Dominik Hofer. Striving for Simplicity in a complex World.
Back in January, I started an experiment by turning this website into a social media timeline-like experience. But now, we’re back to the roots . I like how each iteration of my personal website tells a different story. It’s a snapshot of how I wanted to represent myself online at the time of creating it. With the first version , I mainly wanted a place where people could find me, learn more…
Sometimes, shit gets real and you really have to work towards a specific goal. The way there is not pleasant though. For purely illustrative purposes 1 , let’s say you have to prepare for a math exam at uni. The one (and frankly only) thing that always makes sure I reach that goal is the simplest productivity tool available. A sheet of paper. And here’s how it works: Write your goal at the top of…
Imagine you open your inbox one morning, and you are greeted by an email with a ginormous attachment. It contains hundreds of pages of written communications between members of a local theater group. A local theater group where a murder happened, and your boss thinks they arrested the wrong person. You are an aspiring lawyer, and together with a colleague, you are tasked with helping to solve the…
At the latest since I first played the awesome Mini Metro game, I’ve been interested in metros. Particularly their maps. They sit right at the intersection of urbanism, public transport and graphic design. Three topics I’m passionate about. That’s why I immediately clicked on this video when it got recommended to me: It’s a talk by Mark Ovenden, a transit historian who’s been obsessed with the…
Last Tuesday, I completed my latest PACT : Committing at least once a day to the Morgenblau repo (the RSS reader I’m building) and posting about it over on Bluesky for 30 days. Whilst I’m nowhere near a finished product, I did make significant progress: Moved off TanStack Start to Laravel + React Eventually also moved off Laravel to the current stack: Go + React (mainly for the better ATproto…
A simple trick I picked up from the Runna app: If you want to increase your cadence, drive your arms faster. You don’t even have to think about your legs, because they will speed up automatically. Getting out of sync with your faster-moving arms is nearly impossible. I tried this on a recent tempo run and it felt way easier to reach my target cadence. Thanks for using RSS! View this post on my…
Sebastian shared this paragraph in his recent devlog that resonated with me: Focus is the new bottleneck. I kept coming back to this thought all week, and it finally crystallized: code isn’t the barrier anymore. Modern AI tooling lets me build pretty much anything I can clearly describe. The thing that separates indie devs who ship from those who don’t is now almost entirely about focus and…
Since I’m still in the process of developing my own , I currently have to rely on other RSS readers. And from time to time, I switch them. Today was such a day. Normally, what I do is export an OPML file from my old reader and import it into the new one. But in my current reader, I couldn’t find that export option. This forced me to transfer the feeds one by one. Which was a surprisingly…
A couple of weeks back, I finished my first 30-day PACT . During this time, I wrote and published one post every single day . Whilst I didn’t continue with the daily posts, I really enjoyed the momentum it gave me. That’s what I want to replicate now, but in another area of my life. In February, I wrote about an exciting new project I started working on called “ Morgenblau ”. Now…
Today is the last day of my writing PACT where I set out to write and publish a blog post every day for 30 days. I’ve written about various things that were on top of mind: Side projects , sport , personal finance , general life advice that I found useful , replies to blog posts and lately about our new family member . Funny enough, the most popular post by far (at least according to my…
It’s now been five days since Naida moved in with us. While not everything has been sunshine and rainbows, I was still surprised about how well everything went and how well she adapted to the new environment within a few days. Some personal highlights: In the beginning, she was afraid of entering our house and especially the elevator. We often just had to pick her up and hold her until we…
A while back, I published a post called “ The joy of writing online ”. In there, I talk about how great it is to be a part of the “blogging on your personal website” club. Since then, I also got more and more into the ATproto community and I get very similar vibes from there. I’ve been building things for the web for over 10 years now and the only other time where it felt like I was a part of a…
