Weekly Post 5

Recap

My Monday was basically a full day at university. After lectures I had a meeting with some profs and fellow students to come up with some low-hanging fruits regarding how to improve the study experience. And to eat pizza.

On Tuesday there was no lecture, but I spend time baking muffins because my friend’s birthday was on Monday while meeting with other youth council members to talk about a rework of the concept document for us. I also prepared a rather easy Linux lab. My Wednesday started a bit crazy because I took a train outside of Hamburg to get to my grandmother and giving/installing a new tablet/wifi repeater, in preparation of Badminton. After that we had an interesting lecture.

Thursday we finished the well-prepared lab successfully, and I prepared the topics for the next youth council meeting (we have these bimonthly). I also had a great moment in Volleyball where I use knee protectors, so I often jump on my knees to reach a “lower than anticipated” ball. But at one point during the training one came loose so I did slide on my skin which was painful, never had that happen before — did get the ball though. Friday was a long uni day again, then I spend the evening with my friend catching up on Andor. In the night to Saturday I went to my girlfriend.

And on Saturday I was with her brothers’ confirmation, and after that we went to a mutual friends birthday party. On Sunday I had a bit of a rough start in the day, but took time to catch up with my mother about Rhythm of War. Then did a bit of lab work, visited a friend, and we tried out coffee which my father bought because it had his name on it, and I got 3D printed stuff. I closed the week with the last episode of Andor.

Culinary highlight

We dared trying out Geschnetzeltes (which there is apparently no English word for, so uh. Thin strips of meat in a cream sauce with mushrooms and spring onion), which involves Soja which we had a kind of hit-and-miss experience with thus far. Tasted great this time.

And I did try out poppy seed muffins, and a second charge with basic ones, which uses some dark chocolate we still have lying around. Especially the second charge had a perfect consistency.

On top of that, there was some very tasty self made strawberry cake when I visited my friend. Especially for me vegan, which made it even better!

Weekly thought

Music. I love music, I play some instruments, and I do have a bit of understanding in the theory behind music. Sometimes I happen to catch myself trying to analyse some parts of music I hear.

This happened this week. YouTube Music somehow suggested to me Dance with Somebody from Mando Diao. This is not the radio version, which I don’t think I have heard before. It has an amazing long introduction into the song where they continuously change what instrument you can currently hear and which you can’t, and they build the tension before the actual singing a lot of times, baiting you to think the song starts but it doesn’t yet. All while the iconic breathing is audible. It has way more character than the short radio intro.

While I was enjoying this I started to wonder about how this all fits together and why the other iconic part of the song, the violins, are so memorable. And then I realised that they don’t start on the first beat, but on the next eight one.

On the first eight of the note there is only the rather simple drums which are very present throughout the whole song. And then the strings set in and do their thing while the melody synth comes and goes. This is something they do the entire song, they weave the melody and their singing around the really well provided 4th and 8th beats of the drums. And I think that this is the reason why you remember them so well, because you kinda expect them to start earlier so you stumble over that, and then they have a very nice melody.

Currently watching/reading/listening

I am reading the Rhythm of War still, which is really great. I do love the current plot, am very intrigued where it goes now. They found a new way to use fabrials, which are kind of like mobile gadgets which need recharging in a regular storm. I love this kind of step by step building of knowledge, though it is really quick :D

Do you want to see unofficial public transportation maps? I know you do, and I have you covered now: larstransportmaps.com

We really love Andor, it is an amazing second season. They do cover a lot more story this time but they basically finished all the setups now, and we have still 3 episodes left. Very excited what they will come up with for the end.

Games

We played dominion, I bought the Seaside extension for my friends’ birthday. It was a lot of fun, it introduces the duration cards which stay an additional round. My friend somehow managed to do another village type of really long rounds with these cards…

At the birthday party we played Munchkin Booty which I gifted for the second birthday. It was a lot of fun, a great take on the munchkin series.

Projects

I got the 3D printed parts. Almost all of them. I got a touchscreen for the raspberry pi, we want to use it to access our mealie.io instance in a specific out of the way place in the kitchen. I found this adafruit article about it, though they do make you give them an e-mail to download the parts which kinda sucks. My friend forgot printing the last part so we can’t install it yet. But it works.

As always, make the best out of your day!