#weeklyreview 18/24

Posted on 2024-05-07 by Falko

Party Time

We are approaching to make our “Walpurgisnacht” party a tradition. This year it was a little spontaneous but nevertheless a very lovely evening with our friends from countryside. We had a small buffet, some drinks and two camp fires (and our guests doubled as mosquito buffet 🙈).

Beach Cleaning

Also a tradition already: the yearly cleaning of the local beach by the village community. We meet with rakes and wheel barrows to clean up the beach on the lake from last year’s leaves and possible trash and branches from the winter. This is a really nice tradition which brings the people together for some activity that everyone benefits from. Of course there is self-made cake and beverages after the work. We were around 20 people and work was done in less than an hour. Now everyone can enjoy a clean beach. The weather was perfect. Not too warm yet, but sunny with a fresh breeze.

Good bye Gittea – Hello Forgejo

I was running my own Git Repo site based on GitTea so far. But apparently there are some discrepancies in transparency that caused a decision by the soft fork Forgejo to consider becoming a hard fork and go their own way in the future. Forgejo seems to be more committed to stay a truly independent and community driven project. So I’ve decided to switch to Forgejo as well. Especially as the migration currently is rather seamless as the codebases hardly differ.

Open Studio weekend

On the weekend it was the annual “open studio” weekend in Brandenburg. Local artist opened their studios and galleries for visitors all across the country. We visited the wonderful site of Silke Schmidt and even bought some pictures of her.

Her place is an old GDR kids holiday camp (Ferienlager) and had wonderful vibes of the past. Had to take a picture of the famous GDR F70 compass that I used to own.

Another quite magical place was the garden of local artist Siegfried Haase. Beside this being an awesome garden (wonderfully planned and maintained by his wife) there is so much stuff to discover: sculptures he made from scraps and old gear he found around in the area. The whole property is like a large “Wimmelbild“.

And last, not least we attended a session of the Daumenkino of Volker Gerling. We had seen this before two years ago and it’s still magic. One would think ‘how magic can a mere flip book be?’. But what Volker does from it is truly marvellous. Time seems to stop and you listen to his stories and watch the pictures come to life when he presents them. Go check his schedule of exhibits!

Status

Saw these fancy fresh red pine cones on the weekend #Uckermark

Kurzer Besuch in Westberlin

Posted on 2024-04-29 by Falko

#weeklyreview 17/24

Posted on 2024-04-28 by Falko

Ok, trying to get this one done a bit earlier than usual 🤣

Rowing against myself

The rowing machine in the gym has the feature to re-row a previous session. Then you’ll see a pace boat on the display with the past sessions speed and can compete against that. I used my session from last weeks Monday and beat myself by a few dozen meters. Coming week will be harder to achieve this I guess.

otherwise the gym and fitness week wasn’t spectacular. At least got one running session done with my friend on Tuesday. Slow and shorter than usual, but better than nothing. The evening appointment the same day got skipped.

The weather this week was a little weird. We literally had snow on Monday. I had an appointment to get the summer tires put onto the car for Wednesday. I’m usually late with changing my tires. But this might have been a close call this year.

Food experiments

Saw a recipe on my insta stream to make some tasty paste from chilli flakes, garlic, onions, soja sauce, salt and pepper and sunflower oil. The ingredients meant to be topped with the heated oil and then stirred. The oil supposed to be 180ºC.

On my first try I got the oil much too hot for lack of proper measurement equipment. The chilli flakes almost got up in flames and turn to charcoal pretty quickly.

After getting a proper thermometer the second attempt yielded a glass of tasty hot paste 🙂

Hacktivism

Printed out some shopping cart coins and left them in shopping carts in the countryside supermarket. There is room for improvement on the surface quality. I’ll need to find a better model or make one myself. But the mission is clear: put the locals into conflict between a free cart token and their political views 😀

Obligatory woodworking

Of course there was some woodworking on the weekend. Stacked the firewood that we had split the last weekend. One more round stack finished. Just a few more weekends and we should be done 🙈

Also managed to mow the lawn. Was about time. And we hadn’t mowed the back of the property the whole of last year. It’s meant to be a meagre meadow, which, despite of its name, is actually very rich in plants and insects. As opposed to a nicely manicured lawn. But every other year you should mow it, to encourage the grow.