I had a pleasant surprise in my Bluesky timeline today. Brittany reposted a custom feed made by Marisa called “ Nature in the News ”. The feed surfaces positive news about nature in general, wildlife recovery, advancements in renewable energy, and more. I scrolled the feed for a couple of minutes and saw news like: The coal-hungry economy straddling Europe and Asia is among several developing…
We are lucky that the weather right now is really beautiful. This made getting up early and walking our dog Naida even more enjoyable. Now it’s a little after 7 in the morning. I haven’t yet been on my phone but instead have been out in nature for 30 minutes, have already walked 2.5k steps, got to experience the sunrise and watch Naida explore the forest around our neighborhood. All things that…
Today was a big day! Our little family welcomed Naida into our home. After roughly two months of regularly visiting her in the shelter, we finally felt ready to take her with us. So far, the day has been great with only a few little oopsies. Let’s hope the night will be fine as well. She’s already loving our couch, which we’re counting as a good sign. We’re looking forward to getting to know her…
This is one of the simplest but also most impactful productivity tips I introduced into my daily life. It’s been exceptionally helpful, especially since I’m studying and working from home a lot. An environment where the lines between work and leisure often blur. It’s called the “ daily shutdown ritual ” and has been brought onto my radar by Cal Newport. You might know him from his books “ Deep…
During my youth, I was a soccer player. Over time, this resulted in strong legs (great) but a pretty stiff lower body as well (not great). Stretching was always an afterthought, and I suppose for most amateur soccer players it’s the same. Now, a couple of years later, I wish I had paid more attention to it earlier on. The good news is that since taking running more seriously, I’ve come to…
I’m a couple of days late to Apple’s 50-year anniversary . But I find it still a great occasion to share this video snippet that I rewatch from time to time. It’s from a 1994 interview with the late and great Steve Jobs. It’s short, I recommend you watch it in full (full transcript at the end of the post): This section is the most powerful in my opinion: Life can be much broader once you discover…
Depending on the platform and audience, discussions around AI can be pretty heated. I probably don’t have to tell you that. But there is one particular thing about this whole back and forth that makes it really complicated but also quite predictable to be happening. Matt summarized this very well in his post : Its unsurprising AI is so divisive on Bluesky. We’re at an intersection of devs –…
Here’s the thing with ATproto: It’s very impressive from a technical perspective. If you begin to grasp what this protocol enables, you’ll inevitably become a fan (at least you should in my opinion). Posts like “ A Social Filesystem ” by Dan Abramov that capture this notion of “formats over apps” give a glimpse into what will become possible, once more apps are being built on the protocol. It’s…
Part 4 of my series on the book “ The Art of Spending Money ” by Morgan Housel. In life, there are different virtues you can attain over time. According to columnist David Brooks, we can sort them into two buckets: Things like our salary, job title, net worth and the (fancy) material goods we own belong to the resume virtues. The other ones belong to the eulogy virtues – things we’d want to be…
In the town where I live, we have this great sports facility with multiple soccer fields, a skate park, a basketball court, a sports hall and a tartan track. As a runner, I obviously mostly use the last one. But the thing I enjoy most about it is the environment it’s in. Since this facility is open to the public, there is a diverse group of people exercising there almost every time. Young and old,…
Last night the clocks were moved forward by one hour. The biggest consequence of this is usually one hour less of sleep. Not great. But there’s another thing that’s happening today, and it’s a positive one: All of a sudden, the evenings are longer again. More time to catch a few rays of sunlight on an afterwork run. And the possibility of seeing the sun set behind the Jura while I’m writing my…
Related to yesterday’s post , I want to list a couple of quick and easy ways to get “a small win”. Simple things we can do to shift our mood. Most of the things on the list are pretty obvious when you read them, but I still find it helpful to have a menu to choose from. So here we go: Breathwork Our breath is one of the only automatic functions of our body that we can actively control. That’s…
If you’re watching only one video today, make it this one. Not only is it exceptionally beautifully written, shot, color graded and edited, but it also has a very important message. All you need right now is a win. Sometimes, whether or not we feel like we’re in a slump, the most important thing we can do is think about the next step to take. And this step doesn’t even have to be big.…
