thingsThisWeek

Feb 8, 2024 ∞

thingsThisWeek #87

Busy week. Missed that feeling. Short updates this time, and a day early. I can post it today, not sure about tomorrow.

📷 Last part of the portraits session past Friday, and a new gig on Saturday. A respected gallery in town had two shows opening on the same day (Saturday), celebrating their 60th anniversary, and I was tasked with documenting the event. Again, not my favorite thing, but it’s a job. Can’t complain. Not complaining.
🐠 Dinner for everyone! Full house! The Italians were back, and there’s always a lot of people showing up along with them. We were the ones hosting this time. Fun!
🍛 Another meal worth mentioning is the one we had for lunch, on Sunday. At brother-in-law’s wife’s parents (is there a name for that?). So nice. We stayed the whole afternoon. They are the sweetest, and are super excited their grandson is coming soon. They thought it would be nice to throw another lunch party for my in-laws, and of course close family is invited as well.
🦄 tinyMovieStar broke a snow globe unicorn, and was really sad, sweet thing. But then the Grannies arrived, so all is good. I thought she might not remember it anymore, but the memory on this one is strong. She still mentioned the unicorn a few days later. Also said she missed Chouriço, the one that stayed behind in Istanbul. She gets REALLY attached to them.
🥵 editing,
Editing,
EDITING!
🗳️ And back on the campaign trail, with my usual gang of politicians. I like them, and have a lot of fun doing this. Sadly we don’t have an election every year. It’s going to be a busy month, and the election happens on my birthday. I’m sure I’ll post a ton of photos from the road, you’ve been warned. It started already.
📺 mr.&mrs. smith. The end of The Crown. Sad there will be no more. But just got a notification about the new Tokyo Vice season, so there’s that…
🍿 The Greatest Night in Pop. Saw it last week, but forgot to add it. It was great.
📤 Subscribed to Smash again. Still love it to send large files, it’s one I pay for on and off. Whenever I have a big assignment, I’ll throw some money their way, and log back in.

Feb 2, 2024 ∞

It was what I’d call a pretty regular week. Meaning I had some work, some worries, some fun. Not as much free time as I had gotten used to, so this edition of thingsThisWeek feels kinda rushed to me.

🍇 Friday found me still working, waking up in the Algarve, shooting a couple more vineyards before calling it a day, and driving all the way back home. If felt really nice, being able to shoot these with time, not rushing things. Also sweet to do it with a new colleague, daughter of someone who used to work at the paper. We have dozens of friends in common, of course, it’s odd our paths never crossed before.
🥰 Missed the little one so much while I was away though, and she felt even worse. Cried when she got to school, telling the teacher I wasn’t home, and couldn’t take her to school. I had to take a selfie, and send it over. It’s not easy being away. In a couple of weeks we’re doomed, when movieStar travels to the islands. We’re trying not to overthink it, but it will not be pretty. It will be a rough month for all of us, the election is upon us, there’s a month to go, and I’ll probably spend that on the road.
👨‍👩‍👧 Weekend and Monday kinda glued together, with the trip to the in-laws, and mother-in-law’s birthday on Monday. We drove to Cascais for the celebration, right after picking tinyMovieStar from ballet. The dinner was at a nice restaurant in Cascais, at the marina, and involved a lot of meat, and a generous amount of beer as well.
✊🏼 The remaining days went by, pretty much unnoticed, until Thursday came along and I had to drive to Setúbal for some portraits. Basic, very basic, ones, but a good chance to meet my favorite group of politicians again. Had some issues with the strobes, but managed in the end. Soon we’ll be on the campaign trail again. I like that.
👵🏼 The Grannies adventure has finally reached a satisfactory ending, with the help of a friend who spotted a returned item on Amazon. This week was big for tinyMovieStar, as she also got her second ever haircut. We had to drive to a ghastly mall, but that’s where they have the carousel hairdresser. She loved it. We won’t complain when that happens.
👨🏻‍💻 Signed up for another social network, because why not? I’m not even going to use it, but like to know what the kids are up to these days. Daftsocial, and felt kinda slow when I tried it. Probably the result of many people signing up after it was shared everywhere. One thing that bothers me with this one: it does not work in mobile as well as it does on the laptop. Photos turn up in black and white on the iPhone, and show their full color version when you hover. Hover does not work on the iPhone. Sad.
📺 Criminal Record, still amazing. Tried Masters of the Air, but it felt SO fake, so badly acted, so poorly shot, so over the top, it looked like they were joking. And The Crown. Boy, oh boy, did I cry with this one. Episode 7 of this last season did it, it destroyed me.
💖 There is another post on Boo!, Marrakesh loveProject. Hope you enjoy this one as well. Next one is being written, we’re going back to Asia. Care to guess the country? I’m having a ball with this site!
🧻 Working on a decent blogroll. Still a lot to do.
🌐 Arc Mobile for IOS is out. Liking it. A few more updates, and it will be even better. Not ready to replace Safari as default, not yet. Not for me.
🕵🏻‍♂️ Kagi is back for me. Took me long enough, but it’s on for a year. No turning back this time.
⚙️ Installed Upptime, an uptime monitor that runs on GitHub. A repository, a GitHub Pages site, and some GitHub Actions. Another one of those easy puzzles I like to play with. Easy to install, probably useful to some. Unnecessary to me at this point (updown and Tinylytics are great), but good enough to kill a few minutes, and find out how these work. You can see it working here.

