Recent content on Schafe sind bessere Rasenmäher
My kids, 6 and not-quite-4, are learning chess — and they are kicking my ass. Well, okay…I’ll admit that it’s a bit click-baity, because they have yet to beat me. And I’m actually not all that good at chess myself. But I’m seriously impressed at how quickly they’ve picked it up. I think I was 10 or 11 when I first learned chess, first from a friend that I met…
I feel like I’m bitching a lot about my kids and while I sometimes neeeeed to get this off my chest, I do love both of them dearly. I’ve already described one key moment that I had with my older son 1 , but I’ve been missing something similar with my little one. There are tons of memorable moments, but nothing that stuck out to me … until the weekend before last. We were…
I find it incredibly fascinating how memory works. This morning, I saw a post from my friend Forrest where he linked to http://lostmyspace.com/ . Apparently somebody way back when archived about 500,000 songs from the site, before MySpace lost everything in a botched server migration. My friend and I also had a MySpace page back in the day and uploaded a bunch of crappy demos and cool guitar…
One of the most valuable things that I was taught as a software developer, is to write “good” Git commit messages. Obviously “good” is very subjective, so let me dive into it a bit. I want to explain what I think a “good” message is, but also why I think it’s relevant that you write a good message. I’m hoping that towards the end of this post, I…
My wife and I went to see the band Foreigner yesterday. If you’re not familiar with the band…like… have you been living under a rock!?!?! I promise you that you could have gone to the concert and you would have recognized 90% of the songs, just from hearing them in movies, TV shows, on the radio, singing them back in school, whatever. Let me give you a selection: Urgent Juke…
At work I’m known for having great memory. I keep a lot of stuff in my head, maybe too much for my own good. And I personally don’t think that I have a very good memory at all. I’m prone to forgetting stuff, which is why I set phone alerts even for the most trivial things. So how does that fit together? 🤔 Let’s dissect this a bit. First of all, I do remember a lot of…
While writing my last post about growing my own software , I also started thinking about which languages I use for my projects. Bash I live on Linux now , so Bash seems like the obvious choice for smaller scripts. You can do a lot with Bash glueing your terminal tools together , but there’s a hard to anticipate maximum point of complexity where things start to get uncomfortable. I say hard…
I’ve been thinking about coding my own KOReader Sync Server. At the moment I’m using a lightweight implementation by b1n4ryj4n , which has served me well for years. But recently I’ve been looking for a way to improve the interaction between my Xteink X4 and my ancient Kindle running KOReader. With the server I’m using, I’m stuck with the binary comparison of books,…
I’ve mentioned it before, but we got a new bike a few weeks before and I absolutely love it! It’s a longtail cargo bike, meaning that it has a longer and reinforced luggage rack. And the luggage I’m carrying around? Well…kids. 😅 This is an Urban Arrow Breeze , a pretty new model that we tried on a whim when we went looking at cargo bikes a few months ago. The main reason…
Hell yeah! Let’s start by swearing! Swearing is good! This is not a “Fuuuuck”, that slow, defeated, sigh of a fuck. This is “Fuck it!!!”, the one that nails you to the wall, the one that makes you grin like a maniac, because you just had a terrible idea, but it just might work. Yesterday I was at a pretty low point . Quite a few people have reached out to me, for…
I recently read two thoughtful posts that oiled the gears in my mind and eventually sparked this idea to write through what the hell is going on with me at the moment. One post was Pulling the Master Sword by Forrest , the other was Nostalgia always includes a temporal context by Wouter . You don’t necessarily need to read these posts to follow along, but both come highly recommended by me.…
Together with the kids, we are currently reading Lichterland . It’s a wonderful children’s book, which sadly hasn’t been translated to English (yet?). We’re already on the second book of the series and both adults and kids are enjoying the story and characters a lot. The second book starts with the main characters, Karla and Frederick, building a treehouse. An annoying…
