Category Archives: Enjoy

After the Bestial race

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Wow, the day of the Bestial race I was mentally disconnected while Alan was celebrating his birthday with his class mates. I remember they went to play with lasers in Hangar 37, but I don’t remember any specifics. I remember arriving home, going to bed and just sleeping. The next day my muscles hurt. They hurt while moving around, and while standing still. An annoying pain that simply was all over my body. I decided to simply take it easy. The next day was a Monday, so I had to head over to work. The pain I experienced yesterday had somehow doubled. Another day of suffering, hoping that the next day would be easier. Still wondering why I did it. I found out my time was 1:29:31, but it felt like the entire trial took a lot more time.

I made a couple of videos before and after the event, and Alex took some videos of me starting with the trails and when I arrived at the finish. so there was enough material for a new YouTube video!

Bestial race

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Bestial race!With a colleague, I did the Bestial race today. He convinced me, and I actually assumed I would beat him easily, thus having a fun story for the coming months. The race took place in Arucas, a nearby town. 6 KM running and a few obstacles. At the start, it immediately became clear why my variant was called ‘hell’. Directly through pits and small hills, holes with mud, crawling under low bridges, jumping and diving, pushing tires while crawling, etc. Before the running started, I was already exhausted. The running afterward also turned out to be uphill, with wet shoes and socks, along a small path. There were also a few obstacles here: carrying a 20-kilo stone ball over an extra route, carrying a jerry can with 20 liters of water over yet another extra route, climbing over a two-meter wall, and several obstacles where you had to grab objects with your hands to avoid touching the ground and still ‘climb’ about 6 meters forward. Super difficult. Right before the end there were another two huge containers with water, and a lots of other obstacles, and then we finally arrived at the finish. What a relief. We did it!

After the race we rushed to another event, a birthday party for Alan. I was physically present, but I can’t remember much of it. I do remember being dead tired wondering why I never realised that ‘hell’-difficulty must be something pretty difficult and undesirable. I wondered why I ever signed up for this…

November ’24

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We started this month with a couple of days all-in. Bad for my weight/waist, but good for morale. Once again it was a pretty standard month, with only a few notable events. We had a couple of barbecues. Alan enjoyed a few minutes of fame. We made some homemade yogurt (which I ended up eating myself because nobody liked it) and a couple of very tasty cakes with apple in it. All in all November was a nice and quiet month

Opinions matter!

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Your opinion matters. My opinion also matters but in reality nobody is really interested in hearing how I think about things. However, people are interested in what Alan thinks! He had an interview with a local TV-channel. Alan was very observant and touched base on the subject of using technology in class. Something he is in favor of.

Collectible soccer trading card

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Alans collectible soccer trading card!I remember that you used to be able to collect cards from famous players and teams. Fun for the fans, and something that could quickly turn expensive. To get all the cards you needed to buy lots of little bags and make an effort to exchange all your repeating cards. You could place all the cards in an album, and needed to keep collecting until it was complete.

At Alan’s soccer team (before Fomento, but now c.d. Inter Colonia) they thought of something new. They are going to make soccer cards of themselves. It feels like a good idea to take some money of the parents, and make a nice profit for the club. I made a quick concept card to see how Alan’s card might turn out, but for the actual cards I suspect we need to be patient.

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 – 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.

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.

Fujin

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Since a couple of years I like to browse Kickstarter to see if I can find any fun projects to support. Kickstarter is a platform where you can take a small risk and you can help someone or some organization in developing something new. The idea is simple. If you have an idea, but you dont have the money, you make a plan to create something, calculate what it will cost, and publish it on the site. People who like your plan can pay first, and if there is enough interest, you make your product and send it to the people that supported you. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. When there is enough interest you get the money, and start your development. Normally it will take a long time, and there are almost always delays. There is also a risk. If you did not calculate everything well enough or thought everything through, maybe you fail, and the money disappears. I bought a couple of things through Kickstarter. A robot, a thinket, a super nice towel, a stress relief toy, some books, and the last thing to be delivered on my doorstep was a Fujin.