And while mowing I suddenly catched the smell of fresh peppermint. Apparently I found the spot where we had planted them last year. Found a few plants I didn’t mowed down and made the first fresh peppermint tea this year 🙂

#weeklyreview 16/24

Posted on 2024-04-26 by Falko

Hangover

As reported last week, we went to a birthday party and of course stayed to the very end. Quite a bunch of beers and Küstennebel 🤷‍♂️ was involved. I had a bit of a hangover (for me that means lack of sleep, thirst and still not safe to drive a car).

data archeology

This week was the time that my wife asked me for old data from several years ago. As a good nerd I of course had some old disks and archives that could potentially contain the data (an old address book).

First challenge was to remember on what piece of software I was hosting the address book services and on which of our devices a copy would be present. The data was last seen around 2017. I found old disk images from the MacBooks but wasn’t able to restore the old macOS address book files on nowadays macOS. Then I thought I might just check whether there is a backup of the server side. And indeed I found an old archive of the webserver with the ownCloud installation and a dump of the mySQL database.

I was able to import the ownCloud dump into a local mysql instance and found some tables that looked like they contain the address book entries. Fortunately ownCloud was saving the vCard entry in a single table cell with some meta data in other cells.

Lazy me asked ChatGPT to write a Python script which would extract the vCard cell from the database and write it into a text file one per each entry of the database table. To my surprise this worked on the first attempt. All I had to do now, was import these vCard files into my new nextCloud instance.

Doodle / Rally

Every once in a while we have to find a common slot for some activity among friends and family. A service like Doodle became famous to create a poll and find a common slot. This week I became aware of “Rally” an opensource tool to do exactly that. Of course I quickly installed my own instance 😉

Kitchen tricks

One of my favourite dishes at the moment is a block of feta cheese surrounded by a whole bunch of cherry tomatoe, garlic and olive oil. Put in the oven for about 50min and enjoy.

I cut the cherry tomatoes in have so the loose a bit of water are not popping/splashing when trying to stir the whole dish after cooking.

Finally remembered an old trick to cut a lot of these small tomatoes in short time. Just use a second cutting board and a long knife. Put as many tomatoes on the board as fit and the knife can cut, place the second board on top to hold the tomatoes in place with a gentle pushdown and then cut with the long knife between them board through the tomatoes. One cut and have a pound of tomatoes cut…

Lamb watching

On Saturday we payed a visited to the local Shepard to watch the newly born lambs. Always cute.

#weeklyreview 15/24

Posted on 2024-04-08 by Falko

admittedly this blog post is coming a little late … but hey… better late than never 😉

Snake swimming

During our weekly swim in the lokal lake we encountered a grass snake this Sunday. That snake is living near the water for quite some years now. It can be seen swimming in the summer occasionally. Even when there are people bathing sometimes it is crossing the beach.

The only thing I was surprised about is that it could be seen swimming at this still rather low water temperature of about 11ºC.

BookWyrm update hassle

I tried to update my BookWyrm instance to the latest version (0.7.3 pre-release) this week. This turned out to be a bit more laborious than I thought … Of course there were issues with the pre-release and I had to do a roll-back. The release came with some database migrations (changes to the database schema) that were not backwards compatible. So for the roll-back I had to find the migration information and undo these changes in the database. But then again the migration files of Python Django made this relatively straightforward.

LinkDing now supports Screenshots

Another tool that got an update this week was LinkDing – my bookmark archiving service. The new release now contains an optional container image with the chromium browser engine to take snapshots of the websites you’re adding to your Bookmark archive. This is really neat as the plan of course is to keep this archive around for a long time … likely longer than some of the websites that the links point to.

One can also add more snapshots at a later point in time to the same entry to keep some kind of evolution of the site.

Paperless WorkFlow

Even more software fiddling this week. I’m slightly obsessed with my PaperlessNGX installation now. All my documents go into Paperless meanwhile. Some of them I want to share with other users on my instance. So I created a workflow that adds certain permissions to documents if some conditions are met. In my case the trigger is the correspondent of the new document. If that matches a certain entity, the document is shared with a specific group on my instance.

Wood

Of course we did some more woodworking on the weekend. There were still trees left in the forest for us to fetch. This time it was a little easier as Dad payed a guy with a Forwarder to get us the trees close to the main path. No more hauling the logs with wheelbarrows.

Party Nazis

On Saturday evening we went to a birthday party of one of the locals here. That’s alway fun as one meets whole bunch of people from different backgrounds. Especially different from how we used to live in the big city etc.

I talked to one guy I didn’t know before and he was quite nice. We got along well and talked about where we’re coming from, what we were doing etc. Abruptly the guy asked whether I’d vote for the “DIE GR¨ÜNEN” party. One of the three coalition partners in the current government and the most hated party among the people from the rural area. Hated of course for other reason than the right-wing guys spreading fake narratives about them…

I admitted that most of the times I’d vote for that party. He acknowledged and told me the mandatory story of why he hates the party. Then we switched topics and continued to have a good conversation about all sorts of stuff.

A while later he again asked me – with a little disbelief – whether I’m voting for the “DIE GRÜNEN”. Again I said “yes”. He responded that I surely have noticed by now that he’s on the rather opposite political spectrum. He obviously didn’t like that party, that was obvious. He added that he’d consider himself a Nazi. Blunt straight out. I was a little surprise that he made it that clear. But we still continued to have rather nice and relatable conversations that were by no means Nazi coloured or propaganda. Nobody tried to convince the other of their world view. In fact he emphasised that he enjoyed the conversation and that we got along so well despite our opposite political stance.

Of course some people might now shout: how could you talk to this guy!?

But I believe these kind of conversations and maybe even relationships are very important in keeping the bridge to those people. Showing them that they matter as human and listen to their worries and fears. Building trust and find common ground. So that conversations about the hard topics can take place on a better foundation than mistrust and mutual hate and despise.

Village conversation DIE GRÜNEN

To finish the weekend on a different note this time I stay longer to participate on the village conversation organised by the DIE GRÜNEN Uckermark. Thats a series of talks with the local members of the party but also some higher up staff from the country or even national government on the panel. They briefly introduce themselves to then answer questions asked by the participants. Topics those find relevant and want to ask a party thats member of the government.

It was a small round of about 30 people, but not less interesting and lively.

#weeklyreview 14/24

Posted on 2024-04-04 by Falko

more wood work

This week of course had more firewood working. We spent another day in the forest to cut & haul out some more firewood. Got 2 and about one third new stacks now. But still need to split the remaining logs for stacking. That will likely make another 2 stacks … that should last us a couple of years.

Easter weekend

We’ve been out for a delicious brunch on easter Sunday at the famous Hotel Döllnsee. The buffet was rich and delicious as always. They even had Eierlikör on tab!!!

On easter monday we’ve been over at my parents house for coffee. The traditional egg hunt took place in the garden. I hope we’ve found all the rather well hidden eggs.

Cooking lamb and sauce hollandaise

It’s asparagus season again. And as a good German we had to indulge ourselves with a delicious meal of cooked asparagus, lamb steak and self-made sauce hollandaise. Especially the latter is rather easy to make yourself freshly from just a handful of ingredients.

two pieces of lamb steak on a plate. Behind the steak some asparagus covered with a pale yellow sauce hollandaise can be seen.

