#weeklyreview 13/2025

Posted on 2025-04-04 by Falko

iTerm2 with local LLM

Stumbled across this blog post and gave it a try. One can indeed run iTerm2 with a local LLM
This way non of your local shell questions go to OpenAI. Everything stays local.

screenshot of iTerm2 Settings for the AI Plugin. The lower section is highlighted with a red circle. Emphasising the settings to connect to a local OLLAMA backend for the AI generation.

Input to the AI Agent:

Screenshot of macOS iTerm2 window with the AI plugin prompt window on the top. The input to the prompt reads "iterate over all files in a directory and show their first 10 lines"

Generated output/command:

screenshot of a macOS iTerm2 window. Showing the AI overlay prompt with the generated AI command. Ready to be pasted into the shell.

Switching from Obsidian to Joplin

So far I was using Obsidian for my daily notes. Nice simple Markdown. Was using a community plugin to sync my notes via my personal S3-compatible object storage. That was rather flaky lately.

I took another look at Joplin. Another simple note taking app that’s free and open-source. It can use several systems to sync notes between different machines. One of those is using NextCloud as a sync backend. Since I’ve got my own NextCloud instance I chose that option.

Import of all the Markdown files was rather easy as Joplin can import a whole folder of Markdown notes. So I just pointed it to my Obsidian root folder and swoosh – everything was imported.

Car vs. Building 0:1

Tuesday evening I heard my daughter entering the balcony of her room which is facing the street. Thought that’s unusual as it’s past her bedtime already. So I went checking and saw street all flashing blue from several police cars.

Apparently a car crashed into our apartment building. Fortunately nobody was injured. Someone tried to park and likely mixed the pedals for acceleration and brake and thus jumped over the pavement into the wall. It was one of these car sharing rental cars. So looks like the driver was not familiar with that particular model of car.

Corner of a building showing different textures and colors on the walls; one wall is light gray with horizontal lines, and the other is cream with bamboo fencing on top. The ground is covered in debris and dirt on the sidewalk.

A small gray car with noticeable front-end damage is parked in a dimly lit urban area at night. The car's hood is crumpled, and the front bumper and headlights are misaligned. Surrounding the car are other parked vehicles and residential buildings under streetlights.

haircut

First time kiddo goes to a commercial hairdresser. She wanted to get rid of her long her. Came out really good. We all like the new haircut. They grow up so fast … 😉

repairs

On the weekend I noticed that one of the headlights of my wife’s car wasn’t working. So I checked how to change the lightbulb. As expected … this is not trivial. Had to look up a YT video for the specific model to find instructions how to get to the lamp socket. One needs to open a flap in the wheelhouse to get to the headlights. Then open another flap and pry out the lamp. All blind and just with my hands because no way one can see what ones doing there as it’s so hidden.

A close-up of a hand holding a car part near the underside or wheel well of a vehicle, showing dirty and textured surfaces with visible dirt and wear.

Cold Brew

it was warm and sunny enough this week to make the first batch of cold brew coffee and enjoy it on the balcony in the sun 🙂

#weeklyreview 45/24

Posted on 2024-11-11 by Falko

Frost

Finally Winter seems to be closing in. On Sunday the temperature fell below the freezing point (of water) and we had -4º C in the countryside. But we were rewarded with beautiful sunshine and colourful autumn foliage.

Temperature in the lake also dropped a bit over last weekend. I tried out my new digital surface thermometer. That showed 11.4º C. Another thermometer that measured at a depth of about 10cm into the water showed 9º C.

Crossed the lake nevertheless. Still now issue with that.

Back in Berlin I met with my friend Sam for beers. Hadn’t had beers for several weeks … so it was about time. Fun conversations 😉

Winter tires

This year I made the appointment to change the winter tires back in September already. Before the first snow 😀 Free choice of schedule … But they actually advised to not have the tires changed if it’s still above 7º C average. Thats why I only now got the appointment.

Driving through the city is insane. It was always crazy, but it seems in the last quarter the city has added construction sites to EVERY road. In our area one of the main 6 lanes roads is now reduced to two lanes and also all the side roads are blocked. Apparently this will take at least 2 years to finish. But of course you never see anyone actually working…

proper coffee

On Tuesday I decided to take my coffee gear to the office to enjoy a proper coffee without spending 4 EUR on it outside.

A bunch of coffee gear lined up on a wooden tabletop. Left to right: metal jug with coffee, a cup of ready cappuccino, a Subminimal milk frother, AeroPress chamber and grid lid, AeroPress piston and Coretto permanent steel filter for the AeroPress, Hario Travel Grinder and finally Hario Mill stick.

This nicely fits into an old camera bag

I might do this more often now (or eventually get a copy of the gear for the office…)

Shortly before I was supposed to get my yearly flu vaccination by the company doctor a fire alarm had us exit the building. Quite a spectacle with police, emergency cars, fire engines and even a helicopter. But fortunately it turned out to be a false alarm and we were allowed back in after about 15 min.

a helicopter, slightly blurry, in front of a blueish sky.

Hacker meeting

This time at the Prater Garten Restaurant. Decent “Wiener Schnitzel” and again an inspiring bunch of old nerds having fun.

↬wandzeitung.xyz/@moellus/113431974931326324

CryptPad Installation

I finally took the time to look into installing CryptPad. That’s a secure online editor for documents where multiple people can work on the same document, chat and comment while collaborating. Focus is on security here as all connections and storage of the documents is encrypted.

They meanwhile provide a working docker-compose.yaml and I only had to add the labels for my Traefik reverse proxy.

There some initial challenges in getting the container properly connected to Traefik. One has to get the config.js of CryptPad right.

I’ll share my docker-compose.yaml and my config.js here, so you can take these as inspiration. I basically only put in my domain names in the config.js and docker-compose.yaml. One important piece is to set the httpAddress: 'cryptpad' in the config.js because the docker-compose.yml sets this as the hostname of the container. If you leave this at localhost, Traefik will not be able to connect and you’ll just get a “Bad gateway” error when trying to connect.

Next quest is to the get OnlyOffice stuff running to support Spreadsheets and Presentation documents as well…

[Update 2024-11-11] got the OnlyOffice extension working. Had to execute the ‘install-onlyoffice.sh’ from the GitRepo inside the running application container and restart once.

Art Forest hiking

On Saturday we had organised a hike from our neighbour village through the art forest to the “Mittelpunkt der Erde” (middle of the earth) restaurant in Kurtschlag. That was a nice hike with funny and insightful information shared by one of our neighbours.

The restaurant was really lovely as you would imagine an old small village restaurant that fell out of time. There were 3 dishes on the menu and the max price was 7.95 EUR. You could have eaten all 3 and were still cheaper than a normal meal in Berlin. Amazing.

Fall of Carthage

Sascha and his band “Fall of Carthage” release their new album “Kernel Panic” a few days ago. Of course I had to listen in although I never really like their earlier albums. Not because they were not good. Quite to the contrary. But the previous albums were just not my taste at that time.

The new album however I really do like. The style is still more on the heavy metal side. But I like the arrangements on the new album.

If you like their music and want to support the band, make sure you either buy on Bandcamp or if you’re streaming, then consider donating directly to the band via PayPal. As a small band, there is virtually no revenue for the band from the commercial streaming services.

#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.

Falko Zurell

wondering about stuff

Tag Archives: coffee