When the first ball of dark red ran out and I had switched to the second one and knitted a few rows with it, it became obvious that the two balls of dark red were from different dye lots. I really should have checked and noticed this earlier – this was pure noob sloppiness. And the sharp line between them really didn’t look good, and the one I used first was slightly darker so I really should have taken the other one first, so to make a long story short, I ripped up the whole red-to-dark-red fade and started over with it. I’m back where I was in early to mid-August. But the journey is the destination and all that, so I don’t even mind too much. I do mind the dangling yarn balls I now have everywhere – weaving in all the ends at the yoke is proving to be a minor nightmare, so now I don’t want to cut the yarn if I don’t have to.

Autumn is coming, and the weather is getting colder.

Electricity prices are crazy this year in southern Sweden (nuclear power plants being shut down due to political decisions in the 1980s, limited transmission capacity between the north and the south, high energy prices in the rest of Europe, etc) and I’m not looking forward to our electricity bills for this cold season.

That top line, double and triple historical prices, that’s this year.

Adrian turned 12 yesterday. He wanted all of us to be there for his celebration, so he waited with the presents and the cake until I got home from Ljubljana.

That large box is a giant Lego set. The Sanctum Sanctorum, for the record. For ages 18+ according to the box; not because of any adult content but because of lots and lots of small fiddly bits.

To pad the gift-giving a bit, he also got the next book in the series he’s reading (Percy Jackson) and some colourful Happy Socks. But it was really the Lego set that captured all his attention.

The cake flavours are chocolate and raspberry this year again – Adrian’s favourites.

After yesterday’s knowledge day, we had an activity day today. We started with a team treasure hunt, with very varied tasks – obscure facts about Slovenia, themed photo challenges (a photo of a license plate with “13” in it; a photo of a stranger wearing something 13|37-branded) and teamed photo challenges (at least 8 people of the team jumping and actually in the air at the same time), visiting odd spots of the city and solving maths puzzles.

I was all peopled out after yesterday so I went off on my own and bagged a few of the far-off walking challenges for our team. It was rainy and sweaty. Especially walking up the castle hill afterwards to rejoin my team. I barely took any photos, both because the rain made it difficult and because I had a tight deadline to meet.

For the afternoon we had a choice between a city tour, a boat tour on the river (which was cancelled for safety reasons due to the rain and flooding), a culinary tour (which I assumed would involve lots of meat and wine) and a hike. Even though we spent a full day walking around Ljubljana just a month ago, I guessed that the city tour would show me new sides of the city, so that’s what I went for.

Our group had barely left the castle when our guide showed us the first hidden detail. Ljubljana was built near the site of an abandoned Roman settlement, and they reused chunks of the old ruins to build the castle. A stone is a stone!

Having walked down to the bottom of the castle hill, the guide took us on a tour of the air raid shelters under the hill. Fully maintained still, and ready to be used at 24 hours’ notice, he told us – and actually used for real during the Ten-Day War with Yugoslavia in 1991.

Along one of the main shopping streets, our guide showed us the narrow ventilation corridors between the medieval houses. The buildings all back up onto the hill, and the corridors help air out the moisture. Most of them were either bricked up or shut behind gates, but at least one was open. The far end was narrow enough that I could barely turn around.

The guide also pointed out that all the medieval houses are exactly three windows wide. Apparently this was a rule in medieval times. I walked down this street last time I was here, and paid attention to the views, but never noticed this detail – nor the ventilation corridors.

The river, when we passed it, was seriously flooded and I totally understand why the boat tour had to be cancelled.

This lovely little street with all its greenery and flowers was as beautiful today as it was in August.

Naturally Ljubljana’s city architect Jože Plečnik was a recurring topic during our tour. I learned, among other things, that he was heavily inspired by classical Roman and Greek architecture and really, really loved pillars. An ongoing joke during our tour was that if you see any pillars anywhere, then Plečnik was probably the one who put them there. And indeed we saw pillars in the oddest of places – such as “on the outside of a wall, three meters above ground”. Go figure.

