Technology has done miracles to transform how people can stay in touch through conflict and economic duress, but blackouts like those in Gaza remind us how tenuous these connections can be 🚀 On Conflict and Connection – The Markup

There’s no other way… Before this trip Lena and I promised each other that we’d have regular chill days for the kids’ sake. And by “promised each other” I mostly mean Lena made me promise to her that I would be more relaxed than usual. 🚀 Aquarium and chill – mutelife

✌️ Enjoying this country. Quite a bit.

@stupendousman @pratik @odd We ended up walking almost 10K, most of it carrying her 🤣

@t3mujin 🤣🤣 It’s growing on me. She told me she would love a print of this one hanging in the living room 🤷🏻‍♂️

@camiel Thank you. A tweaked version of one of the old VSCO Film filters. Still like it too.

🇹🇷 Oops, forgot to add movieStar’s favorite of the day!

@odd Oh, right!! I forget about that 😅

🇹🇷 Bear with me, these might probably almost surely in all likelihood be the last ones today… Hopefully.

@help Not this one, no. Thanks. Still feels slow, but seems to be fine otherwise.

@odd Really?? We don’t get our flag! Cute one 😍

🇹🇷 Tomorrow it will rain a lot, so I’m posting extra today. We did have a wonderful day.

@odd Hahahah… The license plates are actually quite funny, as they look exactly like the EU ones, with the blue strip on the side, but with no stars… 😅

@crossingthethreshold 🥰🥰 Thanks! We’re about to go to bed here, little one already asleep (that’s why I’m able to edit and post). Have a good one!

🇹🇷 The little one felt better, that means more photos. First batch of the day:

🚶🏻‍♂️ Spent all afternoon walking around town with the movieStars, and met a friend. She showed us a part of town we wouldn’t go on our own, and a very cool one at that. Photos (many) later.

@ner3y Thank you 🙂 I’m not sure we’ll make it so far north, I’m afraid. The little one is still not feeling great, we’re mostly walking, slowly, around Sultanahmet. We’re probably crossing over to Galata Tower area today, but even that is a stretch at the moment.

@frank Oops! I actually deleted it as quickly as I could, but M.b seems to be extra snappy today.

@frank Yay for Drafts. If it did not exist, I wouldn’t over share.

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

@jean Welcome back! 🙂

@mihobu Hellooooo! Great to see you here! 😊

@podiboq 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

@cliffordbeshers 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Super set.

🇹🇷 6:34, prayer time. Being so close to the Blue Mosque has this perk, we can hear the muezzin as if he was standing in the room with us.

🤯 Up since 5AM. I don’t think that’s how it should work though, as that’s 2AM back home. Time to have that “How time zones work” talk with my body, I guess…

@willtmonroe @crossingthethreshold @lmika @Gaby @jarrod @pimoore It feels awful. This was a family favorite, and one of the nicknames I call her more often is even based on his name 😔 It’s been discontinued, and I can’t find it on the second hand apps. A really sad situation, all in all. He helped us through SO many things!

@pratik Thanks. Still trying to find my rhythm here, but having a good time, all things considered.

@KimberlyHirsh @JohnBrady They are everywhere, and you can tell they are cared for. I’ve seen little piles of dry cat food all over the place. They all look well fed, healthy.

@BenSouthwood Gone. I’m sad, this was also my favorite.

🧸 Things I never thought I’d do: run through the streets of Istanbul in the night, looking for Chouriço, the plush dog tinyMovieStar adores since she was born. RIP Chouriço.

🇹🇷 It’s still #caturday, and Istanbul is a city of cats too! So many of them all over, and all are super friendly.

🍕 And, as we’re in Istanbul, I picked up a couple of pizza pies from a restaurant next door, and we ate them in the empty terrace (only breakfast is served there, but they were nice).

🍺 Everything is fine. Just found out there’s an Efes Xtra (7.5%)! ₺60 at the convenience store! Yay.

🇹🇷 Little one still feverish. We had a very unproductive day.

☕️ I’ve got the photo for my next coffee-a-thon! Or maybe I should have waited until I had one from Turkish coffee… Hmmmm…

@ovr Loved this one.

@ovr 😅

⏰ Fever + three hour difference = well past noon, and we’re still waiting for tinyMovieStar to wake up.

🦄 As usual, photos are shared as Instagram stories. More, faster, but temporary only. Same username over there…

@help Seems fixed. But something definitely feels wrong about the whole thing. Crossposting still broken.

@z428 Thank you! You too 🙂

@ovr Yeah 😔 My site is now completely offline, it won’t build. Mildly pissed.

@help Now my site won’t build with “no space left on device”. I can assure you there’s plenty of space on my device. This is quite annoying, as you might guess, even more so when I can see it’s the middle of the night over there.

🇹🇷 Walk around the block in Sultanahmet. Nice.

@jean No worries 🙂 Just an observation.

@help Still experiencing extreme slowness when it comes to publishing on the blog and timeline, more so when it comes to picking up Letterboxd feed. The whole site/workflow has been sluggish at best for the past few days.

🚬 People smoke a LOT here! Also, good morning, hope you have a wonderful day. Limited online time, I will surely miss stuff. Probably a lot.

Jerry & Marge Go Large, 2022 - ★★★½

Watched on Friday December 1, 2023.

He’s back! Woah, 25 Days of omg.lol is back! Of course, it’s already December 2 in many parts of the world as I write this, and I’m just now getting around to writing this post for December 1. Not off to a great start, but better late than never? 🚀 25 Days of omg.lol · 2023, Day 1

🇹🇷 Late arrival. Just enough time to run out, grab a bite, and back to the hotel.

😢 RIP Elliott Erwitt. If there is a master, he is it.

🃏 We Made It 🇹🇷 👧🏻

🇹🇷 Boarding…

@chadkoh Yay, cool to know, thanks. Managed to watch the first episode yesterday, I’ve got the second one waiting until we board.

@Miraz @lmika @pratik @pcora Thank you, obrigado. Ready!

📚 I was missing something, woke up a few minutes earlier to take care of it.

👋🏼 Ready to Go

It’s past 1AM, time to go to sleep. Most things are ready for our early departure tomorrow, we just need to pack whatever is still being used (chargers, tinyMovieStar’s medicine, and whatnot). Other than that, I trust we’re done. eSIM is installed already, Wise card loaded with some cash for the first couple of days. Hopefully it will work. Checking the weather on our destination left us a bit more relaxed, we’ll find similar conditions to what we have here at the moment. It snowed a few days ago, but it should be a bit warmer now, so no need for extra warm clothes, our regular winter attire should be able to handle it. I’ll try to finish the first episode of Slow Horses before nodding off. Not sure I’ll pull that one off. 🇹🇷 😴

@matthewlang Taking a small break from packing to watch the first one 🙂

@matthewlang Taking a small break from packing to watch the first one 🙂

@pcora Turns out I had something already, from a trip back in January. One screen only, but 8 apps at the bottom. It’s actually cleaner now on my daily mode 🤣

@pcora Turns out I had something already, from a trip back in January. One screen only, but 8 apps at the bottom. It’s actually cleaner now on my daily mode 🤣

@otaviocc I'm sure you can have one anyway... 😉 @pcora

@otaviocc I'm sure you can have one anyway... 😉 @pcora

🧸 Holafly eSIM has been bought. Backpacks are almost ready. Now stuffing iPad full of Bluey episodes.

@pcora No, sir, I have not. Well… kinda. Girls bags are packed, only one missing is mine, but I’m an easy packer. Checking in next, if you want to keep going 🙂

🏨 Istanbul hotel reservation: check. Airport transfer confirmation: check. movieStar took care of both of these, while I drove home with a sleeping toddler, and HemisphericViews playing. Still raining.

@pcora It does not, you are SO right 🤣

@pcora What are you doing??? I’ll have to get one now!!

🌧️ Mercury Weather’s trip feature is great. Also has a handy widget.

⌚️ Seriously considering taking the Apple Watch along on the trip. That would be a first, not having a mechanical one tagging along…

@ner3y Thanks. We’re flying to Cappadocia for a couple of days as well, afraid the rain/cold might make it less than perfect. We’ll have fun anyway, I’m sure.

@512px Not really a surprise. It’s been close to abandonware for a while. Sad, to a point.

@vincent Thank you for your service. It was a good month 😊

@gregmoore I might have had that at one point in time, back in the era known as “torrent days”…

@mattbirchler That is one stupid idea, if I ever saw one! Why would they do that? Opt-out too!

@SimonWoods 😂

@numericcitizen 🙏🏼

✊🏼 RIP Shane MacGowan.

@vincent Updated!

@vincent I have not, strangely, read their terms 😅 It’s still on with arq, for the moment. It’s not too expensive but, as you know, these add up.

@pcora Enjoy it! Wind howling over here, with torrential rain with 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. 📷 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! 🤒 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. 👩🏻‍⚕️ 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. 🇹🇷 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. 🤣 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! 📺 TV has been replaced with Tik Tok this week. 🍿 Movies have been replaced with Tik Tok this week. 🎙 Podcasts have been replaced with Tik Tok this week. 📚 Books have been replaced with Tik Tok this week. 📬 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. 📦 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…

@ndreas I really admire what you do, but I would struggle with everything in “6:30AM, getting back home from the gym”! The time. The gym… 😂

🅱️ The bSides page has grown into something unplanned when I started it, and I’ll need to tweak the text a bit soon. Still, it still works, and a link to Turkey’s bSides has been added, even before we actually have “A sides”!

☀️ In 24 hours, fingers crossed.

Adding this to my read list. Probably one of these will work for me 😅 My philosophy in general has been “throw enough shit at the wall and some of it is bound to stick. 🚀 Marketing methods from photographers in my salary survey – A Photo Editor

Home, I almost certainly said thank you (I don’t remember precisely) but it was from respectful gratitude, not from monitored, gamified fear. 🚀 On having recently had Covid and other modern freedoms (Interconnected)

@ndreas Darn!! Good morning.

@vincent Three hours later, we’re still in bed over here. No coffee yet! It’s close to 10AM 😳

@ovr Hope you feel better soon. Enjoy the downtime.

@ner3y I still remember the thrill of using this, and the feeling of slowness that came after a while. It became too clunky to use.

😶 Tomorrow It Is

Waking up next to the little one. She slept through the night, but she’s not 100% there yet. It’s raining hard. We still have SO much that needs to be taken care of. movieStar will be at the office all day. We’ll spend the day away, and drive back to the city in the evening. Can’t really believe we’ll be airborne in 24hrs.

@gregmoore They are still so good.

🎧 … and 2022, 2021, 2020, 201… You get it. I’m predictable, and boring, and vintage. Love Portishead, though. Still. Thank you.

@JohnPhilpin Ouch!

@otaviocc 🤣🤣🤣

🥰 Doctor appointment turned out to be so late in the day that we decided against traveling back to the city. movieStar is home, and the two of us will sleep at my in-laws! We’re having a father/daughter night!

@Omrrc Haven’t been able to watch it yet, just the first couple of minutes. The little one is finally asleep, I might try again soon.

@odd Sadly, yes. We’ve seen a HUGE increase in the number of homeless people in the city.

@Miraz 😔

@bjhess Nice. Congratulations!

@alexink Thanks. We will go on with our preparation 🙂

@SimonWoods @atog @odd @crossingthethreshold She still needs some medication, but really happy. We need to unblock her nose, or flying could be a challenge. But we’re happy.

Same. And same. Personally, I’m sad to see TinyLetter go. While I haven’t written a TinyLetter email in years, I enjoyed how it made the act of writing and publishing a clean newsletter really easy. RIP TinyLetter. 🚀 Mailchimp is shutting down TinyLetter - The Verge

@Miraz Indeed! Throat infection, should be fine 🙂

🦠 Back from the doctor’s office, really nice pediatrician. No antibiotics needed, tinyMovieStar should be able to travel in a couple of days. Yay.

👩🏻‍⚕️ Super busy day at the doctor’s office, our appointment keeps getting bumped. Now back home, waiting for a call letting us know she’s ready to see us. What. A. Ducking. Day!

@manton 👀

@ner3y The original template (made by @Gaby) is available at Robb’s dedicated page, along with links to everyone’s posts.

👀 Walking to the doctor’s office…

@odd 😻

@gregmoore Felt good, as this one does not do this often 🙂

( 😅 No, I’m not writing posts with titles just because I like to look at the new font… )

@alexink Shorts!! 🥶

@ner3y Beautiful.

🦄 Added emoji to my defaults post, and tweaked the email client/server entry, to reflect the change that happened since I first posted the list. You can check what others (212 and counting) are using at Robb’s site.

📺 Of course the first scene, of the first episode, of the new season of Slow Horses, is set in Istanbul. Of course.

👩🏻‍⚕️ Doctor appointment in two hours. Good.

😻 A Love Story in Three Acts

🤒 Cough, Cough

movieStar had to go to the office today, and thought it would be nice if I drove the smaller movieStar to see her grandma. She was feeling better, so she would be bored at home, for yet another day. It’s been a while since she’s been out. But, as things can never be that simple, she started coughing, REALLY hard, from the moment she got in the car. It was a drive from hell, poor thing. Three stops later, we made it. Usually it takes us around 45 mins, today we doubled that time. Coughing has slowed down a bit, and we are now trying to get an appointment with a pediatrician, in a town with only one of those. She’s busy all day long. Fun day 🙂

🎲 First coffee, then grab the thermometer.

🇹🇷 Getting Too Close

Two days to go, and we still have to book hotels, and take care of some last minute shopping. But tinyMovieStar is still feverish, and we’re trying to figure out how things will unfold. Don’t want to book non-refundable hotels, and then find ourselves unable to fly. A little afraid the hotel we picked will end up being full. It’s a small one. She might wake up much better tomorrow, but we have been warned about a lot of sick kids at school these past few days. We’ll try to keep her home until Friday. Hopefully everything will be ok, but it’s a little nerve-racking. Fingers still crossed.

🙌🏼 Goddess

This, and how incredibly light the whole browser feels. Snappy. Lots to love. Although you can’t adjust the number of columns in the tab grid, you can still pick a smaller size for the thumbnails if you want to see more tabs at once. 🚀 Quiche Browser Is a Beautiful and Modular Web Browser for iOS

🐴 Slow Horses. New season tomorrow. This is a PSA announcement.

Can easily see a movie here… The Camino as we knew it, is gone. It’s been replaced with a Santiago Super Highway of people who all know best, paved by Camino Agencies that benefit greatly from isolating their customers from the local service industry and other pilgrims, lined with albergues and bars that don’t see the pilgrim but their wallet, and a Catholic Disneyland at the end. 🚀 The Ages of the Caminos - mikka in markdown

🦺 No Limits!

194! One hundred and ninety four! So far. If you haven’t done it yet, just go and be a part of this cool thing. Listen to the episode, write your own post, add it to the list. We want to know about your defaults.

👀 While running errands…

🌡️ 37 during the night (no medication taken), and feeling a lot better after 12 hours of sleep. tinyMovieStar is almost as good as new. Plans for today, according to her? Stay in bed all day.

Trying Arq. Yes, officer, @vincent and @manton made me do it…

🚀 Yesterday I posted a link to a travel blog from a family I love. Here’s another blog, from the other half of that couple: infinite dreams, by the awesome Akane Kinomoto.

Disgusting! The Saudi government is like a drug dealer trying to get Africa hooked on its harmful product. “The rest of the world is weaning itself off dirty and polluting fossil fuels and Saudi Arabia is getting desperate for more customers and is turning its sights on Africa. It’s repulsive. 🚀 Revealed: Saudi Arabia’s grand plan to ‘hook’ poor countries on oil | Oil | The Guardian

🤒 39.1!

I’ve been a fan of this family for a LONG time, and their travel journals never disappoint. Awesome photography too. So we booked the cheapest flights we could find. This time we flew with Finnair and our flight included a long layover in Helsinki. Almost 24 hours long. That meant we had a warm-up day to explore the city before heading to Korea and Japan, and we couldn’t be more excited! 🚀 Layover in Helsinki - mutelife

🌟 Dark

🛒 It’s a Sultans of Swing errands kind of morning…

🚪 There’s a “knock knock” joke in there, somewhere…

😷 Little one still coughing, and a little feverish. Lots of cuddling going on.

🕊 90 photos are on their way… I can go to bed now.

💊 Ok, Micro.blog, hope you feel better soon. Take care, I’ll come check on you in the morning.

🍜 A friend just sent a photo from Chiang Mai, a yummy bowl of Khao Soi. I love him, but hate him a little as well.

🥖 Editing, but had a bit of this one before starting…

👨🏻‍💻 Just got home, editing with start in… 10 mins! Sunday night, I know, but I want to send this one today. Got plenty to keep me busy during the week.

🤒 Getting ready for the trip back home. tinyMovieStar a little feverish.

🥰 We have some really good ones over here…

😳 Send help, my father-in-law is making us sit through another of André Rieu’s endless Christmas extravaganzas!

🧂 What took us there was, in my opinion, the least interesting part. Turns out salt is not a great material for sculpting.

🏴‍☠️ This is still going on, almost every day.

👀 It was one of those days! Eating and drinking, non-stop.

🧂 We moved to the in-laws last night, as my assignment for today involves something local, and odd: nativity scenes made with salt. Yes, you have read that right. Salt.

thingsThisWeek #76

This week I was back on the road. Closer to Turkey trip as well. A lot closer. When I looked at the calendar, it was already Thursday. Almost no time for TV, movies, podcasts, or reading. Also busy Saturday ahead, so this was posted very early this week. Sorry about that. 🌟 Weekend was good. We made it to my in-laws, were joined by one cousin only on Saturday, had the fireplace going all day long. It is getting colder here. Father-in-law building stuff with tinyMovieStar, mother-in-law keeping her busy with drawing, dancing, baking,… She is a very demanding granddaughter. On Sunday we were joined by a few more cousins, and brother-in-law-number-two & wife. Happy day. Since most of the closer family was there, the xMas present lottery was arranged, and I now know who I have to buy a present for. Kinda like a Secret Santa, without the secret part… I got my father-in-law. movieStar came up with the perfect gift already, I know what I’m getting him: a pair of headphones. He keeps watching annoying videos on his phone while we try to talk/watch cartoons on TV with the little one, so these will be a godsend! Thanks, movieStar. 🇹🇷 TurkeyTour preparation is ongoing. Thinking I might take missQ with me on the trip, it’s been a while since I’ve had a proper camera while traveling, and it should be dark enough to use one. It is trickier !!!!! Winter light would be better handled by it, I’m guessing. The other HUGE decision, of course, as always, is what watch to wear on this one. Feel like this subject always takes up an oddly long time to settle. I cannot pick one, and be done with it. Planes are booked. Hotels still need to be arranged, but it’s super extra mega low season, so it shouldn’t be an issue. 📷 On the road, for close to two days. Don’t really enjoy these anymore, not as much as I did. Away from the girls, can’t help but feeling guilty for leaving them without help. They manage, of course, but still… How things change! I wouldn’t give it a second thought before leaving town for a month, I even welcomed it, a few years ago. And now I can’t even enjoy a couple of days away. Adding insult to injury, this trip wasn’t even that far from Lisbon, we could have spent the night at home. We do get to eat a lot of awesome food, and I was even extra lucky and had wonderful beer waiting for me this time. The team is super nice, and we always end up having fun, on top of meeting really interesting people. We even had a picnic! But… no movieStars for two days. And the editing that comes from shooting over 2000 photos in two days? Yeah, that’s not too nice either. 🧂 Another, rather odd, thing needed shooting, this time for the paper. Luckily, this time around, it was close to my in-laws, and on a Saturday, when we’re already there. I’m writing this the night before, going tomorrow. ⭐️ I’ll often browse the Discovery timeline on Micro.blog, and come upon some great photo, or post. If it’s from someone I’m not following, I’ll obviously consider doing so. I then check their profile, trying to figure out the amount of posts I might find interesting. What I’m really doing though, is checking if they interact with other users. If there’s not a single reply over there, I’ll 99% not follow. Silly, sure, but I won’t. ⚓️ SimpleBits have a sale going (run!), so I just closed my eyes and got Ships Whistle. I love the studio, really like the fonts, and I’m sorry there’s not enough cash at the moment on my digital wallet to get the whole collection. Anyway, it’s done, and working. I once tried to get a physical item from their shop, but gave up when shipping costs were added to it, more than doubling the cost. Glad I finally got something from this wonderful company. I found myself editing CSS files on the go, while almost falling asleep during our days on the road, but I’m quite happy with the way things look. New toys, that’s what we need! Site name, longer post titles, footer, and H2. That’s where you can find the new font at the moment. 🖼 Follow up to the exhibition that opened a couple of weeks ago: there will be another show, with bigger prints, on a nicer gallery. Only 12 of the 70 photographers were invited to be a part of this one. Somehow my photo struck a chord. A new print, 120cm wide, will be made, and shown at this new venue. 📺 007: Road to a Million, the first couple of minutes only. I shouldn’t even have this here, but I want to get back to it, so itvwill act as a reminder. Hopefully. I got to watch another episode of Paolo fromTOKYO on YouTube, one of my favourite things to have on while editing photos. This time it was Day in the Life of a Japanese All-Night Izakaya Restaurant Worker. I love this Day in the Life series. We still have the new season of The Crown to watch, and have been unable to do it! 🍿 Spy. That was about it. And it didn’t even get my full attention, as I watched it while editing photos. We did watch Ratatouille as well, but that was a rerun, and we were playing and having dinner at the same time, so… 🎙️ Podcasts also took a back seat this week. Days on the road, with company, aren’t great for podcast listening. At home I didn’t get that much free time as well. I have HemisphericViews, Core Int, Underworld, Smartless, Hacked, and a couple of Portuguese ones on the list… When will I find the time? 📦 The Dropshare conundrum. I don’t use it that much, but would love to have it available for when I do need it. The price of the iOS version is ok, even the lifetime unlock, but I’m having trouble with the cost of the macOS app. I’d be stuck with an older version (that supports my OS version), and I find it expensive. Even with Black Friday’s promotion, and an extra discount for purchasing parity (really nice idea, btw). I guess it means I don’t really need it that much. Blaming numericcitizen for this one, he’s brought up Backblaze (10GB B2 Cloud Storage for free) and Dropshare this week. Still, incredible support from the developer, it took him two whole minutes to get back to me with a link for an older version of his app, one that works with Catalina. Decisions, decisions… 👾 Tik Tok. Decided to give it a go. It’s awfully addictive. That’s what I’m prepared to say at this point.

