Just one sign of the climate crisis
Two years ago, for the first time in my life, I experienced the basement filling up after a heavy rain. And now, not even two years later, the same thing is happening again. (I and we are fine and there was not too much damage). ⌘ Read more

Although I have lived in Braunschweig full time for more than 23 years (and now still part time), I only recently saw this portal from 1584 for the first time. ⌘ Read more

While reddit is trying to kill itself – the CEO doesn’t seem to care much about the community (but I don’t really care about the topic enough to know for sure) – I think Lemmy is a nice alternative. Quite minimalist, but fast, has an app that isn’t cluttered with ads, and relies on ActivityPub to federate with the Fediverse. Even though reddit could reverse decisions, some people (including me) now know of better alternatives. ⌘ Read more

The park has some more nice places. 📸 ⌘ Read more

The obligatory photo, this time on a summer evening. 😊 ⌘ Read more

The resources I used to pass the DVA-C02 exam
I recently passed my first AWS certification exam and am now an AWS Certified Developer Associate. I want to quickly share the resources I used to prepare. ⌘ Read more

Social media trap
reddit going dark (a protest action by many subreddit moderators over some planned API changes) reminds me that I should probably stop scrolling through Reddit so much. Reddit is a social network, and as such it attracts you with new content almost every time you visit. Which can be addictive. I once had a profile that I deleted because I wanted to leave all social media. But I fell into the same trap again. ⌘ Read more

Today another view from about 650 meters near our apartment. ⌘ Read more

I am finally an AWS Certified Developer Associate! 🎉 ⌘ Read more

My May ‘23 in Review
May is over, June has already started, so here is my short review of the past month. ⌘ Read more

Google Bard or BingGPT are actually quite useful to answer simple questions without having to scroll through many pages of clickbait and AI-generated babble blogposts. I’m currently preparing for the AWS exam (I finally signed up!) and Google Bard explained the differences between Cognito User Pools and Cognito Identity Pools in a simple and understandable way. Even with a tabular overview and examples how to use both services. Now my knowledge is refreshed again. 😄 ⌘ Read more

What’s going on?
This post is meant for a little reflection because I’ve noticed a few things that I can’t quite place. ⌘ Read more

It’s green again outside. 🌳 ⌘ Read more

😋🎂❤️ ⌘ Read more

My April ‘23 in Review
I almost forgot this monthly review, although it should actually be a routine after more than two years. But so much exciting has not happened this month… ⌘ Read more

A beautiful flowering tree that I see from the window of my second home. 🌸 ⌘ Read more

Viewing PDFs in Firefox works again
A few months ago I complained about Firefox not being able to open PDFs without downloading them. Recently, I also wanted to start developing a custom Firefox addon to fix this behavior. ⌘ Read more

I miss running
I’ve talked about this a few times and posted some of the pictures OneDrive shows me every day. Photos taken on the same day, week or month in previous years. It always gives me a “throwback” and I think about the situation at the time I took the photo. ⌘ Read more

I deleted my Twitter account a long time ago, but sometimes I still used Nitter to search Twitter or we linked tweets. I decided to stop that and removed Nitter from my home server and added “twitter.com” to the deny list at NextDNS. There are too many reasons to list here. ⌘ Read more

IndiePass, Indigenous or whatever it’s called now (for Android) supports unlisted and private posts now! 🎉 Or did it already before and I just did not notice the setting? At least that was a feature I always missed and needed to use frontmatter when creating a new reply for example. Thanks Mark Sutherland! ⌘ Read more

Samsung is known for using Apple references in their advertisements. In this ad, they do it again. Kind of funny. 😂 ⌘ Read more

“the secret list of websites”
Chris Coyier wrote a post mentioning a Washington Post article that analyzed which websites Google used to train its AI model. And it seems that both my blog and my website (I think I should merge them one day) are used. ⌘ Read more

The world’s fastest train
I like trains, if that should not have been known yet. This year I even have two major vacations (Romania and Scotland) coming up, both by train, even if flying would be possible. But if it can be done by train, then I also prefer the train. ⌘ Read more

💭 While some people like to jump between blogging software all the time, or go back to Hugo from a custom one, I don’t really miss Hugo after switching to GoBlog in 2020, but enjoy having my own system quite a bit. Not that Hugo, WordPress, etc. are bad blogging systems, but I really enjoy being able to quickly code a fix without having to research docs, StackOverflow, or the source on GitHub. And when I have an idea for a new feature, it would often not be easy to implement in the existing systems. ⌘ Read more

After multiple years of delays, my Solo V2’s finally arrived. Let’s see what I’ll do with them. I also have a YubiKey, I can’t even find right now. 😅 ⌘ Read more