Jan 26, 2024 ∞

thingsThisWeek #85

New online project started. Not a lot else to rave about. Short edition, I’m afraid.

🛼 Of course my bedridden day had to go off course, and it happened because one of tinyMovieStar’s friends goes to roller skate classes. Obviously she wanted to try that as well! It’s, as usual, not far from home, but the heavy rain made it impossible to walk there. I drove the girls, with pleasure. She tried it, and loved it. Maybe we’ll have to add this to the ballet and swimming activities. Soon we’ll have one of these every day of the week!
🇸🇹 movieStar has a trip to the islands scheduled for the end of February. We’re staying behind this time. She used to do it a lot when we first met, she’d go every couple of months, and we’re all glad she does not have to travel so often at this point in time. The little one will miss her dearly, as will I, she has never spent so long away from mom. It’s going to be interesting.
🎉 Saturday plans were back on track, and we had another birthday party to attend. Two cousins, sisters, celebrated their 76 and 78 birthdays together. It was huge. We arrived shortly after lunch, and went on until well past dinner time.
🐌 The week slowly moved forward. I quite enjoy this routine, but like to have work days sprinkled throughout the week. January is, I’ve said it before, usually a slow month. But not this slow!
📷 Work! Finally! Two days, but it’s better than none! Nice trip too. Spending time away from the girls is no fun, though, and neither is seeing tinyMovieStar crying on the video call we did when she was going to sleep.
📺 Criminal Record. YouTube (Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, hours long LoFi videos)
📓 Boo! launched. Really happy with how it’s turning out, Ghost really is awesome for this format, and there are three posts already up: Walking Meditation, The River Girl, and The Popcorn Stand. Hope you like them, and feel free to suggest photos you’d like to know about.
✏️ notes.maique.eu is also getting some love. Impossible not to do it, when Vincent keeps adding to this wonderful service.

Jan 18, 2024 ∞

thingsThisWeek #84

Messy week, yet again. Not sure what to make of it, but everything seems a bit off balance.

🏊‍♀️ Saturday was a full day, that started with our return to swimming classes, after a couple of months away. tinyMovieStar is a little behind now, but did an incredible thing too. She went full underwater, and that was the thing keeping her away from the pool. The teacher was asked to give her a pass when that moment arrived, and he did. She still dove in at the end of the class. Amazing little girl, I’m proud of her every day.
🥘 In the evening we had dinner at my brother-in-law’s place, and the in-laws decided to join in, after telling us they wouldn’t drive into the city. It’s not a long drive, we do it every weekend, sometimes more than once. But they always make a big thing out of coming into the city. It should not be like that. 2024 might be the year when something changes in this relationship. Not thrilled, but it is what it is. We still need to figure this one out.
😝 Sunday, party day. One of tinyMovieStar’s little friends had a birthday, so we drove to Cascais for the celebration. Funny thing, and lucky too, my lovely mildly dyslexic wife misread the time of the appointment, so we slowly (very much so) drove there, in a very roundabout way, only to discover that we were in fact two hours late by the time we finally made it. A few of the school’s little buddies had been invited, so that was another chance for us parents to have a couple of beers. More on that later.
🩰 Ballet Monday, but that was only after two (as in twice, 2) drives to IKEA. Yes. I went to IKEA twice in a day! Shouldn’t I be getting some kind of award? A giant meatball, at least? Anyway, I love ballet Monday, and how much the little one seems to enjoy it.
🥰 Taking care of myself. I’m back to intermittent fasting, and cutting down on beer. Maybe I’ll even do a “dry some month”, now that January is half behind us, and I’m late for that one. Also walking a bit more again. Not as fun in the rain, but I must get back to it regularly. The Christmas season left it’s mark, and I must get fitter.
🦠 Shots were taken this well, both Covid and Flu. We should be thankful for our SNS (National Health Service). It took me two minutes to book both shots, for free, for two hours later, in a pharmacy on the next street over. Pretty nice, if you ask me. Also, the person getting the shots before I got in was an old friend, so we waited and talked for a while. Cool. A day later (when I’m publishing this), I’m in bed, with my joints aching, and my upper arms in some pain. Not terrible, but enough to give me a monster headache.
📷 No work whatsoever.
📺 The Brothers Sun ended. It was good. Will enjoy the next season, whenever it shows up.
🍿 Lift. Boy, oh boy, is this a shitty one! Predictable, feels-like-I’ve-seen-it-a-thousand-times, soooooo bad. I was recovering from the flu/covid shots combo, and it made me feel worse!
⭐️ Last Friday was, it turns out, Micro.blog appreciation day, even with all the complaining. The post did not start as such, but the service handles some things right. Hope the rest gets fixed. Also, used Scribbles for this, it’s a nice one.
👻 True to my Self-Hosting Woes, I launched another Ghost blog (Boo!) on PikaPods, and it’s still going. Not sure I’ll use it for something, but it’s fun to tinker. Mailgun has been set too, so I can use it to send the weekly thingsThisWeek, since this is as close to a newsletter as I’m likely to get. Sign up, or don’t, really. Not sure if it will make to next week.
🐳 Tried Beluga as well. There’s a profile, but I don’t think it will get a lot more than the initial post. Cool one, though.
📝 Also Gibberish, but I’ll leave that for next week.