🍕 Following this haute cuisine movie, it’s pizza for dinner. tinyMovieStar requested that from her personal butler.

Ratatouille, 2007 - ★★★★½

Watched on Friday November 24, 2023.

🐭 Father&daughter evening starts with Ratatouille.

🇹🇷 Istanbul has 41 entries on Atlas Obscura. Impressive.

Spy, 2015 - ★★★

Watched on Friday November 24, 2023.

🏓 Still editing…

🤩 Editing photos, watching “Spy”, thinking about lunch, prepping stuff for tomorrow’s assignment. All at once. Yay for espresso X3!

🎒 Kindergarten Commute

☕ Maybe coffee will help. It almost always does… Have a good morning, y’all.

😫 Up since 5AM, still have a cold, and installed Tik Tok to see what that thing is all about. What else could go wrong?

🖍️ Wine Naming Should be editing these, but can’t find the strength to do it.

As a manager I have an ethos of never asking somebody to do something that I wouldn’t do myself (if I have the requisite skill and capability). 🚀 The Mop Will Always Be Your Friend | Canion dot Blog

😪 Since I have a cold, no new photos so far. Here’s to the old ones, dark and horizontal! Have a pot-pourri…

🏴‍☠️ Feeling like a pirate! Also, I have a cold.

As humans, we’re surrounded by objects. We pay very little attention to the vast majority of them but they’re there, they’re all around us. I’m aware it’s probably silly, but I want more beautiful objects in this world. Objects made with love, with care. 🚀 On creating beautiful things

🚶🏻‍♂️ Package drop + packages pickup + tinyMovieStar drop off + tinyMovieStar pick up + walk to passport office and back. I feel those 8 floors are way under what it should be. This is Lisbon, after all. I did those in the building alone.

🧳 movieStar needed a new passport, we took care of that today. In and out of the passport office in 15 mins, no appointment, just walked in. Super nice lady too. When things work, it’s great.

🎄 Window shopping on our way to the passport office.

💺 Istanbul - Cappadocia flights have been purchased. Next: book hotels, and pack our bags. We’re in “T- a week and a couple of days” territory around here.

👏🏼 Quick email to Dropshare support, and they sent a link to an earlier release, one that works with my old Catalina. Brilliant.

👀 Picking up a couple of packages, and two photos on the way.

It shields your computer’s IP address from other websites while passing all your web traffic through a server owned by Google. This gives Google a God’s-eye view of every website you visit at all times while using Chrome, whether you are logged in to your Google Account or not. There is zero privacy benefit to IP Protection in its current form, and we strongly recommend people do not enable it. 🚀 Google Chrome’s IP Protection is privacy washing

🧼 Ongoing cleanup. They’ve been at it for over a month now…

🗞️ About page updated with font information. It was missing, unbelievably, and that is now fixed.

Another awesome deal, thanks Vincent. 40% off on the yearly (usually $20) using OMGWHATAREYOUDOING. Use it, share it, print it on T-Shirts 😋 🚀 If you’re on the edge of subscribing to shoutouts, I have so… // Vincent Ritter

Users who have ad blockers installed may experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using. 🚀 YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users

💾 Over 2000 photos on this trip, bringing the number of photos in my Photos.app to over 200000. Gosh!

💖 Back in the city, a #loveProject on the corner.

🍷 Rock’n’Roll Final photo of this report. Thousands more to look at and edit. Heading back to the city, time to pick up tinyMovieStar!

🌳 Countryside maique. Picnicking.

🧸 Just your regular Portuguese rest area on the highway…

🗡️ They take the whole Knights Templar thing very seriously in Tomar. It’s everywhere!

💴 Got Ships Whistle, but I don’t think this will be the only one I get. And editing CSS files on the iPhone at breakfast is FUN!

🏨 Good morning. Strange, waking up at an hotel without the girls. At least there’s coffee in the room!

🖍️ Pick a font, one font… Which one should I pair with Atkinson Hyperlegible, font experts? SimpleBits.

🇦🇺 Pink Blunnies are dead, long live the new Blunnies.

🪑 After lunch. On to the next stop…

🍇 First stop.

🎒 Here we go…

Instant follow, thank you. you should follow the (unofficial) @merlinwisdom@botsin.space. It’s an account that spits out a random entry from Merlin Mann’s Wisdom Project (…) every six hours. 🚀 7 Things This Week [#119] - HeyDingus

☕️ Awake since 4AM, wondering if I would get back to sleep. Seems like I won’t. It’s close to 6AM now. Maybe I should just get up, have an espresso, and start getting ready for a day on the road, visiting more vineyards.

We need a movie made out of this one… These particular Kit Kats would become the key players in an ultimately frustrating saga of shell email accounts, phantom truckers, supply-chain fraud and one seriously bewildered cargo freight broker. 🚀 How to Hijack a Quarter of a Million Dollars in Rare Japanese Kit Kats - The New York Times

🎨 That 5AM street art post. I wonder if I’ll get back to sleep…

Saving, sharing, testing later… I like to keep my photo library organised, which includes location information to all photos I take with my big camera. 🚀 Record GPS tracks and Geo-tag Photos on iPhone

😻 It’s been a while, but here he is again: Gaspar, almost in time for #caturday.

🧳 Spending two days on the road, Monday and Tuesday. Can’t say I’m totally happy with it… I’ll miss ballet, meals, sleep time, laughs, hugs, kisses,… too much!

🌐 Decided to publish this week’s thingsThisWeek on HEY’s World as well. As a test, nothing more than that…

🧸 Rompecabezas!

🎁 It’s that time of the year again, when watches are showing up everywhere, even old school printed press. Tudor looks nice paired with Nazaré and Nic Von Rupp.

🔥 First order of business for today: fireplace.

🌟 We needed a star for our Christmas tree, so grandpa made one with tinyMovieStar.

thingsThisWeek #75

🎉 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. 🎄 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. 🥰 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. 🍺 Managed to meet my best friend for a couple of beers this week. That was it as far as my social week month 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? 👋🏼 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. 🌹 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. 📺 The Billionaire, The Butler, and the Boyfriend. Three episodes only, so that was quick to watch. Incredible story. 🍿 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. 🎙️ 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. 🎵 Thanks to Jack, I listened to Andre 3000’s new album. Flute. Cool flute. 📚 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. 💸 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.

🐘 Back in Santa’s Workshop

🔭 After yesterday’s crying fit, we had to ask our friend to drive by on her way to work. tinyMovieStar missed her TOO MUCH!

🏊‍♀️ Watching how further along tinyMovieStar gets with each passing week on the swimming pool is awesome. Particularly proud today, but it’s a pleasure to watch every time.

☔️ Dark and rainy. Swimming class in under an hour, and we’re walking there. Would rather stay home.

🍊 Parked Orange

👀 Our afternoons are now nights. Light is gone by the time we get home.

Awesome work, great client! It’s a delightful web app to view your timeline, make posts and keep up with conversations. 🚀 Hey Loura! -

🧑🏻‍🍳 Replies to write, photos to edit, things to read, stuff to buy… but have to cook dinner! See you later.

☢️ Throat soreness, muscle pain, someone’s getting tested again… It’s movieStar! Negative, in the end.

🇹🇷 We’re adding Cappadocia to the plan, now that Petra is definitely out.

🤓 WIP… Kagi is working on an email service, and HEY is launching a calendar…

A cool use of AI, with dutchcyclinglifestyle.com. reimagine what any street on Google Street View would look like as a bike- and pedestrian-friendly street. This Dutch webapp uses AI to reimagine what any street… - kottke.org

💨 The day started with a little mishap, so I had to wash a tiny pair of leggings, and blow dry them, in time for school. And I did. Regular programming will resume shortly.

🇹🇷 Two weeks to go, we’re deep in the research part of the trip.

💸 Sometimes it sucks to be a freelancer! I had an assignment tomorrow. It was postponed, now happening on Monday. But I have previous arrangements for Monday/Tuesday, so I’m missing this one…

💡 Warm Late afternoon, after the mandatory stop at the playground.

👩🏻‍🎤 Picking up the little one next, I’m sure she’s out of her Monster Mood. Leaving you with our national colours. Enjoy.

Link includes 1:21 minutes of bliss. Can’t wait for full album. Philip Glass is coming out with a new album early next year called Philip Glass Solo. It was recorded during the early days of the pandemic at Glass’s home on his piano. 🚀 Philip Glass Solo - kottke.org

🇯🇵 Candidate

💰 OH! Looks like we got a refund on our “non-refundable” tickets!

🤬 Someone woke up in an AWFUL mood. Can’t remember the last time this happened. Crying all the way to the car, and then good mood on our way to school. After a very noisy hour, crying with some kicking thrown in.

🌹 SOLVED! An engineer named Rose, from the security team, managed to remove the limits on the HEY account. Thank you, Rose, wherever you may be.

💶 Since I was up way too early today, I managed to finish “The Billionaire, The Butler, and the Boyfriend”.

😩 First disappointment with HEY. Seems like new accounts are limited, for the first two months. I get that spam needs controlling, but who would spent $99 on an account for spam? Anyway, I have 144 parents waiting for an email, and I can’t send it.

💛 Yellow! I’ve been a fan of yellow for a while, and now it’s a game as well. One I play with tinyMovieStar. Whenever a yellow vehicle drives by, she can gently slap me. Yeah, I know. But I love it. (I managed to turn white cars into hugs though, so I come out on top…)

🇹🇭 A friend just sent a photo from a beach in Thailand, where he’s spending a few weeks. Since I can’t go there at the moment, I went to the next best place: the archive. From when I shot horizontal, and darker, photos.

📝 Found myself using HEY’s stickies feature. Handy.

I guess I’m spending part of today going down this list… Below, you’ll find a list of over 140 (🤯) Indie Apps that are offering discounts for Black Friday 2023! Each of these apps is developed by an Indie App Developer 🚀 Indie App Sales - Black Friday Edition

I don’t get as excited about this as I did back in the day, but still worth a look, I suppose. Today’s finalists include nearly 40 apps and games that span a wide variety of categories and range from creations by solo developers to big companies. It’s an eclectic mix that captures the breadth of the App Store well. 🚀 Apple Announces Close to 40 App Store Awards Finalists - MacStories

🇯🇴 Small screwup, seems like we’re not going to Jordan after all, and are spending the week in Turkey. We do have tickets, mind you, just not great ones…

🌇 Cityscape at sunset, a postcard.

Stand for life. Stand for peace. Stand for not killing children, for fuck’s sake. 🚀 In the face of human rights abuses - Werd I/O

🐈 Cats were shipped, just in case anyone was wondering…

🥰 Having fun!

Never heard about this one before, so cool. The Film Compax is distinguished from other UG chronographs by its purpose-built outer scales. These red and black scales are designed to indicate the amount of film used in feet per second: red for 16mm film and black for 35mm film, calibrated to the old industry standard of 24 frames per second. The three o’clock subdial has additional markers to keep measuring the amount of film used in feet per minute. 🚀 Hands-On With One Of The Rarest Universal Geneve Chronographs, Ever - HODINKEE

😶‍🌫️ Foggy morning on the way to kindergarten.

🥱 We’re having a Monday kind of Tuesday. 45 minutes after wake up time, all of us are still in bed. We should be leaving in 15 minutes. How is your morning coming along?

Parenting is a delicate balance of convincing your child they can do anything in life while simultaneously screaming “DON’T DO THAT!” every three minutes. 🚀 The Mum Crew - Instagram

👀 She went to ballet class, we went around the block again.

😪 Let’s go get tinyMovieStar, and check her Snot Level. Ballet class is dependent on that.

😈 Not much accomplished on this here Monday, so far. Little things, mostly, but not a lot else.

👀 Still Walking

I know someone (cough… @vincent… cough…) you will be very happy. Otherwise known as sideloading, the change coming sometime in the first half of 2024 will allow customers to download apps without needing to use the App Store, which will mean developers won’t need to pay Apple’s 15 to 30 percent fees. 🚀 iPhone App Sideloading Coming to Users in the EU in First Half of 2024

👀 Done with Part I of the errands. Back home to edit some photos. tinyMovieStar sound asleep. Still.

😴 The little one coughed a bit during the night, so we’re letting her sleep in. She’ll go to school when she wakes up. I’m running errands in the meantime.

🤓 Homescreen Update It’s like the image on the left 99% of the time, and I never see it like the screenshot on the right. I just swipe to check, and swipe back to hide. Orion and HEY are the new things, and still with Mona, Ivory hidden for now.

🥱 Waking up… Oh, it’s another Monday!

🇲🇴 Another trip down Macau lane, while looking for something else…

🤯 tinyMovieStar is 3 1/2. She just found out about Nutella.

🎄 We now have a Christmas tree. A fake one! It was a present. We will soon start putting up the decorations, and make some new ones with tinyMovieStar.

🥰👏🏼 Every so often, the internet (as in a community of folks within) surprises you and does something genuinely lovely and wholesome. 🚀 Hey, it’s Jason! // Duel of the Defaults

🧸 We’re trying to leave, but tinyMovieStar is still playing with grandma, and very unwilling to get in the car.

🌱 Happy we can use these again… Cozy and lazy.

🐌 We… Are… Taking… It… Slow… Today…

🌧️ Another one of the “has been shared before, but I think it deserves another share” series…

You and me both. I’m happy to give it my money, and I look forward to seeing what else Ritter has in store for the platform. 🚀 Tinylytics Is a Simple, Privacy-Focused Alternative to Google Analytics - Opus

📮 Happy with this one.

☎️ Soooo many people still rather call. The day is a very loud one because of that preference.

🎨 Peaceful

🎂 Not entirely sure we’re ready for it, but here we go: party day!

thingsThisWeek #74

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!

🥳 2AM, finally going to bed. Tired. I’m OLD!

🎲 Lucky Mistake

📝 This week’s thingsThisWeek is close to 10000 characters already, and it’s only Friday!

😬 A couple more hours, and the babysitter gets here. We’ll be on our own!!

⛅️ Odd weather on the walk home…

🌫️ Smoky? Foggy? Long story short, I was looking for a roasted chestnut vendor, and typed “smoky” on iOS’s photos thingy. These are some of the photos search uncovered. You can find smoke on one of them.

🌰 Tomorrow is St. Martin’s Day, so that means we’re eating roasted chestnuts today at kindergarten. And then it’s off to movieStar’s first bDay party of the season!

🧹 Cleaning Up Sometimes I have to open Lightroom, and scroll down, trying to find photos that I forgot to delete after posting them. Some I’ll post again…

👋 One year of HEY. Let’s go.

Ditto! Still send shivers down my spine every time I listen to it. “I want to thank Tracy Chapman for writing one of the greatest songs of all time,” 🚀 Tracy Chapman becomes 1st Black songwriter to win Song of the Year in CMA Awards' 56-year history

🖼️ Not a lot of photos from yesterday’s LONG walk home, as I carried the little one on my shoulders all the way.

Some labor activists say the system creates inequities and leaves workers more vulnerable to the whims of their employers. They also argue that relying on tips makes women — who make up the majority of the tipped workforce — more likely to suffer sexual harassment or abuse from customers and managers. 🚀 New American tipping culture is confusing, frustrating, study finds - The Washington Post

If I’ve learned anything from this, it’s that cash is king. And, I need a trench coat. 🚀 Without a Trace: How to Take Your Phone Off the Grid – The Markup

Cyberbunker: The Criminal Underworld, 2023 - ★★★

Watched on Friday November 10, 2023.

🇺🇸 Jonathan is leaving for the US in a few minutes. tinyMovieStar will be very sad when she wakes up and finds out he’s not here anymore. We will all be a little sad today, in fact. But we have a party later!

🖼️ The show is on, and we made it in time! Before that I had to drive back to the city with Jonathan, we all had a very late lunch, picked up the little one, and walked all the way to the venue.

🚌 Pick Up Next

💥 Another crash on the highway, and 30 minutes added to my ETA. When will people learn??

🕵🏻‍♂️ Took me three weeks to hit the 300/monthly searches limit on my Kagi Starter plan. Hmmmm… A yearly sub would get me 3600/year, so that would probably help even out stuff, but I’m not ready to pay for a whole year yet.

🚌 Back to my Bus Driver gig this morning, picking up Mr Jonathan from Comporta. We might take the scenic route home, ferry crossing included.

🫥 I Guess It’s Good Bye…

👋 I might have started a new HEY trial. I blame @vincent and @Gabz.

😶 Plata O Plomo

🔤 Every time SimpleBits has a new font out, I add it to my list of future purchases. Today they’re launching Wilco, and it’s on the list already. One day I’ll buy one, and use it on the site. Hard to decide which one I’ll get…

I’m a kagi-darkmustard-theme fan myself… A collection of custom Kagi themes with screenshots. 🚀 awesome-kagi-css

🎄 Christmas must be around the corner, as another tradition came back to life today: the email thread where we, parents, decide what surprise we’re doing for the Christmas party. This one will end up with HUNDREDS of emails.

🕺🏻 My Life These Days tinyMovieStar: “For real, I don’t want to have robot feet!” movieStar: “What is the name of the cloud we use at work?”

☯️ We were picking up a parcel from the post office when these two showed up. A classic Good Cop/Bad Cop situation…

“My heart got shattered in pieces,” she said. “He doesn’t want the internet connection to go on YouTube, not to be active on social media. He just wants to be there for the goodbye call. He’s expecting his wife and kids to be killed any minute.” 🚀 ‘Let Me Tell Them Goodbye Before They Get Killed’: How eSIM Cards Are Connecting Palestinian Families - The Markup

🎉 Six months today! Happy.

🐌 Will try to take it slower today. Biggest task for today is taking tinyMovieStar to a shop and pick something up for her mom’s birthday. It’s our secret.

🤣 Just the trick I needed for a quicker edit session: a funny radio show/podcast. I laughed my way through the photos… Exporting, well before midnight. Happy.

🚌 Back home after almost three hours on the road, ready to edit a ton of photos. Maybe not “ready”, but they are not editing themselves…

😱 In other news, the whole country is paused, as Prime Minister hands over resignation, and President accepts it.

