Notes from February 2026
2026-02-02
"The Hidden" (1987) is a glorious, shameless sci-fi action horror. Kyle MacLachlan plays here an aloof FBI agent, pre-Twin-Peaks, and it's a perfect casting. He brings all his Kyleness to the role, which initially helps to fool us, the viewers. Something that would be a twist and major reveal in other movies happens almost immediately, thus making us guessing when the detective on the case will catch up with that. Fantastic 80s rock completes the picture.
There is a sequel, but it's a direct-to-video follow-up done by a completely different crew, so I'll skip it.
"Alice in Wonderland" (2010) is Tim Burton's take on the classical classic, and he does it with some changes: Alice has a different last name (although, I don't remember if she had one in the book) and is older, and in the movie she returns to Underland (that she calls Wonderland), but she doesn't remember that; a bit like "Hook." Characters are expanded and there is more linear plot and standard good-versus-bad story, which I'm not sure I like. But visually it holds.
"The House with Laughing Windows", 1976, is a giallo horror, but it's not very scary by today's standards. Probably the most scary part is when the main character is kicked out of his hotel and has to move to an old mansion, which checks all the boxes in the haunted-or-at-least-creepy-house form, which he does as if it was nothing; then he wanders to the attic. Apart from that, it's a slow-paced mystery about a weird village with a dark secret. Not bad, but only for connoisseurs of the genre.
Nothing is sacred anymore, not even Notepad++. *shakes head in disbelief*
‼️🚨 BREAKING: Notepad++ Hijacked by Chinese State-Sponsored Hackers
Traffic from targeted users were selectively redirected to malicious update servers.
Source: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-update/
In a heavy metal concert, no one can hear you scream.
I neither take notes nor highlight anything in a book; a book is a sacred thing for me, not to be defiled with such behaviour.
I'm not interested in yearly rankings; although, I'm still considering top 10 movies, because why not; but one thing that 2025 put on the map of my interests is whaling. Now, I'm not gonna drop everything and become a whaler (I would have to move to Iceland, and I don't like cold), but I am interested in reading more on the subject. For instance, I had no idea they were hunted for their oil, not meat; silly me. It's all thanks to "Moby Dick," which describes everything with autistic precision.
I guess the biggest downside of running your own Mastodon instance, content wise speaking, is that you're short on hashtags.
2026-02-03
My colleague wrote "MF," to not write motherfucker, and I expanded it into "Merry Fellow," and now, we're using it (or Merry Friend) in our everyday conversations.
I used to do props-drilling in React a lot, but now I'm wiser. Fetch data as close to your component. It's fine, really.
My (ergodic) website is smol web at the moment, but in due time, it will be long web. Just let me write some more.
This is where we got to.
[an image, by its alt text]:
A screenshot of Mastodon profile page, with the following text visible:
Firefox for Web Developers
@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.socialPersonal note:
Follow 2026.02.03, to watch bastards, how they butcher my Sonny.
2026-02-04
Fantastic album. A faux soundtrack, something that is popular on Bandcamp; but I still checked if there was no movie.
At times, it sounds like a lost follow-up of The Queen, whose sound was never picked up by any musician, thus making the band one of its kind.
https://theprotomen.bandcamp.com/album/the-cover-up-original-motion-picture-soundtrack
https://soundmachinestore.bigcartel.com/product/the-cover-up-cd
2026-02-05
Yesterday, I had a brief discussion about Moltbook with someone, and I abandoned it rather quickly, after I realised that my interlocutor is attributing more agency and awareness to LLMs than they have. And I'm afraid that's a problem when discussing the AI topic with non-technical people: the first challenge is to make them see the core of it; whereas for now, they seem to follow the duck typing principle ("if it responds like a self-aware entity, then it is a self-aware entity").
I have picked up semicolons from "Moby Dick," and I realised that I started using them in my Slack messages at work, and that led to me realising that I'm pressing send less, and my messages became more contained; whereas earlier, I would send 3 or 4 messages, only to realise that the flow of my overall message is a bit off. Now I can see the fuller picture before sending, and that's good.
Oh, shut up! :D
2026-02-06
I was looking for an album that I could swear had "rooms" in the title, and I came up short; but I noticed some interesting album covers in the search results, and I started listening to them. All those albums are different in style, but I found some of them interesting, so I'm munching through them, very much like I did with "soundscape" ones a couple of weeks ago. I think I'll be choosing mundane words and search for them and listen to whatever comes up. I like discovering new music.
2026-02-07
JavaScriptBuzz
@JavaScriptBuzz@mastodon.social
voidOperator Returns WHAT?!🤯 MIND BLOWN! The void operator ALWAYS returns undefined, no matter what!
void(1+2+3) = undefined! This ancient JavaScript feature is still used in modern code. 95% of devs don't know this exists!
WebStorm's hint taught me to put void in front of Promises that I fire and forget.
In Polish, we don't translate the "FAQ" acronym, but we read it as if it was a word. Fuck.
Today, lofi hip-hop.
A side note: I have no idea why it was called hip-hop at all. Perhaps, it's because it sounds like a beat to rap to? Beats me, for sure.
But it works as a non-intrusive background music.
2026-02-09
Season 2 of "Fallout" continues story where season 1 ended. I'm not gonna get into the plot, instead I'm gonna say this: the creators are very good at creating stories with multiple plots and arcs happening in parallel, then meeting at the end. This heavily reminds me of William Gibson's books. There is enough pacing to easily have 5-6 seasons, effortlessly; in no small thanks to a large world and its lore. Also, I had a lot of fun watching it.
"Alice Through the Looking Glass" (2016) is a follow-up to "Alice in Wonderland," but it deviates even further from the source material; not that it's bad: with Tim Burton gone, the story takes more standard approach, and in the end, I liked it better, even if it's a sort of a low ball in the creativity department. Sacha Baron Cohen is excellent as Time, complete with his Werner Herzog accent. Luckily, there were no more books, so we can call it a day.
Superliminal
"Superliminal" is a game that can easily be considered a worthy successor to games like "The Stanley Parable," "Antichamber," or "Manifold Garden;" including featureless player character. The action is set in a dream, which goes into another dream, and into another, etc., thus, resembling "Inception." The main characteristic of the puzzles is playing with perspective and scale, but it also has heavy liminal-space vibes. It's short and sweet, and it's probably my favourite type of games.
Strangely enough, it's so short that there will be no weeks-long thread, nor detailed notes. I finished it in 3 gameplays, which could easily be simply 2.
Spoiler: In the end, the doctor, who was leaving us clues as to what is happening and what to do next, tells us that everything was part of planned experience, and the purpose was to show us that, by going outside of the box, we can overcome any obstacle. On paper, that's cheesy in a modern "spiritual" way, and should not work, but it worked for me. I felt better about myself after finishing the game. So, I guess they nailed it.
I might replay it in the future, to find all the Easter eggs and generally, explore more. Now I was more preoccupied with the main plot.
It also makes me thing that I made a huge omission in my gaming live by not playing any "Portal" game. Maybe this year I will fix it.
Tomb Raider
I started playing "Tomb Raider" remaster. I'm not sure it'll be something I play a lot soon, but I wanted to see it. Visually, it improved a lot, which we can check any time by switching between the original look and the remastered one, a feature that is often present in remasters. The old view is much brighter, so I'm sort of cheating with it by checking if I didn't miss any place to go to. It also allows using modern controls (the 90s called and asked for their tank controls).
The fights are tough. I still haven't figured out if the modern controls don't allow to make a back jump, or is it just me, but in any case, it makes shooting difficult because apparently, Lara cannot shoot an animal which is in her face; she needs her distance, and I understand that, but still, it's tough because I cannot make a quick escape. Might be a skill issue, though.
