December 2023

Jorge Sanz | 2024-01-04 | 621 words | update

A bit late for the December update but here we go. I don't think I'll have the energy for a full year review, but I don't know... maybe?

🏠 Personal

The month was dominated by the brain procedure my partner had, the weeks before and also after it. She is recovering slowly but it is taking a bit longer we were expecting, so we need to keep staying positive and try to not overthink it too much.

Apart from that, with the Christmas season, we tried to stay out of home as much as we could and we attended some events, family gatherings, etc. Christmas season in Spain actually finishes after the Three Wise Man night on January 5th so there's still some more family meet ups to do.

Concert and illustration book fair at the CCCC

Nativity scene inside a Central Market model in the Central Market (a bit of meta, indeed)

We got the cotton candy machine out for the first time

Bernat watcng some TV at Ikea

👨‍💻 Professional

At work things where slow as expected but a highlight was the annual December lunch that again we did at La Marítima in the Valencia Port marina. As always, it is great to connect with workmates that live close but I actually don't see much, except a workmate that happens to live close and we take our kids to the same school.

La Marítima

The last two working days of the year I chose to put some Volunteering Time Off working on some web development for the OSGeo Foundation. Hopefully that work will be published soon, improving the onboarding experience for new members. The very last day I also had a work urgency call that fortunately was fixed pretty quickly so I could finish the year without much trouble.

❤️ Community

This month I did not have any community gatherings but I got a visit from a geospatial acquaintance so it was great to meet him "for real" for the first time. The same day I had the Christmas lunch I also attended a conference given by Vicente, a long time uni friend that spoke about his work in the Altamira cave through almost 20 years mapping on iteven the smallest thing you can imagine.

Vicente Bayarri at the UPV

Finally I also got my 2024 Geohipster Calendar, but it happened to have the 2023 calendar and I will only put the maps on my wall instead. Not a big deal!

Geohipster Calendar 2023/2024

📚 Reading

For the fist half of the month I read The Night Masquerade[1], the last book of the Binti series (review[2] in Spanish). On 14th I got a Humble Bundle sale of John Scalzi[3] books and I did read two of them:

1: https://lectura.social/book/27039/s/the-night-masquerade-binti-3

2: https://lectura.social/user/jorgesanz/review/51421/

3: https://whatever.scalzi.com/

The Kaiju Preservation Society[4], review[5] in Spanish

Redshirts: A novel with three codas[6], review[7] in Spanish

Then just by the end of the month I started Old Man's War[8] which I'm enjoying as well.

4: https://lectura.social/book/1197/s/the-kaiju-preservation-society

5: https://lectura.social/user/jorgesanz/review/52203/s/divertido

6: https://lectura.social/book/37613/s/redshirts-a-novel-with-three-codas

7: https://lectura.social/user/jorgesanz/review/55170

8: https://lectura.social/book/66523/s/old-mans-war

You can follow my reading activity at my lectura.social[9] fediverse account.