
It turned out that I attended three other editions. The second one was already a bit different. The stage setups felt a bit less interesting, and there were now fences that prevented you from accessing the seawater. The festival grew and caught enough attention to attract a more diverse but less unique public.

+++

“Rominimal is dead”—that was a text I received from a guy whom I was asking for party suggestions once. He is a very good DJ that I had seen playing once in Montevideo. It was July, 2019, and I was in Berlin trying to navigate the scene. That was just one month before my first Sunwaves, 26th edition, which blew my mind and made me write [_Rominimal is not dead_](./sunwaves-mioritmic-romanian-scene).

It turned out that I attended three other editions. The second one was already a bit different. The stage setups felt a bit less interesting, and there were now fences that prevented you from accessing the seawater. The festival grew and caught enough attention to attract a more diverse but less unique public. It also attracted the police who was constantly raiding stages and searching people that they thought could have illegal substances. Musically it was still good, but also less unique and more like music I could find anywhere in Europe.

I still felt like returning, though. I love Romania, and Sunwaves was still delivering decently. I met people who I would find again in the following editions, which peaked in May 2024, the last edition I attended, when I had the company of tens of people I met along the way, which was amazing. But unfortunately, it was my worst edition in the declining series. You could call 10% of the music _Rominimal_, and a large portion of the audience didn’t seem very interested musically, but just wanted to get high.

For the first time, I didn’t feel like returning. I could the next August, but I instead decided to attend Waha, also in Romania. It was their 10th and final edition. Waha deserves its own article. It’s in the woods, further from civilization. Camping needed. Families with children, stages with acoustic music. Felt like a high-tech gypsy settlement, in a very good way.

Waha made a post explaining why that would be their last edition. What I got from it is that the festival just reached the end of its lifetime—even though it seemed to have reached peak production—and to keep itself alive, it would need to change its essence, thus becoming something else. They instead decided to acknowledge the end.

Festival goers get older, get children, go out less. They give space to younger people who have different taste. Artists also get older, their styles evolve. And this is all happening within cultural, political, and economical contexts that also constantly change.

Interestingly, the DJ I mentioned before told me in 2019, just before my first Sunwaves edition that “it’s past its timing, it’s too popular now”. At the time I couldn’t known better, but eventually took 5 years to get to the same conclusion. Different age, context and background, different experience.

I still find recorded sets of the unique _Rominimal_ sound, so I think it’s alive, or being reborn somewhere. I’ll make an effort to find it before it’s too late again.


The Death of Rominimal and the lifecycle of festivals


We open sourced one of the most fun solutions we came up with as we built our new website @ Quartzo Studio.

+++

We open sourced one of the most fun solutions we came up with as we built our new website @ [Quartzo Studio](https://quartzo.studio).

The idea was to have our Open Graph images as snapshots of each page. But we didn’t want to screenshot every page, every time it changes. So instead, we put up a server that does that on the fly.

By providing a web page, the server accesses the page, screenshots it, and returns a PNG image. The URL used for the request also acts as the image address itself, so we just use that in our pages as the Open Graph image URL.

![Open Graph page screenshot demo](./demo.png)

We named it telescope, and the source is available here: [](https://github.com/quartzostudio/telescope).

Given we were just focused on that website, and how simple the code is, I initially thought of having it in the same repository as the website, as a [React Server Action](https://react.dev/reference/rsc/server-actions) or a [Next.js Route Handler](https://nextjs.org/docs/app/building-your-application/routing/route-handlers). But to screenshot the pages, we need [`puppeteer`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/puppeteer), and that downloads a headless Chrome browser (200MB+) when installing it, which would slow down our builds. For that reason, it made sense to have its own repository and be hosted as a single service for all of our products.


Generating Open Graph page previews on the fly

+++

I breath in, two step, lower then upper 
I breath out, one step, at once 
I repeat 

As I go, my body turns into a cosmic artifact 
That crystallizes, and moves like a giroscope 
Leaving projections 
In my mind 

I breath all the way in 
And hold 
Then release everything 
And hold 

Time stops, there’s nothing 
To worry about 
The flying horizon is still and smooth 
In my mind 

I repeat

Continuous release


It took me some 45 days after Mamaia so I wouldn’t feel it anymore. Most trying to understand you. I made various assumptions to create a story that my mind would be comfortable with, and thus give me some peace.

+++

It took me some 45 days after Mamaia so I wouldn’t feel it anymore. Most trying to understand you. I made various assumptions to create a story my mind would be comfortable with, and thus give me some peace. You didn’t look good in that story, as I searched for or elaborated and talked with friends about narcissism and emotional responsibility. I then visited your country in August, found some resemblance of behavior, and things made more sense. My friend and I now joke that you folks are all a bit autistic.

My mind took a good break from you soon after the last time you spoke to me, but while being in Stockholm, my heart would skip a beat every time I’d see someone with the same tan, height, and hairstyle—not few. I don’t like to admit but I hoped we would meet spontaneously. This trip brought your specter back to my mind, now with no hard feelings, but almost as vivid. I always wonder if it’s a real version of you—spooking or seducing me—or just an illusion.

A few more months later, through all the people I met this year whom I inevitably projected hints of what happened with us, and some incredible and surprisingly dense journey of (self) discovery—funnily facilitated by a YouTube fitness coach from Gotland—I feel like what I had with you has now come full circle where I now find myself in your shoes, not in exact similarity but with the same meaning.

It’s interesting to experience the other side. I wonder if you knew that I'd eventually go through the same, but of course you just didn’t care explaining—or doing anything. I then recognized the same traits—that I would attribute to your behavior—in myself, while also feeling entitled and confident to be so, in certain situations, to my own well-being.

I started writing this a while ago as a journal entry, but formatted as a letter. Something brought me back to finish it, and in my eternal attempt to further embarrass myself, I guess you’d enjoy reading this. I wish this was a physical letter but imagine me asking for your address!

Time did make it fade but I still can’t help seeing you as someone special. The lack of reciprocity steers me away from feeling you, but it does come, in waves, from time to time.


Letter to Caroline

A living edge-case building and navigating systems to handle myself.

Head of Software at [Quartzo](https://quartzo.studio), [amateur cyclist](https://www.strava.com/athletes/17408874), [photographer](https://photo.dlbn.co), and <s>digital nomad</s> high-tech gypsy.

An app to track bike components, their maintenance cycles and lifespan

geer

Map design tool for creating beautiful, high-res, publishable route maps and visualizations for sports events

Co-creator

Open source

The Death of Rominimal and the lifecycle of festivals

Generating Open Graph page previews on the fly

Continuous release

Letter to Caroline