Jan 12, 2024 ∞

thingsThisWeek #83

Last one of the xMas-themed celebrations: Kings Day. And I must really find a job. Really. It was a messy week.

🇹🇷 Friday was extra nice. Our Turkish friend was spending her last day in town, we joined her for lunch. Had a VERY nice burger in a spot I don’t visit often enough, with a yummy IPA. The girls went the opposite way and had oysters, shrimp, and white wine. All of us had a good time. When dinner time arrived we were joined by a brother in law, who found himself alone in the city, wife away in one of those corporate team building weekends. We cooked, he was tinyMovieStar’s toy for the evening, and she cried her heart out when he left. She was SO sleepy and tired by then, it took her two minutes to fall asleep.
🏊‍♀️ Still no way to talk the little one back into the pool. She says she will go “next time”, but she’s been doing that for a while. We will wait a bit longer before canceling the monthly payments, but would really love for her to properly learn how to swim. Maybe tomorrow she’ll wake up and wants to go.
👑 Kings Day was a blast. We had lunch at my parents (Saturday Classic), and then moved to the in-laws. I’m aware I’ve said it before, the house is always busy, but this time around it was incredibly so. The whole gang was around, and I mean all of it! There are a couple of family members who are harder to meet, as they live far from the country, and can’t always make it. They all did this time around. It was fabulous. Lots of singing, eating, talking, drinking, drawing.
😔 The rest of the week felt pretty shitty, truth be told. I need to find regular work, this freelancing thing is a mess. Work has been slowing down last year, and I do miss the steady pay. I’m pretty sure I’m not getting that again, not in the newspaper business, and I’m feeling a bit lost. Hope things brighten up, but it’s not easy to figure things out.
📺 The Brothers Sun. Good.
🍿 No movies this week.
🎙 Core Int, Extremamente Desagradável, Catching the Kingpins, Ruminate.
👻 Moving a Ghost blog. DinkiWinkiMinkiWinki was hosted at Ghost(Pro), and the one thing that kept bothering me for a while was the cost. The service is great, but I was paying a hefty sum to have the blog sit there, posts taking months to write. I was looking for an alternative, ever since I moved it to a monthly subscription, trying to force me to act, looking at the monthly payment. If I’d paid for a full year, I wouldn’t have done this. The blog is too big by now, over 5GB in photos, so that was also keeping me from moving. I was afraid, and lazy. In the end I went with PikaPods. It looks like a nice service, and hopefully stable enough so I don’t have to move again. The Ghost part of moving was impressively simple, with the provided zipped archive they sent on request. Everything (I mean EVERYTHING) is in there, so it’s just a matter of importing stuff into the new home. Then comes DNS (thanks for being cool, Porkbun), Cloudflare, Mailgun. A pain. But a manageable one. It took a couple of hours to sort through this mess, and it was done. There’s was a new post on DinkiWinkiMinkiWinki to celebrate the move, and I’ll try to get to the next one in less than a year. Promise. Also, I should write a longer post about this whole thing, especially about PikaPods. It’s an impressive service that a lot of people, who do not look at self-hosting with a favourable eye, could use.
🔎 Kagi is no more, at least not for me. Shitty attitude, on top of a shitty deal. Sad to see this one go. I have a feeling I’ll get back to it sometime in the future. Other search engines feel even worse than they did before trying this one.
🌐 Since maique.lol is back in business, I thought it would be good to re-enable sidor♡life, the blog hosted at weblog.lol. I refactored the Drafts action I used to post there (it now adds a date to the frontmatter!), and added that to another one, the action that posts the same thing to both M.b and weblog.lol at the same time. It works. Tinylytics works brilliantly with omg.lol as well, so now I have Kudos on this blog too.
🧠 Went ahead and threw some money at GPT4 API. Nice. Cheap. Perfect for the new Shortcuts Jarrod made! The shortcuts are AWESOME.
🐰 I think I also solved my issues with bunny.net. It seems to be working now. CDN are fun.
⭐️ Wishing Micro.blog would stop having hiccups. It would be perfect without them. There are plenty other places, but none like it.

Jan 5, 2024 ∞

thingsThisWeek #82

Into the new year. Slowly.

🎉 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.
🚗 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.
🇹🇷 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.
🎥 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.
📺 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.
📚 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.
📱 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.
📆 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.

Dec 29, 2023 ∞

thingsThisWeek #81

The Christmas Edition. Some parts might be missing. We were BUSY!

