Centralization
Roughly ten years ago I ditched GMail, and started the journey of hosting important software myself. The shutdown of Google Reader made it clear to me how dependent I became on Google and their services. I tried different web hosting services - but always came back to uberspace. They are a small German company, offer SSH access to the server, have an incredible support team and their “pay what you want” policy is really great.On To-Do Management
About a week ago, I read the blog posts from Andy and Birchtree on To-Do Apps. Andy wrote that he’s given up on fancy apps and just uses simple paper & pencil to organise his todos. I’ve given up this week and gone back to paper and a pencil and I feel unbelievably organised and flexible, day-to-day. In his reply, Birchtree points out that he read articles like this a lot before.Rituals
This article is part of the IndiWeb Carnival for August 2024, with the topic Rituals. Thanks, Steve, for hosting it. This is the first time I am participating in the Indiweb Carnival. Rituals seemed like an easy topic to discuss. I wanted to write something about Christmas and how we usually spend Christmas Eve, but it got me thinking a lot in the last few days. Good topic, Steve. 😄CO2 consumption
I recently wrote about how much energy we consume at home. And while I was in the mood, I started looking for similar statistics for running this blog. I couldn’t find reliable information about the entire energy consumption, but I stumbled upon a CO2 calculator. Not exactly what I was looking for, but interesting nonetheless (especially since I saw some cool kids posting this on their websites, too). According to websitecarbon.Electricity Consumption - Update
We moved to a “low-energy” house last year, and I was wondering if we would really need less energy than before. I wrote about this before. Over the last few months, I went to the basement regularly and checked the meter. I am still aware that it’s apples vs. oranges, but I think it’s interesting to write about nevertheless. Back then, my very simple linear progression assumed that we would end up with ~1,500 kWh at the end of the year.50th Blood Donation
Last week I was donating blood. At the check-in I was greeted with additional piece of paper to fill out. I may have looked a bit puzzled, because I was told that this is good news. I will get rewarded1, because this is my 50th Blood Donation with the Red Cross. 50 Blood Donations … 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 Since both my father and my grandfather achieved more than 100 donations, there was a bit of pressure 🙂Fat Boy Update
Beginning of the year, I wrote my first post about the “Fat Boy at 40 challenge”. If this is the first time you’re hearing about this, start reading there - or head directly over to Kev’s original one. I am six months back at work after parental leave and I think this is a good opportunity to give an update. Status Quo Weight Loss During the last twelve months, I lost 10kg.Visting EU Capitals
I know it’s not perfect, but I am a fan of the European Union. Bringing people from different cultures closer together and working on solving the everyday and the bigger challenges together is a big achievement for a continent that has been at war with each other for centuries. United in diversity. (EU) Experiencing this diversity is great, but it’s impossible to visit the whole union. To get at least a taste of this diversity, it has been on our bucket list for a very long time to visit all capitals within the European Union.Three Years with M1 MacBook Air
Like Kev, I own a M1 MacBook Air since three years. And like Kev, I am still impressed. This thing is absofuckinglutely phenomenal. (Kev) It’s not the most expensive laptop I owned, but definitely among the top 3. With great invest, comes great expectations. Spidey Wisdom Changing the main operating system after 20 years felt risky. Before the M1, I only used a MacBook once as a work-machine. But what can I say.eBike Struggles
About a month ago, I bought a new bicycle. One with an “e” - supported by a small electric engine. I went on a few tours and enjoyed myself, but there was always this little voice inside my head asking if it’s still biking if supported by an engine? Is it still sport if I can just turn on the engine when cycling uphill? After every tour I was unsure with my decision - asking myself if I’d rather had picked a “bio bike”.Giving Up Social Media
In one of his recents posts, Kev asks if we could give up on social media I have a love hate relationship with social media. In some respects it’s great, but in others it’s a nightmare. I’m wondering if I could give up social media entirely… (Kev) Short answer is: Last week, I created a draft for an upcoming blog post that I am about to delete my LinkedIn profile and with that the last social media account that I still have.Becoming a First Aid Instructor
One of my goals for this year is to become a First Aid Instructor. Back at university, I liked teaching classes and I hope that repeating first aid lessons regularly helps me to get more routine in my work as voluntary paramedic. The journey to become an instructor is quite long. I already attended a two-day seminar, and a first aid class. Tomorrow, I will join another class and maybe even teach a short section myself.Wedding in the Mountains
