Kill AI
I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI, kill it.” —Ronny Chieng …in his 2026 Harvard commencement speech.
nilsmielke’s blog.
Read what I wrote!
Latest posts
Kirby CMS Community Meetup Karlsruhe No.4
Last night, Kirby Community Meetup Karlsruhe #4 happened. As is tradition, we met at the NUN Kulturraum —many thanks to their kind team for letting us use their wonderful venue and to Bene for his preparations and for dealing with the aftermath of our events. This time seven people joined—three of them were newcomers: Benedikt ( benediktgrether.de ) , Moritz ( moritzkrauss.de ) , and Jan (…
N2S: Deleting suggested entries in autofilling form fields
Hey Nils, it’s me—Nils. Remember when you tried to delete a suggested entry on a form field, that you had used before, in the browser? And do you also remember, how you couldn’t recall how to do it? Well, maybe this time it will stick!1!! Focus the form field. Use the keyboard’s down key to navigate to the suggestion you want gone. Press SHIFT and BACKSPACE ! Done! (At least that is how it works…
Kirby CMS Community Meetup Karlsruhe No.3
Yesterday was the big day. You sure did hear it on the news, too. It was the day of the long-anticipated Kirby CMS Community Meetup Karlsruhe #3 . And—as all stakeholders had rightfully expected from us—we increased attendance again. By a whooping 40 % (compared to our last event). This makes us the most popular and most biggestest Kirby Meetup in the region. (Granted, we are the only such event…
Kelly Slater: Lost Tapes
Ever since last year’s Olympic surfing competitions, I have had a nag for the sport. Practiced it only once in my life—in Australia, of all places, and more than half my lifetime ago—, but never followed up. Looking around on the YouTubes I stumbled across this fantastic documentary series on the GOAT —Kelly Slater. Here’s a playlist. Be aware, that opening the links (which will lead you to embeds…
Kirby CMS Community Meetup Karlsruhe No.2
In October 2024 Bene Zorn and I started a recurring Kirby CMS Community Meetup for the greater Karlsruhe region—or “ Kirby KA ” for short. Unexpectedly I had to bail on this first edition, unfortunately. Last Thursday, April 10, 2025, we held our second meetup in Karlsruhe—and it was a huge success. We increased attendance by 25 %—5 people took part this time. 😋 After a light chit-chat, each one…
N2S: Why does my domain-specific Kirby config not kick in?
I am a simple man. A simple, forgetful man. This is part of the reason why I started this blog. Writing down things helps me remembering them—or gives me a place to look them up. So here’s another Note to Self (N2S) piece. Every now and then I find myself in the situation, that domain-specific configs do not take effect in a Kirby CMS setup. This shows most of the times in the debug option not…
There’s hope
Print isn’t dead—it only looks that way on paper. —unknown source Unfortunately I don’t recall where I heard or read this. I do love me some print. That’s why I love this quote…and for its linguistic cunning.
Using Kirby to “sprinkle in” editability to your existing, static PHP site
If you have come to Kirby from another system—e.g. from Perch, as I have—or if you are simply in search of such a feature, you might struggle to find a solution to just “plug in” a CMS in certain places to make a tiny bit of your project editable as needed. Think “latest news” or service announcements. “Retrofitting” we would call that…in the olden days. As soon as you have familiarized yourself…
Well, factually…
A good conspiracy theorist, won't be distracted by facts. —David Kriesel in his talk at 31C3 The original quote is in German: “Wer ein guter Verschwörungstheoretiker ist, der lässt sich von Fakten aber nicht ablenken.” I hope, I translated it adequately. In his talk at the 31st Chaos Communications Congress in 2014 David explained, how a—if not the —major printer/scanner manufacturer…
US of Aaaaah!
Just leaving this link to Wil Wheaton’s blog post on the results of the 2024 US presidential election here: https://wilwheaton.net/2024/11/what-have-you-done-america/ I like reading Wil’s posts a lot. One of the few blogs I actually read every article of. Deeply feel this, although not a fellow American. I am so sorry and in horror this happened to your country, Wil.
Celebrating consistency
As of yesterday I have been meditating—almost—every day for 18 months straight. Time for a quick recap. On January 23, 2023, I picked up the habit of meditating daily. Only 14 days have I missed in the 549 days since. Those have been birthdays or days that were too busy—oh, the irony!—, so I couldn’t manage to sit down and do my routine. Still I am pretty proud of myself right now. This post is a…
Can’t stop
Complete the motion if you stumble! —Red Hot Chili Peppers in their song “Can’t Stop” I am trying to, believe me. But I fail most of the times.
Mark Farina—A Defected playlist
You wouldn’t believe, how much I enjoy listening to DJ Mark Farina delivering—amongst others—his infamous Defected Broadcasting House sessions. Here’s a playlist of all his DBH sessions published to date in chronological order. (Not, that anyone’d asked for it. 🤷♂️) (For privacy’s sake—and to skip those tedious ads—I am using the alternative YouTube frontend https://piped.adminforge.de for all…
HNY, everyone!