2 days working

Originally had planned to take the whole week off work. But then decided to cancel two of the vacation days and get some work done. The “joy” of Powerpoint …

Was rather quite as many colleagues were also off for easter holidays or sick. Seems almost like the new flu or cold also spreads over online meetings. Large numbers of sick leaves across the globe with a cold…

Flyer delivery

My wife was helping to organise another “Dorfgespräch” of “DIE GRÜNEN” Uckermark. That’s a series of open topic conversations with the locals. We had attended one sessions already a few month ago and found it rather good. I like that they take the time and courage to listen to the people and take their feedback. This party faces a huge amount of hate among people in the rural areas for no good reason. They are blamed for every bad decision the previous governments made and also solely for all decisions and impact the current government makes.

Windows on the Mac

Installed a Windows 11 VM with UTM on my MacBook. Was surprised that there is an ARM64 version of Windows and that it’s really snappy. It’s still annoying Windows though…

Also tried to emulate a x86 Windows machine. That was significantly slower and not really fit for practical use I’d say. Despite my powerful M2 Max CPU with 64GB of Memory. Will give an older windows version a try next to see if those perform better. All this in support of friends who consider moving the Apple platform again, but still have some legacy Windows software without alternatives. So they need a way to run those old programs somehow.

R.I.P. Mr. Tit

K3 found a dead tit in our garden and gave it proper funeral

Motor scooter drive

Hario Mill Stick mod

Got myself a Hario mobile mill stick. Thats a battery powered motor driver for their hand coffee grinders. It also comes with adapters for some other brands of hand mills. I’ve got two HARIO hand mills. The older model HARIO MSCS-2TB (Skeleton) which is formally not compatible with this mobile mill stick and a smaller HARIOD MSS-1DTB. The latter is compatible.

The mobile mill stick looks a bit like a power tool with a bit adapter on one end. The Skerton got an M6 screw shaft which is flattened on two sides to hold the crank. To make it usable with the mobile mill stick I macgyvered it with some M6 screw extension and an M6 screw from the DIY shop. The screw extension sits on top of the Skerton rod and allows for the M6 screw to go in on the open end. Now the Skerton got a normal screw on the axel that can be driven with a normal power tool and bit of your choice. My Makita Powertools spins a bit too fast for my taste (heats up the beans during grinding too much). Thats why the HARIO mobile stick is the better choice.

For the HARIOD MSS-1DTB the mobile mill stick comes with an adapter to properly hold it in place.

AirTag battery swap

I’ve got an Apple AirTag on my keys and it eventually ran out of battery. I really thought those AirTags were single use and one has to buy a new one after about 1,5 years. Give Apples talent for reaching into your purse that did make total sense to me. But then my brother told me that you can just screw open the AirTags and swap the battery. I was slightly baffled. Fortunately I had the correct type of button cell at home at swapped the battery in a matter of seconds. That was but also some sort of Apple experience that it’s finally that easy to swap.

Open Stage Templin

On Saturday there was last session of the open stage at the Multikulturelles Centrum Templin. As always it was a fun evening with a good variety of music from folks to rock and even some poetry this time.

#weeklyreview 13/24

Posted on 2024-03-24 by Falko

The Zone of Interest

Watched “The Zone of Interest” in the local cinema. The film won 2 Oscars at this years ceremony for best international film and best sound.

In my humble opinion the movie is rather overhyped. It’s ok. The visuals are good and the cast plays really well. The story or maybe rather the script is confusing. The sound was particularly bad at the location we watched it. Not sure that was due to the poor equipment or settings at the venue.

I definitely liked “Treasure” from Julia von Heinz, which I saw at Berlinale a few weeks ago much better on the topic of Auschwitz.

Charite

On Tuesday we took a friend who’s suffering from severe ME/CFS to an appointment at the Virchow Klinikum of the Charité Berlin. The German healthcare system doesn’t allow him to get a transport voucher and he’s really not in a condition to take public transport nor can he pay for a Taxi.

For us it was a nice trip to Berlin with a good lunch at a Thai restaurant.

For him it was at least the most relaxed trip in his series of visits to the Virchow-Klinikum.