🍱 I’d been trying to have lunch, or a beer, with a friend of mine for a while now. His life got in the way (big time), and we’ve have been unable to see each other for what feels like months. This week, right before Christmas, we finally got around to it, after another failed attempt last week. If felt good. His life is a huge mess, and he does not deserve it. At all. We cannot help, not in any meaningful way, except by being there.
😵‍💫 Seeing that this is the season to celebrate and be merry, on Friday we had dinner with more friends. At home. I cooked, with the help of one of them, and the girls and kids played around. Always nice when this family shows up. Acted as a trial for what would come later, kids running around screaming, too much sugar on their system, and parents trying (unsuccessfully) to keep things under control.
👶🏻 Saturday: pizza, beach, babies. Yes. All that. movieStar thought we could go to the beach, enjoy the incredible weather we’re getting, and get some pizza at a nice pizza place by the sand. She messaged one of her brothers who lives there, and he talked to the other one. Soon we were nine. We had pizza, a stroll on the beach, a visit to the Christmas fair, a ride on the Ferris wheel, and then we got the news: both wives of my brothers-in-law are pregnant!! Darn! We’re going to be uncles, twice! BIG news to share as a Christmas present. Everyone was super thrilled. tinyMovieStar is getting some cousins!
🎄 Not sure how to start, or IF to start. It’s a blur, still. Christmas, both days. We drove up and down the highway, meeting both families. On my end a smaller event, but a HUGE one with movieStar’s family. Since both my mother-in-law and her sister live on adjoining houses, and all the sons made their way home for Christmas, with their families as well, it gets crowded! Party well into the night, with the little ones dancing around, and the older crowd playing poker into the night, after most went to sleep. The following day felt like the same, Part II. More partying, more food, more drinking, more family. Kids going crazy with attention, excitement, sugar. Everyone is exhausted by the end of all this. When the three (?) days were over, all I could think about was staying in bed all day. Of course that was not going to happen.
🍦 Tuesday. Time to drive back to the city. We dropped the little one with her uncles, and they went to the movies. Alone. First time the little one did that. She loved it. Her aunt (now pregnant) spoils her. We met them at the end, and had pizza, ramen, and ice-cream to top things off. Great.
🍺 Lazy Wednesday. We found out movieStar got us flight tickets to Menorca! We welcomed the little one’s godmother (in town from London), and my best friend, for dinner. We’re all huge fans of both of them, and always have a great time. We cooked, didn’t go out. Cosy, late into the night, with (maybe) a little too much beer thrown in. Waking up the following day would not be easy.
🎥 Thursday started at noon. movieStar had a meeting, so I grabbed the little one and went to the movies. Back home, watched another movie before dinner time. She still has another week before school resumes. Not sure we’ll make it that far. We’re VERY exhausted by now.
🍿 We did watch a few movies this week. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. What a load of crap, as they say. I’ll say that as well. Laughed once. Candy Cane Lane. Had high hopes. It’s bad. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. A classic, still the best one out of all the crap. Wish was not great. The Grinch was pretty good.
📺 Blue Eye Samurai. Done. Liked it, well worth the time. Looking forward to the promised next season. Slow Horses. One of the great shows, in my opinion, has also ended. You will be missed, Jackson Lamb and friends. See you all later. Stonehouse, just an episode. Will probably watch it all. It’s a small, three episodes long show.
😅 Updated my /now page. One of those omg.lol services I keep forgetting about. Thanks ner3y!
✏️ If you’re looking for more ways to use your omg.lol account, you can now try write.omg.lol, a pretty nice (and very basic) text editor that uses your omg.lol pastebin as cloud storage.
🙅🏻‍♂️ Deleted my Substack account. All my subscriptions were deleted, and then my account. Tired of Nazis. It was MUCH harder to stop using Twitter. That account is still ON. Not using, but it’s there. This one was gone without a second thought. I’ll miss a few newsletters that I subscribed to, but that’s it. I’ll survive.
🚨 Threw another €10 at updown.io. That’s enough to keep an eye on 5 sites for a year. The service works great, is very decently priced, no reason not to keep supporting it.
🖼️ Bought another set of wallpapers. How many do I need? These look sweet, though.
🌐 Got maique.lol again. Adding all the subdomains again…
😈 We caved in, and subscribed to YouTube Premium. That’s what you get when you get the kids in the family together: we add another service to our growing list of family subscriptions. We actually wondered how we didn’t include this one earlier, seeing that we already had almost every streaming service in the country (Amazon, Netflix, HBO, Apple, and Disney). It took me 5 minutes to get used to no ads, and I’m already trying YouTube Music. Maybe it’s time to say goodbye to Spotify?
🎥 Added another streaming site subscription, this one as a gift: FILMIN. Art, independent, alternative, you name it. Catalog looks incredible. I’m sure we’ll watch a few, that will surely take us back to our younger days, when we’d regularly go to the Cinemateca, and binge on vintage Italian movies!

Dec 22, 2023 ∞

thingsThisWeek #80

That part of the year when we’re just cruising along, waiting for it to end… Almost done with 2023. Also, sorry about the photo. This was not a week for photos. Anyway, Happy Holidays, if you celebrate, see you on the other side.

