mox Mail Server
I currently use Purelymail for email. It’s very cheap and does everything I need (“purely email”). I’m also happy that I’m free of all the headaches of having a good IP reputation and setting everything up so that my mail doesn’t end up in junk folders. ⌘ Read more
New professional website
I’m always programming on my blogging software, so today I decided to do something different. With the help of ChatGPT, which wrote the basic HTML and CSS template, I created a new resume website, which is basically a copy of everything I put on my LinkedIn profile. ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Office and OneDrive for free?
I’m a bit of an indecisive (and frugal) person sometimes. ⌘ Read more
Nice, the number of GoBlog users is growing! 🤓 The next step is a growing number of GoBlog developers. It would be great to have more people giving advice on how to improve the code. 😅 Any senior Go devs out there? ⌘ Read more
How I archive my favorite TV show to get rid of Amazon Prime
I’m a fan of the German TV series “Notruf Hafenkante”, which is shown on the public broadcaster ZDF and is also available on their website. New episodes are released weekly, and older episodes are also made available on a regular basis. After a few months, however, they are no longer available for free. At the moment I have to buy an extra subscription for a Prime Video Channel to be able to watch all the old episodes. But that makes me dependent on Amazon, and I d … ⌘ Read more
Frozen ❄️ ⌘ Read more
Yet another AI application
AI is currently finding its way more and more into various software. There is ChatGPT, which sometimes feels like an all-knowing human, DeepL uses artificial intelligence not only for its translator, but also for its new tool that improves written text, or Bunny.net provides an API to generate images “on the edge”. ⌘ Read more
My January ‘23 in Review
Before you realize it, January - and with it the first month of the new year - is already over. A little review. ⌘ Read more
GoBlog plugins enable completely new and optional functionality. Andrés created a plugin to show the song currently playing on his blog. I use this plugin for now as well. 🎶 If you don’t see a song in the header, I’m probably not listening to music right now. 😅 ⌘ Read more
🎬🚄💶
Since I have YouTube Premium and log in to YouTube, YouTube is suggesting videos that seem to fit my interests a lot more (and it’s a little addictive again, but not as bad as when I was still studying). ⌘ Read more
My code is still a mess, but I’m learning
I taught myself Go (and programming in general) by learning by doing. I learned by making a lot of mistakes and after noticing them, doing the necessary research. My Go code is probably a big mess, but it’s so satisfying, after not touching some code for a while, to do a major rewrite and improve the code with everything I’ve learned since the last time. ⌘ Read more
ChatGPT is smart enough to detect what the code in the single minified JavaScript file on my blog front page does. Try it out! 🙃 ⌘ Read more
ChatGPT is smart enough to detect what the code in the single minified JavaScript file on my blog front page does. Try it out! 🙃 ⌘ Read more
My motivation to work on GoBlog isn’t always the same. Sometimes I don’t feel like programming in my free time, so the most I do is some bug fixing when I find broken things. Sometimes I just have no time to work on new features or improvements. But since yesterday evening I feel a new push and have completely rewritten the plugin system to make it much more flexible (and I like flexibility). I had to break compatibility with existing plugins, but given the small user base and the limited scope of what plugins could … ⌘ Read more
I posted about GoToSocial, but another Mastodon-alternative and Fediverse software, Takahē, seems to make fast progress and has some unique features like support for multiple domains or multiple identities per user. I haven’t tried running it yet, but it looks promising! ⌘ Read more
Majestetic 🏰 ⌘ Read more
Probably preaching to the choir… ⌘ Read more
I had an AWS training in November and have the opportunity to get the “Certified Developer Associate” certificate. Even though I have two attempts, I want to do well on the first shot. Since the trainer didn’t show us everything that is required for the exam, I’m kind of re-doing the training with this Udemy course (luckily I have access to Udemy Business and don’t have to pay for it). It’s really helpful because it helps me demystify the AWS cloud and reduce the 🤯 whenever I do something in the AWS console. ⌘ Read more