Wood working

We’ve got some woodworking done during the week. My dad organised some trees from the town forest that we were allowed to cut into pieces and haul out of the forest. Since the paths in the forest were still not usable with our cars we again had to carry the wood quite a bit through the forest on to the main paths where our cars with trailers were parked.

We’ve also borrowed an hydraulic wood splitter from friends again to cut the logs into smaller pieces and then stack the freshly cut wood into round stacks for drying.

Started the first stack with a too small diameter and didn’t pay enough attention to the angles. Looks rather wobbly and I needed to secure it with a fence around. The second looks more like a cone but seems to be stable enough to stay without fence support.

D. Kahneman R.I.P.

This week we’ve lost another one of the great thinkers of our time. Daniel Kahneman was probably most famous for his “Prospect Theory“. Explaining why we people often seem to make decisions that are not the most rational. That was something that has bothered John von Neumann and his followers to some extent at least when trying to apply the game theory foundations developed by von Neumann to real world scenarios. Men don’t act purely rational an awful lot of time.

#weeklyreview 12/24

Posted on 2024-03-24 by Falko

Stumbled upon a toot mentioning the “Enable Mastodon Apps” plugin for WordPress. This basically allows Mastodon clients to login to a WordPress instance and post updates and replies. The plugin is still in early beta but works well with Ivory and IceCubes app on the iPhone. I can now post a brief update from within the Mastodon client that will be persisted as an entry on my blog. I find that idea rather neat. Mastodon itself still feels kinda ephemeral to me.

Sports

I’m a bit behind on sports this week I think. Stayed home Wednesday and Thursday. Tried running on Thursday but stopped after one round in the park. Wasn’t feeling it. Tried again on Friday morning and did a good 10k in the park.

I’m keeping up my push-up streak so far. 45 days in a row of at least 20 push-ups. Since begin of March I’m trying 30 per day. Thats hard most days. Some days too hard, so that I only did 20 or 25. But it’s improving slightly. The increase was certainly too steep and I should do smaller increments. And I’m such a habitual animal that I can’t change pace when I started. So I’m leaving it at 30 for the time being and will increase in smaller steps when I feel for it.

Friend is trying to add one more per week. Maybe thats a good strategy. Will see.

GPS Outage

When we were driving from Berlin to the countryside on Friday late afternoon I noticed that the car navigation system lost track of where we are. At first I thought it’s just a short glitch. But it didn’t recover (as usual) after a few turns. For the rest of the journey it was completely off. I checked my phone and noticed that it also couldn’t find its position. Apparently GPS was not working at that time.

Possible GPS Jams can be found after a day at https://gpsjam.org/?lat=49.64017&lon=28.04866&z=4.6&date=2024-03-22

The Man from the Future

I finished reading the biography of Johnny von Neumann. I liked the book very much. Not only because of this amazing achievements and life of von Neumann, but also because of the rich writing style of the book. The language is colourful and sophisticated. The author: Ananyo Bhattacharya is the chief science writer at the London Institute for Mathematical Science. The British English is much more dense that the usual American English of books. I can wholeheartedly recommend this book.

Mudfest

On Saturday we went into the forest to get some firewood from the municipal forest. The trees are already down and we “just” need to cut them and get them out. Plan was to cut them to length of about 30cm already. So that I don’t have to cut them again at my place. We had to get quite deep into the forest. The main paths were OK but we would like to get closer to the allotted trees and go on the side paths. Since it was raining the days before that turned out to be a bad idea. The car got stuck already at the attempt to turn into the path. it was just too muddy and slippery. Fortunately we had a second car and a rope to tow the first car out.

So I ended up carrying the logs about 10 – 30 m from the forest to the main path. Since the logs were also wet and slippery I could only grab one or two at a time. That day I clocked apparently 11km of walking according to my watch. Will definitely need to optimise this for the next round. We only managed to get out 2,5 trees that day. About 2 cubic meters and there is 12 m^3 to fetch …

One more test

Posted on 2024-03-22 by Falko

To post pictures