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🎉 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.
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😵 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.
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🚗 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.
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🇹🇷 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.
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🎥 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.
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📺 Finished the short Stonehouse. The Crown is back on. Slowly.
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🍿 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.
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📚 Picked up The Last Resort again.
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⭐️ 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.
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📱 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.
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🐰 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.
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📆 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.
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🎄 Weekend, regular. Not much to say. Next one should be livelier, with yet another birthday party. Around fifty people attending, so expecting a lot of fun, and food. By now the houses are in full blown Christmas mode, with a huge competition going on about Christmas decorations. Photos on the next report.
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👩🏻🏫 Monday was back to school day, after a week of sick leave, and another of traveling. tinyMovieStar eager to share the news of the trip with her buddies. We saved one of her boarding passes, and a couple of Turkish bank notes, as well as a boat ticket. She had asked us to get a tiny souvenir for her teachers, so she took that as well. She was happy to be back. We noticed that at home as well, when we got back: she would not stop playing with her toys, in her room. Felt great to be home for her as well.
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🧸 tinyMovieStar being tinyMovieStar, she got in her head that she’d love to have the Grannies, from Bluey. These are relatively secondary characters from the show, so it’s not that easy to find them. I went out and looked everywhere. Everywhere! Nothing. Hours later I accepted there was no way I would be able to get them, and found the book instead. Bought that. She was thrilled. I was relieved.
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🖼 I then had the opening of our latest exhibition, and a couple of beers before that. Done. It was good, I managed to get up to speed with an old friend I don’t see that often anymore. I’m sure my photo will not be sold, so we’ll have a huge print at home in a couple of weeks.
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😫 Week felt very odd. Trying not to do much, but having so much to do at the same time. I’m not the best at these balancing acts, it seems.
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💪🏼 The dislocated arm episode! This week, on Wednesday, we had a curious event. The movieStars were playing on the bed. Suddenly the smaller one was about to fall off (Five Little Monkeys style), the bigger one grabbed her as fast as she could. Turns out a bit too strong, and the little one complained about pain in her arm. She couldn’t move it that well. A little crying, not too much, but we did get to call the doctor after all. We even drove to the hospital, to have her checked out. While in the waiting room, we gave her a bag of chips, and her mood improved immensely. Also, plot twist, she started using her arm (yes, that one!) to fish the chips out of the bag! We just looked at her, she laughed and started waving her arm about. Back home we went.
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📷 Oh, and I did work this week! One thing only, but I did. And it was for the paper, so extra exciting. Doing a story on a HUGE construction project in the city. I love big construction yards, with custom made machines, and stuff all over. Plenty of interesting subject matter for me. And I also got to send a resume, for a position I’m sure I don’t want. Fingers crossed they don’t even get back to me. Best part of the work week? It was time to get paid by a few clients.
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🎭 We had theatre tickets (thanks, movieStar), and thought we might as well make it a date night. Walk for a bit, have a beer, get some food, move on to the show. As we were walking by one of our favorite places, we went in. It was WAY too early, but the place was packed already (bless you, foreigners). We got a table, and ordered. Thai for me, a shrimp thing for movieStar. Beer, and cocktails to go with it. Of course karma is our friend, so the tables on both sides of our own had very small children. A baby, and a toddler. Of course. I’m not going to dwell on how bad the play was, but it was pretty bad.
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🎅🏼 xMas Party at the kindergarten was something extraordinary this year! We all gathered at the usual location, a very cool venue owned by the parents of one of the kids. One where we parents would often go before having kids. We then moved to the school grounds, as lunch with the kids was next on the program. That’s when Santa showed up. Instead of the usual Santa (Ana, the office manager, with the cheap Santa costume), this time we had the most amazing Santa! A professional Santa. I can tell you parents were the ones freaking out, a lot more than kids. A selfie had to be arranged. The day ended with movieStar leaving for her office Christmas dinner. The rest of the family stayed back, having fun on our own.
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🧵 Threads is back! I’m back there. Finally with the EU crew. Some like it, some hate it, some don’t care about it. I was looking forward to it, again, and I’m happy.
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📺 Slow Horses. Watching these as soon as they’re out.
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🍿 **The Audition **. Never heard of this one before, showed up on Tik Tok. Found the whole thing on YouTube. Short.
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📚 Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, the book I picked up while traveling. Still going.
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🎨 Still trying to fix sticker spotter’s social.lol account. Sorry for taking so long. RSS still works, of course, but this is something I’d to sort. Mastofeed does not appreciate posts with no titles, so that’s that. Sent the developer a message on Mastodon, no reply. Moving on. IFTTT doesn’t play nice with something else. When I was about to give up on the whole thing, Jeannie came up with a solution: I should use Micro.blog’s crossposting feature, of course. That would mean that a few of you would see the photos twice, but that was it it. Turns out the solution isn’t that simple, so I’m still figuring this one out. It should not be this hard, that’s all I’m saying.
