#weeklyreview 26/24

Posted on 2024-07-02 by Falko

fancy Chinese food

discovered a new Chinese restaurant in Berlin Mitte. It’s apparently authentic as you have a hard time finding labels in German or English. And the food selection is also rather exotic 🙂

They have kind of a buffet with ingredients you pick into a small basket. When you’re done, you go to the cashier and select a flavour of broth you like to have your ingredients boiled in.

The ingredients range from veggies, mushrooms over chicken feet, duck blood, chopped beef stomach to various sea foods components. Only think I was missing was insects. But maybe that doesn’t go well with broth.

It was definitely delicious

since it was very warm this week in Berlin (~ 30ºC ) I of course had to make a few cold brews with ice cubes. Always delicious and refreshing

Finally got my printer dialled in to properly print on the Zweckform labels for the automatic ASN assignment in PaperlessNGX

School concert

This school years concert of the instrumental classes at the gymnasium of K3 was again impressive. The kids really did progress with their skills over the last concert in winter. Given that most of them play the instrument only since almost a year. Especially strings don’t seem easy. Some kids are obviously more talented (and were also learning their instrument since several years at home already) than other and got a solo. One girl of the 6th grade was playing a harp – stunning.

Spicing up video conference

Took inspiration from a post on Mastodon and build a little LEGO stage to attach to the Laptop lid and spice up video conferences 😉

Weekend – Party time

On Saturday we went to a little party at friends in the next village. The weather was awesome, the food delicious and pets cuddly 😉

#weeklyreview 25/24

Posted on 2024-06-25 by Falko

herbal hike (?)

On Sunday we participated in the first herbal hike in our village. A local lady who’s quite knowledgeable about local herbs and their application for medical and cosmetic usage took a small group of people in a hike through the meadows and forest. She was showing us the various plants and explained how to identify them and what they might be used for. Quite interesting.

Cooking

Kiddo loves pasta. And she also loves cooking herself. So we went to make proper Spaghetti Carbonara. You don’t use cream! Just pancetta, egg yolk, grated pecorino cheese and a few spoons of the pasta water. That makes for a very creamy and rich carbonara.

Paperless Document Workflow improvements

I read an article about how to improve the document archiving process with PaperlessNGX. One basically wants some sort of clue between the paper document and the scanned digital copy. So that when you have either document, you can quickly find its counterpart. Paperless has a field for Archive Serial Number (ASN). You can sequentially number your documents if you want. Now you’d also want that serial number on the original paper document as a tie between the original and its digital copy. The trick is, to put a tiny sticker with a pre-generated ASN on the documents before scanning. Paperless can detect this ASN and use it as the serial number of the scanned document.

I was following the instructions in this article to enable the respective settings in my PaperlessNGX setup.

Paperless gets the ASN from QR codes. The stickers container QR codes and a text representation of the ASN for humans to read. The article also contains a link to a Python script which can generate sequential QR codes for various label papers.

I ordered the Avery Zweckform L4731 stickers which are 25,4mm x 10mm small. They fit on almost every document and are still readable. The trickiest part was to print them properly. The python generated labels didn’t seem to fit properly. The margins seems to be off at the top and bottom of the paper and thus the labels were overlapping the cut out stickers. I found out that one can also easily generate the stickers on the website of Avery Zweckform. They have an online editor for the labels which can generate sequential QR Codes and sequential text numbers. At the end you’ll get a PDF generated that you can print out. My print settings had to be A4 paper and explicitly set to scale 100% (not scale to fit or something else) on my Epson WF-4830. This gave me perfect printouts on the pre-cut sticker paper.

public dinner in the village

On Saturday it was finally time for our yearly public dinner in the village. We would gather at the patio in front of the church and dine together. Everyone brings their own food to be shared with other and table cloth and tableware.

This is always a lovely occasion to meet the neighbours, have good conversations and of course good food. It always amazes me that even without coordination there no duplication of food. People just get creative and bring their specialties.

and of course I got my nails done fancy by the kid 🙂

#weeklyreview 24/24

Posted on 2024-06-25 by Falko

3D printing & design

after fixing my printers hotend (the heater was broken) I created a stencil to help put lines on plain paper. That was quick and easy in AutoCAD Fusion 360.

