Happening just a week after the London Pride event/parade, the London Trans Pride gathered more than 25,000 people for a march from Trafalgar Square to Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner – despite a rainy start. The more mainstream crowds attending the London Pride have turned the event into a party-like spectacle. In contrast, the London Trans Pride consciously sticks to being a political protest march.

In April 2023, I went to Argentina with the main reason being attending the 7th CSVconf in Buenos Aires. But of course we also went to visit Eugenia’s family over Easter. And we also managed to squeeze in some Lecturers Without Borders while there, even one in German for myself! Between all of these things we also found some time off for sightseeing.

In October 2022, Eugenia and I spent a few weeks in Laos both in Vientiane and Luang Prabang. A big reason for going was that Eugenia gave some workshops in Vientiane, but we also gave some school lectures through Lecturers Without Borders while there.

This website has included a little personal API in the footer for quite a while. But in recent-(ish) months I’ve expanded a bit on it, as you can see in the screenshot above. It now also makes an informed guess on whether I’m likely doing okay on a given day or whether I might be under the weather – for example because of falling sick, having slept poorly or other factors.

Having recently moved from Paris to London, it was time to get a new nametag for our dog Ohana – as the old one still displayed Eugenia’s old, French phone number. This wasn’t great as many folks don’t have phone contracts that allow calling abroad (thanks Brexit?). Ohana’s old name tag was custom-made with a laser cutter – for both cutting the shape and adding her name and the phone number.

Socrates I’m a huge fan of the Quantified Self and Personal Science movement in which one uses empirical methods to answer personal questions. Related to that, I try to collect and mine as many personal data sources as possible. And visualizing the data to learn from this is the part I really enjoy.

On the weekend of September 17/18, 2022 the annual European Heritage Days took place again. During this weekend many monuments which typically aren’t openly accessible open their doors for the general public. Amongst the buildings that are open to the public during these days is the Palais du Luxembourg , which was built in the 17th century and has been housing parts of the French legislature since the 19th century.

In August 2022 I went to visit Wetzlar and the Leitz-Park together with Vinh. Beyond checking out the old city, we were particular interested in going to the Leitz-Park as it is the birth place of Leica cameras and 35mm photography more broadly.

La Grande-Motte is a comparatively new commune in the Hérault département in Occitanie in southern France that was built in the 60s and 70s in what used to be a marsh. The city was planned by a single architect – Jean Balladur – who was inspired by the works of Oscar Niemeyer and pre-Columbian, Aztec pyramids.

tl;dr: Differences in my heart rate depending on the applications I use are small With France being back in a second lockdown (though the rules are a bit less strict this time around), I thought it would be interesting to look at the impact of different habits a bit more.