On the weekend, we were invited to a wedding. The wedding was a little out of standard. Instead of a full day of sitting and eating, the couple planned for a whole weekend - which made the whole schedule more flexible. Overall it felt less stressful and the couple had time to talk to everyone. I liked it a lot. Additionally, meeting in a cabin in the mountains and waking up with this view really calmed me down.New Theme
I had my first blog in 2007, almost 20 years ago. Since then, I always „owned" a blog but didn’t necessarily update it regularly. Over the years, URLs changed (I remember four), focus changed (travel, photo, personal), technology changed (Wordpress, Ghost, Jekyll, Hugo), … This blog is online since 2019. In 2020, when I had lots of free weekends, I created the first theme myself. Before that, I was always using themes developed by others.New Bike Day
After a much longer than expected odyssey, I got my new bike this week. Pure coincidence - Jan-Lukas just wrote about his new bike, so I thought this is something I should do, too. Like Jan-Lukas, I bought a Cube Bike, and it has been a journey. Since April, my employer allows the usage of a “JobBike”. This allows employees to “lease” a bike through the employer. It comes with tax benefits, making the bike roughly 30% cheaper (that at least is what the providers claim) than buying it directly.Do I need tags?
This blog is based on Hugo and comes with built-in tags. It even provides a page with a list of all tags used on this blog. Mine is not very polished, because I barely used it. One of the reasons is me having a hard time coming up - not to speak of sticking with - a taxonomy. If I am being honest, I just type some random tags in the front matter when I start writing a new post.My Default Apps as of mid 2024
Last year, we all shared our default apps. Robb compiled a list of all responses. Thank you. This helped a lot. Today, roughly seven months later, I wanted to give an update. What apps did I exchange and why? 📨 Mail Client: Mail.app This hasn’t changed. I am happy with Apples build in mail app, although it could get a facelift and a new feature or two. However, not the ones promoted by Apple on this years keynote.First Bike Ride 2023
It’s beginning of April and - according to the news - there are warm winds from Africa. More than 20 degrees Celsius is unusually warm for this season. It is, however, perfect biking weather. And thus THE opportunity for my first ride this year. On the day we moved to the new apartment, I recognized a sign recommending a sightseeing bike tour around the city. Something I wanted to do ever since.March Review
My monthly reviews had a little break. Allowing more flexibility, I hope to overcome this. This is the March update. ⏱️ I am working for one and a half months since parental leave and miss spending time with the baby a lot. Thinking about working part time. 👶 The little one started going to childcare and brought home her first drawing. Cannot tell how much I am in love. ⛑️ I decided to get trained as a first aid instructor.DST Confusion
It’s this time of the year again. Working in a global environment, at some point, you’ll be confronted with the daylight saving time confusion. One example: We have a daily meeting, invited by a colleague from the US and scheduled for 2pm my time - usually. During two weeks in March and October my calendar is messed up, because the US already saves daylight, while Europe doesn’t and vice-versa. The meeting is suddenly one hour earlier - conflicting with other appointments I have scheduled for this time.All the phones I owned
I paused blogging for a while, because re-starting work and having a sick baby at home took more of my energy than I thought. Hopefully, I can find more time soon again, because I miss it. 🙂 This one is in the backlog for quite some time, inspired by Kev’s blog post about all the motorbikes he owned. When I read it, I thought this is a cool idea! I should do something similar.💻 My First Mac
The Mac celebrates its 40th birthday and with that comes another bandwaggon I’d like to jump opon. Everyone is writing about their first Mac. I joined the party quite late. My first Mac was a 2019 MacBook Pro 13" that I got from work and used intensively during Corona lockdowns. It still had four Thunderbolt ports, the only thing I am missing on the M1 MacBook Air. I was a Windows Users since I had my fist computer about 20 years ago, with some short excurses into the linux world, but always wanted to try out one of those “cool kids” notebooks.🍔 Fat Boy at 40
In August last year, Kev announced that he doesn’t want to be a “fat boy at 40” and I decided to accept his invitation and be accountable together. A few days ago, he wrote his Christmas update and I would like to use this opportunity to finally write something myself on this topic. Situation I am 36 years old and have some time left to come into shape until my 40th birthday, but I am having the same goal as Kev - to be fitter this summer.Office vs. "Home-Office"
In a few days, my parental leave comes to an end and I will go back to work. This will confront me with the question how much time I want to spend in office or work remotely. Time for reflection. The situation Before Corona, on paper, we were allowed to work one day per week remotely. In reality, this flexibility did not exist. Working from home was considered an additional day off.🥂 Happy New Year
Dear Reader, a new year has started. I couldn’t find the time to write a 2023 review yet - a lot has happened - but I still wanted to wish you, and your loved ones, a Happy New Year. May it bring many joyful experiences. I am really looking forward to continue writing here and read your awesome blogs. I really love reading them all. Thank you.🗓️ December 2023
