Not that many people would have to know this, but since moving to South America I've been busy setting up a workshop for myself. Why? Well for many reasons, but if I had to sum it up, because I'm trying to find more happy moments in my life, and creating things makes me happy, but I'm thinking....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M-hGd7lBUM&ab_channel=MenO



## Maybe I should vlog the whole thing?

As I'm sure many people who've jumped on the whole "I'm a vlogger" thing; I'm too having a bit of doubt. I mean... I can't help but to wonder if anyone would be interested in anything I've been doing, but then again maybe that's not the point at all.

If, and I mean IF; If my point is just to have fun, then I already won, regardless if there's much of an audience to any of it. 

I believe it would be important to not pretend to be an expert in any of my crazy misadventures, but just to share what I've learnt and what maybe even show my learning real time, on the screen, if you will.

### What have I been doing? I sense you asking.

A little bit of everything to be honest. Aside from building the shop itself, which keeps on growing and (I think) getting better. There's always something around the farm that needs building or repairing. Such is the nature of living close to the nature, I guess.


![WhatsApp Image 2022-08-07 at 9.09.06 PM.jpeg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/meno/23xVPAXHPLNfpHycuTQuGLoFnB6Xy2UcgLbMWoZXdrotUu7btnTeYaft6jwroJ3uZQzh7.jpeg)
<center><i>newest project with recycled pallet wood</i></center>

The initial idea, and it's obviously still centric to the building of the shop is going back to making guitars. An outline of a bass body I'm cutting out can be seen on the picture, but there are quite a few more guitars in the middle of being built.

Now... it's not easy

## Plenty of challenges

Aside from the fact that it rains here for 6 months out of the year, building the shop has been a mission and a half. It was built pretty far from the houses so that nobody would be bothered with the noise my tools make. The distance, however, gave me a whole set of different problems.

Getting electricity to the shop resulted in a solar panel solution, but the water problem.... Well, that's not been solved yet.

## Did you notice the name?

The short video on this post is my way of forcing myself to get started documenting the whole thing. Carapacho Shop is not just a silly name, is also my wife's word for Tick, which we have plenty of. Yes, carapacho does not mean tick in Spanish, it means carapace, but the misnomer was so funny to me, I've decided it's the right name. I'am after all in the middle of the world of bugs, snakes and all sorts of critters.

## The next step?

To learn video editing. I'm sure nobody want's to stare at my face for 10 minutes at a time, so I need to begin learning how to make the videos a little more entertaining. 

I'm a big advocate of GNU, and Open Source, so you won't see me using any main stream tool, but I figure I can get enough out of some of the tools available for Linux these days.

Anywho... Soon, I'll have a fun video (at least for me) to share.



![WhatsApp Image 2022-08-08 at 12.58.24 PM.jpeg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/meno/243M2nJueQ3bwRQ4tgNE2bZYPsfaYu9XcANGmA3K8RVdnyP2bHFqFxd3TJohzcckHV2D6.jpeg)


MenO