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🐸 I have mentioned Lillihub before. But I have to do it again. Incredible M.b client by heyloura. Go try it, it’s really nice.
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📷 What. A. Saturday. Salt nativity scenes. Craft beer. Good food. Long day, but a very fun one. Back to the in-laws for a birthday party (got there late, of course), a short night, and the drive back to the city. tinyMovieStar still had her temperature a little higher than she should. Damn, Winter!
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🤒 The week started (on Monday, as they do) with the little one still battling her fever, and cough. Waking up much later than usual, and staying at home with us. That meant movieStar couldn’t work normally, as I was running around town doing errands. movieStar’s passport was picked up, with no delays. We got to Wednesday with the little one still a bit sick, temperature down again, but not to normal level.
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👩🏻⚕️ We did go to a doctor, on Wednesday. The cough became too much, tinyMovieStar threw up her lunch, and we made a last minute appointment. Busy day for the doctor, so we had to wait hours before we could see her. In the end it was a throat infection, some crazy virus to blame. Medication, and she should be fine. We ended up sleeping at my in-laws, while movieStar had the big bed at home all to herself.
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🇹🇷 We’ll make it! Tomorrow we’ll fly to Istanbul, hopefully. This one was published a bit early, as I’m not sure how/when/if I’ll be able to write that much in the coming days, but I would love to get a special, Turkey themed, edition out when we’re back.
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🤣 Tik Tok has SO MUCH stuff! So far I’m happy to have found socially inept in there, among other things. As someone pointed out, some/most of the videos are available as Reels on Instagram as well. But not all, not by a long shot. And navigation on Tik Tok is much nicer, as well as the discovery. Search/suggestions seem to work a lot better too. Music, movie clips, comedy, tv,… Everything is in there!
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📺 TV has been replaced with Tik Tok this week.
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🍿 Movies have been replaced with Tik Tok this week.
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🎙 Podcasts have been replaced with Tik Tok this week.
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📚 Books have been replaced with Tik Tok this week.
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📬 Back to trying Mailbrew. It still works, and it’s still a good way to get an automatic newsletter out without a lot of hassle. Must look into this a bit more, after we get back.
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📦 Arq Backup. Do I need this? On one hand, my laptop is so old that a failure might actually happen. On the other hand most of the important stuff has a backup already, iCloud is taking care of that. The cost is not too high, though, so…
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🎉 We enjoyed part II of the movieStar Birthday Extravaganza. Family, friends, pets, all gathered around the fireplace, in the living room, dining room, kitchen, and outside. There was a lot of people and, easy to guess, a lot of food and drinks as well. By the end of it she was exhausted, and couldn’t wait for it all to end. It was not easy, considering we went out a bit later the night before. We are not getting any younger, that is so easy to see. These late nights are harder to come back from.
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🎄 We also got a xMas tree. A fake one. First one we ever got. I’m now researching easy-to-make decorations, so we can do those at home, and hang them side by side with the normal, store bought, ones. We started working on the tree on Friday, with a friend tinyMovieStar loves. She asked for her, specifically, for this matter. We all picked her up from kindergarten, slowly made our way home, assembled the tree, had dinner, and she had to go. We were left behind with a crying toddler. She is in full Drama Queen Mode, poor thing. We had to ask Diana (our friend) to drive by our place the following morning, after swimming class, so the little one could see her for a moment. She did.
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🥰 tinyMovieStar had a cool Monday, and a crazy week (see previous point). The little one was exhausted after a weekend of partying, and a little cold. She needed the rest, so we let her sleep in on Monday morning, skipping the morning part of kindergarten duty. She joined the kids for lunch, like a boss! A nap followed that, and I picked her up soon after, and piggyback-ed her to ballet class. Pizza for dinner, to end this fun filled day! On Thursday, she woke up in a very strange mood. She’s usually a very relaxed, smiling, happy, kid but was furious on Thursday. Not sick but, as Alex and Luke suggested, probably just some growing pains. She was ok a couple of hours later. Still felt very powerless, unable to make her feel better.