🙍 Personal: This year marked the first Christmas with baby. In contrary to previous years, we spend the whole time at home and invited family and friends to our place. It was exhausting, but - with the usual exceptions - very joyful. Buying an extendable dining table beginning of the year was a good choice. 🖥️ Work: A few more weeks of parental leave. With the January report this section should become meaningful 🙂I'll read it
Manuel Moreale wrote a helpful article for everyone thinking about starting a blog. He identified two issues soon-to-be-bloggers have: not knowing what to write about, and worrying that nobody will read it For the first issue, I suggest to read either this article by Manuel, this one by Meadow, or this one by alienlebarge. All three offer inspirations on what to write about and to not overthink it. Concerning the second issue, Manuel offers to be your first reader.Home Alone & Rich
It’s that time of the year, where I enjoy watching „Home Alone“. It’s one of those Christmas Movies warming my heart. Every time I watch it, I wonder how crazy rich the McAllisters are if they can afford traveling from Chicago to Paris over Christmas with 15 people, four of them in first class. Lucky me I don’t have to wonder anymore: the NYT asked three economists to estimate the wealth of Kevin’s family.I went to winter wonderland, and all I got was ...
… heavy snow fall, a week spent in the apartment, a Corona infection, but still nice family time. I was really looking forward to this post. We went to the alps for a week (read here about the adventures train journey) with the intention to spend some quality time surrounded by snow. I was so full of anticipation that I prepared a few paragraphs in advance that I wanted to use in the post.Holiday Travels - Part 3
Good news needs to be shared, too. This is a short one. The second part of our Christmas Travels went like a charm. We boarded the first train at 08:47, made all connecting trains without any rush and arrived at 16:45 with just 15 minutes delay in Stuttgart. Thank you SBB & DB. 🚃🚋🚂 After the chaotic first trip, this was a blessing. Two more train-days planned. Fingers crossed there will also be short postings about them 🤞Holiday Travels - Part 2
Yesterday marked the first day of our Christmas Travels. And unfortunately, the strike - which I mentioned in the first post - hit us. Not directly, but it’s after-effects. 👷♂️🪧 This is how our travels went Luckily, my wife was awake at night and saw that our train was cancelled. She immediately booked seats in an alternative connection. The new connection started half an hour earlier - thus our morning routine had to be accelerated.Electricity Consumption
This fall, we moved into a new apartment. The building is labeled low-energy - „KfW55“ in German. Being a statistics nerd myself, I am curious how this effects our monthly energy consumption compared to the 70 year old building in which we lived before. This is the first post on this topic. I plan to post updates on this, to see the progress over the year. If you want to read all the posts, please check them out here.My blogging workflow as of late 2023
In 2019 I wrote an article about the technical background of this blog, and in 2020 there was a post about how I blogged using iPad. Neither of these articles mentioned the complete workflow, starting by how I capture ideas and how they slowly form into larger articles. The idea of this post is to give this comprehensive overview. Not for you to replicate it, because it is so cool & smooth, but for me to see how things change over time.🎄 Holiday Travels Booked
Only a few more weeks until the Christmas Holidays. As our family lives in various parts of the country, it takes some effort to organize that we can all see each other. The holidays are travel times. This week, I booked the train tickets for our travels. It will be the first time, we‘re doing this with a baby and I am not sure if we can carry all the luggage, but - I like train rides, especially in winter.My First Automatic Watch
This is still work in progress It is the summer of 2023 and I am sitting over dinner with colleagues. We enjoy a beer or two and I come to recon the watch a colleague is wearing. It is a pretty eye-catching model - on the dial is a small globe showing a part of the world. I ask the colleague about the watch and learn that it shows the country he is coming from.Spring cleaning
Although quite late in the year, I did some spring cleaning on this blog today. Using the „default apps 2023“ as an opportunity, I finally took the time to implement some changes that were on the todo list for quite some time. Comments are finally gone. I used as self hosted version of „isso“ but found myself not updating the software in several years. Additionally, forcing users to leave personal data (name and email) on this site just to get in touch didn’t feel much GDPR‘ly.My default apps at the end of 2023
I stumbled upon this by reading Kev’s great blog but it seems there are a bunch of people currently sharing their default apps. For me, always looking for a new app to improve my workflow, this is great. However, I had to notice that many people - like myself - stick with the default apps of their operating system. But, I will scroll through most of the other contributions to check if there is something to try out for me.This is democracy day!