Nice to see that there is such a variety of MicroPub clients, next to Quill, Micropublish and the mobile app Indigenous, there’s also sparkles. But on the desktop, I mostly just use GoBlog’s editor nowadays. It has live sync and and a live preview, which is sometimes very helpful. But flexibility is the key, use what fits you and the situation the best. ⌘ Read more
My first Freeletics week
My first Freeletics week is complete. And I got a badge for the first “perfect week”. I hope this gamification (levels and badges for perfect weeks, perfect week streaks, training session milestones etc.) will make me pull through. My girl friend also joined me and started using Freeletics. 🤓 ⌘ Read more
I bought a full year of access to the Freeletics coach, so I should actually start doing my workout, right? 🙃 I can already feel the soreness just thinking about it… ⌘ Read more
My 2022 in Review
2022 is over, welcome 2023! A year full of unexpected events, many personal changes and a lot of new experiences… But since I wrote a review every month, I just want to highlight the highlights here. ⌘ Read more
Happy new year! 🎆 ⌘ Read more
My December ‘22 in Review
Now the last month of the year is coming to an end and before I put together a short review of the year soon, here’s another monthly review. ⌘ Read more
My December ‘22 in Review
Now the last month of the year is coming to an end and before I put together a short review of the year soon, here’s another monthly review. ⌘ Read more
My December ‘22 in Review
Now the last month of the year is coming to an end and before I put together a short review of the year soon, here’s another monthly review. ⌘ Read more
Bitwarden Unified
Bitwarden (my favorite and recommended password manager) is offering a “new deployment option”. This new option combines all microservices into a single Docker container and doesn’t require 11 different containers anymore. And it supports PostgreSQL and MariaDB in addition to MS SQL. ⌘ Read more
Achievement for today: I can finally correctly reply to Mastodon/Fediverse/ActivityPub posts. 🥳 ⌘ Read more
Achievement for today: I can finally correctly reply to Mastodon/Fediverse/ActivityPub posts. 🥳 ⌘ Read more
Just setting up a quick Mastodon instance to test some compatibility is a pain. Using test accounts on public instances is also unreliable, because many instances are already overloaded and I don’t want to create spam. So I got a new DigitalOcean account with a $200 starter credit… ⌘ Read more
WordPress implemented SQLite support! 😱 (Not merged into Core yet, but you’re able to test it.) ⌘ Read more
WordPress implemented SQLite support! 😱 (Not merged into Core yet, but you’re able to test it.) ⌘ Read more
I have a question: Is there something similar to Telegram channels in Matrix? What should I do when I want to enable people to be notified about new blog posts using Matrix? ⌘ Read more
“AirTags Expose Dodgy Postal Industry”
Last year, YouTuber MegaLag tried to send several AirTag-ged packages from Germany to North Korea with DHL. But instead of arriving there, they were either misrouted to South Korea or ended up in China. In a new video, he further researches the reasons and also takes a look at DHL’s sorting center in Frankfurt at their invitation. Very interesting! ⌘ Read more
Bunny AI
Bunny.net joined the AI hype and created “Bunny AI” (docs), AI images created on the edge. I tried it out, because it’s currently free during the preview, but somehow I don’t find the generated images aesthetic or I’m just to stupid to write better prompts. I guess the Bunny developers also need some distraction from time to time, because they are working hard on S3 support for Bunny Storage for years already. 🐰 ⌘ Read more
My website is powered by GoBlog, a simple and dynamic blogging system that’s open source, actively developed and implements most IndieWeb functionalities. It packages everything in a single binary and I’ve been so over the moon using it and seeing it improve week after week that I’m surprised it isn’t more popular. So I put on my evangelist boots to share how I use this “stupidly-simple” blogging system to power my online presence. ⌘ Read more
Forgejo
A few weeks ago, it came to light that Gitea has been owned by a for-profit Gitea Ltd. for several months. The lack of transparency has disturbed the trust of many contributors and users. That’s why Codeberg (a German based non-profit association - disclaimer: I am a member of the association) has now started a soft fork: Forgejo. ⌘ Read more
I should write better tests or at least create some automatic tests. 😬 (But ActivityPub is so complicated to test!) ⌘ Read more
Should I sell my PC?
