Today, while remotely accessing my home server, I noticed that the network was a bit slower than usual. It turns out, there’s no 5G connection and only an LTE connection with another cell tower more far away. I checked the service provider’s website and there’s actually a problem with a base station nearby. ⌘ Read more

Today, I finally finished the reworked MicroPub endpoint in GoBlog using the indielib library by Henrique. It killed about 400 lines of my spaghetti code. 😅 ⌘ Read more

Today, while remotely accessing my home server, I noticed that the network was a bit slower than usual. It turns out, there’s no 5G connection and only an LTE connection with another cell tower more far away. I checked the service provider’s website and there’s actually a problem with a base station nearby. ⌘ Read more

Finally vacation! No work until (including) 2024-01-07. 😎🎅🎄🎆 ⌘ Read more

Migrating to a Fedora CoreOS VPS
It seems like I was successfully able to migrate from my Alpine Linux VPS to a new VPS having Fedora CoreOS installed. 🎉 ⌘ Read more

Beyond the deadline: What I learned from a recent taskforce experience
The taskforce I was part of the last weeks is finally done! The deadline for the production deployment was met and today also a knowledge transfer took place. I’m happy to not have to fear weekend work or do overtime in the evening anymore, and hopefully return to a more regular workload again. ⌘ Read more

“HTML compression on popular websites”
Danny van Kooten did an interesting experiment and checked the top 10 thousand websites whether they are compressing their HTML. About 8% of them do not apply any kind of compression, resulting in many terabytes of unnecessary transmitted data, not helping to save energy. ⌘ Read more

My November ‘23 in Review
It’s that time of the month again for a new recap. November has passed, so let’s see what happened in the last 30 days… ⌘ Read more

I captured the first real snow this winter this morning ❄️ ⌘ Read more

Yesterday, I used a rental car to avoid problems with Deutsche Bahn. Today, trying to do another trip with DB, the train is 50 minutes delayed. Karma? 🙃 Or it’s the weather again, DB’s infrastructure isn’t working well at temperatures below 0 °C. 🤷‍♂️ ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Loop
It looks like Microsoft cloned Notion and calls it “Loop”. ⌘ Read more

Completed my second Freeletics Hell Week and with it my second training journey! 💪 ⌘ Read more

Today, while being in the second home over the weekend, I finally installed the 5G router setup (ZTE MC801A + GL.iNet Beryl AX). Now my home server (staying in this flat because it has a good place here) is behind a cellular 5G connection. There’s running nothing important on it, but let’s see how reliable this new setup will work over a longer period. Today so far all works fine. And if there will be problems, I still have a few months time to find solutions. ⌘ Read more

Colin just reminded me, that it’s the third GoBlog birthday of this blog! I am still genuinely content with it, despite the apparent loss of my blogging momentum since then. ⌘ Read more

My default apps and services in late 2023
To join another trend, here’s my list of default apps and services in late 2023. ⌘ Read more

I quickly played with OpenAI’s new Text-To-Speech model to check if it’s an alternative to Google’s API. And wow! English is fantastic and even German is not bad. Just some syllables in German have a weird English accent. But even then, it’s still good. But sadly, it’s also a bit costly. Let’s wait a few months until it gets cheaper and better, and you can enjoy my blog’s “Read aloud” feature even more. 😉 ⌘ Read more

On subscriptions 💸
Manuel Moreale, Kev Quirk and some others (in response to them) listed their subscriptions and what and why they are paying for them. ⌘ Read more

My October ‘23 in Review
Another month has come and gone, time to take a look back. ⌘ Read more

The last week was really rainy, so I didn’t leave the flat much. And now walking at sunset time, everything looks so pretty. ⌘ Read more

Almost a full yearly cycle since my first post. The leaves are starting to get colorful again. 🍂 ⌘ Read more

Fun fact: Since I started tracking my train journeys in mid-May, I’ve already spent almost 7 whole days on trains. 🚄 ⌘ Read more

