Leaking coconut

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smooth coco!One of the coconuts that I used as a pot for a miniature orchid had a leak! Every time I gave the orchid some water a part of the water would slowly drip out, leaving some stains on the cupboard. I decided to make a new pot, using a new coconut, but this time I did something different. I sanded the coconut to make it nice and smooth, and after sanding it I oiled it inside and out to give it a nice darker color, and to make it even more water proof. The effect was really nice, so I will pobably repeat the same sanding and oiling with the second coco mini orchid we have.

September ’24

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Alex and his first star!We had an easy start of the month. Alex went with his godfather on a city trip to explore Bilbao. A great adventure and a perfect opportunity for Alex and his godfather to strengthen their relationship. It also provided a couple of days of serenity at home. Spending time with only Alan meant there were no more daily/constant fights and it allowed us to get some quality time with Alan.

Alex had a blast with his godfather in Bilbao. They stayed at a very nice hotel, visited museums, the football stadium and even went to a restaurant (Ola) with a Michelin star!

Alan also had a good first week because he spend three days camping with his friends in the south of the island. They had a nice apartment with a pool, the beach nearby and they had lots of fun in the Holiday World attraction park.

Both kids should be ready and fully relaxed to start the new school season. With the new school year the ‘old’ routine also started working again. School days were all similar, weekends similar. Maybe it is boring, but at the same time it is a very easy routine to follow. Soccer, tennis, (still no) English, Bandama, La Laja, a weekend camping trip, birthdays, etc. Once again our routine where everything everyday is almost the same as always.

Camping and filming – Lessons learned

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Camping, llanos de la pez!Well, my first video that was basically centered around me got me quite a bit of comments. It also taught me quite a bit. First the lessons I learned myself:

– Batteries. Lots of video means you need some way to charge a battery, or have a replacement ready. In the two days camping I spend the battery of my good camera the first day. My phone was empty around noon the second day, and the two gopro clones I had did last a bit longer, but had a terrible image and sound quality.
– Interaction. It was difficult to film people I did not know. It felt like I would invade their privacy, so I did not film anything while I talked to others. People in our group also showed some restraint when appearing, so I also kept these interactions to a minimum. The result was a movie where I am almost the only person to appear.
– Clean. The video needs to be ‘cleaner’. I don’t know the correct word, but a lot of my sentences end in gibberish no-one can understand. I need to speak clearer. Some parts of the video show the ground, or my feet, or my shirt, and are not focused correctly. I needed to keep some of these parts to avoid breaking the monologue I was having.
– Information. I need a bit more of background information, so I have something to say when there is a dull moment.
– Editing. Cutting away boring parts is not so easy. I was talking a lot, and sometimes I had to leave bad parts to not cut my sentence in half. Sometimes I had to remove big clips, because I repeated things I had already said. Shorter sentences and a small pause before changing topic might help a lot to do the editing afterwards.

My family also had some comments. Quite a lot of comments actually, but most are covered my the issues I found myself.

– Focus. There is no clear goal for the movie. I was told nobody would be interested in seeing only me talk (and drink). It the focus is a family movie we see to little family. If the focus is transmitting interesting facts, I need to include more information.
– No interaction. The same as I already stated, but my family told me it was not all on me. The participants to the video should participate more, without being scared of the camera. This will probably be hard to achieve, because I told everyone I would be making a video, and everybody thought it was a good idea, but still almost nobody wanted to be filmed.

Conclusion: I liked filming and thought the video was not so bad, and maybe even a bit funny, but after all the criticism I have changed my mind. It is not a good video, and it would take a lot of effort to make it better. Will there be a next video… I´m not sure. We don’t normally go camping, so maybe I can make a video when we do something more often, and I need something to talk about. I’ll see, but for now my motivation is a bit low.

Camping – Coffee

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I used to dislike it, such a bitter drink. I still take my coffee with milk and sweetener or sugar, but I’ve come to appreciate it more and more. A small pick-me-up that is welcome at times. It’s also a pleasant ritual that I enjoy. Even if it’s just popping a capsule into the machine, it remains a moment I find enjoyable.

Most of the time, when we’re in the forest or on a hike, I don’t think about having a cup of coffee. But when the opportunity does arise, it’s extra special, especially when all sorts of equipment come into play. Then, the value of the ritual increases enormously, and even if the coffee isn’t that great, the coffee-experience more than makes up for it.

Camping – Llanos de la pez

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About two years ago we discovered two YouTubers that really inspired us. First ‘Bald and bankrupt‘, who made really great videos, like the one I like most, where he visits an off limits Russian production facility to the one of their last space shuttle like rockets. The ‘Buran‘.

The other YouTuber is ‘Kurt Caz‘ with lots of good videos, but the one I like best is where he visited a family in the middle of nowhere, they invited him to some food, and he then did a fundraiser for the family in Haiti, and returned later to give them some money. The family uses the money to buy a motorcycle, to help them with a better future.

We went camping recently at a site called ‘Llanos de la Pez‘, in the middle of Gran Canaria, and tried to make our own video, inspired by these two great YouTubers. See for yourself how it turned out!

The educational aspects of the video, that maybe remain a bit in the background:
– We are camping in a forest that is representative to Gran Canaria a few hundred years ago
– At that time the entire island was covered with forest/trees
– Roque nublo is the place where the original inhabitants (the guanches) used to meet, to discuss important issues
Maybe the video is a bit over the top, but we laughed really a lot during the production, so even if it is not the best video, we can only be happy with the result.

If you want to go camping yourself, then here are some more info and guidelines for your stay. Ask for permission to camp and spend the night. Walking routes available in the area.