Another interesting thing of my first play was that, as I was switching between views, my daughter was asking about stuff that was obvious for me, but not for her. For instance, she noticed that the cut scenes are not how the game looks like; cut scenes on the game engine didn't arrive until, like, perhaps even "Quake 2" years. Another thing was, why the game geometry was so crude, with simple polygons. We came a long way since 1996.
One thing I noticed and need to remark upon, is that remastered Lara Croft has her braid in the first game, while in reality, the devs were not able to achieve that until "Tomb Raider 2," and it was kind of a big deal back then; at the same level as her larger breasts.
A case against animations
A while ago, I started disabling animations in my devices: smartphones and computers alike. It generally speeds the devices up, due to two reasons: one is that animations take time, and all that unfolding of menus and sliding in of elements accumulate during the day; two is that animations, oftentimes being fancy, deplete the battery.
When I did this in GNOME, the system informed me that I might be missing out on the general feeling of the OS. I found it silly. And I experienced no missing out.
An observation about deactivating animations on the phone, though, is that circular progress bar and loading indicators don't animate, but have no indication of loading, other than simply showing up on the screen. Looks like an oversight, but it's on the app developers.
I also remember that Duolingo deactivated all the cut-scenes animation, too. It's legit, but at this moment, I wished to have this setting per app, not per OS only.
Turning animations off is located in accessibility section of the settings, which is a stark reminder that everyone benefits from looking into the needs of disabled people. I doubt it would be implemented so eagerly if it wasn't legally mandated.
2026-02-10
"Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" is a 1986's cult classic, which I was planning to see for years but kept forgetting. Now I remembered. It's very bleak, both thematically and visually, but it aged like fine wine. Due to budgetary constraints, most of the murders are shown as a detailed aftermath, with voice over of the murder. At the same time, scenes between Henry and Otis look like taken out of a sitcom. It could easily be an entry in the "Monster" anthology.
The drone music, combined with slow pacing, reminded me heavily of "Too Old To Die Young," which I am currently rewatching. This further shows that the movie was ahead of its time. And due to problems with rating and finding distribution, it was not until 1990 that many people could see it.
The director made a documentary before "Henry," and was gonna make another one, but the project collapsed. However, they had money in place, so they did this horror instead. Hence, I think, still docu vibes.
I played "Doom 64" when it was finally re-released for modern platforms, and the game was solid and decent, but still, there was something underwhelming there. Like, I wanted to like it more, but it just wouldn't let me. Later, I tried additional levels, and it wouldn't do much either. I guess it's the old Doom for me, or nothing.
I like using my computer with keyboard alone, navigating through desktop and windows only with shortcuts. Mac was very bad at it, expecting its users to be mouse dependant; it's much better in Windows and GNOME, and GNOME is even better because it allows setting your own shortcuts.
I just pressed ? on the keyboard, while being on Mastodon web client, and a menu showed up. There are decent options to navigate the website with keyboard alone. I like that.
The only thing that I can't seem to locate is when I start replying to a post, I cannot remove that and move to simply writing a post. Other than that, there is all I need.
Speaking of operating a computer without a mouse, a new keyboard just came in; it's the mechanical one that I mentioned something like 10 days ago. The budget one, which I was using in the meantime, was not registering some key presses, so I would sometimes over-press those buttons ("T" was especially stubborn), which would make things even worse. This was, obviously, slowing me down. Now I should be at my full speed. I hope it'll improve my coding speed as well.
2026-02-12
"If you expect disappointment, then you can never really be disappointed."
2026-02-14
Too Old To Die Young
"Too Old To Die Young" is Nicholas Winding Refn's mini series from 2019. It has 10 episodes, first 9 of which run by 70 to 90 minutes, with the last one taking merely 30 minutes (something to consider when planning the watch, as the last one acts more as an epilogue). Refn himself said that he considered it to be rather a long movie than something of episodic nature. I saw it when it was released 7 years ago, so this was my rewatch.