🥳 Party Weekend. We had three birthday parties this time around. One on Saturday, two on Sunday. We went to bed way too late on Saturday, so were thankful that one of the Sunday ones was canceled. But another was just around the corner, on Monday. A cousin turned 4.
😤 For this birthday party we had to drive out of the city, but not even too far. To one of the closer suburbs. Still, it took us over an hour and a half to get there! And 20 minutes to get back! How do people go through this every day? It’s crazy! Waze kept trying to sort things out, but traffic was stuck everywhere. We did have a lot of fun when we finally made it. I’m happy that tinyMovieStar has cousins her age, and that she gets to play with them once in a while. The kid’s father (movieStar’s cousin) has the most amazing man cave, covered with lego and old school gaming consoles. He even built an arcade machine himself, with dozens of games.
💤 The little one, also spent a night at her grandparents, as another cousin a couple of years older than she is was spending a few days with her grandmother as well. I drove there to drop her off, stayed for a while, and drove back. She enjoyed it, we got to watch some tv on an empty house. I still miss her awfully when we’re separated. We picked her up the following day. She was not happy to leave, I can tell you that. We found her learning how to play videogames on a Switch, dancing to Tik Tok challenges, and other stuff not totally appropriate for her age, I guess.. Add chocolate to that, and you can imagine the kind of three-year old we have at the moment living with us.
🏊‍♀️ As suspected, we did not attend swimming class this week. Or ballet class. Teacher was sick on latter, tinyMovieStar sick of it on the other.
👵🏻 The Grannies! We searched on dozens (yes!) of shops. Then the community decided to lend a hand, so the search now stretches from Lisbon to London (Oxana rules!), and two locations in the States (thank you, Charlie, and Luke). We were then joined by the Chaves gang, covering the north of the country, and Galicia. That adds another country to the list. A transcontinental search for a €15 toy! We still haven’t been able to find The Grannies from Bluey. No one cares about them but our little one, no shop carries them, and this has been THE quest this Christmas.
🧿 IVPN renewed for a year. I’d been getting a few months at a time, up till now, but decided to spring for a full year. Saved a couple of months, and I’m very happy with it anyway. In the past I’d get these super saver 3-year things on some other service, and then move providers before the time was up. Ended up not using the whole period. Silly.
🔮 I am SO impressed by the alt text generator in Mimi. I don’t even try to do it myself anymore. It needs minimal editing, once in a while, but it’s perfect most of the time. In my opinion it’s a great use of AI.
🛍️ I moved my shop (yeah, I had one) to Gumroad. Since I never sold a single photo on that shop, I might as well go for wallpapers on the new one, and add photos. I’m busy while doing it, that’s the important bit. I don’t think I’ll sell anything here as well.
🍿 The Family Plan. Meh. From the series “Shitty Movies I Watch”.
📺 Bored to Death, episode one. I like Zach, I like Ted, I don’t mind Jason. That’s why. Not sure if I’ll move on to episode two, though. Watched a few episodes of Blue Eye Samurai. And, we finally got here, we could start watching season 6 of The Crown. Last, but not least, my favorite at the moment: Slow Horses. I wait for it every week, and watch as soon as it lands.
🎙️ Back to podcast listening, with so much driving around on my own again. Smartless, HemisphericViews, and a couple others.
🧊 IceCubesApp is what I’m using to browse Mastodon, almost exclusively, these days. It has come a very long way. Tons of cool icons too. Still keep Mona around, but this is the one on my Dock at the moment. Let’s see how long it lasts there. This is also the app where I first came across AI powered alt text generation.

Dec 15, 2023 ∞

thingsThisWeek #79

Back in town. Back to regular life. And what a week it was!

🎄 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.
👩🏻‍🏫 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.
🧸 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.
🖼 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.
😫 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.
💪🏼 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.
📷 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.
🎭 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.
🎅🏼 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.
🧵 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.
📺 Slow Horses. Watching these as soon as they’re out.

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.

🍿 **The Audition **. Never heard of this one before, showed up on Tik Tok. Found the whole thing on YouTube. Short.
📚 Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, the book I picked up while traveling. Still going.
🎨 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.
🐸 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.

Dec 9, 2023 ∞

turkishThingsThisWeek #78

Merhaba, nasılsınız? We just got back from a full week in Turkey, plenty to report, as you might have guessed. Different format, I tried to go day by day. Some parts will have a bit more detail, others less. A journal of sorts. As this was written on the go, some things might miss detail, other opinions might have changed on a later day.

Day Zero (Home)

✅ Things we needed to do on the last day at home: book Istanbul hotel, purchase Holafly eSIM, arrange for transfer from the airport in Istanbul. Pack bags. All done. We left booking the hotel in Cappadocia for Turkey. Loaded iPad for the little one. Purchased LP Turkey, epub version. Not perfect on iPhone, but that’s what we have.

🌧 Both our moms sent links to reports on TV, letting us know that Istanbul had worst rain in 50 years.

