Yesterday I saw what I think the most vivid rainbow in my life. I don't remember ever seeing as bright one before. But then I started thinking whether it just felt that way because everything else seems to be less colourful these days.

Quick study on the subject seems to support my premise. For example the white, black and shades of grey are dominating the car markets. Same can be seen on the sales figures of the interior paints and other interior design elements.

You don't need the state of the art telescope, or even a cheap one to look up and see something astonishing. We often forget how beautiful our own sky can be while looking at the stars and dreaming of strange new worlds.

Those other worlds can be as mundane as our own when all you have ever known is the one you live in. It's easy to forget the things around you when they are nothing new. Sometimes it's worthwhile to stop and look up, or around you and just enjoy and appreciate what you see.

A couple of news from the space (this time without any concerning JWST):

A French scientist posted an image he claimed was of an exoplanet. The joke got out of hand when some people took it for real without realizing the scientist posted a photo of a slice of chorizo claiming it to be a planet as a joke.

Meanwhile ESO's VLT (that's Very Large Telescope... I think the guys making these telescopes lack some imagination...) has captured an image of not only one, but two actual exoplanets orbiting a sun-like star.

There is always the one hottest social media app/service, but the services just come and go. Even of something seems to ride the wave now it can be gone and forgotten tomorrow. The old giants still remain, but even their share is declining when the influencers move across the new platforms and the masses follow. The cycles are just getting shorter.

The latest hotness appears to be an all called BeReal. It's not exactly a new app as it has been around since 2020 already. It just recently did a breakthrough and seems to be popping up everywhere all of the sudden.

The Scottish fold, Chai, joined our family this week. It took a bit longer than expected as the whole litter were so small they couldn't be neutered earlier.

She has been quite active exploring her new home, but getting acquainted with her new sisters and brother has been a bit of a challenge still. The oldest one is the easiest to approach. He has already welcomed four kittens to our home so one more goes just as a routine. The middle one is quite easy going. Gives room to the new one and is just curious from the far.

Today I received a valuable tip about leadership. I've always known that empowering people to take more responsibility and initiative is important. But what I have experienced giving them permission and encouraging them to do what feels right rarely works.

With such vague promises people are often left confused. They don't know exactly what they are allowed to do despite all my encouragement. It's also hard to give any examples at that situation.

After seeing the thrill an event such the Ropecon causes with the visitors I often get the urge to get involved. I want to ensure these events happen again next year and they won't if there isn't enough volunteers willing to spend their free time working towards that goal.

Some time after the events the feeling starts to fade. Unfortunately the recruitment for the next one doesn't start right away. Once the recruitment opens I've ended up in the state where I'm too hesitant to make the jump anymore.

I usually come back home from RopeCon with several new games. This year that was not the case anymore. Nowadays I get most of my new boardgames from crowdfunding campaigns.

This doesn't mean the visit to the con would have been any cheaper this year. I still spend my whole budget, just for other things. Mostly I hot dome new gaming accessories (including yet another two sets of dice).

The RopeCon in is over. This is the first time I feel so sad that some social event is over. Usually, no matter how much I enjoy those events I'm happy when they are over and I can take the moment of silence all by myself.

Going to a big gatherings like Ropecon is great opportunity to meet people I wouldn't normally meet. There are a lot of like-minded people I have come across in some other similar contexts. Maybe we have played in the same game once or twice in the last. Maybe we met in another event like this. Or maybe we have only met on the same event in previous years.

RopeCon, the biggest non-commercial roleplaying convention in Europe starts today. After two years without a con it's nice to get back to the live event.

It's one of those events where it's a chance to meet people who I don't usually meet regularly. Other opportunities to meet them have also been nonexistent during the past two years due to the lock down. So there will be people (I hope) that I haven't seen since the last con three years ago.

It's been while since I have last time driven a car with an internal combustion engine. Today, while our car was serviced I got a substitute car with such engine.

After finally managing ro catch up with all the messages I hd received during my vacation the next task seems to be logging back to all the various systems and services. There are surprisingly many places you need to be logged in on a daily basis.

I was worried I might have trouble adjusting back to the regular rhythm after I found myself sleeping longer and longer towards the end of my vacation. Turns out switching back to the old rhythm was hardly an inconvenience.

As I didn't have any meetings in the mornings so far I didn't bother setting up an alarm. I wanted to see how far I would get just by adjusting the time I went to sleep.

First day after vacation and you are greeted woth an abundance of new emails and messages as well as other things demanding your attention. And not to forget: catching up with your colleagues. Luckily most of my co-workers are still on vacation so that part wasn't that much after all.

Most of the messages can be ignored. It's just a chatter, notifications and things that have been already taken care of by others. The trouble is finding out the ones that are still relevant among those.

Now it's over, my four (and a half) week vacation. Tomorrow it's time to get back to work. It's been a while since I have taken this long vacation at one go.

It didn't go surprisingly fast, nor did it feel too long. I think it went just as fast as I was expecting. I don't feel like it was over too soon and I didn't have the feeling at any point of the vacation that I would have had enough already.

There has been a new trailer of the Rings of Power released during the San Diego comic con along with more info about the upcoming series straight from the creators. Everything seems better and better the closer to the premiere we get. I just hope they haven't been promising us too much and set up a huge disappointment.

It's nice to meet new people. I just don't have the knack for it. That's a challenge travelling alone, but luckily at times I have company that is better at hooking up with people.

On our Rammstein trip we ended up spending half of the concert and the rest of the evening with a random group of people. Thanks to my son who somehow just acquainted with them. He's definitely inherited that trait from his mother

Well, just loud... very, very loud. Drums, distorted riffs and electric sounds, some might argue whether it's music at all. Rammstein never disappoints (on stage). There is just something primeval in the energy they bring up on the stage.

This was my third time seeing them live. Every time I've seen them on bigger stages. The previous two were great, but nothing like this. I doubt I will ever have a chance to top this gig. There were a whopping 70 000 people on that concert last night!

We spent last night at ER. Our youngest, who had been sick already several days called saying their condition was getting worse and after evaluating the options the best one turned to be picking them up from their home (65 km away, where I had dropped them earlier in the day) and go see a doctor in ER.