In many places, Martin Jones (played by Miles Teller) is presented as the main character, but while it's true that he's the most prominent to begin with, as the story progresses, others come into play, and it becomes closer to ensemble cast. From the point of view of the big picture, his presence is more incidental; which is not a bad thing. Similarly to "Fallout," it felt a bit like William Gibson's story, with multiple actors in slowly converging arcs.
As this was a rewatch, I was curious if the thing would hold; after all, I am a different person than I was 7 years ago; according to sages from the Far East, it takes these many years to change all the cells in the body and become a different person. In short, and to my surprise, the show was better than it had been back then. Audiovisually stunning and with plot far from typical action flick, despite revolving around cops, gangsters, the cartel, and self-anointed paedophile hunters.
The soundtrack might be the finest work that Cliff Martinez did for Nicholas Winding Refn. Unlike "Drive" and "Neon Demon," it's not purely synthetic; for example, theme that accompanies Martin has these nervous strings. And while the soundtrack for "Only God Forgives" was less electronic, "Too Old To Die Young" takes it to its next, fuller step. I am considering CD, which would be my first CD from Amazon itself, as this is Prime Video's production; but still, Refn did what and how he wanted it.
Visually, it's full of slow takes and almost static imagery: many times, the camera just pans lazily over characters who are motionless. This reminded me of "The Mill and the Cross" and "The Color of Pomegranates," which both aimed at reproducing an impression of paintings on screen. I don't know if this was the intention, but it definitely fits with those two movies. There is a lot of things happening between scenes, so the story is slow but also fast, at the same time.
Refn's trademark, neon light that soaks whole rooms with it, is here, as well. As I learned from the making of "Copenhagen Cowboy," the director is colour blind, and he's sharing with viewers how he sees the world: as shades of the same colour.
The slow pacing applies also to the dialogues, which take long, and each sentence is slowly delivered by the characters. I don't think it would work in the real world (which I might try in coming weeks), but it definitely contributes to the sense of hyper reality.
So, to summarise, I think "Too Old To Die Young" might be my favourite thing that came from Nicholas Winding Refn, so far. Just like "Twin Peaks," especially season 3, allowed David Lynch to show him in its full extent, this show allowed Refn do the same.
As a bit of a side note, and this is something that I mentioned a couple of times on other occasions, this show is the closest to what I had in my head, when I was reading all the Dexter books and imagining the adaptation done differently to what we got, with a silent, non-narrating Dexter, and showing everything instead of telling it constantly. I was so astonished that someone did it, and so faithfully to what I was hoping for.
"Knox Goes Away" is 2023's Michael Keaton's, both directed and starred, movie about a contract killer who discovers is being devoured by dementia and has literally a couple of weeks left. The movie feels like a long-overdue spiritual successor to "Memento," with Knox writing things down, and slowly losing it. There is a whole noir layer in the movie, but it felt more like a pretext to show dealing with own's impeding death. And it's funny at the same time.
Because the RGB lighting in my new keyboard doesn't reveal what's on keys, I switched to the heat-map mode, and now it highlights when and where I type. It's not very useful to anything, but it looks so cool. I also noticed that the layout, etc., is so good that I don't need to look at keyboard while I write, so this backlight wasn't really necessary, I guess.
The other day, I saw a discussion about "The Elements of Style," which suggests quote marks to swallow the neighbouring commas and periods; and at least some people said that this is a dumb rule, and predominantly counter intuitive, with which I have to agree; but on the other hand, I read enough books in this style to grow a sort of affection towards it. Writing like that feels more booky, more like literature. So, I am going to continue doing it.
2026-02-15
"State of Grace" (1990) is a gangster movie telling a story of an Irish gang in New York's Hell's Kitchen; it's loosely based on an actual gang of the Westies. A lot of now very well-known actors (maybe even then): Sean Penn, Ed Harris, Gary Oldman, Robin Wright, or John Turturro. It's not bad, but as of 2026, it's sort of mediocre. I have to agree with Roger Ebert on this one: it starts quite originally, but we end up with same old, same old. It's still a solid piece of cinema, though.