Day One (Friday/Istanbul)

🚕 Bolt ride, arrived on time. Having a toddler is awesome when the time comes to go through security at the airport. Airplane late. Not much.

🍿 Jerry & Marge Go Large. A five hour flight is barely enough for an hour and a half movie.

✈️ Good flight. Good food. Thanks, Turkish. Airports in Turkey couldn’t care less about the fact that you’re travelling with a child. Same line for everyone except, oddly, a huge one for people in wheelchairs. There were a lot of those.

🚕 Long drive into the city. Crazy fast drivers. Classic hotel. Touristy area. Dinner not cheap. Feels like Morocco meets Algarve. Plenty of light, neons, menus on display, convenience stores, all the stuff we’re used to (and more), coupled with the insistence of the restaurant touts. On the way into the city I got Vietnam vibes. And it’s HUGE. Over 15 million people call it home.

Day Two (Saturday/Istanbul)

🤒 tinyMovieStar still feverish. Waking up late, as we’re still on Lisbon timezone. Three hours is not much, but makes a difference.

⏰ Waking up in Turkey for the first time.

📓 Reading the Lonely Planet guide, and finding stuff like

Hazards: These include Turkey’s notorious road-hog drivers, rotten road edges and, out east, stone-throwing children, wolves and ferocious Kangal dogs.

does make you appreciate the calmer children we have back home, and those cute, non-Kangal, dogs we call pets.

💰 This guide, by the way, in the latest edition, suffers from an incredible lack of accuracy when it comes to prices. Often we’ll find actual price 10 times over what’s stated in the guide. Turkey is a lot more expensive than we thought.

🥐 Breakfast looking at the Blue Mosque on one side of the terrace, and the Bosphorus on the other. People talk about the (very obvious) fact that the city has both a European, and an Asian, side, but it is very cool to have breakfast and think “oh, look, Asia, a whole different continent, is right over there. I might pop over before lunch”. Awesome.

🚬 There are a lot of smokers here. We still smoke heavily back home, but this is almost Asian level smoking. Oh, wait, Asia is right over there, have I told you that?

🔐 Trying to book an hotel with Booking is impossible without a VPN. It does not work in Turkey. Luckily we came prepared.

🚶🏻‍♂️ Quick walk around the block while the little slept/took her medicine/slept again. People think I look Iranian, must be the new, shorter, beard. We’re in Sultanahmet. It’s nice. Then back to the hotel, movieStar goes for a walk around the block, and I’m in the room, looking out for the little one, still asleep. Repeat. Until 2:30PM, when she finally woke up. With 3 hours of light left in the day. What a hellish day. We managed to do the same but I did in the morning, but took us longer, of course. Five times longer. Touristing with a sick child is not fun, and it’s the second time we’ve done this.

🤯 The Hagia Sophia line is IMPRESSIVE. Hours long, throughout the day.

🛒 Great Bazaar. It’s a bazaar, it’s great. I had to carry tinyMovieStar on my shoulders, so no photos. Just a little back pain. Impressive place, yes. But we’ve seen others that are not that far behind, if at all. Marrakesh came to mind, and that one has motorcycles and donkey carts thrown into the mix.

🍕 Pizza for dinner. Takeaway. Also beer. Strong beer. Had to wait around for the pizza to be prepared, in a very tourist-oriented place, where the staff asks the patrons to join in on the fun, by dancing with them. “No, thanks. No. No, I REALLY mean it”. movieStar then had a brilliant idea, and we ate the pizza on the rooftop, where breakfast is served. It’s empty in the evening, and it was great.

🏪 Convenience stores all over, stocked full. Nice to have around. Also a chance to try local bands of chocolates, and stuff.

😭 Chouriço is gone. I retraced our steps back to the Great Bazaar, in the dark, but he was nowhere to be seen. I don’t think this is a city that returns lost toys, and I dislike it a little now.

📱 Tech-wise: Holafly working as intended, Wise (affiliate link) account too. Contactless is a thing here, so I’m using the iPhone to pay most of the time. I did get local money out of a machine, for smaller purchases, and public transportation.

Day Three (Sunday/Istanbul)

📢 Woke up at 5AM. One and a half hours later I heard the muezzin blasting away for a full ten minutes, from the Blue Mosque. Heard the alarm on the room next door go off a handful of times (what is up with that, people??). Heard the cats fighting outside. Heard someone moving furniture on the room directly upstairs from ours. movieStars? Fast asleep.

🥞 Breakfast, as in the day before, happened in turns. The little one sleeps through it. I’ll go first, movieStar second, and brings up some food for our baby girl. The river is a mighty sight while I’m eating my omelette.

🇯🇵 Throwback to Japan, we got a couple of canned coffee late yesterday, and we had it today.

😅 tinyMovieStar waking up, looking out the window: “We don’t need to go for a walk, we can see everything from here”.

📷 And then we walked. And walked some more. And a bit longer.

🍭 We went by the Egyptian Bazaar (the spices bazaar), and bought some candy. Before that we had to find a toy store, and find a replacement for the missing toy. Nothing will replace it, of course, and the little one still thinks it will show up, but…

⚓️ We got on a boat to cross the river at the narrowest point (yay), and had a nice lunch at a fish spot right on the pier.

🤪 We then carried the little one up the hill, until we got to Galata Tower, a crazy spot with SO many influencers, and photographers offering their services. Incredible. Silly. We bought a balloon, checked in with a friend, and walked to Beyoğlu to meet her. Hipster town. Lovely place. Plenty of street art.

🍺 We had a quiet(ish) beer, walked a little, found a playground for tinyMovieStar, walked a bit longer, up to a rooftop on a classic restaurant for another beer and sunset. We had dinner at a kebap place outside, where we were the only foreigners. This turned out to be the nicest experience in Istanbul. When we were done we got a taxi, and he took us to our hotel. Did not try to scam us.

Day Four (Monday/Istanbul)

💸 We still needed to book the hotel for Cappadocia, we were traveling the following morning. Booking has been made. We’re still using the same MO: pick an hotel on the apps, and then get in touch directly with them. Most here even have a WhatsApp account, so it couldn’t be easier. We usually get the discount they would give away to the app, so that’s nice.

🤬 The taxi thing. I hate this side of the country.

🥙 After all that, we had lunch. Kebab in a classic, very local, spot. Busy busy, but no foreigners. Yummy.

🕌 Still touristing, walked a bit more, stopped at a hipster cafe with a super tasty cookie, and moved on to the Mosques. Hagia Sophia, and the Blue Mosque. Finally walked in, after walking by a few times. Rushing, as tinyMovieStar is, with her sickness, a tiny pain! The mosques are both gorgeous, but so very different. One very very old, dark, cavernous. The other lighter, happier.

🍗 I would be back in the area later, getting money and food. The little one cannot handle meals at restaurants when she’s feeling so down. I got an Efes Xtra from the convenience store. We ate in the room.

Day Five (Tuesday/Istanbul-Goreme)

🥖 Breakfast in bed, courtesy of tinyMovieStar. She finally felt good enough to have breakfast out of the room, and decided she would have it with mom, while dad could sleep a little longer. She’s sweet.

🥰 She also noticed how everyone in the street seems to love her. A lot of people come up to her and touch her cheeks, while calling her “princess”. At first we were all a bit shook by this, but got used to it and now just smile. “They love me”, she says.

🏎️ Crazy drivers. We have nothing on them, and we’re pretty deranged ourselves. Lunatic level speeding on the roads, whenever the road allows it. It’s either that, or gridlock. Nothing in between.

🗺️ Flying again. Internal flight, Istanbul to Kayseri. “Ladies and gentlemen, and dear children”. On the map, the flight map, just ahead of us, we can see a lot of places we’ve heard about, for not so great reasons: Syria just over there, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Gaza to the side. All very close.

🔊 Rant alert: Turkish people (from Istanbul so far), like the whole country, feel a lot like my own country back in the 80s/80s, before the whole EU thing turned us into a civilized nation. They are, for lack of a better expression, very rough around the edges. Common courtesy is unheard of, and any kind of pleasantry is reserved for the little one. We only get a smile if they see any profit in it.

😍 What a country! The part around Kayseri, and the drive to Goreme, is incredible! At sundown, no less! We shared the van with two other couples (no kids), and tinyMovieStar slept the whole time. The most beautiful landscape so far, and we thought to ourselves: we’re bringing a 3-year old into this lunar landscape, it feels a little like the end of the world. From a documentary set in Iran, or Mongolia,… It feels very cool, distant.

🎿 Goreme is a kitschy Alpine resort town. We checked in, and left to find some food, and supplies for the night. Found them at Fat Boys, and at a convenience shop across the street from it. Also visited the pharmacy. Everything, and thousands of souvenir shops, within walking distance.

Day Six (Wednesday/Goreme)

🥶 Waking up to 1 degree. It’s cold here.

🫥 Breakfast at the nice hotel “restaurant”. Super breakfast, tasty, plenty of options, but see no reason to call this a restaurant, since this is the one meal they serve. Also, our room was not cleaned today. I guess we won’t be telling people to pick the Secret Hill when they visit Goreme. Plenty of other options. Room is super nice, but that’s it. You can surely find other options, even closer to the center. All hotels looks very similar here. It’s strange.

🤠 City feels SO odd. Almost empty at the moment, can’t imagine it in peak season. They have a Wild West thing going, with wooden shops and restaurants, making it look like a western movie set at times. A lot of vintage cars, big ones, scattered around, ready for photo opportunities with Instagrammers. Instagram is, in fact, the reason why Goreme has grown this big. Once these influencers started coming, other followed. I can’t shake this feeling, that it’s overgrown, and not very sustainable. Lots of people now depend on them coming.