Fujin wrist!Fujin is the Japanese god of the wind, but also a mechanical watch. The watch was developed as a kickstarter project, and it somehow got my attention. I never wear a watch, so it was an atypical project for me, but the project kept revolving in my mind. Eventually I decided to just take a gamble, and go for it. I made my pledge almost a year ago, and the watch has finally arrived. First thing I noticed is that it arrived in a really big box. It got me all excited, but since it arrived a few days before my birthday I made the choice to wrap it up, and let my kids give it to me. It will be a great gift for myself.

Finally on my birthday I got to unpack the Fujin. It’s a beautiful watch and it fitted my wrist like a glove. I was very happy. After using google translate to read the Japanese instructions I was able to set the correct time, and ever since it just works great.

Model: S-Meister, Fujin SM-DVBK-P-KS
Movement: Seiko Epson YN71
Case: SS (BK), size: 42mm, thickness: 14 mm, lug width: 22 mm
Face: Platinum leaf
Cover: Sapphire glass
Strap: Cordura Nylon, 9 cm including buckle / 7.7 cm for belt only at 12 o’clock, 12 cm at 6 o’clock

Fuji nightstand!The watch is heavy and big, you are easily reminded you are wearing it, it transmits a feeling of quality. The size of the watch was one of the things that worried me. I though a too big of a watch was uncomfortable, and would maybe look to much like I was calling for attention, which I wanted to avoid. In the end the watch is quite sizable, but it is an acceptable size, and it looks pretty good on my wrist, without being overly big.

The watch face is created basically a black area covered by a very very thin layer of platinum. This super thin platinum foil really does look a bit like something representing the wind, so that’s really nice. The watch face has a hole to see the inner workings of the watch, and it feels like looking at the watch’s heartbeat. It is only a small piece of the movement you can see, but it is amazing seeing extremely small pieces moving around so fast you can hardly make out what is moving around.

There are three dials. One very thin dial for seconds, and two dials with little points that light up in the dark for the minutes and the hours. The dials look really nice, and the glow in the dark feature helps for reading the time when you are in a darker environment. During the day the silver dials, on top of the platinum foil can be a bit hard to read. You need to look well so see the dials and know the time, at night or with low light it is much easier to tell the time, thanks to the little dots of illumination.

The back of the watch is also made of sapphire or maybe its just glass, I’m not sure. It shows you a different part of the movement, and it shows the way the watch generates its energy by using your movement to move a big piece around which I suspect charges the watch. The watch can be charged using the crown, or by simply wearing it. The little book that comes with the watch explains that wearing the watch for around 8 hours a day is enough to keep it running for 24 hours.

The strap is black on the outside, there is a very small black leather part where the holes are located for fixing the buckle. The inside is made out of a light brown leather, and feels comfortable. The strap is a bit though when new, but I feel like it will adapt to my wrist in time, and I feel like the materials used will be comfortable for using every day.

The only down-side of the watch is that is can be difficult to read the time, and for a watch that is obviously a pretty big inconvenience, but still I am very happy with my very first mechanical watch. It looks great, and its weight and size make it feel like something important is on my wrist.

Coco orchid

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Coco orchid!Step one was a coco box with coco cookies. It was a great project, the cookies taste great and the coco box was a nice decoration. Still, I had the idea that we could improve the concept. After some mind-storming the coco orchid project was born. There are three parts. A coco that we use to hold the plant. A base to hold the coco, and a pretty mini orchid to provide some stunning beauty.

1. Cut/saw the top of the coco. Clean the inside and let the coco dry.
2. Smooth the edges of the coco, and smooth the outside and the inside with some sandpaper.
3. Lightly oil the inside of the coco, with a little bit of oil, to make the coco a bit more water resistant.
4. Make the base, cut a piece of plastic from a bottle, and wrap it with brown wool. The brown wool combines well with the color of the coconut.
5. Buy a mini orchid, and transplant it into the coco. Add some additional material to surround the base of the orchid to it does not move around, but there should still be lots of air/space around the roots.

Enjoy!

Mini orchid: 16 euro, coconut: 1.50 euro, water bottle: 1 euro, a ball of brown wool: 1 euro. Total: 19:50 euro
Enjoy a beautiful orchid every time you come home: Priceless!