Recently in October '24

October is now two days away. Halloween is gone - which I always enjoying mentioning despite never doing anything for it -, and my birthday too. I’m now 25, a quarter of a century, a very interesting-feeling number. Some would say it’s now closer to the 30s than to the 20s. Let’s recap what’s happened this last month!

✍️ Website

During this past month, I made quite a few updates to my website, focusing on consistency, readability and bolder colors. The updates are, in general, quite small, so they may not be as noticeable as other changes I’ve made in the past.

Additionally, I’ve noticed the website’s design has been quite stable over the past years, and that’s quite telling: it means I’m reasonably satisfied with it, and it works for me. Before, I would completely redesign it every 6 months or so. It can also just mean I’m more grown up, and just like my personality, my website’s style is now more developed and doesn’t change as much anymore.

If you’re interested, here’s a short changelog:

  • Colors, font-sizes and font-weights have been adjusted to be bolder.
  • The favicon has been updated to use a bolder shade of blue, as well as a bolder “H”.
  • The appearance of links is now more consistent in the different pages.
  • The color highlighting has been updates to be consistent across browsers and in dark theme.
  • The resume has been cleaned up to be more uniform and more aesthetically pleasing.
  • The tags are now capitalized.
  • The homepage now shows more articles and photos.
  • The XML sitemaps and feeds are now styled.

I’m also considering deleting my shoebox and redistribute the things there across other categories. Similarly, I feel like the graphics category is also a bit odd, and doesn’t really have a place. Maybe the “graphics” should just be moved into the shoebox. Or maybe I should just have a general “other posts that I don’t think fit anywhere else”-category. But isn’t that what the shoebox is for?

🍄 Life

At the beginning of the month, had followed a short barista training. Then, we hosted a small 🫕 fondue dinner with some friends where we ate… well… cheese fondue with quite a lot of other things. I always find it very nice to do even though I don’t do it that often. It was certainly nice to do it once again.

I’ve also had a week of vacation, which happened to coincide with my birthday - that was actually not planned. I went with my partner and his family to Fuengirola, in the south of Spain. My Portuguese body considered the temperature - around the 23°C - definitely not hot enough for beach or swimming pool. But I definitely enjoyed the warm jacuzzi.

Dramatic Sky, Fuengirola
Dramatic Sky, Fuengirola

We also went to Sevilla on my birthday, and my parents met me there. We tried to find a halfway point between Fuengirola and my hometown, where we both could meet. I’m quite happy we made this decision, it was very nice to see my parents again in person, especially during my birthday.

💪 Health

Not a lot of updates: and that’s mostly good. Kept going to the gym. I think my wrists are improving, but they still have some way to go. Sometimes I feel like this ridiculous things keep happening to me, and I have no idea why. It’s quite annoying.

📚 Reading

More or less back to reading. I used the time in Spain to finish two books I had already begun: Ikigai, over which I already wrote a bit, and also Before Your Memory Fades. The latter is the third book from the series Before the Coffee Gets Cold. It was a nice continuation, but I don’t think I’m going to read the fourth. To me, it now feels more of the same.

But more importantly - at least for me - was Wool. A few months ago, I watched a TV show called Silo, where humans live in an underground silo after some catastrophic event, which no one has information about. In two weeks the second season will come out, and I decided to just read the book before.

Yes, there are differences, quite a lot of them. I’m very glad I read the book and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys dystopian-future sort of books. I’ll now start reading the second book, Shift, which gives more context about how all of it has begun.

🍿 Entertainment

When it comes to films, live shows and series, it was a packed month! I attended two live comedy shows. The first one was from 👑 drag queen Bianca del Rio. I’ve seen her multiple times and going to one of her shows is always a blast. The other one was Double Dutch. We’ve seen his “Work In Progress” show in the beginning of the year, and this was now the final version. So there were jokes that we already knew about. Overall, much better and much improved.

When it comes to 🎬 movies, we watched a few of them. We went to the cinema three times: gotta make the subscription pay for itself! There, we watched Joker: Folie à Deux, Strange Darling, and The Wild Robot. The latter was, by far, my favorite of the month. Despite being a children’s movie, it was heartwarming.

Series… oh, so many 📺 series. I’m not going to mention everything, but I want to highlight two shows we’ve finished watching. The first one was Agatha All Along, which gave new depth to the character of Agatha Harkness. I found it to be a great, different kind of show, mostly protagonising women. And also the German Das Signal

We watched the last season of Heartstopper. It was nice, but not something I would rave about. We also watched Agatha All Along, which gave new depth to the character of Agatha Harkness. I found it to be quite a nice show. And I also want to mention Das Signal. According to Google, many people didn’t really enjoy this show, but for me I considered it as a long movie. It’s a very short series with a Sci-Fi and drama element.

That was it. Until next time!