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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Team #Halite I mean, the other guy is ok too but did the Polish fill a whole mine of it with sculptures, statues and chandeliers? #Wieliczka #MineralCup #MinCup26

Underground chapel with walls and chandeliers carved out of salt

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Any other #MinCup26 match, I'd vote #arsenopyrite all the way. BUT this year I visited the #Wieliczka Salt Mines in Poland. And we were explicitly told that it was "okay to lick the walls" if we wanted. So #halite all the way this #MinCup. Yes, these sculptures are made of salt.

Statues made of salt - a servant hands a queen a small box that contains her own engagement ring, according to a Polish legend.

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

#TeamGypsum #MinCup #MinCup26 We're going to lose (as whichever mineral I support thoughout @mineralcup.bsky.social ) but admire all the pretty #gypsum

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I write about the gypsum mines. @mineralcup.bsky.social puts up the bracket with gypsum in it. Both see the light on the same day. Does this mean I'm supporting gypsum this year?

Mineral Cup 2026 Bracket, featuring gypsum on one of the "matches"

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

June 1st is Dinosaur Day. During the 20th century, dinosaurs were pretty niche (to ages 5 to 8 ).Then came the Dinosaur Renaissance-a renewed interest mostly sparked by the Jurassic Park movie in the early 90s. Later sequels would focus on velociraptors, but Rexy the T-rex became a pop culture icon.

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Hand-sized iron meteorite, composed of alloys of iron and nickel: taenite and kamacite forming Widmanstätten patterns. It is much heavier than it looks (I got to hold something that came from outer space!). This specimen is in the Geomineralogical Museum in Madrid

A hand-sized piece of taenite, an iron meteorite

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

A lot of free-roaming or free-range sheep herds have a few goats in them. Rumour has it this is because goats are smart and will guide the herd to shade when the weather is too hot. Sheep will stay in the sun and overheat. Or maybe it is because gots are fun...

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

If you take a guided tour of Tenerife, the guide will ask you "how many volcanos are there in the island?"Spoiler: the answer is 1. The whole island is a big dormant volcano with several craters. The most important one is Teide, the highest point in Spain, a National Park and heavily protected.

Volcano Teide with local fauna in the foreground

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Some people believe that the Pyramids of Giza are the original tourist trap - actually the origin of travelling to discover new things.

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

The arapaima (Arapaima gigas) is native to the Amazon River, and it is gone of the largest freshwater fish in existence. It breathes both air and water, and every 15 minutes or so it surfaces to "swallow" a mouthful of air.

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

The Big Ben? Actually, this is Elizabeth Tower. You can't see Big Ben, which is the name of the largest bell inside the clock tower. I missed a chance in the 1990s to climb the tower and see the bell, and I am really sad about that. Maybe one day I will be able to do so.

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

In this case, the whole system was crashed. Server errors, accounts not working, pages not opening... It took 37 minutes. Good thing presales opened at 9pm, this would have been horrible during the workday.

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Paris has reusable transport tickets. They are magnetic & stop working if you keep hem near your mobile phone. If you put an airport ticket on them, you can't put standard tickets there on the same day. On the machines, you need to roll a joystick & push buttons with each hand.

Two Navigo passes (reusable transport tickets in Paris)

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

I was finally able to return to see Notre-Dame in 2025. Here are some key dates about this magnificent building (including my visits :P).

Notre-Dame de Paris
Our Lady of Paris
1163 - Groundbreaking
1182 - Consecrated
1345 - Construction completed
1790 - Damage and desecration during the French Revolution
1793 - Converted into a Temple of Reason
1804 - Napoleon crowns himself Emperor
1831 - Victor Hugo published The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
1860s - Restoration by Vollet-le-Duc
1862 - Designated Monument Historique
1905 - Notre-Dame becomes property of the French Government
1937 - Matisse paints Notre-Dame
1944 - Charles De Gaulle Celebrates the liveration of Paris
1991 - Designated Unesco World Heritage Site
2015 - Visited with a frind, we climbed the towers
2019 - Fire
2020 - When I visited, it still reeked of smoke
2021 - Reconstruction begins
2024 - Reopening
2025 - I was able to walk inside again

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Look, mom, I'm human. I ran a sample of JBinnacle through an AI detector, out of curiosity. It is true that the project has changed a lot since it started in 2012 (blame Covid lockdown), but I've built it from scratch. I have too much fun with it to let Skynet run it.

A screenshot of a random www.jbinnacle.com text pasted on an AI detector, whose veredict is "your text is human written, 0% AI GPT".

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Some "quickfacts" about quicksilver (mercury).

Facts about Mercury (the metal, not the planet):
Named after the Roman God of Travellers
Symbol: Hg
Atomic Weight: 80
Classified as a metal
It comes from Cinnabar, a bright red rock that also contains sulphur
Shiny silver colour
Liquid at normal pressure and temperature
Historical uses: dental fillings!, thermometres, mining gold and silver
Extremely toxic to the nervous system
Bioaccumulation and biomagnification

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

I got targeted by the 29th-October WordPress DDoS attack, I think. But I don't use plug ins of any kind. And I am basically no one.

My website which usually gets 300 visits in a month suddenly got 5000 views in a day.

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Now that the pyrotechnia of "Fire Bulls" don't have any mistreated bulls in it, I've been considering to drop by, but... not sure I want to leave the house to find a parking spot at 2:45am.

03:15 horas del viernes 13: TRADICIONAL SUELTA DE TOROS DE FUEGO

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Six years ago today (11th August 2019) I reached the crater of Mount Fuji. It feels unreal now.

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

I bought a Spanish National Museum card - Tarjeta de Museos Estatales for 36.06€. I used it enough so it was value for money, but it will not save you the queues, which was disappointing, as it was actually promoted as "skip the line" when I got it.

Tarjeta de Museos Estatales: 36.06 €
Places I used the card on:
Museo Arqueológico Nacional
Museo de América
Museo del Romanticismo
Museo del Traje. CIPE
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Museo Nacional de Antropología
Museo Nacional del Prado
Museo Sorolla

Considering the prices and number of visits:
I would have paid: 63.00 €
I paid: 36.06 €
I saved: 26.94 €

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JBinnacle - A Travel Logbook @jbinnacle.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

I've made (read: booked) my New Year's resolutions. They totally count, right? ... right? #TheSharkIsBroken #TheRavenAge

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