#21 Berlin post-Christmas

Life peek

After about ten days spent with family and friends in Switzerland, we took the train back to Berlin on December 25th. On the ride back, I continued restructuring the way my recipes are coded^[1], as well as watched two heist movies with Robin.

I don't visit people I love in Switzerland as often as I would like to. Days always feel full and intense, as visits and appointments are scheduled one day after another. Yet, I don't miss Lausanne or Geneva. When not meeting with friends or family, I usually get bored in these cities I used to live in.

Anyway, we are having one more laid back Christmas party today with close friends from Germany, the US and Brazil. Let's see how this international party deals with the traditional Swiss cheese fondue! I'll personally allow for non-traditional toppings, spices and sides, but let's see what Robin's views are on such blasphemy. At least, it'll be fun to watch.

Read & Watched

Army of Thieves (2021)

Matthias Schweighöfer directed, produced and had the leading role in Army of Thieves. We watched it on our 12-hour ride back from Switzerland. The plot was unoriginal, but entertaining nonetheless. Schweighöfer's character and performance is pretty amazing, he made us laugh and cry. From my perspective, the movie also gets bonus points for showing locations in Berlin and other parts of Germany. I felt right at home!

Army of the Dead (2021)

After watching Army of Thieves, we discovered that it actually had a sequel that came out the same year! We still had 3 hours left before arriving in Berlin… so we continued our streak and watched Army of the Dead as well. The prequel was more focused on the heist and comedy part of the show, whereas the sequel was much more zombie-action-packed, as well as serious overall.

Discovered

Back to the Future

Irina Werning, based in Argentina, looks at people old photographs and helps them reenact these past scenes. In her own words:

I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it's imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… In 2011, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

Robin and I stumbled upon the book documenting this project in a coffee shop^[2]. The before / after pictures are funny, shocking and endearing. We will definitely try to do the same with some pictures of our own!

T(W)IL

To play chess again

Yesterday, we went to one of our favorite coffee shops in Berlin. We usually go there to "work" as they have a very tolerant laptop policy. They also have a massive wooden chessboard.

Even though Robin is a big chess fan, I am quite reluctant to play with him. On one hand because I don't like to lose^[3], and on the other hand because I just feel lost most of the time.

For once, I agreed to play a game with him (and did feel a bit crappy losing badly at the end). However, as we went back home and played some more on lichess.org, I started to enjoy the puzzles, post-game analysis and trainings available on the platform. Losing hard still leave me quite sore. But seeing it more like a competition with my own abilities (a.k.a. my chess rating), rather than a competitive game against another player, makes me feel much better and excited about the whole thing. ⊙

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1. I used to directly code the HTML of each recipe. This worked quite well when my recipe layouts were more straightforward. The HTML template I am using is becoming more complex, as it includes microformats and needs more styling. Basically, I am now dividing my recipes more clearly between the recipes content (e.g. ingredient list, instructions, etc.) and their shared HTML structure. ↩︎

2. Where else? ↩︎

3. One on one competitive games often make me feel crappy if I am losing or even winning too much. ↩︎