Gotten back into using Fusion360 I also quickly designed and printed a ring to hold the support rods for our tomatoes in place.

And finally I modified someone else’s model of a curtain clip to work with my strong neodium magnets. The original model exposed the magnets and since they are super strong the clips would come off the curtain when trying to open it.

I modified the design so that the magnets are inside the model and covered by a thin layer of filament so they wouldn’t directly touch when two clips connect. The tricky part was to insert them mid print. Took a few iterations, but now it’s working and the clips are sturdy.

Beer & Burgers

we finally managed to meet again for our irregular/regular beer and burgers meeting. The weather was a bit challenging as it was still quite chilly in the evening. It did not rain at least.

Garage

Finally took the car to the garage for it was complaining about its routine maintenance cycle. Driving through the city… always a challenge as it’s super busy. Best part is always the commute back and to the garage with public transport…

Pottery

Finally picked up our stuff from paint-your-style. My cup came out nice I’d say 🙂

Visit to Szczecin

On Saturday we took a quick visit to Szczecin in the evening. Had an awesome dinner at Karczma Polska. I had one of the best duck with red cabbage I’ve ever eaten 😉

#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 07/24

Posted on 2024-02-22 by Falko

11.02. – 17.02.2024

Due to some scheduling mishap I went swimming two times that Sunday. We originally had an appointment for 11:00 am but the guys didn’t show up (of course I still went for a swim). Then the other half of the group agreed on a 1pm meet up. So I took a second round. The lake also gained quite some water over the last weeks of rain. We seem to be back at the level were we’ve been last year this time.

Traefik config voodoo

If you ever need to configure your container in a way that Traefik will allow traffic coming from specific IPs, but require HTTP Basic Authentication from all other IPs … this is how you’d configure this:

    labels:
       - "traefik.enable=true"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman-internal.rule=( Host(`spooly.example.com`) && ClientIP(`192.168.75.0/24` ))"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman-internal.entrypoints=websecure"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman.rule=Host(`spooly.example.com`) && !ClientIP(`192.168.75.0/24` )"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman.entrypoints=websecure"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman.tls=true"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman-internal.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman.middlewares=auth-users"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman-internal.tls=true"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman.service=svc-spoolman"
       - "traefik.http.routers.spoolman-internal.service=svc-spoolman"
       - "traefik.http.services.svc-spoolman.loadbalancer.server.port=8000"
       - "traefik.http.middlewares.auth-users.basicauth.users=admin:$$2y$$05$$K5HviqYOC3ScWoRqUIQ80elXe.QByrAvpvmaDp9yj0oaA4L0LiCE6"

You basically have to define two separate Routers for the same service. Each Router has its own matching rules and own middlewares.

Mind that the ClientIP in the routers matching rule only matches on the ClientIP, not on IPs in the X-Forwared-For HTTP Header.

new T-Shirts \o/

QWertee had a special offer where you’d get a free T-Shirt every one you order. Even on the discounted ones … so I ended up with a whole bunch of new nerdy t-shirts 😀

Of course one was already occupied by kiddo

Birthday

another birthday in da house. The kids … they grow up so fast.

Elections

This is the big year of elections. On Saturday our village society elected a new board. That was formal but still fun. Especially as we there was another instance of our “Dorfdisco” afterwards \o/

From the camera roll

#weeklyreview 21/23

Posted on 2023-06-04 by Falko

phew week 21 is already almost 2 weeks ago. So I’m definitely late with this post. Again. And admittedly its hard to remember what happened. Because I’m old and because so much stuff is happening all the time.

I refreshed my nail polish

Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to make it proper. Since I’m working a lot with my hands, the normal nail polish wears off rather quickly.

Cooking

A very nice vegetarian dish I recently discovered: Zucchini/Aubergine lasagna. Dunno wether its actually called like that. But its relatively simply and very delicious:

Cut Zucchini and Aubergine into 3-4mm think slices along the long side. Put in a bowl and season with salt and let them rest for about 10 minutes. That will get some water out. Then fry them in a pan with oil until they show signs of brown frying marks.