20th January 2020 - 17:47 CET: Habemus president After a turbulent few years, many people are probably relieved that the inauguration of the new US President went off without any major mishaps and Joe Biden was sworn in on schedule at 11:47 local time.100 Days To Offload
I still enjoy reading blogs. The ephemeral nature of social media services has always left me only semi-enthusiastic. And it was on one of these blogs that I came across the 100 Days To Offload by Kev Quirk. The idea is to publish 100 posts on your own blog over the course of a year. The individual posts don’t have to be overly long or in-depth, it’s more about writing something at all and making it a regular thing.Meine Podcasts - 2020
Auch wenn ich 2020 die meiste Zeit im Home Office verbracht habe und die Pendelzeit mit der Bahn weitestgehend weggefallen ist, habe ich trotzdem eine Menge Podcasts gehört. Wenn ich mir die Liste vom letzten Jahr vom letzten Jahr so ansehe, hat sich trotzdem einiges geändert - bzw. haben sich Präferenzen verschoben. Leider sehe ich in meiner Podcast App Castro nur, dass ich seit Beginn der Nutzung Mitte 2019 insgesamt 988 Epidoden gehört habe.Publish to Blog from iPad
Unfortunately, ideas for new blog posts often fizzle out because I find it too much of an effort to boot up my laptop in the evening and organize my thoughts. I am therefore always on the lookout for ways to lower the inhibition threshold as much as possible. A good approach would be to remove the laptop from the equation and blog from a device that I have in my hand all the time anyway: Smartphone or tablet, for example.Corona-Daten des RKI mit Python an Telegram-Kanal senden
Dritter und letzter Teil der Reihe in der ich beschreibe wie ich Daten vom RKI mit Python abziehe, diese mit Plotly grafisch aufbereite und schließlich jeden Morgen in einen Telegram-Kanal sende. In diesem Artikel schauen wir uns gemeinsam an, wie man einen Telegram-Bot erstellt, diesen einem Kanal hinzufügt und schließlich mit Python Nachrichten verschicken lässt. Artikel in dieser Serie Teil 1: Corona-Daten des RKI mit Python herunterladen Teil 2: Corona-Daten des RKI mit Python visualisieren Teil 3: Corona-Daten des RKI mit Python an Telegram-Kanal senden Telegram Bot erstellen Im Gegensatz zu anderen Messengern ist es bei Telegram überaus leicht, eigene Bots zu erstellen.Corona-Daten des RKI mit Python visualisieren
Im letzten Post hatte ich bereits angekündigt, dass ich aktuell daran arbeite Daten vom RKI mit Python abzuziehen, diese mit Plotly grafisch aufzubereiten und schließlich jeden Morgen in einen Telegram-Kanal zu senden. Heute werde ich euch zeigen, wie ich die heruntergeladenen Daten mit plotly in Python visualisiere. Artikel in dieser Serie Teil 1: Corona-Daten des RKI mit Python herunterladen Teil 2: Corona-Daten des RKI mit Python visualisieren Teil 3: Corona-Daten des RKI mit Python an Telegram-Kanal senden Auch dafür bereiten wir zunächst das Skript vor, indem wir die notwendigen Abhängigkeiten laden.Corona-Daten des RKI mit Python herunterladen
Auch Ende 2020 hält uns Corona fest im Griff. Vor allem vor den Feiertagen habe ich mir die Frage gestellt, wie sinnvoll es ist, wenn Personen aus unterschiedlichen Landesteilen zusammenkommen. Ich wollte also auf einen Blick für meine Familie sehen können, wie sich die Lage in den jeweiligen Landkreisen entwickelt. Idealerweise automatisiert jeden Morgen auf meinem Handy - ohne die völlig benutzerunfreundlichen Veröffentlichungen des RKI durchstöbern zu müssen. Die Idee war geboren.Meine Podcasts - 2019
