that I can see myself using. Sadly it’s not great yet on mobile, and that’s where I need it to shine. Nowhere near the kind of polish we get with Fantastical, for one. I’m aware this is v1.0, and I’m looking forward to the app, and see how it evolves.