It’s time for another clean-up. I’ve removed the calendar, along with the monthly archive. In the sidebar, you’ll now only find a language selector (English or Dutch), a search function, and a list of categories to quickly navigate to a specific type of content.
The categories themselves have also been cleaned up, and there are now far fewer of them. New are the tags, which make specific topics within a category easier to find. In short, everything now looks a little cleaner and more organized.
A while ago, my blog was moved to a new location, and since then I’ve been fixing small issues here and there. Broken links, missing images, and similar problems. One of the content-related things I came across involved our little book, Thomas and Valentine. It was written together with Ana when Alex had just been born. Just a small hobby project.
For fun, I even created a small online shop for it. If I remember correctly, we actually sold one copy. Since then, however, the book has been available on my website as a free download. Yet there were still a few old posts where I’m trying to sell the book. That’s why I’m publishing this new post, with direct links to the different versions.
| Thomas and Valentine. English. Paperback, ISBN 978-1-4478-1373-6 |
ePub | eBook | |
Thomas en Valentijn. Dutch.Paperback, ISBN 978-1-4478-4261-3 |
ePub | eBook |
Almost twenty years ago, I shared the game rules for a Spanish parlor game on my blog: Pokino. A few years later, however, I received a response from someone claiming to be the trademark owner. Although the game rules themselves are centuries old and belong to the public domain, I decided to play it safe back then and took the post offline.
But great fun never gets old. Because we still play it regularly at home and our prints were overdue for replacement, I sat down at the drawing board myself. The result: a modern, fresh edition featuring completely newly designed cards, clear game sheets, and crystal-clear instructions, entirely free of trademark conflicts and ready to print yourself. I even spend some time to make a version using a normal/international carddeck.
The new name is simply PokerBingo. That way, it’s immediately clear what the game is, a mix with a little bit of poker and a lot of bingo. The word to shout when you win is simply: ‘Pingo!’.
Curious about the new version? Check out and download the printable sheets for PokerBingo here. Now playable with Spanish or international cards.
Seeing an unexpected figure like that pop up on a screen can certainly feel surreal and disorienting. My first though was ‘What?’. After some looking around it was quickly clear that there was some kind of error. The graphics showed me that the crypto I bought years ago for 50 euro was actually worth a lot less.
Only natural I think, but I tried to move some of my new wealth to real cash but trying to move a lot of crypto coins to my normal account did not result in the expected deposit of around 60.000 euros, instead I got around 0.05. So much for quitting my job on the spot and living my life.
After about an hour the party was over, and the value was once again around 15 euros. Easy come, easy go. On the other hand, it would be fun to have millions of cash to spend, but where am I going to spend it on..
As I already expected, this was a month filled with routine. The holidays are (finally) over, school has started again. Similar days lead to similar weeks. Before you know it, the whole month has simply passed. After almost two months without running a single meter, I can finally start moving again on a weekly basis. It’s about time too, because during the holiday period I grew quite a bit in width.
Routine in Spain is still not as boring as it might sound. Life here simply happens and keeps introducing random strange events. This month we had to deal with a strange left shoe occurence.
When I take lots of steps back, and I look at the situation on the world stage, it is anything but routine. Canada almost seems to be on the verge of becoming part of Europe, while large parts of the world appear to be distancing themselves from the United States. Normally, geopolitical shifts like these unfold gradually, but now they are happening at a rapid pace, with new developments emerging almost daily. I’m very curious to see how this will continue to evolve, but one thing is certain: it will be interesting. We shall see.
Sometimes a song sounds fantastic, but the lyrics are impossible to decipher. That is certainly the case with this popular track by Imael. I sometimes look up the lyrics online so I can recognize what’s being sung the next time I hear it. This time, though, the official lyrics bore absolutely no resemblance to what I was hearing, so I took it upon myself to create my own transcription. Hopefully it will be useful if you ever decide to sing along.
Oeeeee…
hummmhmmmmmm haheheheee…hmmmm nanananananananana na na nana nanaaaaa dadadadadadada
hmm dadadahmmm dada dedededededede
dada dada dada dede dede dadadahe sja worc en a coss
he sja worc en a coss, hahahahaha
en he sja worc en a coss, hu
sja na dida dida dida de de desjo mate mate tetetetetetetete da
sjo mata mata tetetetetetetete daneeeeheh, jaqueda quede quede dada hehehehehehe
jehhh, sjaquse manamba, tansjacome sjueneses
tell myself namenema, thesone mensega, got eny pleasaa me nona mebesens
hah, gotta see embibesos
hah, no quiseque canon me besjes
enme whatoma toma toma dededewhadoma dededede
dededededede deewa do ma
a no ne toque ne bounce de bouncen de bouncen de bouncen de bouncen, heeheehhehhehhe
tetetetetetetete da
tetetetetetetete dasjeeee, i gotta sea meself, heh
i gotte livve miself, heh
i mo loveh miself i loveh miself
loveh miself agahhe sja worc en a coss
he sja worc en a coss, hahahaha
he sja worc en a coss
he sja worc en a coss, dadadadadadada
I had to stop by IKEA anyway, so I took a few minutes to browse around and look at some products. One thing that caught my eye was a set of popsicle molds. We used to have these when I was a kid, and I thought it would be fun to experiment with a few homemade flavors again.