👍🏼 At today’s assignment venue already, waiting for things to start. Arrived early, of course. After this we’ll have to drive south for a while, dropping our American friend off at Comporta.

🥛 Also found Hulk on our milk cartons.

😔 I shouldn’t complain when I have work, but some days I’d just rather stay home. Today is one of those days.

💬 No Chat For You! WhatsApp for macOS is getting an update, and I’ll have to use it on the browser from now on. My laptop will not support the required OS without some shenanigans.

💻 Sticker mania runs deep in this family… Thanks again, @jean, really made her day.

Testing shortcut. A nice one. This shortcut provides a quick and easy way to publish a quote from a Safari webpage (or in-app Safari web view), with or without a comment, to Micro.blog. 🚀 Publish Quote - HeyDingus

📖 Vintage Only While we’re waiting for tinyMovieStar’s ballet class to end, at the community center.

🇵🇷 Got a new one, a new flag on Tinylytics! Puerto Rico, @Gaby!

“The Bear” will remain open for business. 🚀 ‘The Bear’ Renewed for Season 3 by FX, Hulu - Variety

How?? And even with the court cases, the fraud, the crimes, January 6, the relentless lies, the dictator worship, the attempts to overturn the election, the stealing of classified material, the promise of authoritarian-style retribution, and the general crazy-ass shitheadedness, a recent Times/Sienna poll shows Trump leading Biden in key swing states. 🚀 TRUMP SHOW OFF BROADWAY - NEXTDRAFT

🇺🇸 Jonathan is visiting from the US, we’re all thrilled to have him around for a couple of days. Dinner today, and we’re giving him a ride tomorrow afternoon. tinyMovieStar was STOKED!

🧹 It’s here! Volume 1 of Kousuke Oono’s Gokushufudō has arrived. As new.

🌶 Also had to drive all the way to my in-laws and back, as movieStar forgot a coat there when we left yesterday. Glad I had nothing to do today, except send those files over…

📤 Sending a few videos can turn into a nightmare if the person receiving them has a shitty network connection.

What do you write, he asked. I said, Stuff that isn’t useful. And he said, Damn, useless stuff sells best. TOKIO TŌKYŌ TOKYO³! - Craig Mod

☕ Caffeine, always on the look out.

🌻 Good morning, new week. Please be gentle with all of us. Thank you.

Question for CSS experts: why is the avatar not showing next to the clover or, while at it, not even centered (entire footer should!) Thank you for any hints.

🍕 Waiting for our takeaway pizza. movieStars at home.

And… we’re off! The big difference between then and now is that the tourists are back. In 2022, we were still sakoku shuttered like pre-Perry Edo-era Japan, and even in January of this year, the tourists were just a trickle. Now? Now – total chaos. Total tourism crush. TOKIO TŌKYŌ TOKYO³! - Craig Mod

🚌 Almost time to leave, and slowly make our way back to the city. Fun, and long, week ahead.

Shalako, 1968 - ★★

Watched on Sunday November 5, 2023.

🍌 Finished My Friend Pedro. That was quick.

🌐 Defaults List getting longer…

thingsThisWeek #73

One day off, threw the whole week off balance. 🇯🇴 We’re a month away from our trip to Turkey/Jordan. Everything is a little hazy. I’ve been avoiding this subject because our trip means little compared to the chaos that’s going in the region. But we’re still debating if we should keep the Jordan part of the trip, or just skip it and stay in Istanbul the whole time. We’d be willing to go, if not for tinyMovieStar. Don’t want to find ourselves in a sticky situation with our baby girl. On the other hand, we don’t think it will spread to Jordan. And, already, she keeps talking about Jordan at school, according to the teachers. This week, and before that, missiles were fired from Yemen, rather far away, targeting a city that is right on the border with Jordan, next to one of the cities we’d be visiting. Worrying. 😫 Remember that pesky DST change last week? Yeah, my body does not. As usual I’m now waking up an hour before I have to, thanks to the miracle of “why the hell do we have to go through this every goddamn year”! 🎃 Halloween happened. Still not used to this being a thing here, but I’m now well aware it is. Kids went trick or treating, in our street. First time I’ve seen it live, and I’m over 50! We also have a day off (a religious holiday), and have to find something to do with the extra time. We went to the movies, as tinyMovieStar kept seeing the Trolls 3 ads on the side of buses while we walk to school, and it was hard to escape. We had pizza, watched the movie, and walked back home, just in time. Rain poured right after that. We spent the rest of the day at home, playing. 🇲🇽 A couple of days earlier, as we were walking around the block while tinyMovieStar was having her ballet class, killing time, we came upon a new Mexican grocery store. In our old neighbourhood. It was a surprise, since we walk by often, but a very welcome one. Came away with two bottles of our favourite habanero sauces (La Anita), and the promise to go back for some beer, as they were out. It might not seem a lot for folks living in the US, but Mexico is a loooooooong way from here, so this felt really great. 👩🏻‍🎤 There’s another new cool venue in town, also in the neighbourhood: Casa do Comum. A lovely place, part bookstore (with beds!), part bar, part music hall. It belongs to an incredible woman who used to teach at tinyMovieStar’s school, and her brother. The took their late father’s dream, and made it a reality. The inauguration happened this week, five days of non-stop partying. One of the musical guests is the music teacher at their school, and the kids got to attend. He asked me to shoot some photos, and I did it with enormous pleasure. Love it when I can work next to tinyMovieStar. Does not happen often. It was a fun show, and the venue is really great. 🏴‍☠️ The Flag Game. Tinylytics lets you see the countries where people visiting your site come from, you even get a nice emoji country flag to go with it! And you can share that with your visitors. I’ve been stuck at 47 flags (bottom of the page) for a while now, and looking for new ones is one of the fun reasons I keep checking Tinylitcs. When will someone from another country come upon this little blog? 🖼️ There was something missing on maique.eu, and it was a lightbox. Thankfully @jsonbecker made a wonderful plugin, so that lightbox is missing no more. 📥 This was also supposed to be RSS Week. It all started with a left swipe to mark all as read. And a custom font. I have both things on my current RSS reader, but I wanted to see if I could skip paying for Fiery Feeds (I’m VERY happy with it). Go back to Reeder, the old friend, or maybe some other app. Almost all apps support Feedbin, so there’s plenty to chose from. This week I tried, most of them for a second time, Lire, Reeder, NetNewsWire, and Unread. All of them lack something, a feature or other, and seems like I’ll be sticking with Fiery Feeds for another year, when the time comes. It’s SO configurable, I have it set exactly as I want it, and it does have the incredible left swipe I’d miss. Seem little, but it has grown on me. Next week I’ll try to implement RSS Club, Pedro Cora was kind enough to help me out. Must also finish a sample of my RSS feed list. Next week. 📺 Patriot. The end. I couldn’t stretch this one any more. I will surely watch it again. 🍿 Nobody. If Bob Odenkirk is in it, there’s a very likely chance that I’ll watch it, and love it. This one also features Christopher Lloyd, and it’s been ages since I’ve seen him in a movie. Small part, but nice to see him. If you like extreme violence, or at least don’t mind a bit lot of it, you might enjoy this one as well. If you don’t, skip it. It has nothing but violence. Pain Hustlers, with movieStar. We had to do this in two sittings, but we made it to the end. Trolls Band Together, in a movie theater. Funny thing, I did not expect to be back to this form of movie watching, as I’m perfectly happy with doing that at home but, like with so many other things, having a daughter makes you go back on your reasoning all the time. She likes to go, so we go. 🎙 It was a good week for podcasts. Starting with Smartless and tennis… JohnMcEnroe came to the show, and what a great one it was. Also, out of the blue, two of my favorite podcasts had a baby! Hacked and Jack Rhysider, from the awesome Darknet Diaries, got together, for an interview. Brilliant. To end the week in glory, HemisphericViews had another great episode (aren’t they all??), 097 - Duel of the Defaults!. That sparked a number of people to reply with their list of apps and, obviously, I had to join in. Robb has a list of all the replies, if you’d like to check them out. 🐘 In Mastodon news, I’m giving Ivory a rest, trying to mend things with Mona. Not sure how long that will stick. 🕵️‍♂️ Small note to say that my Kagi trial is going very well, thank you. It’s impressive how quickly one gets used to finding what one is looking for on the first line of the search results! Starter plan will do for now, probably. If it had 100 extra monthly searches, I’m sure it would be enough.

Ukraine’s bakers, pastry-makers, and chocolatiers have turned to culinary works of art to raise money for their military. Not only that, but they hope to create moments of levity and humor for customers living in stressful and painful times. 🚀 In Ukraine, Bakers Are Making Desserts Shaped Like F-16s and Bomb-Sniffing Dogs - Atlas Obscura

🥰 Full house again at the in-laws. Happy family.

🏰 Rampart

🍌 Got My Friend Pedro. Enjoying My Friend Pedro.

🏊‍♀️ At the swimming pool. It is Saturday morning, after all.

👀 A couple more from yesterday’s visit to Casa do Comum.

👩🏻‍🎤 Today’s show preview. A lot of photos waiting to be edited, but they will wait until Monday.

Defaults

After listening to Hemispheric Views 097 - Duel of the Defaults!, and reading what Gabz, and Robb, posted, here’s my list for the Duel. 📬 Mail Client: Fastmail HEY 📮 Mail Server: Fastmail, HEY 🗒️ Notes: Drafts, Notes.app (longterm) ✅ To-Do: Things 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: iOS Camera, Halide 🌅 Photo Management: Photos.app, Flickr 📆 Calendar: Fantastical, with iCloud 📦 Cloud file storage: iCloud Drive 📖 RSS: Feedbin, Fiery Feeds 👥 Contacts: Contacts.app, Cardhop, with iCloud 🌐 Browser: Safari, Orion, Quiche (iOS) / Brave, Orion (macOS) 💬 Chat: WhatsApp, Signal 🔖 Bookmarks: Raindrop 📑 Read It Later: Omnivore 📝 Word Processing: n/a 📈 Spreadsheets: n/a 📊 Presentations: n/a 🛒 Shopping Lists: Grocery, with iCloud Reminders.app 🥘 Meal Planning: n/a 💸 Budgeting & Personal Finance: n/a 🗞️ News: Mastodon, Público, The Guardian 🎹 Music: Spotify 🎙️ Podcasts: Overcast 🔑 Password Management: 1Password, Proton Pass 🎨 Photo Editing: Lightroom

💈 Back from the barber. Cars on the way…

🥰 Why is Micro.blog the nicest place online, reason 3537991: @jean

😫 It’s Adobe month! Arghhhhhh!

Thank you, @jsonbecker, for your incredible glightbox plugin. I knew there was something missing from my blog, and this was it!

🍿 Casa do Comum has the coolest movie theatre in town.

🥁 Concert done. Now off to lunch, haircut after that, and pick the little one up from school. Seems like RSS Club will have to wait another day.

☕️ Time to get up, and go through an hour of controlled chaos. We love it.

📬 It’s in the mail…

😴 Should be sleeping already. Tomorrow I’m shooting a small concert in the morning, and tinyMovieStar will be part of the audience. Can’t wait.

🥘 At a friend’s place for dinner, and my tummy is not in the mood for it.

🍷 Secret-ish preview of what I’ve been editing today…

🌟 From yesterday’s visit to the local mall, home to one of the biggest nativity scenes known to mankind. And, yes, everything is ready for Christmas already.

RSS To-do List

This week was supposed to be RSS Week for me, but it’s going fast, and I’ve done nothing! Enable RSS Club on my blog (thanks for the walkthrough, @pcora) Compile a list with some of my subscriptions to share Try a few other readers, maybe one will dethrone Fiery Feeds on iOS (probably not)

🥛 Our milk is now enhanced with Captain America’s powers!

☕️ Two espressos already, and still can’t find the energy to edit these photos…

☀️ Not shining today, but when it does…

🌧️ Good morning. Words for today are “Drizzle”, “Windy”, and “Extreme Coastal Event”. Hope you have a great one!

😥 National holiday coming to the end. Can’t wait for tomorrow, I need some free time!

Someone might find this one interesting/helpful… I use CSS to trigger a url analytics endpoint on body:hover, determine useful information from the IP address and user-agent, then hash the IP address with the date to create a unique “read” of a page. 🚀 How Bear does analytics with CSS - ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Herman’s blog

🍜 Lost

😝 Back home, after pizza and movies at the local mall. Had fun. We even bumped into an old friend.

👀 I see you!

Trolls Band Together, 2023 - ★★★

Watched on Wednesday November 1, 2023.

🥰 Best thing today! This will be a tattoo, or a new avatar, or something. My tinyMovieStar has an uncanny talent to drawn handsome men!

🍿 Trolls 3 (Trolls Band Together) might be in our near future. As in “today” near future. That’s what I’m hearing coming out of the room where the movieStars are goofing around.

🤯 I suppose it’s a Child Classic all over the world: we have to wake up tinyMovieStar every single day. But, at the exact same time we do it, she’s already up today. Why? It’s a day off. No school, no work. How do they do it?

I’ve been there… I am there! I’ll often spend hours on the internet and not close a single tab before I shut my laptop. To close a tab means to celebrate a mission accomplished, or saying goodbye to a desire I’ve outgrown or an opportunity I’ve let expire. 🚀 Stop, Before You Close This Tab (or Any Others) … - The New York Times

Uber Bye

Haven’t used Uber in years. We have better alternatives, cheaper alternatives, and alternatives that will not leave you with a funky taste in your mouth. I don’t know how’s the company track record these days, but I’d rather spend my money elsewhere, if possible. I still remember all the shitty things they did. Maybe they still do. Today, I could have used a scooter, I was carrying hot take away food, and would shave a few minutes off my walk. The only ones available were Lime/Uber. I opened the app, checked if the account was active and Apple Pay selected as payment method, and tried to unlock the scooter. I had to top up my Wallet. Why? I do not know. Ok, I’ll do it. It then told me I needed to confirm my account, with my national ID. Why? I do not know. By then I was fuming, and our meal not so much anymore. I gave up. Walked home. Exercised a bit. Saved some money. Deleted the app. I call this a win-win-win-win situation. Thanks, Uber. Bye, Uber.

🐢 Today was Turtle Day

Serve likes to promote its robots as “Level 4” autonomous, meaning they are able to make all their own decisions under certain circumstances. But behind the scenes, a small army of human helpers stands ready to step in when something goes wrong. 🚀 A day in the life of a delivery robot - The Verge

🍿 Nobody. Violence, a bit of brutality, add a smidge of savagery, top with barbarity. Serve with a side of cruelty. That’s about it. Fun.

Nobody, 2021 - ★★★

Watched on Tuesday October 31, 2023.

👀 Driving back home. Short ride.

📚 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.

Crazy by night, also a bit unhinged by day… Moments that just like those previous pictures, are quiet interludes amidst the crowds and general hullabaloo of the area. 🚀 Late summer days in Shinjuku - Tokyo Times

🇸🇹 Limited Edition 2023 Every year there’s a photo exhibition in town, organized by the good people at CC11. Dozens of photographers are invited to pick one photo. As usual, whenever I’m asked, I’ll immediately go to Principe. This year I did the same. Picked a classic.

🥺 It’s not even Hump Day yet

🕹️ You pick up a silly game, one that you can play for 10 minutes at a time, a way to turn off your brain. Some time later you realize you’re on level 700.

🩰 The Studio

📺 Forgot to post, but I finally made it to the end of Patriot. I’m sure I will watch this one again.

🩰 It’s ballet class time!

👀 Hello, Monday…

Go. Cry. Just hit play on this one and watch it. Absolutely magical…it sent shivers down my spine. Feist and Hundreds of Choir Members Sing ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ in Tribute to Sinéad O’Connor - kottke.org

💊 Also, woke up with a headache. Paracetamol for breakfast!

😫 Oh, wait! Didn’t you get the news? The clocks moved back yesterday, you shouldn’t be up already. Go back to sleep, you silly human body!

🌧️ Back home. We had to wait a bit before leaving the car, as it was POURING!

😭 Getting ready to leave, and for the crying that comes with it. tinyMovieStar hates leaving her grandparents behind.

thingsThisWeek #72

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.

🎤 Liked it. Didn’t love it, but liked it. Super challenging lighting conditions. Done.

🙄 Editing JPEG photos, because I forgot the card reader at home, the one that would allow me to get the RAW files. Light conditions were shitty yesterday, I was counting on the RAW ones. Anyway…

🥺 1AM, finally back with the movieStars. They are asleep, of course…

🚗 Back in the city.

😫 For those familiar with my pet peeve: Apple Maps… The suggested route has a VERY forbidden left turn (top right of screen). Alternative is faster anyway. And, not offered, the fastest, and closest (in red). How? Why??

😬 As soon as we got to my in-laws, I got a call. Assignment later today, very late today. A concert. I’ll drive back to the city, shoot the thing, and drive over here again.

🎃 The Laziest Halloween

🥩 Tip: Brazilian Rodízio should be visited for lunch, not dinner.

💖 Subway Rider Hadn’t done a decent #loveProject in a while. Kinda like this one.

💃🏻 tinyMovieStar is READY to go! (Make up and shades not visible, but are ON)

💮 Playtime before leaving for Mom’s birthday dinner.

👖 First pair ordered online, a little tight. Second, is a little loose. I guess third time will really be a charm.

A great review, LOADS of great photos too. What else was I expecting from Craig? And while I was suspicious of the value of the camera at first, these past six months have made it clear that this machine has serious legs. I now understand the limitations of this photographic instrument, of which there are few. And I trust and enjoy it more than any other camera I’ve owned. 🚀 The Leica Q: A six month field test - by Craig Mod

💧 Water

Looks a bit like a movie set. Yet busy or otherwise, they are all that’s left, with their former neighbours long since shuttered up. Only their slowly fading signs remain. All of which provides a fascinating glimpse of how local life and commerce once was before supermarkets, cars and convenience stores changed the landscape forever. 🚀 A Japanese shopping street from another time - Tokyo Times

🔋 Saw one of these in person for the first time yesterday.

☕️ Browsing in bed, before beverage.

Its initial SEO “hack” was likely technically ineffective, but it was memorable and funny. The joke led to many, many, many articles and forum posts about the restaurant’s name, which tipped the SEO scales in its favor. All of this content, including the story you’re reading now, will help Thai Food Near Me’s prominence on Google platforms. One SEO trick has eaten another. 🚀 The restaurant nearest Google - The Verge

🎌 I’ll get my Japan fix wherever I can…

😱 All omg.lol seems to be down. All sites linked to omg.lol seem to be down. Is this the end of the world?

🚂 Going home. Finally. The rain has stopped. I have a new umbrella.

☔️ Of course I picked the best day to leave the car home…

🚂 I did take the train in the end…

Depressed already? Children exhibit high levels of concern over climate change and the mental health consequences, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, phobias, sleep disorders, attachment disorders and substance abuse, can lead to problems with learning, behaviour, and academic performance. 🚀 Children at ‘existential risk’ from climate crisis, UK’s top paediatrician says - The Guardian

I like one guy’s work, he designs stuff. He moved to Japan, I thought I’d follow him on Mastodon. But he complains. A LOT! About every thing, about every one. I moved the follow to RSS, where I can “mark all as read”. Now I’m about to unfollow him everywhere, but still like the stuff he makes.

💖 On top of commuting by scooter, tinyMovieStar wanted to wear a pair of our socks, pink ones with hearts. And her pants pulled up, so everyone could see them. And she did.

🇹🇷 Happy that Istanbul is covered by Citymapper.

☕ Here we go, Thursday, we’re not afraid of you!!

Wouldn’t mind paying a visit, even with all the rules. Photos are absolutely forbidden; Fukuyama doesn’t use the internet and has no desire for a presence on social media. If caught, you will be politely but firmly be asked to leave or have your next drinks order refused. 🚀 Bar Martha, Tokyo, where the customer isn’t always right - The Guardian

🛎️ You Can Ring My Bell…

40% increase! Not cool. Not cool, at all. Apple makes a lot more than iPhone, Mac and iPad. It also offers services, and these made up 22% of the company’s total revenue in 2022. But it seems Cupertino wants more because it increased the cost of many of these on Wednesday. 🚀 Apple TV+ and other services hit with substantial price increases - Cult of Mac

🌧️ I wanted to ride a train to the venue tomorrow, instead of driving. There’s a bit of walking involved, with full camera bag. Seems like it will rain. Damn!