After multiple years of delays, my Solo V2’s finally arrived. Let’s see what I’ll do with them. I also have a YubiKey, I can’t even find right now. 😅 ⌘ Read more

I finished my first “Hell Week” and with it the first “Training Journey” in Freeletics. 48 training sessions. On to the next one! 💪 ⌘ Read more

It’s spring! 💐 ⌘ Read more

Since I found a cheap lifetime license for AdGuard Premium, I’ll try it on my phone for a while. I’ve also configured it with my strict NextDNS profile. But now my phone not only filters DNS requests to block ads, but also HTTP requests. And while uBlock Origin works pretty well in Firefox on Android, I decided to disable it while using AdGuard to see how the performance compares. ⌘ Read more

Happy Easter 🐰 ⌘ Read more

Happy Easter 🐰 ⌘ Read more

Too lazy or too ambitious?
Today was the second day of my “Hell Week”. Not because my week is so bad, it is after all holidays and time off, no, because I have arrived in the last week of the “Training Journey” at Freeletics. At the end of the Journey, the “coach” requires training every day, usually a so-called “god workout” in addition to warm-up and cool-down. ⌘ Read more

Kev built his own microblog using WordPress and iOS shortcuts to separate his long and short posts. It sounds like this is a better alternative for him than micro.blog. Maybe with SQLite as the database he can even simplify this setup. ⌘ Read more

My March ‘23 in Review
And again a month is over, March comes to an end, April begins. A short review. ⌘ Read more

WordPress with SQLite
Philipp’s recent post on WordPress with SQLite reminded me to give the migration of a site I maintain for someone else a second try. ⌘ Read more

WordPress with SQLite
Philipp’s recent post on WordPress with SQLite reminded me to give the migration of a site I maintain for someone else a second try. ⌘ Read more

Some photo impressions from our walk today through the nearby park in Kassel. ⌘ Read more

If you regularly work remotely (away from home and the office), a portable monitor is one of the best investments you can make. I’ve had my HANNspree HL162 for almost a year now and it’s really helpful when I work from my family’s home. Having two screens really increases my productivity. 😄 ⌘ Read more

GoBlog’s new ChatGPT integration
There’s been a lot of AI hype lately. Everyone is integrating AI into their applications. ⌘ Read more

Google Bard is a bit too creative. In another chat, where I asked who “Jan-Lukas Else” is, it also said that I developed the “Quarkus programming language”. But this clearly shows the limitations of language models and the current state of AI. Just because the answers sound clever, they are not always right. ⌘ Read more

Google Bard is a bit too creative. In another chat, where I asked who “Jan-Lukas Else” is, it also said that I developed the “Quarkus programming language”. But this clearly shows the limitations of language models and the current state of AI. Just because the answers sound clever, they are not always right. ⌘ Read more

Beautiful sunny day with 17 degrees. So I put on my sunglasses and ride the pedelec a bit. 😎 ⌘ Read more

I’m currently validating the use of the OpenAI API as a cheaper and more powerful alternative to the Google Translate API. I hope my plans succeed and there will be a new GoBlog plugin with some AI power soon. ✨ So far the OpenAI API is quite easy to use, I thought it would be more complicated. Philipp is already using the API for his diary, another cool idea (which I may copy someday). ⌘ Read more

This time I’m doing my commute (to my second flat) with this new 70L travel backpack from Decathlon. It’s already full with just my work stuff (notebook, keyboard, mouse) and some other stuff (personal notebook, smaller backpack, toiletries, 2L water bottle). How am I supposed to fit 14 days of vacation stuff in there? 🤔 Good that I can take a vacation without having to take the work stuff with me. 😅 ⌘ Read more

Sunset view from the hill next to our flat. 🌇 ⌘ Read more

My cheap alternative to Ngrok
Since GoBlog has an Auto-HTTPS feature that can automatically retrieve HTTPS certificates via ACME from e.g. Let’s Encrypt, I need a public IP address with which I can reach my test instance of GoBlog via port 80 and 443. ⌘ Read more

The obligatory photo. Not frozen anymore. 🌞 ⌘ Read more

One reason I (have to) keep WhatsApp installed: It seems to be becoming more common for companies to offer support through it if you don’t want to call a hotline. ~50% of my chats are support chats. 🤔 ⌘ Read more

My February ‘23 in Review
And again a month is over, the shortest of the year. Here is my short monthly review. ⌘ Read more

50% (24 out of 48) of the workouts of my first Freeletics “training journey” completed! 🤓💪 ⌘ Read more