Late summer and early autumn have been a time of ups and downs.
Home
A lot of renovations this summer. One of the biggest ones was the translucent roofing installation:
After around six hours (including breaks), it’s all done! Just in time for rain.
You can see the gnarly reddish wall in the picture. That and a bunch of other grime and residue was cleaned off as part of a neighborhood exterior painting project. The place is looking a lot nicer now from the outside (no pictures of this I’m afraid).
We also got some minor things done, like installing curtains to my fiancé’s office room. I got some new toolboxes that I use to keep everything nice and organized, and hidden away when not needed.
With all the materials and tools lying around our home has felt like a job site, but now that everything’s done and cleaned up, I’m happy that everything got done as well as it did.
Personal life
I lost a close relative to illness. The passing was expected, in a way, so I have had time to process things in advance, but when it actually happened it turned everything on its head for a while.
Sorting out things after the death has taken a lot of time and effort, but things are now more or less in order. I have got a lot of support and help from my peers, and I feel I have let myself process the grief well.
We’ve also been planning the wedding that’s taking place in 2026. In many ways I feel out of my element 😅 But things are moving forward.
FreeBSD server
I have been setting up a home server and writing a blog series about it. Check out parts one and two! My plan is to move things back from the cloud & other people’s computers back to my home and self-host as many things as possible.
Books
Finished
- Robert Nystrom, Crafting Interpreters
- Michael W. Lucas, Absolute FreeBSD
- Michael W. Lucas, FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS
- Michael W. Lucas, FreeBSD Mastery: Jails
- Leo Brodie, Thinking Forth
Started
- Benjamin C. Pierce, Types and Programming Languages
- Adam Aleksic, Algospeak
Games
Played
- Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
- Hollow Knight: Silksong
Started
- God of War: Ragnarök
Enjoyed as a VOD/live stream
- Watched CDawgVA’s playthroughs of MGS 1–3 and Revengeance
- A lot of Silksong VODs and speedruns
Travel
I late August I went on a company trip to Krakow, Poland for one weekend. A nice city with beautiful old town buildings, but sadly the weather was a bit dull. My favorite food spot was the Black Duck 😋.
In September we had booked a trip to Italy with a group of friends. We stayed in Rome for a couple of days, enjoying the 30C heat and sights such as the Villa Borghese. We had already visited the Colosseum and the Vatican on earlier trips so we decided to avoid the queues and visit less popular places. It was the Jubileum year so many sights were jam-packed. After that we got a rental and drove ~500km south to Calabria, where we spent the next week at a really nice villa overlooking the sea.
Later in September I attended EuroBSDCon 2025 in Zagreb, Croatia. A lot of great talks and lab sessions! I might write a conference notes post about the trip.
So, a lot of traveling in a short timespan, so I’ve been feeling quite exhausted. The rest of the autumn is looking less hectic, so I might be able to work on projects more 🤔
Anime
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica
- Started Kill la Kill
- Chainsaw Man (still a couple of eps to go)
