Frozen Landscapes and the Food That Warms Our Hearts

I have been a bit unmotivated lately. While I recorded a bit with the tripod, the footage has been sitting on my hard drive. I will hopefully upload it somewhere this coming week so I can share it with other people. At the very least, I’d like to share the videos before the end of spring, as it would otherwise feel out of place to share them. And while I haven’t been “productive”, I have been occupying my time with other things.

Season two of Snowpiercer began a the end of January and, since a few friends and I were interested in watching it, we decided to watch it together. Due to some scheduling issues (as it happens), it was only recently that we managed to start watching the show. Without going into much detail, I had some reservations. Season one was amazing, but the cliffhanger at the end left me worried that we might see a regression in state. After all, my excitement about this series is the interplay between the characters and the political aspects of the story.

So far, four episodes in, I haven’t been disappointed. It might feel a bit slow on one or two episodes, but it’s easy to see how it serves to set up the stage for the rest of the season. I can’t wait for the next time we get together to watch the new set of episodes, as I’m rather curious about what’s going to happen next.

Meanwhile, I did a Stellaris cooperative play-through with a friend. It is one of the few games that I still keep up with and, since it had an expansion released on the 15th (Nemesis), we wanted to see what was new.

The title feature of this expansion is that now you can bring the end of the universe, and everyone else is now properly encouraged to stop you. And while that aspect is good (if a bit shallow), the other changes are much more interesting to me. The introduction of fog of war changes the early game, and since now there is the concept of not instantly knowing everything about another empire, everything is a bit more nebulous and interesting. At least, that’s my first impression. We did find the changes to population growth a bit too jarring (and the developers agreed that some values need changes), but otherwise it was a great experience.

Since we were too strong to be properly fought by the AI, and we were about to end the game, we sent our entire navies to fight the other end-game crisis. We lost.

Friday’s are pizza days (for the most part), and last week’s Friday we got to eat frozen pizza. It isn’t as good as homemade pizza, but it’s still rather good. Even more so when we consider the difference in effort! As much as we like to eat tasty things, sometimes it’s alright to just throw something together and call it good enough.

However, it did provide me with the perfect opportunity to practice taking photos of food, and I think I actually managed to take a few decent ones. Or, at least, I get hungry looking back at them.

My father cutting one of the pizzas we ate that night.
The cut slices and the way the cheese spills is very appetizing.

I will keep practicing, as I’m sure I can figure out how to better place the lights, and which perspective is best. The biggest issue, however, is that time spent taking photos is time not spent eating…

On the next day, I ate a delicious grilled Salmon. Salmon is my favorite fish to eat, absolutely loving it in about any way I have tried it. This one had salt, garlic powder, parsley and a bit of lemon. It was great, if a bit too much, and I’m looking forward to eating it again.

The grilled salmon on a white plate. Some oil marks on the borders of the plate. Not pictured: my desire to eat it.

Finally, on Sunday 25th, we had cheesecake for dessert. This is a recipe an old friend taught us and so far hasn’t been bested by any other cheesecake I’ve tried. Sure, other styles have their own charms – and I certainly won’t refuse them -, but when I think of what a cheesecake is, this is it.

Sadly, the jam this time wasn’t as tasty as it could have been. It was a bit too sweet and had too little strawberry taste. But, considering we didn’t have any jam at home, I’m quite happy with it.

The cheesecake as presented on the table.
A close-up of the cheesecake. It definitely looks more delicious like this.
My slice of cheesecake. There was an air bubble forming on the base.

Unknown Feelings and Red Roses

This week has been quiet, to be honest. Or rather, while I have been doing things, none feel exciting to talk about. Any other week this would have been fine – sometimes it takes time for things to happen. There is a small piece I wrote that has been sitting on my drafts because it’s missing a photo and I haven’t had the chance to take it. There is a video I have been meaning to share that I haven’t reviewed nor uploaded anywhere. Yet I can’t help that this feeling is a symptom of something else. I’m perhaps afraid that I’m going to fall into another bad mood. Or perhaps there are some feelings that I haven’t really worked through.

Regardless, part of this exercise is pushing through that veil and, at the very least, remembering the things that I did do, even if they don’t seem very visible.

This week, I focused on Instagram. I have been putting off reviewing the last batch of photos I took, since I just haven’t been feeling like it. So, at least I went through some of those and added more to the queue. I also photographed a rose and I couldn’t wait to share it. I do admit to some frustration since I’m not quite sure how Instagram works, but I understand that the only thing I can do is keep working on it.

A blooming rose. Originally published on Instagram on the 2021-04-10.

I have been listening to unravel, by TK from Ling tosite sigure. I first listened to this song when watching Tokyo Ghoul months ago and I rediscovered it recently as I was looking for Jujutsu Kaisen’s OP on Spotify. I love the dynamism of the song and the contrast of his voice with the energy of the instruments. The calm intro with the lone vocals, the swelling, the energy explosion followed to a return to a heavy charged calmness on the first verse. The chorus, oh the chorus. And the rawness in his voice just before the bridge as he screams “unraveling the world”.

I could go on, but I don’t think my words could do justice to it.