I recently added a /now slash-page to my blog. It’s mostly empty, except for the current book I’m reading and the last three books I’ve finished. Because I’m incredibly lazy and don’t want to keep this list updated manually, I went looking for a way to automate things. I already use Jelu to bring some order to my book reading. I have a list of books that I want to…
Today is a slow work day, so I found myself browsing my photos on Immich. Specifically, I found myself browsing the duplicates that Immich detected. And while doing so, I discovered that a lot of said duplicates are photos that my wife took with her iPhone and that were uploaded in multiple formats. iPhones save images in the High Efficiency Image File (HEIF) format by default. The specification…
I’ve been collecting concert ticket stubs for many years now and I’ve always wanted to do something cool with them. For a while I taped them to my wall, but I’ve moved places twice since then. I considered doing a scrapbook, with photos I took and whatnot…but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen now. It feels like a huge effort and I just can’t get…
I’m shocked and amazed how much difference a single day off can make. If you missed it or forgot about it: my wife practically kicked me out for a weekend, because I became insufferable. Don’t worry, our marriage and relationship is doing fine. I was just so stressed out, that I kept picking fights with my kids and even my wife over the tiniest things. Even though I was supposed to get…
A shrill shriek jerks me awake. “No not that one!” My youngest is having some kind of nightmare. I try to comfort him with a hug, but he pulls away. He’s cold, so I pull the blanket over him, but he kicks it off again. I want to go back to sleep, but he’s tossing and turning and I’m afraid to catch a fist or foot to the face. Eventually he quiets down and I drift…
This will be shorter, but I need to gush some more about Jujutsu. You can find my earlier posts here: Why I prefer Jujutsu over Git More Jujutsu tricks Let’s start with the biggest time saver. Version 0.39.0 was released last week and hidden in the list of new features I found this. jj gerrit upload now supports a variety of new flags documented in gerrit’s documentation . This…
While other people are doing something sane and valuable with / for their blog (e.g. adding a “Share to Mastodon” button , I’m spending my time doing something convoluted and kinda unnecessary. BECAUSE I CAN!!! 😈 In his latest Linkdump No 97 , Andreas linked to Zak’s blog . I haven’t even managed to read any posts yet, because I was so smitten with the header image.…
Another message from future Robert: apparently I never hit publish on this post. I found it finished and ready in my notes, but for some reason I never put it online on my old blog. Enjoy. 🙂 “Noooooooo!” “Why would you do this to yourself!?” “Why whould you do this to US!?” Yep! I played Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days (2010) …even after outright hating the…
Tom came up with the interesting idea of listing one album for every year of his life . I’m not 100% sure if I’m playing by the same rules, but here’s what I did. List one album for every year I was alive. The album must have been released the same year. I must own the album in some way. This was mostly to simplify the selection, because I just ran fd '^year' -type d in my music…
Yes, yes, I’m an idiot. I should have looked into this much sooner. I have a super complex setup to serve my blog and when I recently ran the RSS validator from rssboard.com , I ran into a few surprises. For one, the encoding apparently was set to ASCII instead of UTF-8, but also gzip compression was disabled. I should explain that I’m serving my blog from my home server, via a Nginx…
I’ve written before about why I like Jujutsu better than Git . In the last two weeks, I’ve found a few more cool things to do with it, as well as some workarounds and fixes for things that were bothering me. A whole bunch of aliases (revsets, commands and templates) Every now and then I run git branch --contains <commit> or git tag --contains <commit> , to see if a fix has already made…
Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Ball x Pit . It’s a really fun game that mixes a bunch of gameplay elements into a roguelite that is… addictive . And that last word has been bothering me for weeks now. Every time I pick up Ball x Pit , this word swims around my brain. It doesn’t completely prevent me from having fun with the game, but it does diminish the enjoyment…
I pride myself for being punctual. If we have an appointment, I’ll turn up 5 minutes early, sometimes even 10. I don’t hold anybody to the same standards. If you’re late, then you’re late. There’s probably a good reason for that. I always carry a book (and of course my phone), so I can always spend the time reading. But I , I need to be punctual. I have to . And I no…