The grounds of the Ljubljana Festival, inhabiting what used to be a monastery, were my favourite place in the city. The juxtaposition of baroque statues of saints with Soviet imagery of red five-pointed stars, hammers and pickaxes, is pretty unique.

Towards the end of our tour the rain had more or less let up. I had come prepared for a lot more rain than we actually got (a pair of rubber boots took up a quarter of the space in my baggage) so I was dry and toasty all the way. But drier weather made photography easier.

We capped off the day with a gala dinner in the hotel’s grand hall. More festive and glamorous than most events in the software industry! I quite enjoyed dressing up for once.

Knowabunga knowledge day, with talks and workshops and such. One about the API Gateway pattern, and one about the Tailwind CSS framework, and one about business people taking over Scrum from developers and making it theirs, and some more.

The 13|37 Ljubljana office has some cool decorations.

Did you know that you can still by 3.5-inch floppy disks?

I am experiencing some technical problems with the site after an upgrade by the hosting provider. So if you see any issues, I am working on it. I will start posting again when everything is stable.

We’re off to our used-to-be-annual-but-pandemic-you-know company conference, in Ljubljana this year to celebrate the completion of their snazzy new office.

The company has grown since the last Knowabunga three and a half years ago. This time there are so many of us that the easiest and most economic mode of transportation was a chartered flight. Which we filled, and overflowed, so some people still had to fly regular.

Ljubljana was hit by rain and thunderstorms so our flight was late landing and we got to our hotel around midnight. (I gather that it was actually difficult to find a hotel that could accommodate us all, that wasn’t some convention centre monstrosity.) We had lovely foggy views of Ljubljana castle through the rain from our hotel room balcony. Meanwhile there were water leaks in the hotel stairwells due to several days of relentless rain.

Adrian & Eric in front of Adrian’s school.

Ingrid, caught in a random moment at her new school.

There were parent/teacher meetings at both schools yesterday and today. Adrian wants to work on his writing skills, especially when it comes to writing longer texts – being more descriptive and structuring his texts better. (He has a bit of a habit, both in writing and in speech, of just jumping right into the middle of things and forgetting to set the scene.) Ingrid, being in a completely new school, isn’t setting any goals at this time, but needs to decide whether to skip the maths course that she’s scheduled to take because she’s done it all in secondary school already and move on to the next one – which would mean not being with the rest of her class during maths.

Cat claws are fascinating. I knew they were retractable, but before close contact with Nysse, I didn’t know that I could make them appear – I thought that was fully under the cat’s control. But you can just squeeze slightly in the right spot and out pops a claw. Sometimes when Nysse is near me and all relaxed, I poke his claws in and out just for fun.

His claws are very sharp. I know you can trim them, but I have more or less decided not to do so with Nysse’s claws. He’s an outdoor cat most of the time and wears them down naturally. The claws on his rear paws are much shorter and blunter – he clearly uses them a lot more to jump and climb. According to the internet it’s possible for cats’ claws to grow so long that they curve back into the toe, but I can’t think of how that could happen unless the cat lives indoors on plush carpets only. Or maybe some cats’ claws grow faster than others.

Nysse is quite good about not scratching furniture or anything. Occasionally he digs his claws into the sofa to stretch, but doesn’t actually scratch. He much prefers to scratch the cat tree – I guess whoever designed it knew what cats like. And he very rarely scratches any of us nowadays. The only thing he’s actually damaged is my office chair – twice now he’s dug his claws in deep enough to leave marks. I can’t remember the first occasion, but the second time was when he was really annoyed at me for something. I think maybe I took something from him that I didn’t want him to play with.

It’s not easy to catch a picture of Nysse doing anything other than eating or sleeping. He’s either out, or in movement – and if he sees me with the camera, he immediately comes closer to examine it. I have plenty of fuzzy photos of his nose and ears.