Having seen “An Impossible Project” at the Metropol on Wednesday made me realise again how much I like going to the cinema. At least to those of the little, artsy kind. Like the “Filmkunstkinos” here in Düsseldorf.

The whole experience is just so much richer than at home: you get to see the film on a big screen in a dark room, with loud sound and without distractions. It’s much more immersive and I’m always much more into the story being told.

Plus, the locations here in town are all very cosy and inspiring. You get to smell the popcorn. They sell great beer. And you get new ideas for what to watch next. And usually those cinemas are frequented by interesting folks, too.

We all tested negative on Tuesday. And that means life for us is largely back to “normal” again. So far. It steel feels like things can change again at any minute. 🤷‍♂️

In other good news, my shoulder is constantly getting better and I can do most things without pain now.

We waited three days for the results. And since 1pm today it’s certain that Zoe and Nicole had – or still have – COVID. Very likely the Omicron variant. My own PCR test result was negative.

That explains Nicole’s somewhat heavy cold symptoms last week. But both are now feeling ok again. To be honest, Zoe only had some heavy coughing the night from Monday on Tuesday. Otherwise she seemed happy and healthy as ever. (Fingers crossed, no long-term symptoms will develop).

Maybe I’ll still get it (or have it already). We’ll see. (Nicole and I have spent our time mostly in separate rooms for the past few days.) We’ll all get another test (non-PCR) on Tuesday. When those are all negative, we’ll hope some normality will return.

We’re definitely happy we decided to already get boostered end of last year.

So my shoulder seems to get better slowly but steadily, thank you!

But the corona situation is frustrating. Now the PCR pool test today was negative while we know of one kid, that also was part of the pool, that had a positive self-test in the afternoon. And last week there was a positive PCR pool test with all the children’s individual tests afterwards being negative. And now I’m questioning all the tests!

So we’re thinking about leaving Zoe out of kindy this week altogether again, just to be safe and not risk an infection. I think at least half of the children in her group have it right now. And with seemingly unreliable tests, it seems like the more cautious action.

My shoulder already doesn’t hurt as much. But I still can’t put socks on by myself.

So, ok, next week is not off to a great start, either. Fell while skateboarding today, and now my right shoulder hurts and I don’t want to move it. Then, this time there have been Covid cases in kindy. Luckily Zoe and the two of us are fine (so far), but it sucks for all the parties that are directly affected. And now the kindergarten is understaffed; and we’ll first try to get another PCR test for Zoe before sending her again (and wait for others to test, too). That means work-juggling continues.

Sorry for the negativity. Maybe now 12 hours of shoulder pain is making me a little grumpy. 🤷‍♂️ (don’t feel sorry, I fell while skate-boar-ding🙄.)

It’s been a bit of an chaotic week here. Zoe being sick at the beginning of the week, and then two positive Covid PCR pool tests in kindy (at least one of which was false alarm) meant she was home four of five days. Works just fine with two working parents. Not. Hopefully next week will be better.

I recently bought Pixelmator Photo for iOS and now I can finally do all my image editing on the iPad.

Which is missing for me from Apple’s “Photos” app is a “Retouch” tool, which I use for dust-removal – and for which I had to use the Mac-variant for. Until now. Because Pixelmator Photo has it. I don’t know what took me so long.

I DIYed me some wind-noise reducers using a sock and a bit of velcro. With my new bike, I started riding a bit faster and one thing that bothered me was all that wind noise. So I looked for possible solutions and came across these catears. But before ordering something pre-made so seemingly simple, I wanted to try making something like this myself. So, I cut a sock, glued on a bit of velcro and wrapped the whole thing around my helmet strap. Et voilà. And it indeed works and reduces the wind noise significantly. And it does not look too strange IMO.

Just got my booster shot. It’s only been a little over four months since my second Pfizer/BioNTech vaccination dose. But they say to not wait any longer. And I figured being protected for winter makes more sense than being ready in spring.

Ordered some 300+ prints the other day. It’s always something different holding physical photographs in your hand. Even when it’s relatively cheap ones, like these.