I love the term “to unlock something”, as in “this unlocked something for me” or “you just unlocked a memory for me”. I think the image nicely complements the loud click noise I hear in my head when something like this happens. I’m sure it has happened to you too. The moment you suddenly “get it”, the “penny’s dropped”. When I…
It feels like just yesterday, I wrote how to send and receive Outlook mails on the terminal . 1 Today, I want to show you something neat that I learned from the aerc-discuss mailing list . 2 I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my time with aerc so far. But if there’s one thing that was bothering me, it was that opening links from an HTML mail was a bit…tedious. You can use the…
…or what I actually wanted to call it: Showing the middle-finger to Microsoft and overeager system administrators . 1 I’ve been moving more and more of my daily business over to the terminal. Part of it is, that I spend most of my time in the terminal anyway. Another part is surely that I’m a huge nerd. And I’m addicted to Vim and whatever text I write, I want to be able…
I’ve been using Jujutsu for about two months now and it has almost entirely replaced Git for me. There are only a few actions left where I still prefer Git and I’ll try to explain why. Both can coexist and in fact complement each other, so this hasn’t been a deal-breaker for me. This is not a tutorial! If you’re interested in learning how to use Jujutsu, here’s the…
A friend of mine is struggling with being a parent. Well – I am also struggling with being a parent. You may have noticed that, if you’ve been following the blog for a while. I don’t have all the answers, but I did remember one thing from a book I read or a podcast I listened to. I’m sorry that I can’t quite remember where I got it from, because I find it a very…
Out of left field, Dom surprised me this morning with a killer thread on Fedi about all the ways he…enjoys (?) his coffee. To each their own and, as a pragmatic coffee drinker myself, I was on board with the thread for a while. But this is where I draw the line… At the end of the day if there’s any coffee left I’ll put it in the fridge and drink it cold the next day.…
I fear this post will go all over the place, so let me give you a heads-up as to what I’ve planned. I want to recount a few memorable stories from my last 5 1/2 years of being a dad. As things go, they will mostly be positive and fun, because that’s what we humans remember in the long-term. There will also be scenes that may seem absolutely banal to you, but that have touched some core…
My kids draw / scribble / craft a lot and it’s slowly getting out of hand. We’re running out of space. Luckily, a good friend of mine told me about their solution to a similar problem. Their kid crafts a lot of elaborate machines, robots and other figures. They decide together when things get thrown out and then they take photos of it from every angle, before tearing it down. So a few…
Earlier today I read Joel’s posts “On keeping up with friends and contacts” and “True friendships” , the latter of which immediately reminded me of one specific friend I have. I got lucky at university, because I met a few people there that I’m still in close contact with and whom I count as being amongst my best friends. However, the one person I’m…
“No daddy!” “What?” “Mommy says: you can’t wear the same socks twice in a row.” He scoffed. “Watch me.” He slipped into his socks and jumped up proudly. “Tadaah.” All of a sudden, his flesh was pierced by multiple fish hooks. The hooks were attached to long chains, which appeard to be coming from the walls. When the chains pulled…
Yesterday I experienced the first pangs of “game fatigue” with Hollow Knight: Silksong . It’s not the typical “game has overstayed it’s welcome” either, but it’s a feeling that I’ve experienced often enough in the past that I want to put it into words. Let’s try and define this first. I’m specifically talking about “game…
I self-host the Foundry VTT (virtual tabletop) server for my Dungeons & Dragons group. It runs on my homelab server and is the one service that sees the most users apart from myself. Yesterday I caused severe issues for all my fellow players and my GM due to recent changes in my setup. I’ll walk you through the process of how I (re)discovered each moving part and fixed it. Hopefully…
Have you run your fingers down the wall And have you felt your neck skin crawl When you’re searching for the light ? Sometimes when you’re scared to take a look At the corner of the room You’ve sensed that something’s watching you. Have you ever been alone at night Thought you heard footsteps behind And turned around and no-one’s there ? And as you quicken up your…