Yesterday, I got to watch one of the most anticipated films of the year on the big screen. Project Hail Mary is the movie adaptation of the similarly named sci-fi book by Andy Weir. If that name rings a bell, it’s probably because it’s the same author that wrote The Martian, which was a huge hit (both as a book and later a movie starring Matt Damon) a decade or so ago. I won’t go into too much…
The Pudding is one of those sites I love to browse regularly and always leave with a feeling of delight (and new insights). If you haven’t heard of them, they are a digital publication that creates data-driven stories. So they often have an interesting dataset or pose a curious question (often both) and turn it into a visual essay for readers to explore. One piece I found yesterday and wanted to…
Part 3 of my series on the book “ The Art of Spending Money ” by Morgan Housel. For me personally, when it comes to personal finance, one of the hardest things is to find a good ratio between the money I spend vs. the money I save. As I wrote about in the last post from this series , saving is what gives us independence. On the other hand, spending money on the things we truly value is a great…
The crazy stuff that is going on over on the other side of the Atlantic has made one thing clear: Too many people (and businesses), me included, are way too dependent on US big tech companies. Switching away from tools you depended on for years can be hard though. And while I think it would theoretically be possible to completely ditch all US tech, I don’t think it’s a pragmatic solution. Case in…
Part 2 of my series on the book “ The Art of Spending Money ” by Morgan Housel. One of the main theses of the book is the following: There are two ways to use money. You can use it as a tool to improve your life. Or you can make it the measure of your status, to compare yourself with others. It’s pretty obvious which of the two ways is the better one when you want to live a happy life 1 . The…
“Writing online” can mean many different things. A social media post, a forum entry, an essay, a poem – you name it. But my favorite format remains the short blogpost. A couple of paragraphs, talking about one experience, one idea, one epiphany, but always something to take away or something leaving the reader inspired. As a creator, I find them the most pleasant to write. More space to expand my…
This is an observation I regularly have during everyday life. Some days feel like I have all the time in the world. I manage what I set out to do, I move, create, read, learn. These are fulfilling days. Then, in the evening, I have this feeling of “being done”. I can properly wind down. But then there are days where I feel like the exact opposite. Not enough time for anything. A todo list that…
Part 1 of my series on the book “ The Art of Spending Money ” by Morgan Housel. One random fact from the book that stuck with me is this: Between the 10 richest men in the world, there are 13 divorces. Even if one has all the money in the world, more than they could spend in 1’000 lifetimes, a good and happy life is not guaranteed. On the other hand, it shows us normalos that the calendar quotes…
It’s already past 8 pm and if I’m honest, if it weren’t for my writing PACT , I wouldn’t be writing this post. And you wouldn’t be reading it. But you still do. Because I just set a timer for 5 minutes, sat down and started writing. We often hear that consistency is key when it comes to habits or getting better at something. Even if you’re not in the mood to do the thing you set out to do, simply…
This weekend, I finished reading “ The Art of Spending Money ” by Morgan Housel. If that name rings a bell, it’s probably because of his mega-bestseller “ The Psychology of Money ” from a few years back. He also writes a blog well worth reading . I never read “The Psychology of Money” because, from skimming the table of contents and reading a couple of summaries, I felt it was more geared…
For the longest time, I was an article hoarder and jumped from one read-later app to another. But most of the time, it stopped at the hoarding part and never got to the reading part. Until I found out from Marcel that there is a superior way to manage articles you want to read. I’m even a bit ashamed to admit that it took me reading a post from another person to come up with this system. Because…
In the hectic world that software development seemingly has become, reading “ The Joy of Building Slow ” by Andy from !Boring 1 felt like a breath of fresh air. And it deeply resonated with me. The current zeitgeist (at least according to my YouTube feed) seems to be to create apps in the shortest amount of time possible while maximizing revenue at the same time. But statements like “I built…