I usually use ALDI Fotos and I have been very satisfied with their service so far. The main argument for them is that they can print on matte paper with a white border. And it turned out they can even print my panoramic images with only little cropping.

I should really make more of a routine of ordering prints. The more photos I get out of my computer and into the physical world the better. Gotta feed the archive!

Bought concert tickets for “Der Weg einer Freiheit” in Köln in November. It’ll be the first concert after a looooong break.

Here’s a current screenshot of my iPhone’s homescreen. It’s been looking like this for quite a while now and so I wanted to log this.

Oh man, I’m so behind on my photos. I’ve developed and scanned everything until and including June. But there are now 25 more rolls to scan and currently 13 rolls still to develop. And I haven’t edited much from this year, either. Makes me a bit nervous about being able to keep up with my photo journal in any timely fashion. But I need and want to! But I will probably end up posting a whole year again, as I did with 2020.

Today, I at least finally ordered myself a 5-reel development tank, which will make film-developing quite a bit quicker and more convenient, compared to using two 2-reel tanks.

Got the second COVID-19 vaccine shot Wednesday evening. And other than a sore upper arm again, I haven’t had noticeable side-effects.

Got our first COVID-19 vaccine shot (BioNTech/Pfizer) yesterday. Having a bit of a sore upper arm, but that’s it for side-effects so far.

We’ll get the seconds dose in four weeks, and so should be “fully vaccinated” by September.

During the recent vacation, Zoe took a photo of me with my Instax Wide. And this now is my avatar for the summer.

Normalerweise kein großer Sport-Gucker, aber die Fußball-EM verfolge ich dann doch mal wieder ganz gerne.

New pedals! The compressor is mainly planned for use with the bass. And the Eyemaster gives me the HM-2 Swedish chainsaw sound. Gonna learn some Entombed I guess!

Instagram seems to have definitively locked out people without an account. I couldn’t open a single page for weeks now.

A shame some people only post there. But I’m not going to get an account.

How come Rails’ String#blank? never made it into Ruby itself? So frustrating! And I thought, Ruby was about “programmer happiness”!? Well, guess what, Matz: I’M NOT HAPPY!!!1!!

I don’t know how parents regularly have their child(ren) sleep in their bed. Nine times out of ten we get beaten, kicked and headbutted. Best case, we get woken up multiple times per night. Worst case, we additionally get hurt. Plus, Zoe also wakes up way earlier than usual. The snuggles make up for the abuse a little, though.

Messing around with the website again. Now having pages grouping all blog posts (articles, notes and links) at /blog and all media posts (music, movies and books) at /media.

Makes it easier to scroll through all content at once.

Here is the signal path and pedalboard settings for how I recorded “Bridge of Sighs”:

• Strat knock-off, pick-up switch in 4th position.
• Distortion with low gain.
• Tremolo in a subtle setting.
• A bit of delay.
• Some reverb.
• A clean amp in Garageband.

The audio in the video is a combination of the Garageband recording and the sound recorded by the iPhone.

I still wish more people/bands/utilities/companies/restaurants had RSS feeds, so this wouldn’t even be necessary.

Oh, sweet: NetNewsWire – my RSS reader of choice – added the ability to subscribe to Twitter timelines.

Videos are now served via HTTPS. This fixes playback in Google Chrome. For now, I uploaded a manually generated Let’s Encrypt certificate to my HostEurope webspace for that subdomain. So now, videos should finally be working for most people!

Gestern auf die “Heavy Metal”-Playlist von Amazon Music gestoßen. Als erstes kommt Iron Maiden, dann Metallica, und danach – natürlich – als drittes – ganz klar – gleiche Liga! – …

 

 

… Guano Apes! 🤷‍♂️

Argh! I didn’t know Chrome doesn’t allow mixed content (HTTPS + HTTP) anymore. So, I should get SSL sorted for my newly created videos.danielpietzsch.com subdomain.

Update: Sorted!

Das Kind hat woanders übernachtet. Endlich mal wieder in Ruhe Sonntagmorgens im Wohnzimmer Death Metal hören.