August ’24

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Witte kerk!The month started easy for me, while the kids were celebrating their holidays in Torrevieja and later in London I was back home, working. The second week of the month it all started for me. My official holiday finally started and I went to the Netherlands with the kids. We spend two weeks there staying with grandma Nel. We did all the usual stuff. Playing with Grandma, beach, lake, bitterballen, frikandellen, Alex’ birthday, niece, nephew, uncle and aunt, friends. Avifauna, the juliana toren, a kid oriented attraction park, the flower corso on the boulevard of Noordwijk. De kinderboerderij, an illegal trip at 22 meters from the ground. BBQ’s, Indonesian food. A soft-ice sprint, Gijs and the list goes on.

For me it was a very nice holiday, and for the kids it was again a big contrast with their partyweeks with around 40 neighborhood kids in Torrevieja, or their week of discovery in Londen, but still they were happy with their Holland adventure.

Coconut insect hotel

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I continue to see new creative projects which I can realize with a simple coconut. After making a drinking cup, a cookie jar and an orchid pot I now recreated a project I already did in the past, but now with a coconut as an important part. My new project is a coco insect hotel. I made an insect hotel without any coconut in the past that is already hanging on our outside wall for a couple of years. Sometimes insects hang around, but it is not a very popular/busy object.

The ‘old’ insect hotel requires that the insects fly. Flying is the only way to arrive and that probably limits the usage that we see. The newly created coco insect hotel is created in a similar way, but I will not put it on the wall, but instead simply place it among the plants on the dirt. This way the insect hotel can serve a much greater amount of insects.

First step was cutting a cocunut in half. This is getting easier every time now that I’m getting some experience. With the coco cut open you need to remove all the white inside. I use a dull knife to cut the white ‘meat’ in small strips which are easy to remove. After drying the empty coconut I sanded the edges and that was the coco part. All done. Now I get some reed, and cut this into small pieces of around 4 cm each. I used two types of reed, new fresh green reed, and older dried up light brown reed. The fresh green reed was easier to deform, so it made it easier to fit inside the coco. Before putting the reed inside the coco I sanded it a little to take away any imperfections. I mixed sizes so that different insect could find different sizes rooms in our hotel.

I put some paper inside the back of the coco, so the reed does no go in to the coco all the way to the back. The paper fills up the back part, and after filling up the front with the pieces of reed I could align the pieces a little by pushing the a bit deeper into the paper, or by pulling them out a bit.

ezDatepad: Simplicity meets boundless potential

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ezDatepad!ezDatepad is a text editor combined with a calendar — simple yet powerful. Finally there is an easy and intuitive tool to keep data related to dates or times. The data you store, whether related to the present, past, or future, aids in memory, planning, and evaluating your thoughts and actions.

Use ezDatepad as an ideal planning tool, a diary, an agenda, a journal or a way to assess your past or shape your future. It’s also perfect for small tasks like creating shopping lists, quickly jotting down phone numbers, names, notes, ideas or whatever comes to mind.

Get ezDatepad!

July ’24

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July is a strange month. The first week I had a small holiday. The kids were also free, so we did quite a lot of activities. Ana had to work the first week, but later she took off almost one month. Ana and the children have gone to Torrevieja for the holidays, and I stayed behind to work. We don’t have enough vacation days to go on holiday together. Ana spends all her days with the children in July and part of August, and then I do the same in August, so that together we just have enough to bridge the vacation period of the children.

Besides my work, I no longer have to attend to all the extra activities of the children. Alex had monday: music, tuesday: English, wednesday: tennis, thursday: English, and friday: tennis again. Alan had monday: football, tuesday: English, wednesday: football, thursday: English, and friday: football. Together, Ana and I could just manage it, but it was all very tightly planned. It’s a relief not to have that this month; suddenly I actually have free time. It feels as if I’m the one who is celebrating a holiday.

A month off gave me plenty of time to get things done. I still had to go to work, but with the afternoons free I was able to get lots of things done. My health got a big boost because I went to run almost every day between 6 and 8km. I worked on hobbies like the coco insect hotel. I invested time in my future by finishing a couple of iPhone apps that I started years ago, but never had time to complete. I did a big spring cleaning, and renewed my wardrobe. It left me in a much better emotional state. Just the results expected from a vacation.

Ana and the kids were at the beach for three weeks. They had an experience similar to the movie ‘Groundhog day‘. All their days were similar. Wake up, breakfast, beach, swimming pool to clean off the sand. Lunch. A couple of hours relaxing, Swimming pool again, shower, diner, playtime with all the kids in the same holiday park; the same kids they see every year, and finally sleep. The exact same day over and over again, but in contrary to the movie the kids probably hope it would never end.

June ’24

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The highlight of the month was at the end, but we also started the month pretty nice with a healthy dose of creativity. We made a couple of beautiful coco-orchids. One for each kid, and they turned out spectacular!

The kids started their summer break! First they will spend two weeks near home where they will spend one week doing a canoe course. The weather during the canoe course was not the best, and a couple of days there was even a bit of rain.

Ed Sheeran concert in Tenerife 2024!It was also a month filled with birthdays. First Ana, than me. This time my birthday is extra special. It will be my last birthday in my 40’s. Next year I will start with my fifties. Time is going so fast! To celebrate I planned a weekend in Tenerife, where Ana and I will visit the concert of Ed Sheeran! First we will fly to Tenerife, where we will arrive pretty early. After arriving we will go and check out our hotel and leave our bags. Get some food and relax a bit, then we can go to the concert. After the concert we spend the night in the hotel, and the next morning we have to wake up quite early to fly back home.