Last year for my wife’s birthday I made Black Velvet cake and I was telling my german boss, Martin, about it and he mentioned that it kinda reminded him of the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (commonly know as Black Forest Cake). Later I asked ChatGPT about it:

A Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, commonly known as Black Forest Cake, is a classic German dessert that consists of layers of chocolate sponge cake, cherries, and whipped cream. It is traditionally flavored with Kirschwasser, a clear cherry brandy, which gives the cake its distinctive taste. The cake is typically decorated with chocolate shavings and more cherries.

So I then asked it for a recipe and saved it in my recipe archive and this year I made it for my wife’s birthday. But as I was in Cercedilla sourcing some of the key ingredients (sour cherries and Kirschwasser) was complicated so I had to reroute a bit (spanish picota cherries and spanish brandy) so I have rebaptized what I made as as Cercedilla Kirschtorte!

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This morning Minerva (my OpenClaw AI Agent) included this in her morning report:

Interesting! Let check out this On Computable Numbers paper!

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Just finished this book that we read in my work book club.
Wow. It is like being in Paris in June of 1940 as the Germans are invading France, living the uncertainty, fear, and chaos that ensues through the story of 4 different groups of people.
An amazing historical read, made more amazing by the conditions in which it was written, and how it came to us: The author lived through this and wrote the book in occupied France up until she was sent to Auschwitz in July of 1942 where she was killed. The manuscript remained in the possession of her daughters who thought it was a journal too disturbing to read, until in 1998 when they discovered it was a novel and they published it.

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Collection of my notes on AI

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OMG. NetHack 5.0 was released on May 2nd! I downloaded it May 6th and I am currently playing my first game of it as Bob an left-handed Ranger. Read on to find out what the heck NetHack is and how Bob and I do on our decent into the Dungeons of Doom!

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Sitting above and to the right of Cercedilla is the Navalmedio dam and its reservoir which I first heard about from the previous owners of our cabin while we were finalizing the purchase. They said it was a nice walk from the cabin, and I was quite confused thinking they were talking about the Navacerrada reservoir which is quite far away. So early excursions from the cabin centered on exploring and finding the reservoir. Read on for what I have learned about it!

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What you see above are all the walks and hikes we have done in Cercedilla.

The gif was last updated 09/05/2026 and has 31 walks that we have done and my objective is to paint the entire town and mountains orange!

When we first thought of getting cabin in the sierra mountains near Madrid, our first thought was of Cercedilla as we had some great hikes and experiences in the red pine forests around it, and as we have begun exploring it has not disappointed! Read on for more details and our discoveries!

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The above image is the drawings that I fed to Claude Code and the resulting working watchface for a Pebble Watch that was produced after 5 sessions (each one lasting until i burned through my tokens which was about 20 minutes a session).

People are bad talking “vibe coding”, but quite honestly “agentic coding” is so empowering! Read on for more details of the adventure!

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I have another post about the wild flowers at the magical Ermita de San Antonio but have begun noticing other wildflowers that are at higher elevations or maybe just have not yet seen them there, so I will start a new reference note to the flowers I discover on my walks around Cercedilla.

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