🎵 Cool side-effect of watching Patriot: the soundtrack. Someone (Aj Murray) compiled a pretty good playlist on Spotify. Here, if you’re interested, and are a Spotify user.

😍 Waiting for “Happy Hour”. That’s when we pick the little one up from kindergarten.

🌳 Tree Amigos

😫 That feeling you have when you find out you’re 8/9 hours early. Because miscommunication.

☕️ 07:07AM. Let’s do coffee before anything else. G’day.

😡 Just realised DST ends next Sunday! ARGHHHHHHHH!!!

🥞 Pancakes next, both movieStars are in the kitchen!

☔️ What. A. Day.

🌍 For now, I’m all-in on “Kagi, Inc.” Kagi for searching, Orion for browsing. Let’s see how long this will last.

👀 Unhappy.

YAY! The idea in part three is to walk the full length of “Tokyo” — the prefecture, the city-state, the metropolis, the “to” (都) (the only one of these in Japan) — in order to feel the gradients of life and landscape from edge to edge. 🚀 Walking TOKIO TŌKYŌ TOKYO Part Three — Ridgeline issue 173

About the show we missed in Rome… ‘I left school at 15. No education, no knowledge, nothing – and I’m now embracing a world that’s far beyond my capacity to understand. All I have is these eyes – and they’re good, my eyes, they’re still in there for the fight.’ 🚀 Legendary war photographer Don McCullin: ‘Flashbacks stop me from sleeping’ - The Telegraph

🧘🏻‍♂️ Mentally preparing myself for an early rise tomorrow. I’m aware it’s only 3PM now, but these things take time…

New posts from Tokyo Times are immediately read, whenever one shows up on Feedbin. Little vignettes that provide an interesting counterpoint to a location quite righty known for its bright lights and busy streets 🚀 Late summer nights in Shinjuku - Tokyo Times

☔ It rained a little, 15 years ago.

☕ ☕️☕️☕️

🥰 It’s been a while since movieStar has made an appearance!

🥱 Good thing I woke up a bit earlier, as there’s been a huge influx of people in Micro.blog. I suppose that POSSE article is working its magic. Welcome, folks!

🚽 One of those “Oh, shit!” moments…

👀 Very slow photo day. Very slow day, altogether.

🌴 On my way to kindergarten. Next: ballet!

🏷 Import seems to be going fine. Sloooooooow, but fine. Next question? How do I batch tag 1200 posts??

📺 I will miss Patriot when I’m done with it. I’m on my second episode today, getting ready to start a third one… Though it all makes sense in retrospect, in the moment, the hairpin turns are hard to see coming. Yet that compelling, often comic intrigue is just the icing on a messed-up layer cake. 🚀 Amazon’s ‘Patriot’: Crafty, crazy, and the best show you’ve probably never heard of - Los Angeles Times

👨‍💻 Downloading the sticker spotter archive from Micro.blog. Will then try to upload said archive back to Micro.blog. Had to go back to the macOS side, since there’s no way to export/import without the app. No way to do it from a browser. Anyway, it should take a while.

🦥 Slept too much.

🤙🏼 Ready (-ish) to start a new week! Let’s go!! Good morning, hope everyone has a nice one.

🦭 Almost dinner time, and we still haven’t found the courage needed to drive back to the city. We’ll have to, but…

🍹 Let me just say that drinking Poncha (Rum and Passion Fruit) instead of water, at meal time, makes you laugh a lot more….

🧑🏻‍🍳 Bacalhau à Brás for lunch. Nine people. I’m cooking.

thingsThisWeek #71

Work, meetings, weather, family, web stuff. What one would call a very normal week. A good one. Plenty to write about too. 🌧️ Weather is finally catching up with the calendar, and the rain is here. Not perfect when one has to work outdoors, but… In a week we got hit by Babet, Aline, and Bernard. Ouch. 📷 After a big resting period, we went back to a vineyard, and got some photos/videos for the shop I shoot for once in a while. Of course the night before had to be a rough one, so I was in a very good mood waking up. A couple of coffees later, I was on my way to the meeting point, got on the Tesla bus, and we drove to the Alentejo, far far away from the city. Spent a few hours with a Danish-American-Portuguese girl who’s running a vineyard, had lunch, drove back to the city. The mandatory battery charging stops are a pain, as they add hours to an already long day. When I’m lucky, I get some photos. Added, fun, bonus: on the way back we drove by David, and he spotted me. I did not, as I was texting him. Kids, get off your phones! 🌧️ Thursday was an odd day. I had a meeting, and that was postponed for weather-related issues. I did mostly nothing. Had to send a receipt, did that. Not much else. Spent a while thinking about the sweetest hug my adorable daughter gave me the day before at dinner time. Found a theme for Kagi I kinda like. Watched the news. Waited for the time to pick the little one up. 🧰 Thursday’s meeting ended up happening on Friday. A work meeting, a friend needs help with her store’s social media, and website. I might be able to help. Not sure if I really want to get into this, but would like to try. I feel my skill set is almost up to this, so… Let’s see how things progress. This would be a big change of pace for me, a non-photo related job. Putting all the hours I have spent at the computer to work, whenever I have no actual photos to do. 🍰 The weekend came, and the whole family got together for dinner, on movieStar’s side. Both brothers, their wives, Mom&Dad. Auntie joined us. It was a blast. And SO much food, again. Next week Auntie’s son is joining us, just back from Japan. Her kids as well, So tinyMovieStar will have her cousins to play with, and not only her uncles. We could also get back to Saturday lunch with my parents, as my mom is by now fully recovered from the cataract surgery. Every weekend is a party! 🥰 tinyMovieStar keeps on being awesome, and being a Papi is still my favorite part of the week, every single week. She’s now enjoying her swimming lessons a lot more, but not even close to how much she loves her ballet ones. She’s doing great at school too. We’re still the ones who pick her up earlier, and most of the time we both manage to do it. We’re at home, working on something, counting the minutes until we can go. We just love having her around, she’s great company. She has an imaginary friend, for a while now, and I should have mentioned him before. He’s the most imaginative imaginary friend imaginable, of course: his name is Jovedine (I have never heard of this time), and he comes from Guiné Bissau (of course, why wouldn’t he?). He has a severe disability on one of his legs, and he limps, and he’s missing an eye. He needs a bandage change every day. He has traveled the world with tinyMovieStar (Myanmar, Vietnam, Russia, …), sometimes as a friend, others as a husband, or even son. From time to time she’ll show us how he walks, and she’ll limp about, one hand covering her eye. She’s crazy. I love her. 📺 Still on the Patriot train. Still odd, still enjoying it. Finished season one, taking a small break before season two. The Juul story is on pause, I was getting serious “I need a smoke” vibes from watching it. We tried an episode of the new Lupin season, but were so tired, we gave up. Not sure we’ll make it through this one. 📚 Haven’t updated lately on what I’m reading because, well, I’m not reading a lot. Whenever I have some free time, I’ll just check the news, or Feedbin. That’s it. Books are “open”, on the app, but I’m afraid only a couple of pages at a time are read. Still, these are the ones I’m trying to go through: The Last Resort - Sarah Stodola, Please Scream Inside Your Heart - Dave Pell, Unreasonable Behavior - Don McCullin, Three Assassins - Kotaro Isaka, How to Avoid Being Killer in a War Zone - Rosie Garthwait. I’m putting it out there, maybe that’ll force me to get back to them. Also, I have been looking at Kobo, maybe I need a new ebook reader, now that movieStar seems to have kept mine forever. Reading on the phone is only possible if I turn on the sleep focus mode, where all notifications are off. 👀 Gaby started it, and I tried it: shooting b&w for a while. He promised a month, I lasted a couple of hours on the first try. One photo, a single one, and then I was back to colour. Gave it another go. It doesn’t come easy for me. And I kinda cheated as well, as I posted a LOT of photos in between, photos from the archive, colorful ones. 🕵️‍♂️ Kagi, Kagi, Kagi. It’s been going on for a couple of weeks now, I kept seeing the engine mentioned everywhere I look. And I’ve been doing what I’ve read some others did as well, carefully wondering if I should use Kagi for a specific search, saving those precious trial searches, not getting into it as I should for a proper test. So, I transferred $10, and am now ready to give it a go. By Wednesday my free trial had ended, and the first $5 were used for a month of Starter plan. I might need over 300 searches a month, but not ready to pay $10/month for a search engine just yet. I’m happy with Kagi. Not sure if pay-for-me happy, but really happy. Since I turned it into my default search engine, and stop caring if every search was worth spending one search token on it, I have been using it everywhere, and I’m really happy with the results I get. Usually there’s not a lot of scrolling when I search, as the thing I’m looking for is at the top of the list. I guess that means it’s a good search engine, right? The summarize function is pretty cool as well. 🔩 Adding a button to a site shouldn’t be that hard, but this particular one did take a while to figure out. Thankfully Sara came to the rescue, as I was about to give up. CSS can be SO tricky! Anyway, you can now find a “Reply on Mastodon” under every post on the blog. Of course someone took it upon themselves to create a plugin minutes after the whole thing was finally done (thanks, Otávio), so now everyone can add the same feature, with a lot less trouble. The community part of both Micro.blog and Mastodon (social.lol in particular) keeps on being awesome. Happy to be a part of these two. 📥 On Drafts… Greg posted about Drafts Web Capture, and this is even better than Mail to Drafts, a feature I mentioned last week. Thank you, I am now using it often, whenever I’m using my Mint install.

😻 Caturday photo, and this time it’s even actually Caturday!

🧮 I had no idea how many searches I do in a day. Not before using Kagi. Turns out it’s between 15-20, on a regular day. Seems like the 300 searches/month of the Starter plan will not be enough.

🤗 Almost dinner time at the in-laws. Both boys made it as well, with wives. Ten of us for the meal. Fireplace is ON. Yes.

🚌 Bus stops are different in the countryside.

🇬🇷 Old Greek Old Book

🐬 At the pool. There’s always, still, a tense moment when the time comes to leave the changing room, and into the pool area. I must always go as well. I’ll leave afterwards, and that is already an improvement. First couple of times we had to stay next to the pool.

☂️ Will it Rain? Will it Shine?

🏊 Off to swimming class in a bit, then lunch with Mom&Dad, and the usual drive to the other parental unit. Still have my fingers crossed, I want that fireplace!

🎸 Testing Note: Do NOT disregard this one. Ali Farka Touré - ASCO

🤒 Both grownups feeling a bit under the weather. tinyMovieStar about to be in charge.

🐙 Office-Tako

🤗 Not sure if I’ll end up doing it, but this kind of website maintenance/social media update part-time job would be cool. Work from home, looking at movieStar all the time…

👀 Back from the meeting, package also shipped already. Still doing the B&W thing, not entirely happy with this situation.

🦉 Still before sunrise, well aware it will not make it to the collection. It won’t even be worth a photo, most probably.

🥱 I guess we’re doing the “up before 6AM” thing again… Bom dia!

📯 I suppose a shoutout to shoutouts is also in order. Every time someone visits the blog there’s a little “things I love” at the bottom of every page, and these are possible because @vincent made another cool service. I don’t praise it often, but it just keeps on working, 24/7. Cool, right?

🦘 Plans for tomorrow include dropping the little one off at school, meeting right after that, ship another Vinted sale, edit a few photos, pick up the little one. Busy.

👩🏻‍🎨 tinyMovieStar is back home. We all made it through the day.

🇲🇾 Still in Malaysia. At least in my dreams. Locked inside, with no photos to edit, means browsing the archive…

🕺🏻 Smoooooth all the way to around the one minute fifteen seconds mark. Then it turns into something truly awesome! I now have a dancing life goal! Tom Jones - Treat Her Right

🔥 Dreaming of Saturday. There will be a fireplace.

🎨 Using Dark Mustard theme with Kagi at the moment, but wondering if I should have a go at making a theme for it…

🇲🇾 Malaysian Cars

💼 Meeting postponed for tomorrow. Good.

👀 Unable to walk around today, I just got this one quick shot when I ran to the supermarket for supplies. It’s going to be one boring day.

😆 Against all warnings, we did get in the car and drove the little one to school. We truly are rebels! (Not really, though, it’s not even raining at the moment).

📺 Whenever I start using a new service, I’ll check to see if Matt has reviewed it. Lucky me, he has a video about Kagi.

🕵️‍♂️ Used the hundred free searches with Kagi, now trying it with the Starter plan for a month.

🍝 Cooking Spaghetti Bolognese (or Bo-Log-Nay-Zee, as some would call it) for dinner. One of tinyMovieStar’s friends came over, and is staying for dinner, with her mom. Happy chef.

⛈ Tomorrow should be fun, as we’re already getting SMS weather warnings from the government. Non-essential travel should be avoided, and people should work from home, if possible. Of course my only work-related meeting of the year, in person, is tomorrow.

I love what Studio Underd0g are doing. While it takes the World War II-era Dirty Dozen watches as inspiration, the quartet of new watches meets the brief in a playful way that only an underdog could. Introducing The Studio Underd0g Field Watch Collection 2023

🦣 I kinda like my “interaction cluster” with the added Mastodon button. This theme is really good looking too. Happy.

🆘 As I feared, I have already asked for help...

👀 The rain is here, and so is the darker mood… Just in time to keep up with @Gaby, and his B&W photos.

🎄 No! Just no! tinyMovieStar: “But, Papi, it’s not Christmas yet…” me: “Yes, my love. You’re only three, and even you are aware of that.”

🔪 Getting ready to hack away… There’s a CSS thing I have to figure out!

🚗 Tall Wall

💰 EyeEm seems to be back in business, after a stormy period. I have received the money the owed me (today is half-a-beer day!), and I’m looking forward to the usual $0.03 per photo sales…

🧰 On Thursday I have a meeting, a friend wants me to help with social media management/website update and maintenance for her shop. Not sure if my skill set is adequate, but it would be a nice way to spend some down time.

🌧️ Soon we’ll have a river running wild…

🚀 Exporting...! I'm one step away from not having to think about this assignment ever again. YAY.

🐌 Again trying to find excuses not to edit this today... But I have to... But... It's boring...

👨🏻‍💻 Dropping the little one at kindergarten, and then spending this lovely rainy day sitting down, editing photos.

🇯🇵 A subject that pops up regularly when driving with this particular friend, Japan. That led me to dig through the archive for unedited/less published photos. おはよう

🕵️‍♂️ You’re all doing it, I might as well try it. Still enjoying my free searches with Kagi…

🏡 Back home. Long day. At one point I was one meter away from @crossingthethreshold, and didn’t see him, because I was texting him! He saw me!

🔋 Some Tesla Superchargers are located in really nice spots.

👀 Going… See you later…

☕️ Rise, and hopefully shine. Didn’t get as much sleep as I wanted, or needed, or wished, but here we are. The time has come, let’s get up, get dressed, and walk out the door. Day trip, will spend most of it on the road. And charging the car, since we’re taking the Tesla. First move? Coffee!

😕 I’m back. tinyMovieStar woke up a couple of hours after going to bed, and came barging into my room. She snuggled for 5 minutes, then left. Now I’m awake, and she’s back to sleep.

💤 Time to go, leaving early tomorrow.

😎 Test!

🗞 Recent events have brought me back into checking the news sites more often than I probably should.

🌧️ We had lunch, have to get back to the city, but the weather is just whispering: take a nap…

😻 The usually late Caturday photo…

thingsThisWeek #70

A lot less work, a lot more fun. It was that kind of a week. Not a bad one. 🩰 Second ballet class for the little one, I made it this time around. She is SO happy to be there, it was the first time we heard “You two can go, I’ll stay here”. Ever! ⭐️ M.b meetup in Lisbon, with Mr David. By now It’s a regular thing, I consider him a local already. In fact, when I think about it, I see David more often than some people who live here, next to me, all year. 🎨 We visited Joana Vasconcelos exhibition at the MAAT museum this week. The show is there until March, but this is one of those things where we just have to go, and not postpone. We know ourselves. Anyway, we got the car, picked the little one from school, and drove there. It’s a ten minute drive, but as we got there it felt like we were entering a parallel universe. The weather went from sunny and warm, to foggy and chilly in a second. Odd. We went it (the show has pieces on both buildings) and had fun, as one does on her shows. I like her work, and it is perfect for kids too, we found out. tinyMovieStar wanted to touch everything! I’d seen one of the pieces already, many years ago, in Macao. It felt a lot grander there, in the MGM lobby, with a gigantic aquarium, and much taller room. Still loved the show. We all did. 🥰 Fun with tinyMovieStar is now a constant thing, as she’s turning into quite the companion. Chatty and smart, cute and funny, she’s a super company when walking about. movieStar had a hairdresser appointment this week, we all walked there, and then the both of us kept busy walking around, touristing, while she had stuff done to her hair. We went shopping, visited the tourist spots in the area, walked by the brewery owned by one of our friends, people watched, and went back to pick up movieStar. We were having so much fun, she was done by the time we got there! 👨🏻‍🏫 On Friday I drove to Setubal, for a photography class. An old friend is teaching a course there, and asked me to join him, for a special appearance. I did, of course. Packed a bunch of photos on a USB drive, and showed those, along with a few stories about the old days. Every time I do these I can’t help but to feel privileged. I did have an incredibly rich professional life, and it’s kind of sad that no one is now able to do what we did. We were very very lucky back then. I try not to bring their dreams down too much but, for kids just getting started into, specifically, photojournalism in this country, things don’t look very bright. 🍛 The weekend was a bit different, as we didn’t meet my parents. Mom had eye surgery (everything is fine), she couldn’t host the usual lunch. On the other hand we had cousins visiting from the UK at my in-laws, who were joined by a few more who live around here. Fun times for everyone. Over eating, again, but the food is SO yummy, I can’t help it. 🚚 I moved (am moving) sticker spotter around. It’s is now part of the maique.eu conglomerate! Muahahahahahah (evil laugh!) 📺 New week, a few more episodes of Patriot. Still finding it entertaining. We watched the four episodes of Beckham. Really nice, came out of it liking the guy a lot. Started watching Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul. Mostly because I enjoy these documentaries, but also because I LOVED my Juul, back when I smoked. This is what I was smoking when tinyMovieStar was born, and I’ll always remember that. (It’s been over five months since I last smoked, by the way. Still going!) 🤓 You probably know already that I love Drafts, that I spend a lot of time on Drafts. And still only use a few of the hundreds of features the app provides. This week I booted Mint on the laptop again, and was struggling to find a good way to have stuff I write there available on iOS/macOS. I was already considering Standard Notes (why the hell is this one so incredibly expensive? Don’t get it), Joplin, or other solutions. Even a simple draft on Fastmail… Then it hit me! Drafts Mail Drop! It’s perfect. A draft on FastMail, and I just send it. It’s available immediately, on iOS, and whenever I get back to macOS. Awesome.

⏱️ Full day out of the city tomorrow (work!), so trying to finish the weekly report today…

🦜 Cracker?

☀️ Sunset today is two minutes before 7PM. I’m not ready for this.

🍲 Family lunch, always awesome. We are very privileged. Big family, someone is bound to show up.

👀 I have no title for these, or anything to say, really…

🌳 Back in the countryside.

stickerspotter, v3

sticker spotter has changed a bit, again. I still did not want to kill it altogether, but needed to move some things around. The pop-up project, supposed to last a couple of months, started as a blot.im blog, and lived there for a year. I then moved it to Micro.blog, as an independent blog. It has happily been hosted here for another year. That year is coming to an end, and it’s moving again. Hard to believe, but sticker spotter is now entering its third year. sticker spotter now lives at maique.eu, as a category. You can get all the photos by clicking here, or the link up on the navigation. The stickerspotter domain is also redirecting here already. Only a couple of photos at the moment, but will try to import the whole thing. Hopefully Manton has a trick for that. All social media accounts associated with sticker spotter will probably fade away. I’d love to still have a way to post to stickerspotter at social.lol, and will try to figure this one out. No promises though.. There is an RSS feed for this category alone, if you’d like to subscribe to these, and not the whole maique thing. It’s https://maique.eu/categories/stickerspotter/feed.xml, feel free to subscribe again. This is probably the biggest annoyance, if you subscribed to the original feed. Sorry about that. It won’t move again anytime soon. sticker spotter is dead, long live sticker spotter!