I acquired a new, fancy domain for a new side project. A site with tips on how to save money on purchases is something I would like to start. The search for a CMS reminds me of why I built GoBlog: all available options are not optimal. But GoBlog also isn’t optimal for this project for various reasons, as it shouldn’t be a typical personal blog. And now I have this really cool domain and question my plans. 😅 ⌘ Read more

Update Tailscale on the GL.iNet Beryl AX (GL-MT3000)
I’ve been toying with my recently received GL.iNet Beryl AX (GL-MT3000) for some days and I have to say, it’s wonderful! It provides all the features I need in combination with my 5G router (like support for IPv6). I was also able to set up a VPN connection using Wireguard to the other home that will keep a wire-based internet connection with a public (but changing) IPv4 address. As it also works perfectly fine with an LTE stick or mobile tethering, I’m quite tempte … ⌘ Read more

No hello
Thanks to Tim Hårek Andreassen, I finally have a link I can send my coworkers whenever they send me a “Hi”, “Do you have some time?”, “Can I call you?” instead of asking their question right away or even just mentioning the topic. And there’s also a German version, great! ⌘ Read more

Long term career thoughts
When I read this article by Herman Martinus, creator of Bear Blog and some other projects, about how he stays motivated as a solo creator, it triggered some thoughts about my own career. ⌘ Read more

5G chaos in my head
One of the reasons I like blogging is that it sometimes helps me organize my thoughts. There’s a lot of chaos in my head before I write them down, and after, my head is sometimes calm. ⌘ Read more

My September ‘23 in Review
Now September is over, and it’s time to take a brief look back at the past month. ⌘ Read more

The field near my second home… Walking here reminds me of when I walked here a year and a half ago, debating whether to accept the new job offer. It feels like an eternity ago. But it was a good decision! ⌘ Read more

A better Postman alternative: Hoppscotch
I used to use Postman for both personal and work projects. It was great for making HTTP requests without having to create curl commands. But now, Postman requires a login, which I hate. I don’t understand why a login is needed for such a simple tool. ⌘ Read more

“The Frustration Loop”
Spammers and their spam are annoying. ⌘ Read more

Catching COVID-19
So far, I had been spared from COVID-19. “Had,” focusing on the past, because now it has affected me, or us, after all. We had to cut short our vacation, which I used to share little glimpses of here on the blog. We quickly went back home, wearing masks the whole time and hoping not to infect more people. ⌘ Read more

The angle of the sun wasn’t perfect for this photo, but it turned out to be an unexpected highlight during our hike around Thurso today. ⌘ Read more

Is this the Hogwarts Express? 🚂🧙 ⌘ Read more

West Highland Way
With a backpack full of stuff for two weeks, we managed to walk 11km on the West Highland Way in 2:35h. I feel it in my legs, but the views and the experience are worth it. ⌘ Read more

West Highland Way
With a backpack full of stuff for two weeks, we managed to walk 11km on the West Highland Way in 2:35h. I feel it in my legs, but the views and the experience are worth it. ⌘ Read more

Here are three things I’ve noticed in the UK that I really appreciate: ⌘ Read more

Here are three things I’ve noticed in the UK that I really appreciate: ⌘ Read more

London is on a whole different scale when it comes to size. It has roughly the same population as Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, and Frankfurt combined, and those cities are already quite large. 🤯 ⌘ Read more

Tailscale and Mullvad
This is some really cool news! You can now use Tailscale and Mullvad simultaneously without any additional setup required. ⌘ Read more

After some cold and rainy weeks, it’s a quite warm and sunny again, but probably for the last time this year. ⌘ Read more

My August ‘23 in Review
Now it’s already September. So, what happened in August? ⌘ Read more

In my second apartment, I really like sitting in the winter garden (more some kind of balcony or loggia but with windows) in the evening and looking outside. The neighbors aren’t very close, and you can see the sky well. It’s very relaxing to sit here in the dark, thinking and enjoying the time. ⌘ Read more

ChatGPT Plus?
It’s been a while since ChatGPT was introduced to the world, and after the initial excitement, things seem to have settled down. While there’s still daily news about various services and companies integrating the GPT API into their products, the buzz around it has quieted. At least, that’s how it appears to me. ⌘ Read more