In a bowl mix some canned tomatoes squash with salt, pepper and garlic (shredded, squeezed etc.). Now alternating layers of tomato sauce and fried veggie stripes in a cooking pan (must be good for oven use) like a lasagna.

Grate some cheese on top and put into the over at 200ºC for about 25min.

Testing Food posting

Image

Pflaumenstrudel mit Mandel-Zimt-Streuseln

Posted on 2021-09-11 by Falko

Dieses uralte Rezept hat meine Frau aus einer BRIGITTE-Zeitschrift gerupft. Es ergibt einen sehr sehr leckeren Strudel. Eigentlich bin ich kein Freund von gebackenem Obst. Aber dieser Strudel bildet da eine Außnahme. Er ist knusprig, süß, nussig und zimitg. Perfekt für Herbst und Winter.

Zutaten:

2 Rollen fertiger Blätterteig auf Backpapier
500g Pflaumen
Für die Streusel:
- 150g Mehl
- 125g Zucker
- 120g Butter
- 100g gemahlene Mandeln (Haselnüsse tuen es auch)
- 30g Mandeblättchen oder Mandelstifte
- 1 Prise Salz
- 1 1/2 Teelöffel gemahlener Zimt
60g Butter
4-6 EL Pflaumenmus

Zubereitung

Den Backofen auf 200ºC vorheizen. Die Butter für die Streusel weich machen (entweder im Wasserbad, oder vorsichtig in der Microwelle). Alle Zutaten für die Streusel in eine Rührschüssel geben und mit Knethaken des Handrührgerätes vermischen.

Die Pflaumen waschen, halbieren und die Steine entfernen.

Den Blätterteig auf einem Küchenhandtuch oder Backpapier ausrollen. Mit der zerlassenen Butter dünn bestreichen. Dann mit dem Pflaumenmus bestreichen, dabei an den langen Kanten ca. 5cm zum Rand hin Platzlassen. Nun die Streuselmasse gleichmässig dünn auf dem Pflaumenmus verteilen (wieder zum Rand hin 5cm frei lassen). Anschließend die Pflaumenhälften auf den Streuseln gleichmässig verteilen.

Nun den Blätterteig vom Rand her mit dem Küchentuch zusammenrollen. Vorsichtig, damit dabei keine Löcher im Teig entstehen. Die beiden Blätterteigrollen mit der Teignaht nach unten auf ein Backblech mit Backpapier legen. Die Oberfläche noch einmal mit flüssiger Butter bestreichen und ab in den vorgeheizten Backofen.

Nach ca. 35 Minuten sollten die beiden Rollen schön braun und knusprig sein. Abkühlen lassen und genießen. Vanilleeis und Schlagsahne passen sehr gut hierzu.

Milchreis aus dem Reiskocher

Posted on 2020-04-11 by Falko

Zuerst eine Warnung! Versuche nicht normalen Milchreis im Reiskocher zu machen. Das gibt eine Sauerei. Die Milch kocht über und versaut Dir Küche und Kocher.

Aber es gibt einen Weg für Faulpelze und gleichzeitige Besitzer eines Reiskocher dennoch soetwas ähnliches wie Milchreis zu machen. Und das geht so:

1 Tasse Reis (Sushi-Reis, Milchreis)
1 Tasse Kokosmilch
2 Tassen Wasser
1/2 Apfel
1 Stange Zimt
1 Prise Salz

Die Größe der Tasse spielt keine Rolle, wichtig ist das Mischverhältnis.

Zuerst schälen wir den Apfel und schneiden ihn feine Spalten. Auch das Kerngehäuse entfernen. Dann alle Zutaten in den Reiskocher tuen und das Program für normalen weißen Reis durchlaufen lassen.

Nach ca. 1h hat man sehr leckeren, duftenden Reis mit der Konsistenz und fast dem Geschmack von Milchreis. Den Apfel kann man auch durch andere Früchte wie z.B. Trockenpflaumen oder ähnliches ersetzen.