Aufgrund meiner beruflichen und privaten Situation bin ich die letzten Jahre sehr viel unterwegs gewesen. Und weil immer nur Musik auf Dauer langweilig wird (egal wie viel neue Songs mir Spotify vorschlägt), habe ich vor ein paar Jahren angefangen Podcasts zu hören. Immer wieder werde ich gefragt, ob ich was empfehlen kann. Außerdem, als kleiner Statistik-Nerd, interessiert mich selbst ja auch, wie sich meine Hörgewohnheiten so über die Jahre ändern. Ich möchte daher heute einen Einblick in meine Podcast-Liste geben und nach Möglichkeit, diesen Artikel mindestens einmal jährlich aktualisieren.Etwas coolere ggplots erstellen
Leider muss ich zugeben, dass meine bisherige Beteiligung am TidyTuesday weit hinter meinen Erwartungen zurück geblieben ist. Bisher habe ich lediglich einmal mitgemacht und das ist auch schon Monate her. Natürlich überfliege ich trotzdem jede Woche unzählige Tweets und erfreue mich an tollen Grafiken zu verschiedenen Themen. So wie beispielsweise an dieser super-coole Visualisierung, die wirklich Lust darauf gemacht hat, mal wieder was mit Karten zu machen. Und da ich mit ein bisschen Glück demnächst wieder Vollzeit-Baden-Württemberger werde, werden wir uns nicht Pizza-Restaurants in NYC sondern was aus dem lokaleren Datenbestand anschauen.OSM Daten als SVG exportieren
Ich möchte euch heute ein cooles Projekt vorstellen. Der Hase nutzt die Zeit während seines Spezialprojektes sehr effektiv und hat am Wochenende ein Python-Projekt auf GitHub geladen. Mit dem Skript könnt ihr Daten aus OpenStreetMaps als XML oder SVG exportieren. Das ist super-nützlich, wenn ihr eine skalierbare Grafik vom “Grundriss” eurer Heimatstadt, eures Lieblingsbundeslandes, eurer Lieblingsinsel, Bielefeld oder Trinidad und Tobago braucht. Das bietet sich auch super für ein Ratespiel an.Hugo mit Git auf dem uberspace nutzen
Vorgeschichte Vor gar nicht allzu langer Zeit bin ich mit diesem Blog von Ghost zu Jekyll gewechselt. Ghost hat mir eigentlich sehr gut getaugt, auch wenn ich nicht der größte Fan davon war, dass bloggen mit Markdown mit den neueren Versionen einen Klick weiter entfernt war. Außerdem war es für mich immer eine kleine Herausforderung bei neuen Versionen die Abhängigkeiten auf dem Betriebssystem auf dem neusten Stand zu halten und die Datenbank zu migrieren.Komplexe CSV-Dateien einlesen
Natürlich gibt es einfachere Dinge, als Daten in R einzulesen. Und trotzdem ist es zumindest seit der Einführung des tidyverse und den damit propagierten tidy data principles sehr viel einfacher geworden saubere Daten zu laden. Leider hat nicht jeder Sensor-Hersteller das Paper von Hadley Wickem gelesen. Dieser Tage ist eine sehr spannende Aufgabe auf meinem Schreibtisch gelandet. Es klang zunächst so einfach: Wir haben da eine Maschine. Die misst etwas und schreibt ihre Ergebnisse in eine Textdatei.EXIF Daten unter Ubuntu auslesen
Heute nur ganz kurz, weil ich es gerade gesucht, gefunden und vermutlich morgen wieder vergessen habe: Mit Hilfe von imagemagick könnt ihr unter Ubuntu die exif-Daten eurer Fotos auslesen.