If you haven’t already noticed (though why would you?), I have finally merged my homepage into my blog. Why? Well, I believe it doesn’t make much sense to keep them separate. My homepage had only a few pages, and elements such as my “About Me” page and collections of things I use are well-maintained on my blog as well. Some pages were also deleted during this process, but I made an effort to preserve links where possible. ⌘ Read more

My unsuccessful search for the perfect 5G home router solution
In search of the perfect LTE or 5G-based home router, I recently found myself tumbling down a rabbit hole. ⌘ Read more

My unsuccessful search for the perfect 5G home router solution
In search of the perfect LTE or 5G-based home router, I recently found myself tumbling down a rabbit hole. ⌘ Read more

My July ‘23 in Review
I have already read a few monthly reviews from my fellow bloggers, and now it’s time for my version: ⌘ Read more

After two weeks of traveling by train at a maximum speed of about 120 km/h, sitting in a 230 km/h train is mind-blowing. 🤯 ⌘ Read more

This will be my accommodation for the next 15 hours. Tomorrow morning I’ll be back in Budapest (from Bucharest) and hopefully catch a train that will take me back home by tomorrow evening. ⌘ Read more

I’m still on vacation. It’s hot most days, but it’s interesting to get to know a new country and visit some places from my mother’s youth. I will write a more detailed report when I return. 😊 ⌘ Read more

#SlowTravel in the IC/IR 73 Traianus from Budapest to Timişoara. 🚂 ⌘ Read more

#SlowTravel in the IC/IR 73 Traianus from Budapest to Timişoara. 🚂 ⌘ Read more

#SlowTravel in the IC/IR 73 Traianus from Budapest to Bukarest. 🚂 ⌘ Read more

First day of Interrail to Romania ✅ ⌘ Read more

I bought myself a Tilley LTM6 hat. It was expensive and still feels a bit strange to wear because nobody wears hats here. But it’s comfortable even with my big head (I always have to buy XXL caps and helmets) and it protects my face and neck pretty well from the sun. And it comes with a lifetime warranty! ⌘ Read more

Finding peace in ignorance
During and after my studies, I used to refresh my Miniflux start page (the feed reader, which I use to keep up with things on websites I want to follow) every few minutes. As soon as there was a new article, I would read it. I also used to use this tool to read the news by following a local national newspaper website. ⌘ Read more

Ditching Pocket Premium: Streamline link saving with Telegram
For the past two years, I’ve been using Pocket to save links that I want to revisit later. However, as my yearly subscription is about to expire, I’ve started thinking about finding a free alternative that offers the features I actually use, without paying for unnecessary extras. ⌘ Read more

My June ‘23 in Review
So, another month is over and with it the first half of the year 2023. Time for a short review. ⌘ Read more

Bloatware removal on Android without Root and without a PC
In this blog post, I want to share an alternative method for removing bloatware from your Android phone without the need for a PC. I discovered most of the apps during my recent adventure of migrating to a new phone. With the help of a few tools and some basic knowledge, you can debloat your phone and easily revert any changes if necessary. ⌘ Read more

Ditching Pocket Premium: Streamline link saving with Telegram
For the past two years, I’ve been using Pocket to save links that I want to revisit later. However, as my yearly subscription is about to expire, I’ve started thinking about finding a free alternative that offers the features I actually use, without paying for unnecessary extras. ⌘ Read more

Shot on my new Galaxy A54. ⌘ Read more

Yes, I still keep some old domains to redirect to sections of this blog: appydroid.eu to redirect to the app and smartphone related section and ein-geek.de to redirect to the German part of my blog. Even though I merged them about four years ago. 😄 ⌘ Read more

Overcoming challenges for a better phone: My frustrating upgrade experience
Although my old smartphone is still in perfect condition, I have made the decision to upgrade to a new model: from a Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite to a Samsung Galaxy A54. Despite its current functionality, I opted to make the switch now, with the hope that the trade-in value will remain higher compared to what it would likely be in a year when it will likely decrease. And the A54 was on sale. ⌘ Read more

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