Broken Glasses and Comfort Shows

A few months ago I promised a friend I would get a new lens for my camera. I made the promise because I tend to say I want to do something, but then I procrastinate on it until it no longer makes sense. We both know it, so promising it to him is a great way to make sure I actually do things. So, a few days ago I purchased a new lens for the camera and I’ve been having fun with it! I took lots of photos, and given that it’s spring and bugs are out, even tried my hand at recording with it.

That said, it hasn’t been all good with the new lens. The day it arrived I went to test it out. I wanted to try retaking some photos that didn’t come out right with my kit lens. And, because I’m… careless, as I was trying to take one of the photos, I put my glasses on the ground. One of the dogs was really excited I was about and came. He accidentally put his paw on them, and considering it’s that rough pavement… One of the lenses got scratched.

I asked my dad to attempt to save them, but sadly there wasn’t much we could do. Alas. A trip to the local store to ensure the prescription hadn’t changed and to choose a new set.

A lense from a pair of glasses. It has a scratch in it in the middle — An attempt was made to polish away the scratch, optical characteristics be damned. It didn’t succeed.

On other personal achievements, however, I did some organizing. I went through my email inbox with the intent to, at least, mark all emails as read. It took a while, and it is in no ways perfect, but certainly better than what it used to be.

Continuing the ebb and flow between good and bad, these two weeks I haven’t been in a great mood. Some expectation mismatches, is all. And as it turns out, my comfort food nowadays is just watching anime. I binge watched two up to current release through Crunchyroll. Both are from the Isekai genre, though one of them is further along than the other.

The first one was So I’m a Spider, So What?, which was really enjoyable. Half a season is currently available, with more to come after the mid-season break and I’m honestly very excited about what the next half is going to bring. I have enjoyed the main character’s arc so far, and there are hints and promises both for the other characters and the plot that I would like to see fulfilled which I won’t talk about to avoid spoiler.

The other series I binged on was That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime. It’s fun. I have enjoyed the characters and the plot. I appreciate the focus it has given to diplomacy and trade, even if at the end of the day it won’t venture too deep into the subjects. Though, beware, it has its fair share of fan service.

Finally, I ought to mention the Cookie Creams Cheesecake my mom made. A friend shared the recipe with us, praising its taste. She did recommend we use more chocolate cookies than what’s on the recipe, and I’m glad we followed her advice. The taste of the chocolate cookies mixes rather well with the lemon in the filling. Though I do prefer a creamier and cheese cheesecake, this was definitely a good change of pace!

I’d love to share the recipe, but all I have is a photo of the magazine where it was published, so instead here are some pictures of the cheesecake once it was done.

An Organized Inbox

I have had an inbox with hundreds of unread email for years now. Throughout the years I have set up some rules to manage the flow of emails, directing Patreon updates, newsletters, and promotional things to specific labels. Google’s automatic email categorization has also helped surface the ones I care about. Recently, however, I decided to make some improvements and, perhaps, get that unread number down to something reasonable.

The other reason I have so many emails is because I don’t really delete them. If I care about them, I read and then return to the inbox, satisfied that they are no longer highlighted and not counted as unread. And those from the categories I mentioned above? Chances are they are not getting read to begin with. In fact, I would have set up a maximum age for those emails if Gmail had let me – a newsletter from a year ago is not something I will ever care about, I think.

Thus, I finally decided to return to using Thunderbird as my email client. I have always been quite fond of it and it does everything that I need of one. Its biggest sin is that its rules only apply locally, which means that I don’t benefit from them on the go. That said, I can set retention policies and its search is much more in line with what I want than Google’s.

So, throughout the week, I set up rules and filters, handling the bulk of them. And for those that were too few to justify, I went through them one by one, doing my best to prefer deletion over merely leaving as unread. Imagining a room filled with read letters, none particularly worth the space they occupy proved useful. The next challenge will be going through those that are read and cleaning them up!

I Can See The Bees – Equipment Upgrade

I recently acquired a new lens for my DSLR camera. It’s a Sigma 18-200mm that I chose because its relative affordability and the versatility it would give me over the basic 18-55mm lens I’ve been using. I’m quite happy with it, to be honest. It allows me to take pictures that I couldn’t before. For example, in spring our garden comes alive with insects and blossoming flowers. With this lens I can now focus on the bees without being afraid that I’m too close to them.

Now? I just have fun with it.

A close up on the lilac flowers of a vine in my garden.
An insect among white-lilac flowers.
The same insect still among white-lilac flowers
Another insect among the white-lilac flowers
A bee on tiny blue flowers arranged in a corn-like fashion..

The other thing is that it suits me better for the style of framing I want to do. I’m sure that with the old one there was plenty I could do (and did), specially with the aid of some work in the computer. For, with this one, I do feel like I have more freedom to do what I want to do the way I want to do it.

That said, the experience has solidified my desire for a macro lens, since I still want to take photos of small tiny things. I still want to get close to fungus, barks and rocks, and I think that it will (much like this one did) let me take those photos in a much more pleasant way.

Regardless, the lens did give me an excuse to learn some more video-related skills. I wanted to take a video of the bees and the butterflies out in the garden, but I don’t have a tripod. I intended to use a ladder we have at home as a place to rest the camera but that one wasn’t available… So I figured I would make my best effort to record without shaking and I would do some video stabilization with blender.

I’m quite happy of how it came out for my first attempt with the entire thing. Hopefully, I do get around taking more and better videos! At least, I hope, I can take some worthy of sharing online.