Month: December 2016

2016 in numbers

2016 in numbers – or how to make sense of your personal data

thegirlinthecafe

Here is a little disclaimer for this post:

  1. <nerd alert on>
  2. This has become a bit of a long post … don’t say I did not warn you
  3. And I am not a designer – so this is not pixel perfect. But for this purpose it is good enough for me. If you look very carefully you’ll probably spot some pixels that aren’t completely aligned but then I am not a designer. I hacked this together in Google Draw, it’ll have to do. I’ll try to explain how I gathered all the data.

1. Cycling to work

This shows the number of times I have cycled to work this year. In order to automatically track this I created an IFTTT recipe which gets triggered on my phone  when I pass a certain location on my route to work. I can only pass this spot on bicycle and will only pass it when I cycle to the office, so this works fine for me. IFTTT logs this in a Google sheet, so the only thing I need to do at the end of the year is check how often this is logged.

So I cycled to work 105 times this year.

  • (Since I am also tracking when it rains (as you do…)) – I only had to cycle 5 time through rain. This is only 4,7% of the time (quite amazing when you think about it).
  • 105 cycle trips to work have saved me about €220 in gasoline and has also saved me from the stress and frustration of standing in traffic jams during rush hour.
  • It hasn’t saved me from some serious bruises though, as it turned out that taking a turn on a frozen cyclepath makes you fall flat on your face… (be careful cycling in the wintertime is the lesson here).

And finally, here is a graph (click for larger version) showing how much I cycled per month. (from the last 4 years). Seems like I finally figured out this year that I can cycle to work in the fall/winter too. Let’s see if we can tackle the spring too in 2017.

Cycle stats
Cycle stats

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All the reasons you too should see La La Land

thegirlinthecafe 
Here's to the ones
who dream
Foolish, as they may seem
Here's to the hearts
that break
Here's to the mess
we make

You should see it because …

  • Hey girl, Ryan Gosling is in it.
    Not enough? OK – Ryan Gosling dancing? And singing. And playing the piano? I mean – come on! (It took Ryan Gosling 3 months to play the piano like this, as it is really him playing it in the movie).
  • Oh and Emma Stone. She is fantastic and sings great too. And they have great chemistry together.
  • Yes it is a musical. I don’t like musicals either. But there is less singing in it than you would expect. And the singing that is in it is so beautiful and touching that you forget you’re actually watching a musical.
  • The colours used in this film are wonderful, it’s a visual feast for the eyes.
  • Have a look at those (fairly long but wonderful) one take shots in this film. Some of them took 3 months(!) of rehearsing just to make sure get them right when the outdoor light of the sunset was perfect for the scene.
  • The soundtrack is just perfect.
  • Because they don’t make films like these anymore. (Well appararently they do, but you know what I mean)
  • Like John Legend? He is in it!
  • Because it takes you away from the messed up world we live in for 2 hours of so.
  • And the story (set in modern times) make you think. Which for me is normally the most important thing about a film. (even though there are people who say I think too much …)
  • And last but not least: for the sheer amount of courage it takes to make a movie like this in times when films only seem to care about which special powers the next superhero has.

Plot: “LA-LA Land” is a riveting and uncensored look at Hollywood. It is a story that reveals how friendships sustain us and keep us going. It is a tale that reflects our celebrity-obsessed culture. It is a revealing look at some people’s desire to be loved, adored, and adulated at any cost.

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Hologram for the King

6 movies to get you through your Christmas weekend

thegirlinthecafe

Christmas time is not my favourite time of the year, I am always glad when we enter January again and we can all get back to normal. But there are ways to get through December – watching some appropriate Decembery movies is one of them. Of course there are the obvious Xmas movies getting repeated every year (Love Actually, Home Alone etc.) but here is a list of 6 movies which are repeated a bit less but definitely worth seeing:

Dan in Real life
I know I have seen this move about a dozen times now (yesterday again actually) but I never get tired of it. Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche are great together. When I saw this film I immediately crushed on Steve Carell and discovered what a great actor he is (also in more serious movies).

Dan: It might be wrong – but there is a certain rightness to our wrongness.

Last Chance Harvey
Dustin Hofman and Emma Thompson are great together in this last chance for romance for Harvey film. If they can make it – we all can – can’t we? Oh, and set in lovely London …

Harvey: Should I take that as a hopeful sign?

Serendipity
This one is a bit older but still a classic – what if you left meeting the love of your life again to chance? (Oh and John Cusack…)

Sara: You don’t have to understand. You just have to have faith.
Jonathan: Faith in what?
Sara: Destiny

Lost in Translation
Has been around for quite a while too, but can always be watched again, because who can forget (and get over) the ending. And the Awesome Bill Murray will make you fall on love with him.

Bob: I don’t want to leave.
Charlotte: So don’t. Stay here with me. We’ll start a jazz band.

At Middleton
This is probably the least known film of this list, but I saw it last year and was pleasantly surprised. Who knew Andy Garcia could be this sweet? Liked it – you might too.

George Hartman: I’m a cardiac surgeon. I was speaking with a patient.
Edith Martin: Hmm, so you can fix a heart over the phone?
George Hartman: Depends on the data plan.

Hologram for the King
And last but not least, the lovely Tom Hanks is always worth watching. This is a sweet story about trying to figure out your life in a different environment. Has nothing whatsoever to do with Xmas but I recommend it anyway!

Alan Clay: What do you think of this?
Zahra: You and me, the big culture clash? We are separated by the thinnest filament.
Alan Clay: Well, that’s the way I think.
Zahra: That’s the way it is.

 

 

Film: Nocturnal Animals – (8/10)

thegirlinthecafe

This second film from Tom Ford is a bit of a slow starter but don’t worry about that, it will quickly grab you by your shirt and won’t let you go until you have left the cinema. This is one very beautifully shot and stylish (of course) film that is going to stay with you for a while.
I highly recommend you to watch it, if only for great performances from Amy Adams and Jack Gyllenhaal and the beautiful stylistic scenes.

Oh and nocturnal, I had to look it up!

Plot: An art gallery owner is haunted by her ex-husband’s novel, a violent thriller she interprets as a veiled threat and a symbolic revenge tale.

Nocturnal Animals has an IMDB Rating of 8, which is exactly what I would rate it too.

Nocturnal Animals trailer

Read more about Nocturnal Animals on IMDB »

Bored is boring – the 2016 edition

thegirlinthecafe

You know you are bored when:

  • None of the 352 songs on your Spotify “Happy” (the name of the playlist alone for crying out loud …) playlist seem worth listening to.
  • You start reading the mails in your spam filter…
  • You check your watch too often. And because you can’t believe that only this few minutes have passed since you last checked it, you check the clock on your mobile phone as well. Only few minutes had passed indeed.
  • You keep making cups of tea, even though you are not really thirsty because you already too much tea.
  • You keep eating sweets, even though they are nearly coming out of your nose.
  • You make lists of things you do when you are seriously bored.

Now this list is very appropriate for the day I am having – but a little bit of browsing through my archives I found this one:
from 2007. It is kind of shocking to see that nearly 10 years later – too little has changed. I need to make some serious plans for 2017.