For the sake of full transparency, I’ll have to say that I’m writing this after less than 24h. It’s been more like 18h…and I’ve slept maybe 7 of them. But I’m still super excited about it and don’t want to wait to share my thoughts with you. Some background My old phone, a Realme 7, broke after about 4 years of usage. I bought it in 2021 and kept using…
I first heard the term “I-get-it” button on Watch out for Fireballs , a game club podcast. I’m not sure if they came up with it themselves, so I’m not sure if I’m giving credit to the right people. I just wanted you to know that it didn’t come from my own head. In the context of the show, hitting the “I-get-it” button is synonymous to being annoyed…
Welcome back! This time I’m kinda talking about hacking a handheld again. And once more I’m a bit out of my depth, because I haven’t really done much with my Kindle. I have a vague idea of what’s possible and an itch to try some of it out eventually, but if you’re looking for a more in-depth article about messing with a hacked Kindle, you probably want to look…
This article has been tumbling around in my brain for a while. I’ll go into the whole history of why and how I started my self-hosting journey, but if you’re just excited to see what I’m running you can use the links below to jump ahead. The origin story How do I get this online? A backup of the backup Upgrading hardware and expanding services A bit about security Stop talking…
“What is a man? Belmont don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more.” – Dracula 1 Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles ( DXC ) for the PSP is a mindblowing package, containing an all-new remade version of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood and, unlockable in it, the original Castlevania: Rondo of Blood ( RoB ) and its sequel Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 2 ( SotN ). Rondo of…
I’ve been following a few people on the Fediverse who almost exclusively spend their time playing older systems and games. Until maybe a year ago I looked at that from a distance with mild curiosity, rarely participating with half-remembered anecdotes from my youth. Even though I had some nostalgia for games that I played in the past, I rarely went back to them. I didn’t even consider…
Continuing my Hack all the things series, I’m doing something slightly different today. So far I’ve hacked my PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS, but this time I want to talk about my Toniebox. Or rather…my kids’ Toniebox. If you’re unfamiliar with the thing, it’s a little music box with a built-in speaker, two little “ears” to raise or lower the volume and…
Title says it all, thanks for coming. . . . Okay, maybe it makes sense to talk a bit about the why here. I might have mentioned it already somewhere in another post, but there was a time in my past, where I had already established meditation as a daily habit. I might misremember, but I think I kept it up for more than half a year, only missing a few days here and there. This time I made it 66 days…
My inspiration Dissecting my delusion What to do about it? Final words My inspiration I’ve finally decided that I want to reduce my screen time. This has been on my mind for a long time now, but the most recent posts that gave me the final kick were Dom Corriveau’s Turning off my instance and going on a social media hiatus and Christine Rosen’s On The Death of Daydreaming . These…
I recently came upon a few blog posts that talked about adding comments to a static site. Here’s Maho Pacheco hooking up their blog to the Fediverse by implementing the necessary ActivityPub endpoints . It’s a very thorough and exciting series of posts, but it’s much, much more than I intended for my blog. Then there’s Beej describing how to dynamically load replies from…
I previously talked about hacking my PS Vita , which is where my device hacking journey started. My next stop was the Nintendo 3DS that lay forgotten in my cellar and collected dust. I bought a Nintendo DSi shortly after it came out and replaced it with the New 3DS later. The biggest additions to the 3DS over a DSi were the stereoscopic 3D screen on the top – which is still super impressive…
I finally managed to move my blog off of GitHub for good! I mostly followed the call to leave GitHub, shortly after they announced Copilot, the LLM they illegally trained on all the code on GitHub in secret. Almost all my code is now hosted on Codeberg with backup copies on a Forgejo instance in my homelab. But I took my sweet time moving the blog, because it was just so very convenient to have it…