2026-02-16
Halt And Catch Fire
"Halt And Catch Fire" is probably a series I watch the longest time, due to breaks in between; I must have started somewhere in 2021, if not 2020. It was advertised to me as "Mad Man of IT," so I was expecting wild 1960s, but, to my surprise, the action was set in 1980s. Yesterday, I finally saw the last season, which is set in mid-1990 (I don't know if it's mentioned explicitly, but they mention death of Kurt Cobain at some point). And it was a treat, and also, it hit differently than the other seasons.
This season was about building the early Internet, when there was no search engines; Joe and Gordon's company actually built handcrafted and curated catalogue of the web. Crazy from today's perspective. But that's not why it hit differently. I realised that the show created a very likeable characters. The last season doesn't have any villain or even a slightly nasty character.
And so, when one of those likeable characters died, I felt it. They took four seasons to build someone who felt real, and then they took him away; very similar to what "Ozark" did at the end. And so, while the technical side was cool and spot on and showing the energy of those endeavours, that's not where the show's strength was. Not, it was the people.
In other words, I recommend it. And of course, if you know the history, it brings a lot of things in a well-researched way. But that's extra.
When I was at school, I had trouble with spelling of "environment," and after some deliberations, I found out that there are hidden "iron men" inside, and somehow, it was easier to remember when I knew I had to add "env" at the beginning and "t" at the end.
Env Iron Men T.
Human brain, right? *blows a raspberry*
2026-02-18
Tom Noonan passed away.
We're going to give our hamster a funeral today. After 2 years and a half, he/she (we never found out) fell asleep forever, looking quite peacefully. Now, hamsters can go into hibernation, so we waited a couple of weeks to be sure. But now it's dry and certainly gone, so we're gonna proceed with last rites. I'd like to believe we gave it a good life, hence 6 months of life more, compared to the hamster's average.
2026-02-19
I need to follow more artists here, to fill my timeline with beauty. I believe it's good for my soul.
It would seem to me that with consolidating powers of the world, which includes Big Tech, we need to seriously start taking care of alternative communication channels. Either that or we're cooked.
The demand for RAM and other components, with which the AI companies are taking all the air from the room, might lead to smarter designs around software and the machines we have in our possession. In case it sounds as if I was somehow praising this, I don't; but it could lead to something interesting. Historically, limited resources triggered creativity. It's not like we have much to say about it.
2026-02-20
A dripping water woke me up. The sink in the master bedroom's bathroom is leaking, and we're gathering that water into a basin. I tried to ignore the sound, but to no avail; so, then I started wondering why would that be so irritating at all. And, of course, I don't know, but maybe I'll read up on it, or something. I'm hungry for knowledge.
2026-02-22
After over 7 months of reading on and off, I have finished "Moby Dick." I'll try to steer clear off such long books for a while, given my irregular reading. More on the book itself later.
I am planning to read "The Handmaid's Tale" some time soon, in English and Polish at the same time, side by side, to see how translating has been tackled. I am not interested in judging it, or something; I wanna see linguistic patterns and regularities.
What I learned about leaving comments in code, is that the main person that will benefit from them is you, in six months and later, when you no longer remember what you wanted to achieve with this cryptic piece of code. So, go on and do yourself a favour.
2026-02-25
I worked 19 days straight, to catch up with a project, and I ended up with an overloaded brain, where merely thinking about anything would physically hurt. But now I'm recovering from it, avoiding all the work-related thoughts.
I remember when it happened to me for the first time. It must have been 9 years ago; I was sitting at work, alone, because everyone else was either off or remote that week, and I started refactoring a piece of code, but it turned out to be like a thread that I couldn't stop pulling. In the end, I did it, but I ended up coding for 16 hours in one go. I could afford it because it was Friday, and I knew that the weekend was coming up. So, I did this to myself, unasked by anyone.