I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do with my desktop computer (ASRock Deskmini A300), which I don’t really use anymore since I got my new laptop. ⌘ Read more
I think it was a very wise decision to buy some long merino underwear, a new and warmer jacket and new winter shoes. It’s so cold! The whole week already under 0°C. ⌘ Read more
I’m honestly thinking about switching browsers, because this “new feature” where Firefox always downloads PDFs first to display them is annoying me so much. I don’t want my Downloads folder to be cluttered with all those random PDFs. If I open a restaurant’s menu PDF, I just want to take a quick look, but don’t want to have the PDF in my Downloads folder until I manually delete it and then delete it from the Recycle Bin again. There are some work-arounds, but no real solution. ⌘ Read more
I use Firefox as my preferred web browser both on PCs and my phone. One extension is always installed: uBlock Origin. The web is so much nicer with all the ads and tracking removed. But today I also retried an extension that will probably join the “must install” list: DarkReader. Especially when I’m browsing the web on my phone in the early morning, I don’t like to be blinded by white websites. Since March DarkReader has finally an option to detect if a website already has a dark theme and only apply it’s color chan … ⌘ Read more
Thinking about chat apps again…
Lately, I’ve been thinking about chat apps more often again. Actually, I’ve always been a fan of Telegram, and it’s still a good messenger, but I’m a bit suspicious about the latest developments (such as the Fragment platform, with which Telegram is now implementing its crypto plans again). ⌘ Read more
Near my new home. 🍂 ⌘ Read more
GPT-3 is crazy 🤯
Do you want to read why Go is a great programming language? ⌘ Read more
GPT-3 is crazy 🤯
Do you want to read why Go is a great programming language? ⌘ Read more
My November ‘22 in Review
November is now over and it’s December and the Christmas season begins. But first a short review of November… ⌘ Read more
DeepL Write
I’m a big fan of DeepL for translations. Before trying to write more blog posts directly in English to improve my skills, I wrote many blog posts in German and then translated them. The texts were probably better than my non-native English. ⌘ Read more
“Bloggers, Dump Your Twitter Card Tags”
It’s crazy to think how much bandwidth is being used by metadata tags. Every company wants to invent it’s own new system. Wouter Groeneveld gives a brief overview and recommends getting rid of them (for the most part). I agree with him completely. The only one of these systems that my blog supports is Microformats, which is quite popular among the IndieWeb community. ⌘ Read more
My websites have finally favicons again. And I can update them using a simple web interface. 😄 ⌘ Read more
Sideloading Android apps on Windows 11
It’s really impressive how easy it is to sideload apps on the WSA (Windows Subsystem for Android). ⌘ Read more
I reworked the current ActivityPub implementation of GoBlog, fixed ActivityPub replies to posts and also added support for reply updates and deletions. Under the hood it’s using the comment system. 🥳 Using the go-ap/activitypub library, working with ActivityPub is much easier (but still more complicated than I wish it would be). ⌘ Read more
Today was already the 4th day that I worked using a mobile hotspot with a speed limit of 10 mbps down and upload. This is definitely doable. I’m glad I didn’t have to transfer any larger files. Faster internet is coming in two days. But I chose wisely when I signed my mobile contract last year without a data cap. ⌘ Read more
Moving to another city
As I’ve probably written many times before (have I?), I’m currently moving with my girlfriend to her university town. I will keep my old apartment as a second home. But it’s still my first move to another city and I’m just realizing it. ⌘ Read more
Why I bought a new laptop 💻
I just updated my Hardware Uses page. Recently, I bought a new notebook and today I reset my Surface Go and sent it to a trade-in portal. ⌘ Read more
Although there are definitely reasons to hate Windows, there are also reasons to like Windows 11: Linux GUI apps, Android apps, winget package manager and improved window tiling. It would be even better, when one wouldn’t need to toogle all the privacy and telemety settings first… ⌘ Read more
One simple thing to noticeably reduce the router’s power consumption: turn off 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, almost every device supports 5 GHz. ⌘ Read more
After three days of AWS Developer training, I am fascinated about all the AWS products and features. But I also think that AWS has a huge lock-in power. Once you moved everything to the Amazon cloud, it will probably be very hard to get out of it again. And then prices will increase and you have a problem. 🙃 ⌘ Read more
SourceHut is banning cryptocurrency projects
SourceHut, a source code hosting service, is banning cryptocurrency- and blockchain-projects: ⌘ Read more
My October ‘22 in Review
Another month is over and Happy Halloween! 🎃 ⌘ Read more
Because I used Prometheus and Grafana at work, I also tried them at home and I must say, monitoring isn’t as boring as I always thought. Next up Kubernetes? 😅 ⌘ Read more
98.css (again)
I already shared “98.css” on my blog in 2020. It’s a CSS framework that styles semantic HTML to look like Windows 98. ⌘ Read more
Disable RAM Plus on OneUI 4.1
When Samsung released the Android 12 update for my phone a few months ago, I noticed a new RAM Plus setting, which uses the storage to expand the memory. Pretty useless on my phone, as it has already 8 GB of RAM. ⌘ Read more
The Pocket Casts mobile apps are now open source
Good news! The Pocket Casts mobile apps are now open source. ⌘ Read more