Notes from May 2024

2024-05-08

An idea for an exercise. To leave at least one note here every day. Nothing fancy, boring stuff is acceptable. And let's see where it goes.

Two thousand years from now, they might publish it as "Meditations." You miss all the shots you don't take.

2024-05-09

I got pretty good with a gamepad over the years. Yesterday, I was circle-strafing Cyberdemon in a tight space and managed not to die immediately. I abandoned the fight eventually, to return later with stronger weapons, but still, earlier in my gaming career that would be an insta death.

A quote from Dune

"Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery."

2024-05-10

I was asked yesterday to remove a dead pigeon from our community pool. I had to use a rubber glove, which I disposed of afterwards. The pigeon had fully white eyes by the time I got to do the job. It was more physical in contact than I imagined beforehand, and it didn't feel like some sort of blob but a mechanism with a defined set of possible movements.

2024-05-11

I bought my first floodlight lamp yesterday. We're painting the ceiling, and the light is good only for a moment during the day. This way, we're leveling the field.

More quotes from Dune

"Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'"

"Thinking you know a thing is a sure way to blind yourself. Cultivate a sense of both, sophistication and naïveté about all things."

2024-05-12

Having two dogs of completely different sizes (in my case, one is three times the other one) removes power struggle from them. It's not that the smaller one yields to the authority of the big one. They just operate on different levels and there seems to be no overlap. It might be, though, that those are their characters. But it works for me.

2024-05-13

We're trying different coffees for our cold brew routine, and we just finished a different brand than usual, which turned out to be a bit less stellar than our average. Now we're back to our personal champion, L'Or. Pure pleasure. I just had a cup for its taste alone.

2024-05-14

My new team is more experienced than me and that is very refreshing. I had my latest work rewritten a couple of times in the last couple of days. That is something that I missed in the previous workplace. I once read that if you're the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room. I am definitely not in the wrong room. Maybe I'm even in the right one.

2024-05-15

During the lockdowns, I was afraid I'd get fat, and I paid so much attention to my weight that I actually lost 10 kg. Then I occasionally bought a scale, which further boosted the process and led to losing another 7 kg. All in around 15 months. But then my scale fell and broke and I was planning to replace it ever since, but there were always other expenses and so it never materialised. However, I realised recently that I don't need it anymore, and it felt liberating.

2024-05-16

My newest interest is Cybermen from Doctor Who. I never saw the show and I am not planning to, but I like to explore some ideas and concepts they came up with. Planet Mondas, which is Earth upside down, and their transformed into half-machine, half-human entities devoid of feelings. Yeah, definitely interesting. And they have different origins every time. It seems, however, they were sort of nerfed over the years. I find those in baclavas the most creepy and terrifying.

These are the most terrifying: The Cybermen Break Out of the Tomb | The Tomb of the Cybermen | Doctor Who [YouTube]

These are unsettling too, but the TV-theatre-like vibe kills the immersion for me (it's not without a charm, though): "Love, Pride, Hate, Fear. Have You No Emotions, Sir?" | The Tenth Planet | Doctor Who [YouTube]

2024-05-17

I read once a post on a blog. A lost post on a forgotten blog, time before time. The author described how, in the ultimate punk act, they were destroying a collection of CDs because punk is about action, not meticulously collecting music albums. All the CDs would fly out the balcony. There was one moment of reflection when they got to Joy Division, but it was briefly commented as, "I didn't even know how we got this shit." Every time I listen to Joy Division (from a CD), I recall this story.

2024-05-19

We drove to the city for a white night. In the end, we saw only Teatro Romano and started looking for a food joint, but everything was busy and booked and with long waiting queues, so we ended up getting bubble tea and heading home. Might not sound like it, but it was a rather pleasant evening.

2024-05-19

I played Roblox with my daughter. She chose Dress To Impress where you have a topic and you have to select your clothes accordingly, then there's a show where everyone votes. I was always very low and it was fascinating, to not understand the rules of fashion. Using a turquoise colour for the skin didn't help either. I gotta try again, tho. It must be a puzzle like everything else.

A quote from Kop Kopmeyer

"Learn from the experts. You will never live long enough to learn it all directly from experience." (Kop Kopmeyer)

2024-05-19

I once read a story in a magazine. Two women were approached by a young man in a restaurant, who told one of them that she should be ashamed of herself for being so stunning. Then he left, leaving her feeling good. The moral of the story: compliments should be given without any agenda. I liked that and I started complimenting people over the years and never when I wanted something.

2024-05-22

I was walking my dogs one day. We were on a dirt road cutting a patch of crops in two, when I realised that a car was following us. While it's not unusual to see cars there, they never get to that part. And then I saw two bodegueros in front of the car, which was strolling, really, if anything. Not knowing what was going on, I got out of its way into crops. A couple of days later, I saw the same car and I noticed that the driver was missing a leg. He walks his dogs like that.

2024-05-23

The drop of search engines' quality modified my usual behaviour. Out of laziness, I was adding "wiki" or "mdn" or "doomwiki" to my queries, but I realised recently that I can go *directly* to the page if I know what I want. And usually, I know.

Enshittification brings self-discipline.

2024-05-27

A person I used to know is sliding into dementia, I learned yesterday. We have lived in the same apartment at some point, and the last time I saw her was when I was driving a car during a visit to my hometown, and she was standing at the bus stop. For a second, I considered stopping and driving her most likely to her work, but I didn't make the decision in time. There is something saddening in the fact that not all relations can be maintained. And then one learns about circumstances like these.

2024-05-29

It turns out to be challenging to write something every day without getting repetitive. And that is a valid finding from the exercise so far. The danger of posting "whenever relevant" is that discipline disperses and notes become rarer and rarer. I might consider writing down comments to articles I'm reading. Not the political stuff, though. I'm not a pundit.

2024-05-30

I read yesterday that students' reading skills dropped. Anything longer than 10 pages is tedious. But not only students. People in general switched to shorter forms of Tik Tok stories, etc., and can't comprehend longer readings. I'm not that better myself, although, I can dig in a book if I find it interesting. But this can't be good for mankind, long-term.

I just learned that Laura Branigan died in 2004. I always assumed, unconsciously, that she gave up after the 1980s or faded into obscurity, but no, she passed away in her sleep due to a previously undiagnosed thing. It saddened me a bit for a moment. As a child I liked the oh-oh-o part with stomping from "Self Control," and I would always synchronise my GI Joe and other toys to that part. She would have been 72 this year. I'll go for a medical checkup.

2024-05-31

It was Hemingway who said to "make every word count," and from the moment I read it the first time, I liked that brevity and minimalism expressed in the advice itself. Whenever I compose a message, I keep this rule in mind.

They found the original Backrooms. That must mean something.

The plan is that I can open my profile here and read my notes in a long stream of unconnected thoughts. This is how we used to blog twenty years ago.