And now, let's get back to notes on "Hexen."
An interesting bit I picked up in "State of Grace," and that's what I like about those old movies, was one dialogue where Gary Oldman's character says that it used to be that if you dropped ice cream on the street, you could pick it up and eat; but with all the yuppies moving in and walking their dogs, there were dog poops everywhere. I don't remember this being brought up anywhere else.
I saw "Hot Shots!" when I was young, and I don't really remember if it was very funny. I do remember quoting stuff with my classmates, but I can't recall the extent to which it was amusing me. Now, years later, it rather has funny moments at best. Overall, it's so and so. The funniest I found was the manner in which Charlie Sheen and Valeria Golino talk, as if they were parodying something but it was forgotten what.
The character of the general, played by Lloyd Bridges, reminds me of the nowadays Donald Trump, who wanders off the topic and has aloof monologues about, well, hard to say about what.
It was also interesting to see Kevin Dunn from "Veep" in a younger role. He was also in "Snake Eyes," which is an example of retro recognition, when you see an actor and then they're in all the other movies, all of a sudden.
This might change, but after I'm done with all the "Hexen" stuff, I think my next choice will be "REKKR." For a simple reason that I have it in the official add-ons on my Nintendo Switch.
Moby Dick
Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" is one of the most famous books ever, probably, and while it was mentioned in many places, I never took interest in it. This all changed when I started following @mobydick, and from the quotes, I could clearly see the explicitly superb language; and that's with not even complete sentences sometimes. Then, I noticed that I can buy the whole thing for 7 euros; and so I did.
And this thread section will be about what followed.
First of all, I was maybe not concerned but curious if the language itself will not be an obstacle for my reading. Mid-1800s English is a bit different from the one we have now, but in the end, it went much better than expected. I had to google "ere," and I'm still confused as to what it means and how it should be used, but other than that, it was just a little bit more peculiar English. Punctuation was more robust then, is what I noticed.
Plot wise, I am impressed that the whole thing holds so well. The old mental models and world views might worsen experiencing the story. But not here. In fact, Ishmael, the narrator, feels like someone with whom I could go along just fine. Now it makes me wonder, if he was any different from people back then, or did we evolve in the direction he was already exhibiting?
Ishmael is probably my favourite kind of narrator -- a deuteragonist; so, someone playing the second fiddle to the main focus of the story, which would be Captain Ahab in this case. He seems very easygoing and has an autistic focus on the subject of whaling, to the point that around half of the book are various descriptions of whale parts and other aspects of whaling. I found it very instructive, but at times, it felt like too much.
"Moby Dick" uses a technique, which I know under the name of legacy character (and I'm not interested in researching the proper name now), which happens when before you show the character, you build them up through other characters talking about it; maybe by some other sources, too. And that is the case with Captain Ahab, who's mentioned a lot before making his first appearance. And then, that's also a case of titular Moby Dick, who's introduced with all the Ishmael research on whales.
Due to those scientific passages about whales and whaling, the pacing was kind of on and off for me. After the first 200 pages, which I swallowed within a month, I got stuck with plotless descriptions of whales. Not necessarily a bad thing; maybe it's the part where the book got old, after all. I did, however, learn a lot about the trade: why would they hunt whales and how would they do that, in a very minute details. Now I'm interested in knowing more.
A minor thing that I mentioned here before, but let me re-iterate again, was showing me a bit different punctuation, which is, I suppose, a bit archaic, but it feels more natural to me, so I absorbed it; it also showed me how to use semicolons. So, for that alone, it would was worth diving into those 600 pages (it took me, like, probably 400 pages for it to sink in).
So, to summarise, I can recommend it, for a number of reasons. Now I'm curious about Edgar Allan Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket," which I bought in the meantime, and which, as the title suggests, is also set on a whaling ship.