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🍺 Managed to meet my best friend for a couple of beers this week. That was it as far as my social
weekmonth went, but felt great. -
🇹🇷 Trip update time, although I’ve been updating throughout the week pretty often, sorry about that.. We thought about it for a long while, and decided to go ahead and not skip the Jordan part of our upcoming trip. We’re going to Jordan! Tickets were purchased. Then, came Tuesday evening, movieStar said we needed to make a decision regarding travel in the country, as we only had a short window in Jordan (we tried to cram a lot into a week). I double checked the reservation email, and it was not pretty. We had screwed up the flight times. We would fly into Jordan very late on a day, spend two days, and leave as the day turned. That would make the whole thing crazy, as we wouldn’t even have time to properly visit Petra. Barely doable for both of us, but we don’t feel like dragging Clara behind us, running around like mad men. She would not love it for sure, and we would feel the same, with guilt on top. We’re not going to Jordan! Lucky us, one of the legs was rescheduled, and we were able to request a refund! Turkey it is, Jordan is out. We then proceeded to add Cappadocia to the itinerary. How’s that for ups and downs?
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👋🏼 One of the things that I enjoy when using a new service, any new service, is digging through the feature set, the FAQ, the manuals. Finding out what I could use it for, best ways to go about it, and new things I might have missed entirely. Where am I getting this fix this week? HEY. Setting up things just the way I like it is a big part of the fun. I’ll try to keep these HEY updates to a minimum, but still having fun. Particularly on the web version, the extensive keyboard shortcut support is very nice, makes navigating the whole thing as easy as can be. Love the fact that the actual key is discreetly placed next to the action. Didn’t remember this detail, but it’s great for this part of the process, while my brain is still getting used to the new shortcuts. Also, enjoying the stickies, and that’s something I didn’t think I would.
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🌹 Still on HEY, I feared the worst, when the time came to send an email to 144 parents at kindergarten, as part of my duties in the group that is setting things up for the Christmas event. I got a message saying that my account had limitations for the two first months, something that is not written anywhere. I was annoyed, considered asking for a full refund, again, but instead sent another mail to their support team. A few (lot) of hours later, the limitations were lifted, and I was able to proceed. Christmas surprise is ON. Support came through, it was a very welcome surprise, they now have some karma points in my book.
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📺 The Billionaire, The Butler, and the Boyfriend. Three episodes only, so that was quick to watch. Incredible story.
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🍿 Tried to watch Focus, but couldn’t. It promised fun, but I found it very boring. Old Dads was the second one I gave up on, and rather quickly as well.
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🎙️ Podcasts took a back seat this week. Other than the nightly listen, my sleeping pill routine, I didn’t get to a lot of them this week. Ruminate 173 - Should This Be a Blog Post?, Abstract Development #56 - Oh, I forgot to mention tinylytics.
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🎵 Thanks to Jack, I listened to Andre 3000’s new album. Flute. Cool flute.
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📚 Added a few books to my list, well aware I haven’t read a single line (in a book) in over two weeks. Should change that.
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💸 I subscribed to Kagi’s Starter plan, the yearly subscription. My 300 monthly searches were gone after 3 weeks, and I did not have a way out. Couldn’t pay for an extra package. It was either upgrade to the unlimited, $10 a month, tier, or get this one for half that. I’m aware the allowed 3600 searches won’t last a whole year, curious to see how far I can stretch them. On their Discord the announced a new mail service is being developed, and also they’ll start charging VAT. Darn. Paying for search is not something I did without seriously considering the cost, and adding 23% on top of that will probably mean I’ll skip it after I’m done with this year. I figured the starter plan will not be enough, and I can’t really afford the unlimited plan, with VAT on top of it. There are much better ways to spend that kind of money.
📚 Flex Much?
📚 Here we go…
“history does not repeat, but it does instruct,” he analyzes recent European history to identify conditions that can enable established democracies to transform into dictatorships. The short (126 pages) book is presented as a series of twenty instructions on how to combat the rise of tyranny
Thank you for the tip, @ArnoldHoogerwerf.
📚 My birthday isn’t that far off, just saying…
thingsThisWeek #82
Into the new year. Slowly.
thingsThisWeek #79
Back in town. Back to regular life. And what a week it was!
This is the Slow Horses way: the hero is a kebab-loving, chain-smoking, drunken slob who claims to be terrible at his job but is actually embarrassingly competent.
Started reading: Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman 📚
Got this yesterday evening, and couldn’t put it down until well past 1AM. Looking forward to a few more pages today.
📚 I was missing something, woke up a few minutes earlier to take care of it.
thingsThisWeek #77
Final preparations for TurkeyTour, editing a lot of photos so we could leave without a worry (didn’t make it to the end), taking care of last minute purchases. tinyMovieStar sick for a few days. Busy week, all things considered. Not a lot going on, and still a lot going on, if that makes any sense.
thingsThisWeek #75
📚 Ordered volume 1 of The Way of the Househusband (極主夫道) from Vinted. I wanted one of these in print for a while, and the price was just too low to skip it.