Idea: Everyone gets to taste each flavor and rank them from best to worst.
The flavors:
The results:
| Ranking | Alan | Alex | Adrie |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 – Gold! | Aquarius | Aquarius | Orange |
| 2 – Silver | Orange | Orange | Aquarius |
| 3 – Bronze | Apple | Cola | Cola |
| 4 | Cola | Apple | Apple |
| 5 | Kiwi | Kiwi | Beer |
| 6 – Last | Beer | Beer | Kiwi |
Alan and Alex came up with some great ideas: a coffee popsicle for me, a vanilla yogurt popsicle, a stracciatella-flavored yogurt popsicle, and a chocolate milk popsicle. That will be our next experiment.
Finally.
I don’t often follow politics. Too often, it feels like an endless stream of arguments, outrage, and short-term thinking. Still, I try to stay informed about what’s happening in the world, and today I did that by listening to Mark Carney‘s speech at the European Parliament.
What stayed with me most was not a specific proposal or a political victory. It was the feeling that these were leaders who are seriously thinking about the future. About cooperation. About stability. About what we want to leave behind for the next generation.
What happened? Yesterday Ursula von der Leyen set the tone. She spoke about closer ties between Canada and Europe. The exact nature of this new relationship was not yet clear, but at least part of it involved the word “member”. Imagine that: Canada, part of Europe. Today, Carney built on that vision convincingly and highlighted how much both sides have to offer. Next month, concrete steps will be taken. For Europe, that is impossibly fast, but there it is. When there is a will, there is a way. For the first time in a long time, I felt something that has become rare in politics: optimism.
After the first breakthroughs in the United States, AI technology quickly became available across the world. There was a lot of money at stake, and moving slowly was considered a risk. Demand for processors and memory surged, driving prices higher. The United States responded by restricting exports of advanced chips to China. These restrictions affected not only American companies but also foreign firms that relied on US technology. As a result, China was forced to find alternative ways to remain competitive.
Without the same access to cutting-edge hardware, Chinese companies focused heavily on software optimization. Instead of relying only on more powerful chips, they worked on making AI systems more efficient. A growing number of models appeared, each introducing improvements and pushing the technology forward in different ways.
Europe, meanwhile, is taking a different approach. Rather than sprinting to the finish line, it is focused on long-term stability, regulation, and safety. Whether this proves to be wisdom or hesitation remains to be seen. Europe’s structure makes rapid, coordinated action difficult, as decisions often require agreement across many countries and institutions.
The most remarkable aspect of the AI race is that nobody fully understands it. We know that larger models, more data, and greater computing power tend to improve results. Improvements are arriving at an ever faster pace. What once took months or years can now be replicated, analyzed, and improved upon in a matter of weeks. The feedback loop between new models has become remarkably short, and no clear endpoint is in sight. Yet the exact reasons why new capabilities emerge remain unclear.
Despite this uncertainty, every major power continues to invest. The fear of falling behind is greater than the fear of not fully understanding the technology. That is what makes the AI race so remarkable. Never before have so many resources been committed to something that even its creators cannot completely explain. Yet the race continues, and it is accelerating.
The race has only just begun. The United States took an early lead, and China quickly narrowed part of the gap. Europe is moving more cautiously, balancing innovation with regulation. Yet despite all the progress made so far, we may still be closer to the beginning than to the end.
The month started with a major cleanup of my photo archive. The family was in Torrevieja, enjoying the beach and the pool, so after work I could fully focus on this big task. And it worked out: I went from an extreme overload of photos to a clean, curated subset. In the end it cost me almost one evening per year, but it was absolutely worth it.
15 years! A milestone for Alex, and of course we celebrated it. He’s growing up so fast, incredibly intelligent, and athletic. We can only be proud of him.
We wrapped up the holiday period beautifully with the whole family by spending a vacation in Ireland. We started in Dublin, and travelled all around the country.
After Ireland we went home and I still had one free week, after which the daily routing, once again, took over.