📦 It’s a “moving stickerspotter kinda morning”…

🍏 After yesterday’s complaint post, I decided to give it yet another try, since I knew where I was going anyway. The app’s looks are really on another level. It’s beautiful.

🍜 LUST

A little nod to say people have read it and like it, rather than just bouncing off the page. Greg Morris - You Can ‘Like’ My Blog Posts

👟 New sneakers in the house! So odd to wear something other than my trusty boots. But these Veja V-10 sure look good!

🎙️ Finally got around to the Micro.blog’ing with Manton Reece of ShopTalk. What a great episode, @manton, congratulations. It is really a pleasure to hear you talk about something you love so much.

👨🏻‍🏫 Having another espresso, and I’m ready for class.

🧐 4PM, not a single photo shot. Can’t remember the last time that happened.

🍏 We’ve been here before, multiple times, but it’s one of my pet peeves. I’m sorry Apple Maps sucks so much at actually navigating here, because the app looks SO good. No one else has this attention to detail! Trees, crosswalks, everything looks so perfect. But follow directions = get fines.

Back in the day, I was happily making themes for Mona. Feels like a lifetime ago. Not even using the app anymore, thanks to icongate.

🐲 Slower day today, at least until I have to pick up the little one.

👀 Museum visit, and fog by the river. It was a very unexpected end of day.

⚽ Also, we’re watching the Beckham show. Even though we don’t like football at all, the show is so well made that we now love Beckham!

🕵🏻‍♂️ So many photos to chose from, can’t decide on the ones I’m sharing. The museum visit was super cool, and the weather foggy right outside, by the river.

🖼️ At the museum, seeing a piece for the second time. First sighting happened eight years ago, in Macao! Liked it much better then.

👌 Hand-picking hundreds of photos for the class on Friday...

🪂 Not the best assignment (or photo for that matter), but the look on this paratrooper’s face always makes me stop for a second, when I’m going through the archive…

🛵 Tourist

👨🏻‍🏫 On Friday I’m giving a class to kids who want to become photojournalists. I’ll try not to depress them too much.

🥰 On Our Way

❌ Locked

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🩰 Morning meet up with @crossingthethreshold, and ballet afternoon with tinyMovieStar. A few photos in between.

🚁 No “Ride of the Valkyries” for us, but that helicopter at dawn, over the river, had the right vibes…

thingsThisWeek #69

Again, a busy week. We had a national holiday thrown into the mix, and had to sleep away from the girls. Work to do in the city during the weekend, and it would be unfair to them to force them to stay behind, and miss out on all the weekend fun. They got on a train to the beach, then a lift to the countryside, and I picked them up after the weekend work was done. 📷 Another week, another batch of assignments. Slower week this time around, I got two days off! Starting with a lifestyle thing, the worst possible thing you can have me shooting! I thought I was going to shoot glamorous photos of bacon and avocado, pancakes and kombucha, for a brunch place, and found out two days before that they were presenting a new line of skin care products AT a brunch place! Not very cool. Anyway, I did it. I also learned about skinfluencers, a special kind of influencer. Later in the week it was marathon time, and I mean a real marathon, with runners. The yearly Lisbon Marathon even was upon us, and I would be shooting for one of the main sponsors, like last year. This time I also shot a little video, with the phone. Not my favourite thing to do, and the reason why I had to do it is pretty shitty as well (smaller budget, no money for proper videographer), but I do get paid extra, and they don’t seem to mind the subpar video quality. As agreed beforehand, if I can’t do both anytime, I’ll stick to photography. I do love the marathon assignment, though. Fun times, fun people. Waking up too early, but riding that convertible double decker on bridges, and getting infected by the energy of thousands of runners, is a good way to spend a few hours. Also plenty of opportunities to get a few shots on the way there and back. 👯‍♀️ First ballet lesson for tinyMovieStar, and I was away, on the silliest of all assignments. Darn! movieStar told me that parents are not allowed inside while the class is happening, but… Next week, next week I’ll be there. Outside, but I’ll be there. 😢 Speaking of tinyMovieStar, she’s going through a phase where she will cry every day, when we’re dropping her off at kindergarten. Every day. She’s fine a couple of minutes after we leave, but it hurts to see her going through these moments. I’m now taking her alone, no mom, as we hoped it would be easier for her, but she’s doing it with me as well. It breaks my heart. She literally climbs to my arms, and won’t let go. A good ten minutes later she will finally relent, I’ll leave, and get a message from school saying she’s happy as can be, playing with her buddies. Even before getting back home, and it’s only a 15 minute slow walk. 💬 I feel I’m posting a lot less than I used to. August is the usual culprit, as we’re busy on the road, vacationing and working at the same time. Lots of things to do all day long, lots of people to talk to. September came, and went, we took some time off and we’re away as well. Just now getting into the rhythm of things in town. I try to keep up with M.b, and Mastodon (usually just my 🦄 list, and social.lol local timeline), but it’s hard. Mostly lurking, still reading a lot of the posts, but not posting as often. 🍿 Quite a few movies this week or, at least, a lot more than I usual watch. The Sisters Brothers. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. , delicious. Bottoms, very fun, loved the different take on the high school genre (Thanks, @sod). The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring. Sue me! I was browsing HBO, this one came up, I’d heard about the case before, and watched the movie while doing stuff around the house. I did miss Paw Patrol, The Mighty Movie. The movieStars met a few cousins and went to the nearest movie theatre for that, but I was… you guessed it, working. 📺 This Fool. A couple of episodes, maybe it will stick. The Morning Show had another episode, so I watched that too. I actually wrote the previous sentence before finishing the episode, and had to force myself to watch the darn thing. I believe I might be dropping this one soon. Also two episodes of Patriot, on Prime. It has a cool IMDB rating, so it seems, and that was enough to talk me into watching an episode. Liked it. A spy show with a few odd twists, and SO many familiar faces on the cast. 📱 Tested Holafly. I didn’t have to, of course, but I wanted to check the service out, since I’m planning on using it on our next trip. Not cheap, but handy. This week I had the Marathon event, and that means a lot of images, and videos, being sent from the phone, on the fly, so why not test the unlimited data this way? eSIM are just an awesome idea, and I’ve been a fan since the first time I tried it, on the French island. Since then I swapped my physical SIM for an eSIM, and then I actually changed mobile operator, after decades with the same one, and all this without leaving home. Made possible by this great feature. The idea of Holafly (and many other services) is also great, as it allows you to always have a connection, jumping from operator to operator, always finding the strongest signal. No local number, true, but you’re not stuck with a single company in the country, you get to use them all. Other services have marginally cheaper plans, but the “Unlimited Data” on Holafly’s offer really appeals to me. The test went beautifully, I had a super fast connection anywhere, and didn’t have to use a single byte of my limited data plan. For this kind of days-long assignment, with the new to transmit from the venues, it’s probably a good idea to start including this expense in the budget.

👟 Marathon Morning

⏰ True to form, here I find myself again: alarm set for 06:20, awake at 05:15!

📺 Watching "Patriot". Showed up on Prime, glad it did. Funny, quirky. And still a spy show.

🍃 Slower afternoon, even time to go visit Mint!

👀 Almost back home. But saw these this morning, when I was close to the venue.

😻 Here, kitty kitty kitty…

❌ Don’t move!

🚇 Here we (?) go. 08:30, not a lot of people around…

Others will have a very different Saturday. Still a bit odd to open The Guardian and find Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Palestinian group Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on Saturday.

🌄 Up early on a Saturday, getting ready to leave for today’s work. Should be a lot more fun than previous couple of days, with happier photos. See you later.

💖 To Love Is to Live

🏨 It was a rather uninteresting morning, photo wise. Heck, it was a rather uninteresting morning all together!

🏃‍♂️ Not a runner myself, but the race takes place in one of my favourite roads in the country: the Marginal. Cascais to Lisbon, see for yourself.

🎟 Quick assignment today as well. A press conference, and picking up the press credentials for the marathon while I’m there. Should take about an hour. Before that I’m dropping tinyMovieStar off at kindergarten. She’s awesome, have I said this before?

🌳 Good Morning! Let’s go, final push!

The Rat Catcher, 2023 - ★★★

Watched on Thursday October 5, 2023.

🛴 Rode a scooter back home. Should have stopped a couple of times more, but I was rushing, and it was a 10,5Km ride.

🤔 Wondering if things are fixed already…

🔋 Camera is charged, iPhone is charged (more important than camera today), Watch is charged, AirPods are charged, Power Bank is charged. I’ll have another coffee, and be on my way.

The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring, 2023 - ★½

Watched on Thursday October 5, 2023.

😅 Yup, I guess it’s not a great day to share stuff on M.b. Things are a bit messed up… Hopefully better later today, otherwise I suppose it’s a postless day.

⏲️ Waiting for my time to leave for today's small photo shoot.

Bottoms, 2023 - ★★★★

Watched on Thursday October 5, 2023.

🤓 Was curious about how good Holafly would work on the trip (still a couple of months in the future), so I thought about testing it in my own country. I have plenty of photos and videos to send in the next few days, so their unlimited plans are welcome.

😩 Slowly (very) making my way through the hundreds of very uninteresting photos from this assignment. Bored out of my mind.

👀 Another quick walk around the block, another package needed picking up. It doesn’t look like it, but these are super close to the other, more regular, photos I usually post. A different city, it seems.

👀 Perfect drop off at kindergarten today, no tears were shed.

😫 On shampoo, and similar, labels… Could the font on those be any smaller? Am I the only one that showers without glasses, and has less than perfect vision? How many times have I wasted conditioner, while looking for the shampoo bottle?

🏃 Long day at the computer today, and then I'll have four days on Marathon assignment. Bye bye, weekend.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, 2023 - ★★★★

Watched on Wednesday October 4, 2023.

👀 Very short morning walk.

The Sisters Brothers, 2018 - ★★★½

Watched on Tuesday October 3, 2023.

📦 Shipped another package. Vinted stuff.

🖍️ Odd Day

🦄 TIL there’s a subspecies of the influencer family: skinfluencer.

💛 We came across this yellow Ford yesterday, thought I might as well share the shots.

thingsThisWeek #68

A week for feeling thankful. Plenty of work, and plenty of fun. Quite the privilege. Small update this time, I’m really struggling with time. 📷 Here we go! Still doing the rounds. Still waking up too early, or working late. Missing tinyMovieStar’s drop off/pick up times. That’s the worst thing about these days. She’ll be asking me to take her to school when morning comes, and I’ll be telling her I can’t. She’s not used to that. I’m not used to that! On the plus side, I’m working (yay, money!), and I get to go to places where I haven’t been in a while. I used to spend every day moving around, nowadays not so much. Sometimes months go by without visiting some parts of the city. It still feels odd. Places that were familiar, now strangely out of my routine. Anyway, sometimes these assignments take me to really depressing places, and the next day my spirits are lifted again. That was something I enjoyed at my previous life, when working at the paper. And the week wasn’t done yet, I had more stuff to shoot. Busy one. ✈️ On top of everything else, I’m now researching Istanbul and Petra. Two new countries - Turkey, and Jordan - will be added to our list of visited places. Petra is a spot that has been on our list for a while, and a recent visit by one of movieStar’s brothers helped seal the deal on this one. Istanbul is one of those cities that is always on the “of course I’ll visit” list, but kept getting postponed. We have both been a few times, but only at the airport (go, Turkish)! Anyway, plane tickets have been purchased for the flight to Turkey and back, and we still need to get the Istanbul - Petra - Istanbul ones. Now looking into hotels. We don’t have a lot of time in either of the places, so we will probably pick a very central/touristy spot. Don’t really want to deal with the notorious Istanbul traffic, we’d rather walk whenever possible. Still plenty of time to go, so no rush yet. ⭐ We reached the final week of the Micro.blog photo challenge. Days 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30 were posted. It was an odd one for me. Being busier than usual, I did not have the time to plan the posts. I ended up missing a few days, and rushing through a couple others. These are very fun to watch as well. I enjoy visiting the timeline. Loads of cool photos. Thanks @jean, for making it happen again. 🍕 We finally went back to zeroZero, this time with the one who makes us stop by their window every day. We had a good time. 🍺 Another incredible event took place on Sunday. tinyMovieStar’s dance teacher, a very easy going, competent, happy girl, celebrated the fourth anniversary of one of her projects. She threw a party at on of our favorite breweries, a place with a pool/tank, a huge number of shaded tables, DJ spot and, of course, an endless supply of beer. Everyone has fun. Kids putting on costumes, dancing around, having a dip in the tank, and grownups having a beer and chatting. We met old acquaintances, some we hadn’t seen in a long while, because they also have kids now, and their kids have dance lessons with the same teacher, elsewhere. It was a very lively afternoon. 📺 One more episode of The Morning Show. 🍿 Sentinelle. The Little Things.

The Little Things, 2021 - ★★★

Watched on Monday October 2, 2023.

Whoever thought about organizing kid’s parties in a place with a very decent IPA? Respect.

🍺 tinyMovieStar’s dance teacher is performing today, at one of our favorite breweries. Dance, at a brewery. How lucky are we?

🦥 Laaaaaaaaazy.

📷 Day 30 : treasure (@agilelisa) #mbSept

👀 Friday Photo Dump. A very random day.

😅 Also, 8PM, 28ºC. Awesome, the end of the world is near.

🦖 Natural History Museum is having a Night at the Museum kind of thing, with loads of scientists showing off their work/schools. We went with the little one. She had a great time, as usual.

📷 Day 29 : contrast (@gregmoore) #mbSept

🥺 Not the same, anymore. Not at all.

💔 Time to kill before another photo shoot, decided to check a place where we spent years of our lives. It’s full of tourist oriented stuff, almost all the OG places gone by now. Made me feel a bit sad, but tourists seem to be having a ball. I guess it’s still cool, if you’ve never been.

📷 Day 28 : workout (@rom) #mbSept

🔬Looking at the archive, trying to find a photo for today’s word. My fingers are getting quite the workout!

⏰ Woke up with the watch alarm buzzing on my arm. First time in forever, as I’m always up before that.

🤗 Back home after a long, tiresome, and yet fun, assignment. Next? Editing. These must be sent today.

🍊 Working my way to the venue of today’s assignment…

📷 Day 27 : embrace (@mroutley) #mbSept

🇹🇷🇯🇴 Let the planning begin… Started adding places to the map already. Seems like a good time to give Organic Maps a thorough test, even though we’ll have an internet connection the whole time we’re there (hearing good things about Holafly).

📦 Up and down the street, shipping a couple of things sold on Vinted. Today I’m working late in the afternoon, so that was convenient.

💶 Another sale on Vinted. Yay.

🍕 Pizza Night (more like Pizza Afternoon)

Every day, when we’re walking to kindergarten, we have a mandatory stop: our local pizza place. Early in the morning there’s always dough in the kneading machine, facing the window. It’s a big machine. We have to pick tinyMovieStar up (assuming she’s not riding on my shoulders already), and look at the dough, slowly moving this way and that way. The kitchen staff smiles, we wait a couple of minutes, and move on. Every. Day. We used to go there often, but not so much these days. We asked the little one if she’d like to taste the pizza made with that dough, and of course she would. We picked her up from school today, and told her we would visit a secret garden. A wonderful garden where we could have pizza. Sitting in said garden, armed with restaurant-provided crayons and drawing paper, we had a lovely time. Yummy pizza as always.

Sentinelle, 2023 - ★★½

Watched on Tuesday September 26, 2023.

🎨 Walking from the metro station to the hospital. A good walk.

🚇 Early morning subway is very different from morning subway. No tourists in sight.

😩 Worst side effect of these crazy shooting schedules? I miss dropping tinyMovieStar off at kindergarten.

📷 Day 26 : beverage (@annie) #mbSept

🤨 Alarm set for 0645. Of course I’m up at 0430!

thingsThisWeek #67

Messy week, plenty of work (too much, maybe?). 👩🏻‍🏫 Adulting-wise, the week started with a PTA meeting at kindergarten. What. A. Long. Meeting. The kindergarten where tinyMovieStar spends her days has a fun story, and I’m not sure I’ve told it before. Back in 74, right after the Revolution, parents occupied the building where the school stands today. Available kindergartens were not enough, and they decided to do something about it. A board was created, and a kindergarten was born. Others did the same, elsewhere. Over the years the others turned into a more regular managerial style, but this one is still managed by the parents. Some are parents of kids who left the school over a decade ago. They just love the model so much, the volunteer their time. It’s really cool. 🍰 We had a birthday party at the park, as another one of the kids at school celebrated her birthday. There’s one every week, as we have over 50 kids at her school. This was a cool one. Since these kids have been here for a couple of years now, parents are also a lot more friendly, and familiar. We enjoy a beer, the kids have a lollipop and some cake. We’ll have to start skipping some, eventually, but we’re still attending. Most parents are really cool too. 🍰 And, trying to keep the party going, a friend also had her birthday celebration, this time at home. Dinner with family (big one), and friends. Plenty of kids as well. 📷 Doing the hospital rounds again for work. This week I had Tuesday, and Wednesday shoots at two different hospitals. Waking up before sunset, well before sunset, off to work, and back home just in time to wake the movieStars up. Next week I’m back at it, a couple more days. These are usually fun. Not brilliant fun, but entertaining. One of the pluses is that there are not a lot of photos to edit when I get back home. Best case scenario I’ll send 15/20 of each session, meaning not a lot of time spent at the computer. Sunday was different, a big conference, with an assortment of events: concerts, theater,… Monday was go out of Lisbon and work day. 📺 The Morning Show, season 3. Slow start. No time. 🏊‍♀️ This was also the week when tinyMovieStar had her first swimming lesson. We walked down the street to the Clube Nacional de Natação, and watched as she walked into the pool. She had a wonderful time. The teacher made sure she felt comfortable, and was always paying attention to her. She missed a couple of classes already, so the other kids were feeling a little more at home. She was named “captain of the team”, and that helped a lot. She spent the entire class looking at mom and dad, giving us thumbs up, and smiling. She loved it. Of course, when night came, she said she didn’t want to go anymore! That’s her thing this month: having fun, and then letting us know she will not do that anymore. ⭐️ Photoblogging Challenge is ongoing. This week’s entries can be found here: 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25. Again, not a perfect week.

🍗 Odivelas

I had to go outside the city today, to one of the many commuter towns that border the capital. Odivelas. A place I don’t visit often, even though an aunt lives there (we usually meet at my parent’s place, or at their beach place). Lucky me, there’s a subway line that connects our place to Odivelas. I thought I should take the subway, instead of driving. Much better in all sorts of ways. Faster. Cheaper. Environmentally friendlier. More entertaining. Except the walk from the station to the place where I was to shoot my assignment today. Fifteen minutes only, but the most depressing fifteen minutes of the month! Half an hour when we add the walk back, and that’s 30 minutes I’m not getting back. I’m sorry to my aunt, and all the other many people from Odivelas, and I apologize for the snobbiness, but that is one UGLY town! I got there pretty early, thinking I would walk around a bit and get some photos, but it was too hot. I decided to take my chance and entered an Indian restaurant, above a roasted chicken place. Both owned, it turns out, by the same nice Indian family. And SO happy I did. Ended up having a delicious lunch, a sure way to get into the mood needed for today’s portrait session.

Testing @heyloura’s M.b web client. First post 🙂

🥘 Arrived early, as I do. Now waiting for lunch at an Indian place. Smells delicious.

🚇 For now, though, let’s ride the Yellow Line to the end, and see what’s there! I know, of course, what’s at the end! The opposite of a rainbow: Odivelas. (Joking, Odivelas people!)

🇹🇷 🇯🇴 movieStar woke up and said we’re going to Istanbul, with a side trip to Petra. That’s that. We were planning a 3-day trip to Rome, but that would be too expensive. So this is the alternative: further away, longer trip, and (much) more expensive. She might have missed a couple of math classes.

👀 Before starting work, I’ll scroll down the September Photo Challenge timeline… So many nice ones!

🚚 On our way to school today…

🥈 When the word “flare” showed up on the calendar, I immediately thought about the photo I posted, a recent one featuring (what else?) the movieStars. While checking the archive, this one was also a strong contender. But, obviously, when in doubt, the movieStars always win.

📷 Day 25 : flare (@matt17r) #mbSept

🎼 Back home, after a rather long day. On to editing the photos, the night won’t be short either.

🙄 Weekend cut short, I’m working today. movieStars made their way back to the city with me, and will now try to find something to keep them busy.

📷 Day 24 : belt (@allaboutgeorge) #mbSept

👍🏼 Nothing makes you understand the importance of opposable thumbs like the inability to use one for a while! Darn, these things ARE handy!

🩸 The thinly sliced potatoes were delicious in the end…

🚶🏻‍♀️ The walk to the swimming club.

📷 Day 23 : a day in the life (@challenges) Special day in the photo challenge, and our lives. tinyMovieStar had her first swimming lesson, and I became my father a bit more. He patiently waited for us to be done, for almost two decades. Every. Single. Day. Thrilled for my awesome daughter. #mbSept

👀 Sometimes we forget to look out the window at our regular restaurant, and only think about how lucky we are when tourists seem impressed. Two minute walk from our door, we eat here probably two/three times a week.

🏊‍♂️ Heading out to tinyMovieStar’s first swimming lesson. Curious about it.

😱 03:47AM. Not cool, not cool at all…

🎧 Every time this one comes up, I can’t help but smile, and get the hair on the back on my neck standing up immediately. It’s been well over a decade, still one of my favorites. I could listen to the entire album every day. Portishead - Glory Box

😬 Finally Friday For Fuc…

📷 Day 22 : road (@jomalo) #mbSept

🙄 Hey, Flickr, I know this is a brand new feature on iOS, but can we please have a dark mode on your awesome 1997 app? The share sheet is still blindingly white. Great app in every other sense, as you are so aware. Otherwise you’d try to improve it. Thanks.

🥰 We had the most wonderful afternoon and evening. Friends, food, fun, and family. Happy to be able to share these moments, and happy to see tinyMovieStar laughing and playing with everyone.

🛵 Red Scooter Love

🐴 Let’s go!

☁️ Rain has stopped for now, as so has editing. I should turn the Wi-Fi off when I plan to work.

💈 Forgot to update after yesterday’s visit to the barber, we went with the “Psycho” again… Can’t recommend Belarmino (Instagram link) enough, if you find yourself in town.

☔ It's raining, and I have photos to edit. Could this day be any worse?

📷 Day 21 : fall (@pcora) #mbSept

💈 On my way to the barbershop today. Afternoon, not the usual morning visit.

⏰ Woke up way too early. Went to work, shot another doctor, and was back home by sunrise, just in time to wake the movieStars up. Perfect.

👀 Back from this morning’s shoot, a quick (and mostly painless) one. Going a bit outside of the city, and not the best looking venue. Anyway, it’s done.

📷 Day 19 : edge (@rnv) #mbSept

🥱 Good Morning, y’all! Posting today’s photo next (sorry if you’ve seen this one already, it’s a classic), and off I go to a wonderful day in the exciting world of doctor portraiture. See you later, have a good one.

🤦🏻‍♂️ Just realized I should have saved the photo on this week’s thingsThisWeek for tomorrow’s prompt: Edge. I will use a classic, often seen, photo instead.

⏳ Meeting Time

🧀 tinyMovieStar is VERY MUCH into flags these days, so I have to be on the lookout. She loved this one.

🚸 Getting ready for a meeting (think PTA) at kindergarten later on.

📷 Day 18 : fabric (@adam) #mbSept

thingsThisWeek #66

Back in the city, and slowly back to work. Busy week, in the end. Most of the items on this week’s report would need a bit more text. I could not find the time, and mindset, to do it. ✏️ movieStar went back to school, this time for real, no more breaks planned at the moment. She is starting swimming classes as well. She loves school, and the teachers love her back. Her colleagues are nice, smart, and she goes in every day full of confidence. I think she has awesome self-esteem. And super polite so far. Love her more every day. I’m well aware this is what most parents say about their children, but it’s impressive how much I love this girl. 📷 Almost as soon as we got back, I had work to do. A couple emails from the agency I work with/for, and a few more portraits were scheduled. Good, money coming in. One this week, a few on the next one, and another lifestyle shoot for a brunch place. Busy month, all things considered. 🦄 tinyMovieStar’s godmother flew into town, on a quick two day visit. She was attending a show opening, and a quick Rosh Hashanah celebration. I do wish she’d move back to the city, to the country, but it’s hard to compete with London. She would like it as well, I believe. 😪 Attended an homage for a colleague from the newspaper who, very sadly, passed away a couple of years ago. Met a few colleagues from the old newspaper days, people who have retired in the meantime. It was another fun moment of the week, and the photography exhibits on the venue were also cool. Most of them. 👰🏻🤵🏻 Saturday was wedding day. movieStar’s best friend got married. It was raining when we woke up, but things got much better after a while, despite the downpour forecast on all apps. Go figure. We had a wonderful time, as we’re friends with most people who were attending. Lovely day for our dear friends. Relaxed It was a long one, though, that ended with a dinner at a cousin’s place, complete with both of my brothers-in-law. 📺 Finished the Telemarketers thing. Started Spy Ops, Extraordinary Attorney Woo (thanks, @Miraz and @pratik), and one more episode of D.P. as well. It was a slow TV week. 🍿 STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie. Liked it. ⭐️ This week’s entries to the September 2023 Photoblogging Challenge were a mix of old and new. That’s the only way I’ve been able to keep up. Days 13, 14, 15. Miserably failed days 16 and 17, while having fun at the wedding, and crashing a bit on the day after. Will I be able to get back on track? 🛒 Finally added some items to my Vinted account, after making my first purchase. Call me surprised, but I also sold my first item on that first day. Adding more stuff, obviously. The feeling here is a lot more relaxed than on other apps we have available, people seem more polite too.

🙈 Missed a couple of days. Wonder if I can back on track with the photoblogging challenge!

👰🏻 Four from yesterday. Long, happy, day.

❌ Should have been an “Oops!”, and not a “Oof!”. Failed.

😅 Not worrying a lot about today’s oof! for the photo challenge. I am going to a wedding, after all…

🧸 From yesterday. So many still left, I suppose I’ll post them after we get back from today’s event.

🌧️ Wedding day, waking up. Raining cats, dogs, and all sorts of other animals.

🖼 Attending an homage to a colleague in a while. Will probably try to catch some of the exhibitions before the main event.

STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie, 2023 - ★★★★½

Watched on Friday September 15, 2023.

🍿 STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie

📷 Day 15 : red (@chiawase) #mbSept

🦞 redRules. Different moods, countries, styles, cameras, decades…

🧧 While trying to pick a photo for RED, I came across hundreds from my redRules folder. Haven’t yet picked one for the challenge (even though I’m almost certain where I’ll land), but a HUGE gallery post is coming in a couple of minutes… Get your data plan ready!

😰 9676 unread items on Feedbin. Damn!

🤓 My glasses finally made their way here from London… Yay!

🦄 tinyMovieStar’s godmother is back in town. One day only, then back to London.

🇯🇵 It’s the little things. That’s what I’m missing today…

🍿 I really want to watch “The Deepest Breath”, but I was crying by the time the opening credits rolled by… Not sure I’m ready for this today.

🎟️ Ok, we haven’t been here in a while as well, but I have some Bluesky invites. Is that something people are still looking for?

👰🏻 movieStar’s best friend is getting married on Saturday. She’s been living with her groom for many, MANY, years, and have a daughter, older than tinyMovieStar. She finally managed to talk him into it! Weather today: sunny, clear sky, hot. Weather on Saturday: cloudy, cold, wet!

📷 Day 14 : statue (@christopherchelpka) #mbSept

📷 Day 13 : glowing (@anniegreens) #mbSept

👀 Yesterday was all about pairs. Couples. Diptychs, if you will…

💼 Today is "Get Back to Work Day" for me. Not entirely happy.

⌚️ Modular Ultra face is available to older Ultra. I’m good.

😭 Morocco, Libya... Sad, sad week.

🛵 Back to walking in my home town.

🍎 Apple event later on, and all I can think about is I have to pick up a hat a friend left for me at the brewery. It’s a new-in-box hat from said brewery, with the old logo. And that is all I’m picking up today. That, and tinyMovieStar, of course.

thingsThisWeek #65

A day late, spent all day yesterday driving. 🌧️ We postponed our trip, and left a couple of days later. Thankfully, since he’s a friend, our host didn’t ask for his money, even though we cancelled the day before we were supposed to show up. Thanks. Much appreciated. 👀 Tuesday should have been the day when we’d drive down to Castro Marim, and start enjoying our week of beach/pool/Spain day trips, but we were still stuck in the city. So, after we dropped tinyMovieStar off at kindergarten, we just decided to walk around, acting like tourists. We were the only ones speaking Portuguese downtown, as if we were somewhere else. Cool. We walked by places we haven’t been in a while, saw a ton of new shops, found out a lot went out of business (some really quickly), and ended up having a nice Austrian lunch at a place owned by one of tinyMovieStar’s colleagues mom. We love it, and missed the food there. We came home, finished a movie started the day before, and picked the little one up. Awesome day. ✏️ Back to school isn’t easy, for anyone. The little one wants to stay home with us, and play all day with us, and talk all day with us. I kinda want that as well. It’s exhausting, true, but I miss her as soon as I drop her off and have an espresso at the corner kiosk. Caffeine levels stabilized, and I’m already thinking I should pick her up again. Happy we managed to get away from the city for a bit, after only half a week of this suffering. Things can get pretty intense on these first days, even though she’s been at this school for a while now. She loves her teachers, and her colleagues, and talked about them often during August. But, when the time came, she doesn’t seem that thrilled anymore. I know we’ll all get into the groove again, but this week wasn’t great. 🏖 And, finally, we got in the car, and drove south. Day one was ok. We had to pick up the in-laws, as their car broke down thirty minutes after they left home, we all drove to the house, quick visit to the supermarket, and five minutes in the car to VRSA for dinner. Always a pleasure to go back to Vila Real, we have a favorite place there, overlooking the river, and Spain. The following day was spent at the beach, not a lot to say. The water was warm, the wind non-existent, and the sky had a ton of clouds. Awesome day anyway. 🇪🇸 Sevilla day trip. What a ride! The place where we usually stay in the Algarve is right on the border with Spain, so going there is a regular thing. Sevilla is a bit further down the highway, but still pretty close, around 90 mins away. We did not spend as much time as we’d wish to, but still managed to catch a few of the must-see spots, and have a wonderful lunch at a place movieStar wanted to visit. Tasty food. My father-in-law hadn’t been there in decades, so that was cool too. He got to ride the carriage with tinyMovieStar. The rest of us spent that time having coffee. Unlike some of our countrymen, all of us love Spain. 🏖️ Barril is an incredible beach in the Algarve, one I had never been to. You get on a little train to make your way to the beach (walking also possible), and the water was warm and clear. Plenty of places to grab a bite as well. We stayed almost until sundown. Will surely come back to this one. 🚗 There wasn’t a lot of time left in the south. We crossed the border again, had a wonderful lunch at the closest Spanish town, bought a few items, filled the tank, and drove back to the city. It was short, but very nice. 📸 Another week of Micro.blog’s September 2023 Photoblogging Challenge. I have not been able to shoot all of the on the exact day, but I posted photos from last month a couple of times. It is what it is. Days 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, and 12 are now behind us. 📺 Platonic. It was fun. Also finished The Afterparty. Both seasons. I need to find a nicer one next, both these felt a little meh. 🍿 Molly’s Game. Unexpected, we came across it as we scrolled Prime, but really nice find. 🤓 Smallest news of the week: got a Popsocket. Late, and not totally sold on it yet, but I’m trying it.

📷 Day 12 : panic (@maique) #mbSept

📷 Day 11 : retrospect (@chadgmoore) #mbSept

🇪🇸 Pool morning, over the bridge to Ayamonte (a very far cry from the coolness of Sevilla), nice lunch, and many hours driving back to Lisbon. We’re done.

☕️ A very good morning to all, and a special one to @odd.

🏖️ Back to the beach, and back to slower days. Also a lot less photos, as we’re stuck in the sand all day long.

📷 Day 10 : cycle (@agilelisa) #mbSept

🤿 Not proper scuba, but as deep as this watch has been so far… (Awesome day at Barril beach, btw)

☕️ It’s been a while… Coffee Time?

🇪🇸 No nap on the way, so busier with tinyMovieStar, and a lot less time for photos. Also shorter stay than we wished for. Still great.

📷 Day 09 : language (@thedimpause) #mbSept

🇪🇸 Posting from the country next door. Photos later.

🗣️ Lucky me, tomorrow is Day Trip to Sevilla day! I was going around in circles thinking about the “language” prompt, and now it hit me: Spanish is super familiar, but it IS a different language! Just a matter of finding something that I can turn into a photo then…

🏖️ Quiet day today. Beach. Cloudy. Still nice. Warmest water we’ve found here. 24C.

🏖️ Kids and the Beach

🏖️ Natural Habitat

🥴 Guess who hasn’t slept yet, and is looking at 5AM on the watch? I’ll help: starts with “mai”.

Got to say that Mercury’s daily forecast with trips enabled is pretty cool. Nice way to get an overview of conditions on the road.

📷 Day 08 : yonder (@jidabug) #mbSept

👀 Day one photo dump.

🛖 Back “home”. Photo dump coming soon…

🥰 Finally.

🏖️ We made it. In-laws car broke down, so we had to drive an hour to pick them up, and we all drove down in our car. Let’s have lunch, and a swim in the pool.

📷 Day 07 : panorama (@dejus) #mbSept

🤨 Wondering if I should just post an old panorama before we leave, or hope for the best and try to get a new one when we get there. This is the biggest decision I have to make now. I guess it’s a good day.

😡 Someone I cannot stand? At all? Christine Lagarde. As soon as she shows up on the news, her arrogance front and center, I have to mute, and wait it out. Not a lot of people have this effect on me.

🎒 Packing. No turning back now...

🇺🇸 It was bound to happen… After a couple of sticker sightings, we should have seen it coming: the invasion has begun!

📺 Done with Platonic. Had fun.

🌥 Ok, let’s try this again: tomorrow we’re moving down to the Algarve, for a little R&R. (Hopefully this time it works out…)

Blancpain! Damn! The initial run of this collaboration will feature five different watches named for the five oceans. Swatch Is Rolling Out Its Next Massive Collaboration

📷 Day 06 : well (@val) #mbSept

🛒 Deliveries

Molly's Game, 2017 - ★★★★

Watched on Tuesday September 5, 2023.

💖 Our tour around town… Details later, now just a ton of photos. Sorry.

💖 Morning, and lunch, with movieStar. Walking around, feeling like tourists. Love it.

📷 Day 05 : forest (@ovr) #mbSept

🏨 I emailed an hotel two days ago, with a question regarding a possible stay. Still waiting. We’re looking for another one. No way in hell are we spending money in a place that takes this long to reply.

☎️ The Public Phone Still remember these, from using them. Now I have no idea why they keep them around, except as a poster wall.

🍊 Of course every single thing on the city is orange. Only today!

🙄 Exchanged my car for my father’s, and immediately got stuck in traffic. That’s what a little rain does to this city.

✂️ Cutting the week short, we’re staying an extra two days in the city, before moving south. It sucks.

🌧️ Not a great way to start a beach week.

thingsThisWeek #64

Final week of August, a month that should have been mostly vacation, but took a different turn this year. No week at the village, no week at the Algarve (we’re doing that next week, in September). It was not an easy month. We are super thankful to my in-laws, as they helped us with this loooong one. 🍎 We moved back to the in-laws, after one night in the city. We’ll have plenty of those soon enough. It’s quieter in the countryside now, cousins all left. We spent the rest of the week there, and then moved to the city again. Friday was “back to school” day for tinyMovieStar. We also missed our place, and have only a couple of days before we travel to the Algarve for a week of R&R. August was mostly spent over there, in the countryside, ever since we drove down from the music festival. Three weeks. That’s a long time. We did have a great time, though. tinyMovieStar got to pick apples and figs at a friend’s orchard, play around with cousins, spend time with her grandma&grandpa, go to the pool… Life in the countryside does have advantages. We are very fortunate to have this available, and so close to the city too. 🇨🇭 Still on tinyMovieStar (can’t get enough of this one), for the past month the little one has been super into flags. She knows a ton of them by heart now, and, although she has no grasp of where the countries are, or what they actually are, she does remember the links between some of them. We have a couple of books now, with all the flags in the world, and we keep going back to those. Neighbours are “friends”, and she wants to visit all the countries, so she can find out what language they speak there, and how the local boys&girls look like. Awesome. So, instead of walking to school on her first day, we had to drive there. She wanted to see the Swiss flag she discovered the other day, “a real one, not paper”. We drove by the Zurich insurance company on the way. 🎉 We, finally, drove back to the city, just in time for kindergarten day one. tinyMovieStar a bit scared. She’s moving up in class, and changing teachers. Her friends are still the same, but she was, understandably, apprehensive. One day only, and on to Party Weekend. That’s how this one will be remembered. Two birthday parties! On Friday a cousin was celebrating his 10th anniversary, and two days later another one was also turning a decade old. Fun times, for sure, but very exhausting. 💸 Purchased App Tamer license. It really helps my old Air, I’ve been trying to, well, tame the fans, but couldn’t quit the processes that fired it up. They would always come back. This works. 🔐 1Password subscription renewal time this week as well. I’m on the family plan, with a 50% discount for another year. I like it, and have been using 1P for many years, but… For the first time I thought I need to find a replacement. I loved it, but, since the update to v8, it just doesn’t seem to work as reliably, as snappy, as perfectly. It was smooth, but not anymore. I could go with Bitwarden, Proton Pass (I got the lifetime $1/month Plus plan on launch day), or something else. I would just need to figure out movieStar’s situation. Proton Pass seems rather nice already, and a ton of new stuff seems to be coming in the near future. I started using it as a quick, and easy, way to have a few passwords available when I’m playing with Linux, and it has grown on me. 💻 Edited and sent last week’s small assignment. Also sent a couple of receipts, as we need more money for our week down south. August is normally a slow work month, this time it was no different. I have one thing scheduled for September already, but had to say no to a request, as we’re not in the city. Not great. 📸 We are a few days into Micro.blog’s September 2023 Photoblogging Challenge. Time to see a lot of cool photos, and figure out what to post every day. Prompts have been getting harder with every edition of the challenge, and I’ve been trying to shoot for it, instead of just going to the archive and pick something that fits. Not sure if it was a wise move. So far these are the ones I submitted. Day 01, 02, 03, and 04. 📺 Finished the Ghosn limited series. The Guardian has a great review, I agree with it 100%. Watched The Big Conn. The world is full of incredible stories. Love non-fiction. Also Platonic. Fun. 🍿 House of Gucci, Sing 2, Hail, Caesar!. It’s been a while since we’ve had such a movie-filled week! Felt good to sit through this with movieStar (and the tiny one for Sing, of course). 🌧️ It was also the “Hello, rain” week. Not a particularly brilliant timing, I must say, as we’re moving out of the city for some beach days early next week. We will probably spend the first day, on the road, with rain. And we’re going to Seville the following morning, so… darn. movieStar is getting a bit worried, as they rain seems to be here all week. Far from perfect. If we’re unable to go to the beach, and miss the opportunity for some pool days, I know someone who’s going to be pissed!

📷 Day 04 : orange (@ekcragg) #mbSept

Happy that @t3mujin found his way over here. Nice photos are guaranteed. Welcome.

⛵️ Huge boat goes by, with a Mexican flag. tinyMovieStar recognizes the flag, and comments “Where my dear Frida Kahlo lives”. I’ll file that under “Things I never thought my three year old daughter would say”.

👀 Today.

📷 Day 03 : precious (@odd) #mbSept

📺 Platonic.

😎 Welcome to Las Bejas.

😶 Had to happen, I got a Vinted account.

📷 Day 02 : buildup (@V_) #mbSept

👀 Had to pick up a present for a cousin’s birthday party, so I walked there. Missed walking in the city.

😫 Already struggling with the prompt for the second day of the photoblogging challenge, but enjoying the photos that people are posting. Should be a fun month.

