Recently in April '23

It is, yet again, that time of the month to write a bit about what’s been happening lately. April went by relatively fast and it was quite packed with some events, both regarding personal and work life. In addition, the weather is definitely getting so much better than a few months ago.

✍️ Website

Maybe to surprise of many, Hugo is back again. Hugo is the static website generator I used to use before. I have once welcomed Hugo, and later said goodbye. However, it seems that the goodbye didn’t last for long. There are many reasons why I am using Hugo again, but most importantly is the assurance that I can easily rebuilt my website statically and Hugo packs so many features that I want to use.

Don’t take this the wrong way though: I believe custom CMSes are quite important to push the development of custom features and standards we’d like to be more mainstream. In addition, I am still using Eagle, just like I was before, it’s just the rendering that is mostly handled by Hugo.

🍄 Life

Life-wise, I want to mention something that actually happened in March but I forgot: I went to the Bloesempark again. Last year, I also visited this park and took some very nice pictures. It’s this park in the Amsterdamse Bos completely filled with Japanese Cherry Blossom 🌸 trees, layed out in a circle. Very pretty and I do definitely recommend everyone to visit if they get a chance. Be mindful they only bloom 1 to 2 weeks per year, depending on the weather!

Another important event was IPFS þing 2023, a conference dedicated to IPFS implementers. Since I work on one of the implementations, I did go to the conference this year. It’s only the second year it has happened. Last year it was in Reykjavik, this year in Brussels. I had the chance to give an extremely lightening ⚡️ talk. Overall, very nice conference and very well organized. Since I work completely remotely, I really cherish this events where I can finally see and (re)connect with my coworkers in person.

I also finished my current Dutch course. I think it was quite helpful, especially in terms of talking. However, I definitely need much more practice. Since we did not go over the full book, I will try going over the rest of the book during my free time. I really want to reach the point where I can just start and keep a conversation in Dutch, a conversation that is more than simple basic things.

Towards the end of the month, my friends and I were planning on doing a road trip to Normandy. Sadly, we had a small car break down that did not allow it to be driven anymore. However, we made the best out of it. Since we were already in France, in Lille, it was relatively easy to go to Paris. Two people in the group had never gone to Paris, and it was a very nice experience. Basically, we spent 2 nights in Lille and 2 nights in Paris. Very nice moments and fun memories for the future.

🍿 Entertainment

In the entertainment department, I finished watching RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 and the All Stars season is almost coming up. I feel like over the past years, there’s always Drag Race seasons popping up every month. Especially since the international variations started coming out, but I avoid those. It’s too much. I’ve also watched Murder Mystery 2, which was a fun movie. I don’t have anything incredible to say about it.

I think I’m succeeding on one of my “goals” I set last year: I have definitely been watching less series in general. I feel like that has had a good impact as I can focus on other things, such as learning Dutch and going to more social events.

This month was extremely quiet in the gaming department, as I do not think I have played a single game. At least, not anything worth remembering as my brain is not able to remember a single instance where I played. It is possible. I usually go through this cycles: play a bit for some months, stop for more months, come back, and so on and so forth. Now I’m in the low part of that cycle.

Overall, it was a very nice month. Things have happened, the weather is warming up. Have a nice May!