Alright, you have no reason to believe me (I wouldn't if I were you) but I do believe I'm really back this time. Back, and ready to blog regularly again. Ready to connect with old friends and make new ones, and discover what has changed.
If you remember me from the old days, let me know! What's Hive like now compared to a few years ago? What recommendations do you have? I'm not necessarily after high pay-out posts, but I would like to attract a growing and regular group of like-minded artists and thinkers.
So what can I tell you? I have a lot on my mind... =)
Alejandra sketched me and some of said things on my mind -
First, the reason for my most acute and lasting happiness: Last month, I got married to the most incredibly talented and charming woman I have ever met: 
And now that I'm here and semi-settled, I have to think about how I'm going to make money. Teaching English has always been my go-to, but I'd love to try something new here: Making and selling biltong. Biltong is basically South African style beef jerky: Much tastier and much healthier. Also, I'll sell "my" carrot cake on the side XD (I call it mine but I got the recipe online ;P .. Ok, I made a small adaptation, but still...) Anyway, around here, no one else makes carrot cake this way, and my mother-in-law told us that she dreamed about it after eating it for the first time, lol. So I'll give it a try.
Then, there is our house. I cannot wait to start moving in. It's a beautiful house in the mountains, with the exact sort of mountain-life-style I've always dreamed of. We'll be in the city for another year, but vacations and many weekends will be spent there in the meantime. Which gives us time to patiently discover what kind of style we're going to furnish and refurbish in. Initial thinking is some sort of mix between eco-brutalism and "earthship" design. In the next week or two, we'll have new beds delivered, which is all we'll need at first for a weekend visit =)
Lastly but not leastly, there is my art and my programming (which are sometimes the same thing). I have sadly neglected making art with fractals the last two years, but I console myself with the knowledge that I started programming again and created Eye-Am, a generative art collection, as well as three more (check them out on mandelsage.com). I've also recently started creating my own game: it started as a way to learn Godot 4 (an open-source engine similar but different to Unity) but it's coming out better than expected to I'm going to try make it a real thing =) Expect posts about it!
In fact, you can consider this post a great summary of what you can expect post-wise from me. All the above and more: I want to start collecting things: Favourite books, stickers, silver items, precious stones and key-rings... not to mention growing my already-formidable art collection (mostly in the form of digital NFTs). Oh and I cannot fail to mention my love of puzzle-building (and models! Whatever happened to model aircraft etc? Hmm, would love to do a SpaceX rocket.)
Ah, and! A huge hobby I've always had my mind's eye on: Astro-photography. I'll start small with a good set of binoculars, a simple tripod and decent DSLR camera, but intend to go full-astro with equatorial mount and Dobsonian (or similar) telescope.
Ooh, and gardening! A little-known fact is that I really enjoy and am good at gardening, and I'll finally have a garden to do it in.
But ok... That's enough for now. Thank you very much for reading =) I'm really looking forward to getting back into this HIVE thing.
Bye for now! o/