😅 Walk to Goreme Open Air Museum. It’s a nice walk, around 1K. Harder with a toddler on your shoulders, but the landscape is great all the way there. Once you get there, you realize Lonely Planet is SO wrong when it comes to prices. SOOOOOOOOO wrong about it, on their last guide. It’s impressive. Anyway, around 15€ per person later, we’re in. This is unlike anything we’ve ever seen, truly. Worth the visit, and I guess it’s worth the money. When we think about it, we spent almost the same amount on a silly 5 min pony ride for tinyMovieStar. They know how to milk you. The Turkish, not the pony.

🍔 For lunch and dinner, it’s Fat Boys again. All day. We are back in Bagan, food wise. We liked a restaurant on day one, and never tried another one. People are so nice here, and the food is great. We’ve been back, and will come again until it’s time to leave. After almost a week here, it’s awesome to feel they’re not trying to upsell anything. It’s refreshing. As a result, they will get all of our meal money. Maybe others should learn something.

🌅 movieStar went to one of the sunset spots, but it was cloudy. No sunset. I suspected that much, so stayed behind with the little one.

Day Seven (Thursday/Goreme)

🎈 Woke up early to see the hot air balloons.

🚍 Woop Woop Travel is located right in the center of town. That is the reason we picked it for our tour. We walked in because it was sitting next to the cafe, and we soon found out a Portuguese speaking girl was taking care of tourists. She had studied in Portugal. We booked it, and lucky we did. It was Red Tour day. We had the company of a small group (three) of Spaniards, and an almost empty van. The guide was super nice, and spoke pretty good Spanish, so that was ok with us. He appreciated the fact that we could speak the language, and he could skip doing the whole thing in Spanish and English.

🤩 We went through the list of locations, all of them very cool. Two other open air museums that we found even nicer than the one in Goreme, with old churches carved into the rock, and houses as well. We had the museums mostly to ourselves, in the sense that we would be the only ones at times, but still plenty of people in this very low season. Can’t imagine how crazy it gets in the summer.

🥗 Lunch break happened at the nuttiest place of the day. A food emporium, the mega buffet where all the vans and buses stop. When we thought all the roads lead to small towns, we found ourselves in Avanos, home of the tourist traps. Huge buildings dedicated to separate as much money as possible from the growing number of tourist’s wallets. This is the place where you realize there are still quite a few people coming here in the winter. From all over.

🏺 Mandatory stop at a pottery family owned workshop, that turns out to be a bug industrial thing as well. Hate these stops on these tours, and do not make the slightest effort to be anything but grey anymore. tinyMovieStar had a blast, of course. Being the only children she got to try her hand at pottery.

💞 Final stop before we headed back to Göreme: Love Valley. A very rickety, very rundown, way to try to capitalize on the landscape. A few swings, some hearts, the most depressing Instagram spot I’ve ever seen. They even had a 360 rotating camera, overlooking the valley. People just didn’t care. They stepped out of the buses, onto a camel, quick shot, and down again. Quite gloomy. These things look even more depressing in the low season, as the locals are still manning their shops and stalls, but there’s no one around. The tourist/local ratio is off.

🇪🇸 Since the others in the bus came from Spain, when the time came to look at a lot of camels, tinyMovieStar went “La fiesta de los camelos”, so they could understand what was going on.

🇹🇭 Dinner at Fat Boys, where else? Another good meal, and yet another chance for tinyMovieStar to impress, by ordering a soup in English. Also impressed, a Thai couple who then had a huge slice of chocolate cake delivered to our table!

🛏️ Settled the bill at the hotel, and early to bed.

Day Eight (Friday/Goreme-Istanbul-Lisbon)

🌙 Early (very) wake up, coffee on the run, van ride with the little one asleep on my lap. Airport packed, but dawn is finally here. A huge bus full of Chinese tourists (how we missed those, right?), and a severely overpriced BÜFE stall. Only one available in this small airport, so they get to pick their price point.

✈️ Older 737-800, with vintage entertainment system. We get used to nice things very quickly. This one felt like we were flying in the 70s. We had the same plane (not same same, of course) on the flight home. We feel like we were spoiled on the way over, as both flights were on newer aircraft.

💨 We got the “Last Call” up on the board in Istanbul, while we enjoyed our Shake Shack Burger and ice cream, and Slim Chicken tenders. We ran. A lot.

💺 Four flights in a week, always same seats: 10A/B/C. How come?

🍿 Bullet Train!! Haven’t seen this one show up on streaming, and was about to pirate the thing. Took me almost five hours (all flight) to finish. Still like the book better.

And we are back home. It was not an easy one, mostly because sickness kept us busy for more than half the trip. As far as everything else goes, Turkey is an easy destination. Tourism has been big there for a while, and infrastructure is in place to make moving around, finding a place to stay, or eat, an easy affair. If you have deeper pockets, even better.

And that’s the one thing I don’t appreciate, in Turkey, and elsewhere.

I believe the same happens to people who visit our country: workers in the hospitality industry (and what a stupid name that is to start with, as one should exclude de other) are probably the same. People are seen as wallets, and Get That Money is the name of the game. I hate that. There are, of course, lots of nice people in the country, or countries. Most of them do not work in the tourism industry.

Even so, it’s a brilliant destination, and a huge one. We only scratched the surface.

{micro maique}