Week 28: The Workflow

9 Jun 2026

Another two-weeks long week, productive and filled with A-HA! moments.

• 🚗 Failed my driving exam again and now on a five months-long waiting list! At this point I am so pissed at this system that is designed for failure. The examiner's job should be to check if you are prepared to drive in traffic without endangering people. Instead, they seem to think their job is to make things as confusing as possible, really trying to devise different ways to make the test stressful and harder to pass, including talking in formal Spanish (almost archaic, I have never encountered anyone speaking like this, not even in government or banking), or purposefully sending students to areas of road work, construction, closed roads (which was my case both times). The internet is full of people who took 7 or 8 attempts before they passed, paying very hefty sums before each attempt.
• 🪪 Here's the funny thing. I have a Brazilian driver's license since 2004. I haven't driven since then because of fear after a car accident. But I have the damned license and I am allowed to drive. I feel I already did my part too: I took over 40 double-classes (1h30 each) in Spain, and I drove on the highway at 120km/h, in town at 20km/h full of pedestrians and crazy drivers, roundabouts, I drove at night, under the rain, with the sun blinding me, did it all. I've been practicing since November and I've had two driving instructors say I am super prepared and driving very well. Most importantly: I am not afraid anymore. I don't need to go through this bullshit of deliberately tricky exams to get a license. There is an agreement between both countries, and all I need to do is renew my old Brazilian one, and exchange for a brand new Spanish one. So that's what I'll do.
• 📺 Finished watching After Life. Depressing but very human. We liked it.
• 🍿 Watched Mandalorian & Grogu on the big screen, and wrote briefly about it.
• Mother-in-law visiting again.
• 💸 Trading went great in March, then awful from mid- to late- April, then ok in May, back to good those past couple weeks. I'm feeling tempted to share a little bit more on trading.¹
• 🍿 Watched Hoopers! So good! I really loved it! 🦦😍
• 📷 Tried Dante Sisofo's FLUX 7-day challenge, but only went to day 5. The daily theme thing doesn't work for me, but I absolutely LOVED shooting in B&W with my Xiaomi 15 Ultra! Set the camera to jpeg, capture profile Leica Authentic, and filter Leica BW HC (black & white high contrast). Absolutely incredible photos, I really REALLY enjoyed this.
• 💸 Started a deep dive (à la Pradeep Bonde) on 2nd Entries. After I took all my screenshots, I got a bit overwhelmed. In the past I've used Notion and Powerpoint. Qullamaggie has been saving screenshots in Evernote for ages. I felt it was not enough, I just couldn't devise a way to get organized. And yes, I did write pseudocode and if/else statements in my pursuit of organizing my screenshots, LOL. Problem is, those solutions are all text-based, but the chart screenshots are, well, images. It's almost as if one needed to use a photo DAM to organize those screenshots, keyword them, add to collections… Oh wait!²
• 😎 Mini-vacations! We went on a short five-day road trip around Costa Brava and Occitanie. It was lovely, great weather, great food, laughter, many many memories in the form of photos and drawings. I'll share more in the form of one or several blog posts in the coming weeks.
• 📷 For the first time ever, I downloaded all the photos immediately after the trip, edited them, and PRINTED them. Proud of myself! Excire Foto was indeed a great help, the culling project is quite helpful. In one day I culled 1500 photos down to 220 images that tell the whole story, and to further pick 50 for printing. The following day I edited the 50 selects on DxO, and printed 2 copies of each on the canon selphy CP1500. Wrote captions on the back of each photo with a 4B pencil. Put the photos in two identical tiny photo albums, one for me, one for MIL. Gifted MIL her album, of the trip she just took. Was met with many tears and hugs. The workflow was a huge success!³

weeknotes