📷 Day 01 : abstract (@greghiggins) #mbSept

🏙️ In the city.

🐱 Here Kitty Kitty…

Hail, Caesar!, 2016 - ★★★★

Watched on Wednesday August 30, 2023.

Sing 2, 2021 - ★★★★

Watched on Wednesday August 30, 2023.

🍎 Farmer tinyMovieStar

🎲 Random morning so far… Can’t wait to get to the Algarve, and a different place to shoot. We are also planning a day trip to Seville. Haven’t been in ages!

House of Gucci, 2021 - ★★★

Watched on Tuesday August 29, 2023.

🦶 Happy Feet

🦥 Proof of Laziness

🦥 Another VERY lazy day.

🍽️ Meal Time!

☁️ Evening Walk

We didn’t rename Mastodon to M (or any other random letter). Mastodon iOS app release notes.

🛬 Still trying…

💛 Yeah, someone just drove by on a yellow convertible Mustang.

😅 113 days in, and still very much miss my beloved cigarettes, btw.

🐌 Good thing about how long (A LOT) it takes to get photos from Photos.app into a folder? Time to try to catch up with the M.b timeline.

🛑 App Tamer license has been purchased. Trial was very successful, Air runs better.

💶 Receipts have been sent... Come to daddy, vacation money...

thingsThisWeek #63

This week started on a Tuesday, a very hot August day. Temperature reaching 41C at my in-laws. It would turn colder later in the week. 🧸 movieStar still working from home, so I’m taking care of tinyMovieStar most of the day, with grandma and grandpa helping. A lot. We spent most of the week at my in-laws, with a couple of cousins staying with the aunt of lives next door. The houses are arranged in a way that it feels like they’re one, with connecting patios. We move back and forth a lot. 📷 True to form, I got a call about an assignment due next day, a small one, in Lisbon. We’re about an hour away, but of course I said yes. It’s August, a very slow work month, always happy to make a buck. Rode to town on my father-in-law’s Harley, on what was probably the hottest day of the god damn year. I wanted to get back to the countryside as fast as possible, and driving to the city (and deal with traffic and parking) was not part of my plan. Turns out it was for nothing, and I had to go back a second time. 🛵 That second trip to the city felt great. The assignment wasn’t very exciting, a simple affair. But it allowed me to ride for almost three hours again, and that’s awesome. This was Scooter Week for me, and happy about it. Colder weather too, it felt incredible! The following morning movieStar ran out of her special oath flakes, and I had to ride to two different towns to find them. Again, a pleasure. Everything feels better when you’re riding there. 🎂 THE party! Auntie had a birthday this week, a party was arranged. Loads of food, as usual with this particular aunt (she does all the cooking, even on her birthday - three main dishes, four desserts), and loads of family. All her daughters and sons came back home. That is not usual, as one daughter has to fly back from Helsinki, and another from London. Almost all her grandchildren also attended. One was missing, busy in LA. tinyMovieStar met a few new cousins, thrilled to find out she has an almost endless supply of those! It was a monster party, and we were still very tired the following day, eating leftovers. 🌡️ tinyMovieStar had a temperature spike, probably due to excitement levels being high all week. A lot to handle. Or, maybe, a growth spurt. She seems taller, again. Over a meter by now. 🌴 Weekend came, and went. The two younger cousins that were staying with us left after Sunday lunch, one back home, the other back to England. We took that as a sign, and drove back to the city. Had dinner with my parents. August is almost done with, tinyMovieStar starts school on Friday. She will also go on Monday, and then it’s off to the south, and the beach. She’ll miss the first few days. Truth be told, that’s all we can think about already. It was a very odd August. 👀 Another unfortunate side-effect of spending so little time in the city, while spending so much time with the girls, is that sticker spotting ends up being almost non-existent. There are no stickers in the village where my in-laws live. Hopefully I’ll get back to it soon. 📺 Afterparty, The Bear (we finished season 2, and immediately started watching season 1 again), Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn. 🎙️ The weekly episodes of Spy Valley, and Um Espião no Kremlin, on top of the usual podcast list. I’ve been listening to a lot less of these at the moment. No time for podcasts, I’m sorry to say.

🌆 Back in the city. At least for one night.

🐶 Walking the Dog

🛵 Someone needs a shower…

Colophon has been updated, with Tinylytics mention and real, live, uptime information. No idea why it took me so long. Sorry about that, Vincent.

📷 I had to wait a bit, so took a couple of photos.

🍁 Breakfast time. We’re having it at Auntie’s place. Still having a black and white moment, sorry about that.

🛵 Later today: second attempt at shooting my unfinished assignment, the one where I get to ride my father-in-law’s motorcycle to get to the venue. Way over before sunset, riding back in the night. Happy maique.

🙏🏼 Today’s appreciation post goes out to Jamie Lee Curtis. Watching The Bear, season 2, episode 6. She’s is a goddess.

So… No falling down from a window for you?

🛵 Back and Forth

Rode the motorcycle to the city (sorry about that leather thing, I hate it, but father-in-law owns the bike). The weather was pretty cool on the way there, too early in the morning. Not a lot of traffic too. Very pleasant ride. Picked up the cameras and, just as I was making my way to the place where I was supposed to shoot the thing, I got an email asking for late afternoon/early evening photos. Not morning ones. Awesome. Rode to a sporting goods store, got two pairs of swimming goggles, then off to my parents, and back to the countryside. Hot. As. Hell. Crazy traffic. Dozens of giant trucks on the road. Awesome ride still, lots of zigzagging. We have a birthday party today, so the shoot will have to wait a day or two. Probably means another ride… Yay!

🥇 Made it to the city, temperature still bearable. On to the shooting part, and I can be on my way again.

🌞 7:30AM, ready to leave. Trying to outrun the heat.

🛵 Riding to town tomorrow, quick shoot before lunch. Taking my father-in-law’s motorcycle, much faster than our car.

🌱 Buddha, and Plants

thingsThisWeek #62

🏡 After a few days with the in-laws, we drove back to the city. We missed our home. Sleeping in our beds. Showering in our own bathroom. We left again, soon, but felt really good. 📺 Bear. End of Acapulco (when in heaven’s name will we get season 3?? Hate cliffhangers!). Afterparty, Telemarketers, and Platonic. 📷 Had a couple of assignments on the same day, ones that included a lot of driving around the Alentejo. Hot. As usual around this time of the year, it’s impossible to drive a bit without smelling burnt wood. Forest fires are, sadly, so common around here. Truck on fire too on the highway as well. Crazy. Spent what felt like the whole day in the car, as locations were scattered around the area, with loads of driving time between them. Still, I do miss the days when this was my main occupation, I love shooting proper newspaper assignments. 🦆 We spent a couple of hours at Gulbenkian’s garden. We wanted to go there for so long, and somehow it never happened. It’s beautiful, close to home, and we had fun. I even got bitten by a duck! 🏖️ For the weekend, we drove to Setubal, and took the catamaran to Troia. A friend has an apartment there, and invited us to spend a couple of days. The movieStars love the beach, so off we went. Sadly, the father of the girl inviting us is not a very happy person, he’s quite bitter, and he was also there. I spent way too much time with him. That took a toll. Other than that, lovely days. Beach is fine there, water cold as usual. It’s a beautiful part of the country, and quite busy during the summer months. Got to watch a movie outdoors, have a nice food truck meal (with huge lines), and Bolas de Berlin on the beach. Yay. 🥵 Not a lot else happening, so we just did a full 360, and are back at the in-laws. It’s super hot now (40+C), we’re mostly staying home, trying to survive.

📺 Telemarketers. Boy, is this disgusting!

😩 Thinking about going back to the in-laws for a couple of days. Temperature forecast: 42C.

🚶🏻‍♂️ The Long Beach Walk, black and white edition.

🫥 Less than perfect day = less than perfect photos.

📷 Today the second assignment from this week was finally printed. I do miss going around the country shooting these more often.

🍿 We had a wonderful beach day yesterday, ended with food truck dinner, and outdoor movie session. Lovely.

🐬 Little after noon, saw dolphins already. As we’re getting to the beach. Thrilled tinyMovieStar.

😝 10AM already, tinyMovieStar just waking up. Our “Beach Day” is now officially a “Beach Afternoon”.

🤪 The Font Maniac strikes back!

🛥️ Today’s trip to the beach includes a boat ride. tinyMovieStar, for some reason, wants to hear none of it. Updates later.

😰 August is not an easy month, parenting wise.

😎 Lisbon by Dusk

🐬 tinyMovieStar is already dreaming about tomorrow's beach trip. We're meeting her friend over there.

🧳 Take me home, country roads…

🎙️ From Brazen, and PRX, comes a new podcast: Spy Valley. Being a fan of the stuff they put out, I’m sure I’ll enjoy this one as well. Spies and tech, what else could I ask for? Pretty cool site too.

🏝️ One more day to go before the weekend, then it’s off to the beach for a couple of days. First August we spend in town in a long while. Odd.

👀 Today, so far…

🌺 Almost done with the editing part of my day, then it's off to a beautiful garden with the movieStars.

🏆 Minor issue with new mobile provider’s app, and app chat functionality is not working on iOS 17 beta. Tried Instagram, issue solved in under 10 mins. Brilliant. Love good customer service.

🚙 Today’s dump. Not a lot. Spent most of the day driving. And shooting cameras, not the phone. Can’t say I’m too happy.

✈️ One day I’ll get the photo. Today was closer than usual, but not what I’m looking for.

🙃 Back in the city. Tomorrow I’ll spend the day far from home, shooting two assignments in the Alentejo. Happy.

🌴 Day Off

🙂 + 🧽

📷 Black and white morning walk, shooting from the hip with the new Obscura beta.

We might go back to the city today, at least for a couple of days. Still not sure, but might happen. Can’t say I miss it. Not yet, anyway.

📺 Finished Acapulco, season 2. How long before season 3?? I hate cliffhangers.

🙌🏼 50

thingsThisWeek #60/#61

It took me a while to get through this one. Busy couple of weeks, lots of traveling, working, playing, living. Heavily edited for brevity. Also used a photo I already posted, but I love it. This little human is getting cooler every day, and I am enjoying watching the whole thing develop a lot more than I thought I would. Fingers crossed I don’t screw this up, as she’s doing great so far! 😇 We’re in half-vacation mode. At the in-laws, and moving around, with movieStar on her laptop all day. I’m taking care of the little one, with HUGE help from mother-in-law. In return I’m helping her taking care of my father-in-law… 🏃‍♂️ The Pope came, and went. We moved out of the city, as things got crazy. There is no way to host over a million people in a city as big/small as Lisbon, and not have a chaotic time. Loads of people we know did the same: moved out. We followed the event at a distance, mostly through social media. As most of my colleagues were banned from taking time off during the event, Instagram was flooded with photos. Theirs, and from the many protests that happened. A lot of those as well. 🎸 N2 music festival. The usual stress that comes from having to work LOOOOONG days, while trying to keep both movieStars company, and entertained. Juggling too many balls. It was, in a (much used over here) word, awesome. We had a blast, saw some really nice concerts, met old friends, also some older ones we hadn’t seen in a long while. Had great food too. The city is home to us, and we don’t feel so welcome in many other places. It’s another level of hospitality. tinyMovieStar also got her first haircut. I love traveling with the girls, and got plenty of that these weeks. Hotel living is something we excel at (who doesn’t??), and not having to cook every day is a blessing. We get to spend even more hours together, and our mood is much happier because of that. 🥵 Both in Chaves, as back home, it’s crazy hot. Temperatures have been on the rise, and the fire season has begun. 🏖️ We had an epic beach day. We’re going to our usual spot in September, a month later than what we usually do, so we’re keeping ourselves entertained locally until then. movieStar is working from home this month, we’re visiting beaches that are close by. Plenty of those around. tinyMovieStar LOVES being on holiday. “Is today cartoon watching day?” 🏦 As promised, got a new bank account. At an old school bank, and at very old school branch. Love it. Decided to open the account at my in-laws village, on the farmers cooperative bank. The bank is modernizing quickly, but still manages to keep a very old school vibe that I love. It’s also the bank with the most branches in the country, as there’s one in every small sized town. “Aren’t you movieStar’s husband”?, asked the branch manager, someone I had never met. “Well, yes, yes I am”. Small village life. 📱 Prices on our mobile carriers keep going up, but some new players have showed up. They are mostly sub-brands of the bigger players, and offer quality service for a cheaper price. 2023 is the year of the change, so I decided to cancel my decades long Vodafone subscription, and move to WOO (a NOS company). So far no complaints, and roughly half the cost. I will probably go for a bigger plan soon, but still cheaper than the old one. Kept the same number, but the new one was actually kinda cool. Can’t afford to change numbers, too much is tied to the old one. 📺 D.P., new season is out. Acapulco. Gemstones, Lasso. No time for more, we’re going. 🍿 The Beanie Bubble. Awesome cast, great story, not so great movie. Entertaining, but felt like tapping the fast forward a few times. Operation Chromite got the same FF treatment. Air. All these, of course, after getting back from the festival. No time for that up north.

📱 Testing a new telecom. WOO. eSIM makes this too easy.

👀 Probably my favorite from yesterday: completely focused, reading a supermarket leaflet for the hundredth time. My baby girl.

🐠 Trying to finish my weekly notes (two weeks missing already), but stuff keeps happening. Can’t find the time.

🏖️ tinyMovieStar’s favorite place in the world: the beach. We like it too. Spent an amazing day with the in-laws, and got one of our classic family selfies.

Operation Chromite, 2016 - ★★½

Watched on Sunday August 13, 2023.

🏖️ Very fun, and very long, day. Past 11PM, finally home. Beach, party, back to the beach, sunset party…

🏖️ Time to go, beach day ahead.

☕️ Good Morning. Enjoy your weekend.

☕️ Good Morning

🧊 Plan for today: get car’s AC refilled. Oh, and keep the movieStars happy!

💖 Fig loveProject

🌻 Back to waking up at 7AM. Can’t say I’m a fan.

Air, 2023 - ★★★½

Watched on Thursday August 10, 2023.

🍿 Air also starts with a song from the Violent Femmes!! I’m on a roll!

📦 Days spent waiting for a delivery are always stressful days for me, even if said delivery is a small cable.

💙 Will probably post Chaves photos to balance out the ugliness. Chaves, the place where even the Ibis hotel looks great.

😜 Back to shooting ugly details…

The Beanie Bubble, 2023 - ★★★

Watched on Wednesday August 9, 2023.

🎲 Public Beta 3 is out.

⃣ hashtagLife

🧸 The Beanie Bubble. Violent Femmes song part of the soundtrack, the movie is a winner already.

🏪 Back home (well, in-laws). Slowly making my way back online.

🥵 Temperature close to 40C for the drive back south. Neat.

🥴 Waking up. 10AM. Still tired.

🍺 Festival: Done.

🧟 Exporting final batch.

🥴 Almost 1AM. Can’t wait to see what I shot today. It was an AWESOME day.

💙💚 Crowded

🐌 Sending 1.33GB from an hotel room with spotty internet is not a fun way to start the day.

🐻 Papi, as seen from tinyMovieStar’s point of view.

😱 Minor scare: hotel internet was not playing nice with laptop. Sorted.

🐝 Very busy days ahead, not sure how present I’ll be online. It’s one of those weeks where you have to be on Instagram to “see” me. Sorry about that 😅

🎵 Here we go, N2 2023 edition. See you on the other side.

🌻 Ready for a new day. Yesterday was really cool. Pool visit for the girls 10 mins after getting here. tinyMovieStar: “This life is very good” Happy to hear that.

🎈 We made it!

🚙 After a couple of days of R&R at the in-laws, it’s time to move on. Picking up a friend at the train station, and driving north for hours. Tonight we sleep in Chaves! Yay!

😅 I’ve said it before, but will say it again. Probably more than once. This place, that I like, is UGLY!

😎 Dusk is nice over here.

🍅 Salad Incoming

💰 First order of business, and first check of the week: new bank account! Done!

🧸 Teddy As we were getting ready to leave for the trip… tinyMovieStar: “Can we take Teddy with us?” movieStar: “Sure.” tinyMovieStar gets Teddy. movieStar: “Oh… you mean THAT one…“ She got this when she was born, never paid any attention to it. Until today, when the car is packed full. Of course.

😜 Pope-mobile, or Mobster-car?

👋 See ya! Have fun in our super crowded, locked down, city.

👨🏻‍🎨 Marilyn

🎒 Packing, packing, and packing some more. That’s today.

🪴 Mint Day Easily one of the most polished distros I’ve tried, and I have tried a few in the past weeks, Linux Mint is pretty good-looking out of the box, and even better with a couple of tiny tweaks. Looking forward to the next couple of days.

🎸 Uncle John is the best. We had SO MUCH fun, recording tinyMovieStar with AutoTune!!

🎙️ What a fun day we’re having!

🦄 3 years old. That’s when tinyMovieStar first played Fortnite.

So… We could not stay away from the Algarve after all. Booked the usual place for September, when it’s a bit quieter.

🪴 Mint morning. And by that I mean Linux Mint morning…

😌 We had to visit the mall yesterday, so might as well document the way there…

🤨 7AM on a Saturday, and people are outside our place, whistling at the peacocks, trying to get them to scream. As if the crazy birds need incentive! Damn. Tourists.

🥰 The movieStars.

🏁 We all made it through another year of kindergarten. We all had fun!

thingsThisWeek #59

The week we spent wishing the week would end. Also, not a lot of free time, so it’s mostly topics, and not a lot more. Sorry. Spent my nights watching tv shows. 💸 Mortgage is paid. No more mortgage payments. Done. Happy. This is the biggest news of the week. I could just stop there, and be done. 🧂 Work at the salt flats. Saturday away from the movieStars, and extended family. It was a cool event, I think, but not a lot of people showed up. The ones that did had fun. And the organisers were really nice people too, so not a bad way to spend the day, all things considered. By the end of it I was exhausted, lots of walking around with the cameras, and the heat was a nuisance. Also, as the girls were having fun at the beach with the family, and kept sending news of how awesome their day was, I wanted it to end a bit sooner, but it was not to be. 😢 Sunday, saying goodbye to grandma, and uncle. Both are traveling next week, and so are we. tinyMovieStar is a bit of a drama queen when it comes to goodbyes. I am too. 📺 Afterparty, following a tip. Quite fun. A couple more from Acapulco. The usual weekly episodes of The Righteous Gemstones, and Hijack. Ted Lasso too. 🍷 Wine country again, for the newspaper. Alorna is a well known name in the wine industry. They’ve been doing it since 1723, and I had never visited. Great assignment, lovely photos, cool lunch and, surprisingly, they even had beer! 🎉 Family dinner, with mom & dad, brother & sister in law. Thanking the mortgage help. tinyMovieStar, of course, believes, as she should, that it was all arranged for her. School pick up, park, tea, home, dinner. Everything revolves around her anyway, I guess she’s right. 🦜 Parrot OS, Manjaro, Zorin, Debian. More later. Still keeping my Live USB Kali one, it works beautifully. 🤒 The little one had a bit of fever for a couple of days. Nothing else. Might be the heat, might be missing school already (teacher thinks so). She fine otherwise. 💈 Haircut, getting ready for the trip north, and the festival. We’re going!

😰 Get ready, pilgrims…

☕️ Good Morning

🧩 Domino Effect

🤡 Every time tinyMovieStar has to skip school, we just know there’s no resting. She. Does. Not. Stop. Ever.

💔 Parrot fails miserably, can't install from Live edition. Anyway, no worries, just installing plain old Debian next...

👀 Today’s archive catch… Still Lisbon.

🥵 tinyMovieStar is still a little hot. Two days to go on her school year, she probably felt she had enough already.

🧵 People keep joining, I get notified, but still can’t use the app.

🦜 Parrot OS is next in line...

🌡️ Yup, a little higher than normal on tinyMovieStar. Monitoring...

RIP Sinéad O’Connor.

🤑 Money makes the world go around.

🤗 Edited, and sent. Around lunch time. Happy.

🔎 Lisbon Details, while Lightroom (very) slowly exports a few photos.

🤍 Brightness

😩 Wanted to start editing today's assignment, but feel so tired, my eyes are giving up after picking the ones I'll edit. Tomorrow it is.

😱 They’re here! More coming soon. Run for your lives!