Back when I first started designing and coding things for the web, one of my favorite channels was the one from a designer named Mackenzie Child . In hindsight, one of his videos had a huge impact on me. Despite it being a simple video with a simple message: But the great thing about our world today, with the internet and all the tools available to you, is that we can build stuff and just see…
It’s been almost two years since launching this blog . Back then, I used to write very frequently on here 1 . But since then, that habit of writing daily has faded quite a bit. And especially lately, my brain felt very scattered across different things that are very important to me when it comes to creating and learning: Building Billow at my day job, being a good student at University and…
Although the occasion is very devastating , I still found the quote below worth sharing. For context, the whole interview revolves around uncertainty in life and how to cope with it from a philosophical angle. Philosopher Wilhelm Schmid (translated): […] There is also the other side of life, where something completely unexpected can always happen. There are people who put enormous energy into…
Recently, I listened to this great interview with the creator of Claude Code, Boris Cherny: If you don’t know, Claude Code is currently widely considered the gold standard when it comes to agentic engineering. So his words carry a lot of weight. What you’ll immediately notice when you hear Boris talk is how calm and clear he speaks. He sounds very considerate and doesn’t have to use hollow phrases…
Ok, hear me out here. Two days ago, I posted this note : With the exams finished and my new personal website out in the world, it’s time to dive into the world of iOS development again 🥳 I will talk more about the app in the next couple of days, but as a little teaser, here’s the icon :) Well… maybe not anymore. Yesterday, I worked a little on the app again, but I felt almost no…
Last Sunday, approximately 1.5 years after its launch , my old website got retired 1 , and this new one got published. Maybe you’ve seen it already these past couple of days – if not, then welcome! In this post, I want to give you a glimpse behind the scenes, some decisions I made and why, and where we’re heading. Enjoy :) The reason I wasn’t really “unhappy” with my old website per se, there…
If I had to choose one direction, that I could push the IndieWeb towards for the next couple of years, it would be the social route. Just having a personal website, which already makes you part of the movement, can be incredibly lonely without any additional tools. This is definitely something we need to improve. Sure, there are standards like Webmentions , which lets one website notify another…
It’s the beginning of December again, which means Spotify Wrapped has just dropped. Like last year, I want to share mine here and encourage you to do the same, so we can all discover some great music :) This year, Spotify used a TikTok-style vertical scroll for Wrapped instead of the old Instagram Story format. I didn’t quite like it as much because you had to actively swipe pretty often to get to…
From “I love calculator” by Andrej Karpathy, founding member of OpenAI: The calculator is incredible. […] To perform its function it only requires light (thanks to its tiny solar panel on the front) […]. If you traveled back in time with this little thing that you can hold in the palm of your hand and gave it to people living thousands of years ago, it would just… work. It would feel completely,…
Yesterday, I participated at the Lausanne Marathon – my first-ever race at that distance. Now, on the day after the big event, I want to recap a bit and write about my experience. For future me and maybe for you as well, if you’re interested and perhaps even want to run a marathon yourself. The result First things first, I actually finished the marathon! This was my primary goal and I achieved it,…
I’m currently on and off designing and building v2 of this website. Along the way, I’ve been looking for some fonts that I could use for my new branding. As a future reference for me and hopefully as inspiration for you, I wanted to share some of the gems I found: Host Grotesk A beautiful sans-serif font that works very well for headings. I like that it has a very geometric feel while still…
I quite like this definition of success by Will Ahmed, the founder of Whoop: Success is being excited to go to work and being excited to come home. Sounds like the recipe for a good and fulfilling life. Discovered via Aaron Francis’ Newsletter . Thanks for using RSS! View this post on my site or reply via email .
Number Go Up by Zeke Faux is a unique blend of investigative journalism, social commentary and a true crime recount of some of the biggest frauds in recent years. And it was an interesting read because I experienced most of the stories told in the book in real time. Zeke’s book documents the 2020–2022 hype-cycle and subsequent fall of the crypto industry. Think Dogecoin, NFTs, news about Bitcoin…