The Great
I've been eyeing "The Great" ever since I saw the trailer of the first season, but for some reason, none of my streamings would offer it. Sure, I could have rent it off Prime Video or torrent it, but somehow, I didn't. But now Netflix added it, so I jumped at it almost immediately. Despite broadly being based on the actual history, it's not even realistic; though, it doesn't aim at it. It's a story of people, of power, and of navigating a court. If you forego historical pretences, it can be fun.
The story is based on Catherine the Great, Russian empress, but it merely borrows some names and events. Young Catherine gets married to Peter, the Russian emperor, because she's aristocracy but poor, hence uninfluential and not posing a risk. Or is she? Well, she's ambitious from the first moment, and doesn't get discouraged easily; at least, after she abandons the idea of killing herself in the first episode.
Nice characters, with nicely cast actors, to name a few: Ellie Fanning as Catherine who goes from naive to more seasoned court plotter; Nicholas Hoult as the emperor, a rather dumb and full of himself, but also isolated from the reality, due to his position and being surrounded by sycophants; and let me name only one more actor, Douglas Hodge (of "Penny Dreadful") who plays a drunk Russian general Velementov, but how!
Watching how everyone pleases Emperor Peter, which makes him unaware of many things and actively makes him less of a leader, made me realise that this must be a thing for many rich people, and especially millionaires and higher. This has been discussed many times, actually: they either push away people criticising them, or otherwise lose them to yes-men; at which point, they're done and divorced from reality.
Another thing that I realised while watching "The Great" was that this over-the-board, absurdist characterisation can help to tell the truth, on some level, better than a straight and faithful adaptation. Living in the Peter's court must have been that crazy, and the focus is on making it feel rather than be historically accurate. I believe something similar is done in "Veep," which is not true but also more true. And I like it.
And now, I'll see something else and I'm back to season 2.
2026-02-26
I think I'm more of a 16-bit-console person than an 8-bit-console one; purely as a nowadays hobby; back in my days, I was a Commodore C-64, Amiga 1200, and a PC gamer. Which reminds me that once I'm done with the Switch backlog, I need to install Pico-8 on my R36S, and explore those games there. It would make a fantasy console a bit more rooted in a physical reality.
2026-02-28
Faithless' the best of for €1 at the flea market. And the 50th anniversary edition of "Dune" for €2. And I was the one who did not want to go in the first place.
A day with family
Yesterday, we went to a Chinese restaurant with a hot pot. In the middle of a table, there is a heating plate where a pot is placed, which constantly boils broth of your choice, and you can immerse foods, also of your choice, and eat them fresh. We took normal broth and a spicy one. We were gonna go for 4/4 spicyness for the spicy, but the waiter advised us to go with 1/4, so we went down to 2/4; and it was a bit of a challenge, when I'm good with Thai levels of spicy. I also had plum juice.
We were planning to go to the Malagan botanic garden afterwards, but it turned out that between all the time we took at the restaurant and Winter opening hours of the garden, we had only one hour left, and we would still have to drive there, so we decided to skip it. The first idea was to call it a day and just go home, but on the way, we had a change of heart and drove to Mijas Pueblo instead.
In Pueblo, we went to their ethnographic museum, which we tried to see a couple of times already; and even now, it was almost a miss because it was closing in 20 minutes; but the ticket lady said it would be enough. The thing I was most interested in was a reconstruction of a secret room, in which a man once had lived for 30 years, while hiding from General Franco's regime; we saw a movie about that once. Unbelievable.
Then, we went to the museum of corrida, in a now defunct bullring. There were a couple of uniforms (or however I should call these clothes they wear to a fight) and a lot of plaques for various fights over the years; with the last one dating for 2001. Mijas Pueblo has a small bullring, and it's now all opened for the visitors. For years, we've been planning to go to see fights, but maybe just seeing a bullring will be enough. I am curious, but not sure if that much.