Happy New Year to everyone, who celebrates! 🎉 Here are my favourite Hipstamatic shots from last night’s fireworks in our neighbourhood. Frankly, I am not too big a fan of fireworks, with the insane pollution they cause and the unnecessary irritation they give animals. My kids love the spectacle, though. I did too, when I was their age. Thus, we watch, as others light up the night sky. And the…
N2S: Elvis and the Null Coalescing Operator (in PHP)
This is more of a Note to Self (hence N2S ), to remember, what the Elvis operator ( ?: ) and the Null Coalescing Operator ( ?? ) in PHP are and what they do. Elvis in da house The Elvis operator is used like this: $z = $x ?: $y; … which is a shorthand for this: $z = $x ? $x : $y; … or for this: if ($x): $z = $x; else: $z = $y; endif; If $x evaluates to true , do your thing. Otherwise do different…
The mental game
The most important part is your mental game… I would say it’s 90 % mental and the rest is in your head. —Cam Zink on Red Bull TV The 2023 (and 2010) Red Bull Rampage champion was talking about the mental strength required to compete in the most prestigious—and likely most dangerous—freeride mountainbiking event in the world. This quote makes me chuckle every time I hear it or even think of it.
Airbus’ open source font
Thanks to a post on Mastodon , I came across Airbus ’ open source font “B612”. It was “designed and tested to be used on aircraft cockpit screens”, which makes it a perfect fit for small—even low-res—applications. I like well-designed fonts with purpose—and I like, when companies share their findings and ultimately their resulting assets. See for yourself and make good use of it:…
Using cURL to get records from Airtable
I was having a hard time, figuring out, how to use cURL to retrieve Airtable records with their new token-based API . Granted, I am a slow—albeit eager—learner. But their API documentation wasn’t that much help with references like curl -X POST https://api.airtable.com/v0/{YOUR_BASE_ID}/{YOUR_TABLE_ID_OR_TABLE_NAME} . What’s that supposed to mean? Where does that go? For future me, here is what I…
Humans, ey?
[…] humans don’t communicate very well by default. —Jen Simmons on The Big Web Show with Jeffrey Zeldman I keep repeating this, but Jen said it on air, so …
Perch “standard” to Perch Runway migration—the missing steps
I have recently migrated a bunch of websites, that were on Perch version 3.2 (a.k.a. the last “regular” release), to Perch Runway 4.x. It is not always an easy route, is what I have learnt. Runway has been around for quite some time and was sort of the bigger sibling of standard Perch —some called the latter “Perch proper“. After the CMS changing owners in early 2021, the standard version has been…
Using PHP’s list() with varying length arrays
I enjoy using list() ( php.net/manual/en/function.list.php ) to disassemble arrays into named variables. It is a bit awkward at first, having a language construct on the left side of the is equal to character (=), but that’s okay. Say, you want to dismantle a page’s path into named fragments. This is, what that might look like for only one fragment (like "/contact"): list(, $level1) = explode('/',…
Alias for your Mastodon handle—in the Kirby config.php
On Mastondon, there are a few posts about how to implement an alias for your actual handle using different setups. In _Kirby_ this can also be achieved by adding a route to your config. On Mastodon , there are a few posts about how to implement a custom alias for your actual Mastodon handle using different setups already. Phil Hawksworth wrote about it here (using a Netlify redirect rule) and Trey…
Minimal PHP—less, but better
As always (😬), I am most likely late to the party, but have you enjoyed writing shorthand PHP , yet? Shorter if statements For me, it all started when I realize, that this block of code <?php if(condition) { echo ’some text’; } else { echo ’some other text’; } ?> can be turned into this: <?php echo (condition) ? ’some text’ : ’some other text’; ?> Neat, ey? Likewise this can be used to define…
I failed you, German blog posts.
Here’s to a new era—of posts on this site only being published in English.We didn’t even have a good run, German posts. We’re only five posts in. I am sorry. Oh no, why only one language from now on? This is kind of a side project to me. Or better yet the side project.I am having a rough time making,—well…—time for writing posts as it is. Three kids and a main gig keep me on my toes more than I…
Never lonely
If you are scared of people, you never feel lonely. —Ai Weiwei in Debbie Millman’s podcast Design Matters
Essentialism
You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. —John Maxwell from Greg McKeown’s book “Essentialism”
Loading Fathom Analytics’ script.js under a strict Content-Security-Policy
If you follow me on Twitter , you are most likely aware, that I am a big fan of the privacy-first website analytics solution Fathom Analytics . A less known fact may be, that I am no expert on the topic of Content-Security-Policies ( CSP ). 🤷♂️ The problem When it came to introduce a strong CSP to a client’s web presence, I hit a wall, trying to load the Fathom script.js . The obvious solution…
My favorite podcasts (a snapshot)
Do you listen to podcasts? I do and I have subscribed to many of them over the years—and listened to even more. I am a true fan of the format. Some of the subscribed ones I listen to every single episode. That’s how good they are (to me, at least). Some I cherry-pick. These categories are always in flux, of course. That’s, why this is a “snapshot”. Here are my current go-tos—in alphabetic order:…
Go!
Done is better than perfect. —Sheryl Sandberg That’s what I thought, after—literally—years of tinkering around on this website. Many a technology was tried, but there was no leisure to learn. Even more designs were iterated on, but long breaks inspired indecisiveness. Way too little spare time was available to achieve real progress—this is “just for fun”, after all. So let’s get this over with and…