🍽️ Lunch Time After yesterday’s cheeseburger sando, a complete change of pace for today’s lunch.

🚇 On my way to the meeting point…

🌅 6AM, let’s go. After almost a month with no work, this week has been a welcome change of pace.

😶‍🌫️ Unfocused

🎒 Packing for a long day tomorrow. Out into wine country again, it's been a while.

💻 Testing this one again. Installed on SSD, no more running this from a USB drive…

💖 Barbie World

🍔 Snack for lunch at the cool kids club. Nice. Will return.

💥 Next: Nuking my Kali, and installing Manjaro. Just need to pick a flavor...

👀 Lisbon People

💸 Finally! Mortgage has been settled, I owe the bank nothing! Next: close that damn account!

🦚 Yay Colors!

🕊️ Good Morning, wishes of a great week. Also, if you’re in the area, RUN! The Pope’s coming, groupies are already getting here!

⛏️ Sunday night program: editing. Sucks.

🦖 Sunday not as quiet as I wished for…

🌳 Planted my first tree with Ecosia. Took me 50 searches. Would have been quicker to just go out and plant a tree myself.

📍 Middle of Nowhere

Long work day yesterday, still exhausted waking up. Lazy Sunday would be great.

💖 Glasses are in London. Can’t wait to have them here.

🦩 A bit later…

🦩 Arrived.

🦘 06:30AM, here we go!

💤 Should be going to bed now, before 10PM, if I want to get enough sleep tonight. Early rise tomorrow.

🤩 Gentler Streak update, with fixes for those “who live in the future”. Brilliant. Watch app is now fully functional again.

🌧️ A little rain. Very unexpected. Will probably ruin tomorrow’s beach trip for the girls.

🍃 Sort of an early weekend for us, so here’s another set…

thingsThisWeek #58

🧸 Pijama Party for the little one on Friday, I thought I had managed to escape this one, so I went out and had a beer with my best friend, the one I was supposed to be driving north with for work. And then we had another beer. And a couple more. We got hungry. Went to the nicest pizza place in the area, like we always do. We are very predictable. I then went home, got ready to sleep, and got a call from the movieStars. Party turned into a mess, as the other girl was acting like a little diva. I went and picked them up. tinyMovieStar had told her mum “Maybe we should go home and sleep in our beds”. 🌴 Pool Day on Saturday. Friends (I’ll just say this because the exact relationship would take forever to explain) invited us to visit their new place. They live in a really nice spot, and sold their previous house on the spot to someone who walked by and made an offer. They took the money, built another one, one street over. It’s a lovely place, they are a cool family. The house looked a bit like a showroom, but there is a pool there, and tinyMovieStar is our boss. We went. Great lunch too. Delicious food. 🌳 We drove back to my in-law’s place, a very fun drive in itself, with a couple of stops along the way. That’s when we found out the car was leaking diesel. Next morning, a few cousins joined us for Sunday lunch, a fun weekly event. Some of them we hadn’t seen for months. 📝 Monday came. We’ve been postponing filling out the forms for tinyMovieStar enrollment in kindergarten next year. She’s in, mind you, it’s just that we have to find SO much paperwork! This Monday, a slow work day, I decided to take care of it. Took forever, but it’s done. 🚙 Our sweet car (Bogas) was left behind on Sunday, and we drove my father-in-law’s Beetle back to the city. That one is nicknamed Waterlily. tinyMovieStar named it, and does not love riding on this one. She was cool with it this time. We told her Bogas had to see a doctor. The verdict came a day later. The issue was in a filter, it was replaced. Total cost: 35EUR. I was as surprised as you probably are, to find out there are still things that can be done to a vehicle that cost this. Impressed. 📺 A few more episodes of Ted Lasso, Jack Ryan is done with. Hijack (sorry, Alex!), and The Righteous Gemstones, ongoing. Giving Acapulco season 2 a try. 🍿 The Greatest Beer Run Ever. Meh movie, and only found out it was based on a true story after the movie was over. 💻 App Tamer was suggested to me on Mastodon, after I complained about the 24/7 fan noise that comes with two Photos.app being always on. It works! It’s been years since I started trying to shut them down, and the solution has been found. ✂️ Head Lice! Took them long enough, but tinyMovieStar has finally caught them. Now taking care of it, as we enter another weekend. I’m working all day Saturday, so will miss part of the fun.

👀 Not my favorite thing, but sometimes I also have to shoot portraits…

🌳 Moved to the countryside for a few days.

🍭 Love the Kudos feature. Thank you again, @vincent, this is so much fun.

💨 Everyone I know is making plans to get away from the city when the Pope comes to town. Living here will be hell for a week!

🩷 💛 Morning walks to kindergarten are always fun…

The Greatest Beer Run Ever, 2022 - ★★½

Watched on Thursday July 20, 2023.

🍿 The Greatest Beer Run Ever.

😬 Head lice alert!! Trying to keep tinyMovieStar free from them!

🤪 Hope your Thursday isn’t as messy as these…

📺 🥲😍🥰 Ted Lasso, the Amsterdam episode 🥰😍🥲

⏱ I’ve been trying to kill two processes on my Air for years. Nothing seemed to work, they always come back. Complained about it, again, and a tip was offered on Mastodon. Tried App Tamer. Brilliant. It works. Even better, as no process murder is involved, just slowing things down. Thanks, oku_yama_old.

🐢 Very. Slow. Morning.

GoodLinks gets an update, first since forever, still no highlights. It’s been promised for years.

🥐 Still embracing the randomness, Breakfast Edition.

🐪 Good morning, Hump Day. Nice to see you.

🎲 Here You go: Random Catch of the Day.

New Tinylytics feature: quick links for date filtering! Lovely! Thanks, @vincent 💝

Two random reasons why I prefer to run Kali over macOS on the Air these days: Waking from sleep is flawless with Kali, takes forever with macOS Kali does not have Photos.app, with processes endlessly running, fans blasting 24/7

👓 Screw Brexit, I have friends in the UK! Glasses are on their way...

🎉 Car has been fixed, and I'm getting it back today.

🚶🏻‍♀️ Fits/Misfits

👓 Broke my glasses. Time to order a new pair.

🐔 Why Did The Chicken…

👃 And now, for something completely different: Haute Parfumerie! I’ve been wearing the same, (not haute at all), Clinique fragrance for decades. First time I want to change? Today. movieStar got a box from Maison Crivelli and, if you’re into this kind of thing, BOOOOM! They are amazing!

🎪 tinyMovieStar has to attend a party later on. It's bloody hot too!

🚶‍♂️Rather uninteresting walk today. Decided to go another way, and it was SO boring. Except the jailhouse, that’s a cool building.

🎙️ Looking forward to this one…

🥱 Ok, Monday, let’s do this!

🚲 This was not the weekend when tinyMovieStar finally said: “Boy, do I love my bike!”

⛽ Car seems to have a gas leak, we drove my father-in-law’s car back home…

🅿️ Parking / No Parking

💺 Driving to my in-laws yesterday.

🐑 Sheep Counting: ON!

😅 I’ll tell you something: you should be happy Threads lets you get started with your follow list from Instagram. The algorithm suggested accounts, when you start from scratch, is amazingly awful!

🪑 Pinterest House

🟢🟡 Having fun with my Flickr account…

🌍 Quiche Browser Browsers are a dime a dozen, and yet Quiche Browser caught my attention. Maybe you’ll like it too?

Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. – Frank Pittman

🦇 Up since 5AM. Long day ahead, with a pool, and a bit of driving.

👀 Friday Afternoon Photo Dump

🍕 Too much beer, and pizza. Quite perfect, if I stop to think about it.

⊹╰(⌣ʟ⌣)╯⊹ Riding with Monks A very fortunate coincidence, that day when I could pick riding in a faster boat, or a slower one. Picked the slower. It had a surprise bonus.

🚚 Returning a rug... Yes, exciting afternoon!

🧵 See You Soon, Threads!

Threads is no more! At least not for us in the EU. After a lovely week, it’s gone. Or partially gone. I still get notifications, I can still read the timeline (threadline?), but I cannot reply. Or post. Or see the notifications tab. Or any profile. I can’t see my profile on the app, but it’s perfectly fine on the web. I had to get it from the US App Store, to start using it, and today it stopped working. No amount of trickery will fix this. No VPN, no setting my phone to another country, nothing works. Meta has confirmed they are actively stopping us from using the app. No matter how much we want to. I get it, they are using our data in very nasty ways. But I’m a grown man. Big tobacco used my lungs for decades. Big alchool has a foothold on my liver to this day. I read the warning labels, think about it, and decide to partake anyway. What is different here?

😡 Adding insult to injury, I still get Threads notifications. All the likes and follows are still making their way to my phone. Great!

🥰 I remembered how much I loved the X100 series… Probably the camera(s) I miss the most.

💔 Still no Threads. I might as well work a bit, an edit yesterday's photos.

🧵 Six hours later, Threads still acting up. Not sure if Beta is to blame, or something else. Unusable at the moment. Can’t post. Can’t reply. Can’t see profiles. Can’t see notifications. Can’t…

thingsThisWeek #57

🧺 Friends who live in Denmark came to town, so the gang (this is movieStar’s gang from her Paris days, mind you) got together for their yearly picnic, complete with a lot of kids. It was FUN. 🌳 Weekend fun. Water balloons. We had big plans, but did absolutely nothing instead. Strawberry pie. 🎹 Chaves trip. The N2 festival is getting close. There’s always an unveiling day, when the lineup is presented to the media. I usually make the trip up, spend the night, and back down again. It’s a rough day, as Chaves is all the way up, next to the Spanish border. A lot of driving. This time I decided to take the bus. Flixbus does not stop in the city, so I had to take the regular bus. Damn, that is one very boring ride. And, most crucially, a very long one to take on a bus with no toilet. Trying to balance your water intake so you don’t dehydrate, but also taking a chance with overdoing it, and then having to hold it for hours. Not easy. Not at all. One of the buses had no USB plugs, or sockets, and the other one had both. Same company, same route, very different experience. Both had Wi-Fi, but one almost unusable, and the other one allowing movies to be streamed. Anyway…. Once I got there, though, it was really nice. Meeting the gang is always a thrill. We met, had a party, had meals, had beers, had laughs. Slept, repeated, and back to Lisbon on another ride from hell. 📺 Smartless On Tour, episode 2. Jack Ryan, ongoing. Hijack, ongoing. The Righteous Gemstones, ongoing. Ted Lasso, season 3. Finally. 🍿 Bolt, this time in English, as tinyMovieStar quickly lost interest. Sleeping Beauty, also without her after a couple of minutes, as she found something a lot more interesting to do. The Out-Laws. Meh. 🐉 Kali and stuff. Not a lot more to say. Except the fact that I’ve been dealing with web apps, and not minding it a lot. 🦺 Beta time! I jumped it, and installed iOS 17 Beta on the iPhone, and the corresponding watchOS on dickTracy. More about this later, I’m sure. Just started using it, too early for thoughts. 🏦 I had to visit the bank again, as the clerk that I spoke with before incredibly missed the need for a document. In fact, the only document that was needed. Anyway, I went to a different branch, this nice new clerk figured out what was missing last Thursday. I went online and requested said document. A couple of days later I had it. Got on an electric scooter, and we filed the request again. Hopefully this time things will work out. I’ll then be able to close that account, and move my banking needs to the farmer’s bank.

🎉 Kali on the laptop, and iOS 17 Beta on the phone. Now is the time to use "Livin' La Vida Loca"!

👀 Odd photos, for an odd day.

🐆 Run! Last minute request, photo assignment, have 20 mins to be there.

🇹🇭 I used to shoot a lot darker than I do today. A LOT. Kinda miss it.

😬 Weekend job has been cancelled. Shame I’m not driving up, and working, with my best friend. Shame the money is not coming in. On the other hand: movieStars!!!

⌚ Next up: the watch. I guess I'm skipping lunch for this one...

💴 Yay! Bank app works!

🐌 Install is taking a loooooooong time.

🎢 Ok, hit me, Beta!

🤪 I know I should not. Really should not. So why am I still looking at the beta?

🥰 This 3 year old cracks me up. Love her SO much.

☺️ Tattoo Love While I was out, tinyMovieStar played with temporary tattoos again. She said she knows I love tattoos so much, she saved one for me. I now have a unicorn on my arm.

⚡️ Browser Power

If my escapades into Linux land are to last more than 10 minutes, I must be able to do, at least, some of the things that I can do on macOS. Photo editing is out, of course, as there’s no way to run Lightroom over on Linux. Darktable exists, yes, but I’m not even having this conversation. For other things, I can get almost everything accomplished, one way or another. The browser is my big friend here. Web apps are something I hate on iOS, and even macOS, but they make life a little easier. For these Linux days, i actually prefer to have a decent web app. One I can open in a browser, regardless of location, system agnostic, and just keep on working. Log in, and do whatever needs to be done. Mine is a niche case (the guy with too much free time on his hands from time to time demographic), but there are a lot of people who are forced to use multiple OS, for work, or leisure. Maybe you are a Mac person at heart, but your boss does not understand the need for such a lovely OS at work; or maybe you’re a Linux die hard, and the fancy design studio where you spend your days insists on using macOS only. I could go on… So, here we go. Launch Brave, with Proton Pass extension (1Password/Bitwarden would work, but don’t want to go through the hassle), and I’m ready to rock. Micro.blog. The whole omg.lol suite. Same on iOS/macOS. Waiting for Otávio’s app to change that. Social.lol. It’s painful, but it works. Mastodon’s web view kinda sucks. No Ivory, no Mona, not as fun. I know Elk is a thing, but I can’t get used to it. Bluesky works just fine on the browser, but I don’t even have to check it that often, so… Instagram does most of the things on the web view as well. Fastmail. Use their web view everywhere. Their “app” is on my dock on iOS, and I have no email client on macOS. Gave up on all of them by now. Feedbin. If I’m on the laptop, I’ll skip Reeder, and just use this as well. On iOS it’s Reeder and Fiery Feeds. Omnivore, complete with extension. I use the same exact one on macOS, and the app on iOS. Telegram (and even WhatsApp) are also available on the web, and that settles my chatting needs. Those are the two I use all day anyway. I could easily install Signal on Linux, but there’s really no point, weeks go by without using it. So far I can get to most of my social needs (Threads is app-only), I can get my mail, I can read my feeds and save stuff for later. I’m also able to keep talking to my family & friends. There is no Tot here, but I remembered my Standard Notes account. Free tier, enough to jot down anything I need, and have it show up on iOS/macOS. Does the job. Web version works fine, no need for apps. What about files? How do I transfer those? I’ll either drop them on Telegram, and send them to myself, or use Proton Drive. Both do the job. What am i missing? Threads, Drafts(!), Things. Threads is new, but can already tell a web view will soon be indispensable. Drafts web would make me sooooo happy! Capture is good, but… Things is also left behind. I must pick up the phone for that. But, if I had things to do, I wouldn’t be fooling around with Linux, would I? Anything else?

🤞🏼 Hope today is a calm, and relaxing, day. I could use one of those. Tomorrow, or the day after, I’m on the move again. Still waiting for confirmation.

🚌 Final Stop Almost back with the movieStars. Miss them a LOT!

🎧 Tip for bus rides in this country: get noise canceling headphones before attempting a cross country trip. People are, no other way to put it, imbeciles. Music, ringtones, loud talk, phone calls, video games, music from the actual bus sound system,… You will go crazy without some protection.

🚌 Here We Go!

💖 Last photos before leaving. Will be back in a couple of weeks, this time with the movieStars.

🚶🏻‍♂️ Chaves Morning walk photo dump.

🇲🇽 When Chaves takes you back to Mexico…

😎 Looking forward to a walk around town, before getting on that bus again and riding it all the way to town. Six. More. Hours.

🏨 You Are Here

🗑️ Made it! (And I really hope they were holding something to draw the face)

🚌 My mood is not improving.

🚌 Still an hour to go. Bus stops are getting more depressing with time.

🚌 Made it to Porto. Two and a half hours to go.

🚌 First Stop Care to guess where?

🚌 Five. More. Hours.

🛒 First Ones Sorry to say Facebook was the first one.

😭 My battery’s health is at 87%

🚌 stationLife As usual, I’m very early for my bus. I’m always too darn early.

🚌 Going… Live microblogging/threading/tooting/skeeting the trip up north. Should make for a very boring day.

☕ Coffee, on the run. Here I go. Next stop: Chaves!

👀 Today’s Photo Dump

🎒 Packing for tomorrow's trip.

🍺 Beer before kindergarten pick up.

Drafts Capture is very handy when you’re away from macOS. Using it to send stuff back to me right now, from my own laptop, who’s running Linux at the moment. Drafts is probably the app I miss the most when playing around with Linux.

The Out-Laws, 2023 - ★★½

Watched on Monday July 10, 2023.

🪞 Close to today’s bank branch, pink all around…

🏦 Another trip to the bank. Yes, the saga is ongoing...

🤓 Quicker than expected. Working! GUI and CLI.

🐉 Back on Kali. NextDNS is set, next I’ll try to figure out IVPN.

📚 End of Day. Yesterday.

💖 Weekend about to finish. It was a long one.

🇹🇭 Thai Memories While looking for a photo to pano, and share on Threads, I came upon this one. From an earlier trip to Thailand, a lifetime away. When I carried cameras with me.

🚌 Already thinking about Tuesday’s bus ride. It will be a loooooooong one.

🍓 The most delicious pie. Yesterday.

☕ Time for coffee number 2.

😻 It’s been a while since I’ve done a #caturday with Gaspar. Fixed now.

🎈 Yes, I got wet a couple of seconds after shooting this.

🍿 Watching Sleeping Beauty with father-in-law. tinyMovieStar was too, but gave up long ago.

🧢 New trucker cap. Failed miserably at showing how neon pink it is.

🚨 Someday the staff at the supermarket downstairs will learn how to turn off the alarm without it going off at 7AM. Today was not that day.

🤩 Not exactly a place where you should go in, but who’s telling tinyMovieStar that? We had a blast.

🐉 Kali

I wanted persistence on a Live USB Linux install. That was it, my plan for this morning. I was a little bored, and wanted to stay away from the whole Threads / Bluesky / Mastodon /… thing. A fun little project to keep me busy until lunch time. From time to time I like to pretend I’m a Linux user, and boot my Air into it. In the old days I had a full install on a spare SSD drive, and would spend days without coming back to the macOS side. I enjoyed my Manjaro, and spent many hours tweaking it. These days I just have a distro on a USB stick, and use it when I’m super bored. Then it’s back to macOS. I can’t really live without the apps that aren’t available on Linux, the ones that make my life easy. I’ve been using Tails, but that got old. I understand what it is good for, but I don’t really need Tor on all the time, and the fact that it’s so locked down makes installing new apps a pain. Persistence worked, but… I needed something else. A quick search for a distro that runs good enough from a USB drive, and still allows persistence, surfaced Kali. Another very specific distro, but one that I can tweak to my liking, and just forget the whole hacking thing. Persistence was easy enough to accomplish, as well as installing Brave. That allowed me to get Proton Pass working. I keep a very small set of passwords there, just enough to make my life a little easier in this very particular situation. Don’t need the entire 1Password vault, just a few passwords for sites I must have available. Brave is great, and has a neat feature where you can enable Tor on a new window. That’s enough for me. I don’t need every byte going through Tor. Proton Pass comes with a rather small Proton Drive allowance, but one that makes it a breeze to send screenshots and stuff back to the macOS side of life. And that was it. I can now reboot, launch Kali from the USB thingy, and spend a comfortable couple of hours pretending I know what I’m doing. Persistence on this one works in a different way, when compared to Tails. I prefer this one. With Kali, I just turn off the system, and it will boot in the exact same state. Apps will open, settings will be reinstated. Perfect. As I said, I don’t need Linux, there’s is really no point in doing this, except the fun I have figuring out how to solve the issues along the way, and trying a different way of doing some things. That’s enough to keep me going back.

🥰 Sticker Day! The envelope made it all the way here! Thank you SO much, @jean! The extras sheet lasted two minutes. A very happy two minutes.

💻 Kali actually runs pretty decently from the USB drive.

📱 Feed the Machine

🤖 Hello, Kali.

🤖 Hello, Zorin.