My vacations have been centered on reducing stress. Work has been haunting my sleep and seething through to every other part of life. Being off while being a full time father isn’t as easy at it appears. Having searched for solutions, the “Monty Python and chill” moments were created. It’s nothing but watching Monty Python’s all corpus, Fawlty Towers and others, at night. This has had some unlike consequences.

And now for something completely different.

Minions & Monsters: A Pythonesque comedy for children? #

IMDB link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32890033/

Today, I went to watch the “Minions & Monsters” film. It was glorious, a perfect mix of a century of comedy, with animation. The ever so absurd minions were joined by South Park’s creator, Trey Parker. He’s the parody of Lovecraft’s Cthulu, named Goomi. Instead of the ancient terror, Kaiju like monster, you get a really cute minion like Cthulu, who tries to hustle the minions towards planetary destruction.

Today, I was tired, but I can’t stop laughing of the whole thing. It’s a film I’ll cherish for years. Highly recommend it!

Santa Claus: taunting leads to AoC? #

The Portuguese expression “E eu sou o Pai Natal”(basically “And I’m Santa Claus/Father Christmas”) has caught my attention. My soulmate has a slight preference for this expression, when reductio ad absurdum my ludicrous propositions. This is slightly more common that I’d like to admit. Yes, I’m an idiot.

Some days ago, with this whole code insecurity and self loathing thing, made me think of all those years that I’ve never completed Advent of Code (AoC).

What is AoC?

Advent of Code are basically algorithm exercises for each day of the Advent. They are Christmas themed and tend to be fun. Thus I’ve decided to do them again, with less pressure.

Why I’ve been a bit frustrated about them?

My path through them is always the same. Crazy motivation for the first days, and basically gas out after day ten or so. One would think that this year, I’d complete it, because they were just a dozen, instead of the traditional twenty-five.

What shall I use to beat it this time? How to find Joy?

As, I’m on my “Monty Python and chill” vibe, I’ll do them in Python.

Solved the first day, and it has been the first time this year, in which I’ve felt joy solving a challenge like this.

For the curious, I’ll put my solutions here: https://github.com/cpmachado/aocpy