So once again I have my shorn my rented tree of its pretty adornments and sparkily lights awaiting the nice university students from the Forestry School to pick it up and as always it seems too soon. But I complain too much as we get a full extra week here in Spain thanks to the blessed kings who arrive on Jan 6th, so I was able to resist this moment until a full halfway through January and enough complaining and lets review how the silly season went!
If the first field note was about the iconic red trees in Cercedilla, the second of course has to be about the iconic background of Cercedilla: the seven peaks (Siete Picos) that are visible from most parts of the town (providing they are not clouded in).
Sweet baby Jesus did not bring me my Powkiddy X55 for Christmas, but rather it was a self gift after Julio told me about his and introduced me to the world inexpensive of handheld console emulators. He pointed me to this you tube video (in spanish) that covers all the options available from 0-20 euros (!) that have form factors similar to the original Nintendo Gameboy up to devices that compete with Steam’s handheld consoles (400€ - 1000€). Let me repeat that: devices less than 20€. A hamburger, frys and a drink in most of the hamburger joints in Madrid will set you back more! So just out of absolute curiosity I had to get one experience this first hand.
This week I had the luck to participate in a debate about climate change at work. For me it was a forum to promote the first of the “three R’s” (reuse) that Jack Johnson introduced to me but there were other ideas, and a lively debate was had! As one would hope, the collateral effect of getting together and exchanging and exploring new ideas is that interesting lines of exploration are raised to help clarify certain ideas. So read more for two doubts I had post debate and my investigations into them!
This week I had the opportunity to explore a new mobile device operating system, Sailfish OS, something that does not happen every day, so it was a special week!
Here is snapshot of my mobile OS journey up until now:
So read on for what drew me to Sailfish OS, how the installation process went, and my first impressions after a week of use!
Since getting a small little cabin in the local mountains I have had on the to do list pulling out one of my currently unused Raspbery Pi’s and setting it up and lots of other yet to be determined things for gathering temperature data inside and outside the house. Then last week when chatting with my neighbor Nieves about how soon it would be cold in the mountains as WINTER IS COMING she mentioned that we probably need to get a smart plug to turn on the heater before we came up, as otherwise by the time we left at the end of the weekend the house would just be getting livable. I said yea that was a good idea and was thinking about my Raspberry Pi and having to get WireGuard on it as well so I could get onto the local network to control things… and later in the day I thought, well before doing all that, let me see what is out there. Oh boy was I in for a treat!
This december it will be 8 years since Pebble Technology went out of business. I still wear and use my Pebble watch daily, and boy o boy, when it dies it is gonna make me lonesome! So before that fateful day comes and I will be too teary-eyed to type about it, I decided to sing the praises of the Pebble Watch.
Today I celebrated this year’s moment of summer Zen!
This year’s summer solstice project was a bit less technology related (although I did write my own hello world OS in assembly[1]) as I made what I call a Sunset Magazine chair, but is more widely known as an Adirondack chair:
