#weeklyreview 05/2026
Summary:
Week 05 centred largely around frozen water. First in the form of our frozen lake, then black ice on my way to the office and eventually in beautiful frozen leaves on the weekend.
Sprinkle in some tinkering with flashcards, my new thermal camera and the usual food porn pictures. But there are also some pieces on chronic illness and updates on my reading.
Frozen Water
Sunday
On Sunday the brave winter swimming group gathered on the frozen lake and axed a square hole into the surface. After several weeks of constant below 0º C temperatures the ice thickness was close to 20 cm. With joined forces we managed to get it open with large axes and sledge hammers. A few of us took a refreshing dip in the water. I did not. I’m swimmer… not so much a sitting duck or floater 😀 I must be able to move to try and produce at leaste a little body heat and especially to distract myself from the freakin’ cold.
We left the ice shield right next to the hole and thought thats obvious enough that there is a hole. Unfortunately still a kid later managed to fall into the hole. Fortunately it “just got wet” as the hole isn’t that deep. But still a shock of course. We then tried to mark the hole more clearly with branches and spray paint.
Monday
In the night to Monday, after several days of really cold weather it suddenly started to rain. Instantly a thick layer of black ice formed and made the city really slippery and dangerous. Finally I could put my snow chains for shoes to use. They were sitting in our closet for a decade I think and waiting for their chance. Now it was the time. Strapped them to my boots and happily walked into the office. The trains were not going anyway because of the ice on the tracks and power lines. And biking would have been suicidal (still some people tried… I hope they made it)
Throughout the week it remained really dangerously slippery outside. One day I was brave (or stupid) enough to try the bike. It went OK and I survived. But can’t really recommend.
Saturday
As it continued to be below freezing point all the plants were covered with a visible layer of clear ice. On some plants that lead to beautiful ice sculptures that could be carefully peeled off the leaves. I collected a few of them and took photos graphs. Of course posted it on Mastodon as well and that post really got a lot of attention.
Post by @maxheadroom@hub.uckermark.social View on Mastodon
Tazzie
Finally my friend is back from Tasmania and brought me some sweet gifts. Among those is this super cool Tasmanian devil oven mitten. How cool is that!?
Food porn
I’m a fan of the “nose to tail” philosophy when it comes to meat. If an animal has to die, then we should use as much as possible of it.
On Sunday we had a classic German dish (I’d say): fried chicken liver with Potatoes and glazed onion rings. That was cheap dish my mother used to cook on Saturdays for us. For whatever reason liver was considered less valuable meat. Maybe for the distinctive taste. That’s why it was on Saturdays (an almost normal working day in the GDR) and not for Sundays.
On Monday is was over at a friends place for dinner. She’s a marvellous cook and fixed us chicken roasted on a bed of (basically) leek, white bean and bacon stew. I brought my famous New York Cheesecake for dessert 🙂
During the week kiddo demanded Schnitzel. Another famous staple of my mother. So it was Schnitzel with potatoes and a classic roux sauce and a side of beans.
New Toy
I’ve got myself a little thermal camera to toy with. I was always fascinated with being able to visualise invisible to the human eye things with tech. A thermal camera reveals infrared heat radiation. Now that we’re building out #project25 attic and do the insulation I thought it was a good time to give in and get such a camera (settled for a Thermal Master P1). It’s simply attached to my phone and the accompanying app produces images with various color themes and can also overlay the image from the phone camera. Really nifty toy 🙂
cooking dinnerShowing the underfloor heatingCronic Illness
My favourite author right now – Kristie De Garis – wrote another brilliant piece last week. This time about her chronic illness and how it’s perceived in society. Again a very on point and reflective post. Honest, concise and easy to read.
It resonates so much with me as my wife is suffering from chronic illness as well and describes the same issue. Chronic illness is not getting better. It’s fighting every day to not get worse. And that fight isn’t usually seen and even less understood by people without chronic illness.
Learning
As complained about last week that I didn’t learn enough I tried to make an explicit effort. Always wanted to learn to use the Linux terminal multiplexer tmux properly. So I looked into it. But quickly my brain veered off into ideas on how to make this into a flashcard. So I started vibe coding a script that would generate printable flashcards from a Markdown file and published it on my Forgejo instance.
But … I eventually also learned about tmux by using my flashcards. Also found a flashcard application for my phone and thought it’s a neat idea to build flashcards while I’m reading a book. So I’m now building a set of flashcards for the Vienna Circle
Reading
I’ve finished the “Manual for Cleaning Woman” by Lucia Berlin. It was a fun read. Unusual writing style for me and at times a little confusing to follow whether it’s autobiographical chapter or a story about someone else.
I’ve now picked up a book about the Vienna Circle (Wiener Kreis) by Karl Sigmund (with the help of Douglas R. Hofstadter … the author of the famous Gödel, Escher, Bach). The title is “Exact thinking in demented times” and it’s about that gilded age in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th centuries and the breathtaking discoveries that were made by those famous scientists all at the same time fascism and Nazis rose to power in Germany and other European countries.
Still manage to keep my daily reading streak for this year… but then again it’s just January 🤦🏻♂️
#chronicIllness #enEN #flashcards #food #MECFS #project25 #tmux #Uckermark #weekly #weeklyreview
