#weeklyreview 41/24

Beer’n’Burger

On Monday we had another instalment of our infamous beer & burger crew meetings. This time we finally met at the Brewdog restaurant at the Frankfurter Tor. The burgers were surprisingly good. The beer was good not surprisingly. But on the costly side with around 7 EUR per 0,5L glas.

Cold

I guess two times swimming on the last weekend and two sick kids at home last week took a toll on me. Woke up with a severely soar throat on Tuesday and it went downhill from there. So bad that I actually called in sick for Wednesday and Thursday.

Originally this Tuesday I was scheduled for the company sponsored flu vaccination. But fortunately that had to be rescheduled due to the doctor herself being sick.

Tried to stay in bed really and rest/sleep. Of course got interrupted several times by phone calls and family emergencies.

But eventually managed to get through and felt much better on Friday already. Almost no symptoms on Saturday.

big mastodon update

On Tuesday version 4.3.0 of Mastodon came out. Almost a major release if you ask me. The update required some manual intervention. They’ve split the container images into one for the web app and one for the streaming app. The docker-compose.yml had to be adjusted accordingly and a second container image built. I also had to rebuild the patch or the source code to allow for longer postings. This is now a little bit easier and can be achieve by just changing one variable value:

From d04253848c2d53cc732e3cb0c6e31be91dd6107c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Falko Zurell <email>
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2024 15:27:02 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] adjust post character limit to 5000 chars for 4.3.x

Signed-off-by: Falko Zurell <email>
---
 app/validators/status_length_validator.rb | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/app/validators/status_length_validator.rb b/app/validators/status_length_validator.rb
index dc841ded3..9cb1ec94b 100644
--- a/app/validators/status_length_validator.rb
+++ b/app/validators/status_length_validator.rb
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 # frozen_string_literal: true
 
 class StatusLengthValidator < ActiveModel::Validator
-  MAX_CHARS = 500
+  MAX_CHARS = 5000
   URL_PLACEHOLDER_CHARS = 23
   URL_PLACEHOLDER = 'x' * 23
 
-- 
2.39.5 (Apple Git-154)

All in all the upgrades of all three of my instances went perfectly smooth and the new web interface looks slightly fresher.

Dinosaurs and Future

The weather on Saturday was so good and we stayed in Berlin for quarantine (not pass on the cold/flue on to my wife in the countryside) reasons. Kiddo and me decided to go to the museum of natural history to see the dinosaurs and other stuff again. We took the bikes and happily pedalled there through marvellous Mitte.

I was surprised to find Knut the famous Berlin Zoo polar bear there on display.

After the museum we felt fancy enough to drive down the road to the FUTURIUM. A new building new the river and Hauptbahnhof where some vision of the future stuff is on display. There was a spectacular view from the skywalk on the roof over sunny Berlin.

We rounded the trip off with lunch at Sanku Maots’ai 三顾冒菜 柏林 a Chinese style restaurant at Friedrichstrasse. It’s quite popular among the natives and you get to choose your ingredients for your hot pot yourself. And yours truly doesn’t shy away from the weird stuff like duck blood or tribe 😀

In the evening we watched the original Tim Burton “Betelgeuse” movie and afterwards James Bond – Goldeneye. Good ol’ stuff.

#weeklyreview 24/23

What a week … my work project is in its final phase of hopefully successful completion. But it’s taking a few over hours to push it over the finish line. Not because I’m forced to, but because I like the technical challenges and also working with people and solve their problems.

I also get to write some Python code again. Not that I’m good at it. But I love automating tedious tasks with code. Thats what computers were made for – take over jobs that can be automated, so you’re free to do stuff that the computer can’t do.

Lunch break

spontaneous in-person lunch with @moellus on Wednesday. Forgot to take picture as the distracted me with conversation (I know, quite unusual for him)

K2 odyssee

K2 got an invite to the university of Saarbrücken and the Max-Planck-Institute for Computer Science to attend the “Forschungstage Informatik”. This was his first (almost) solo trip by train across the country. The journey to Saarbrücken went, apart from a hour delay on the last leg, OK. The event itself was apparently quite interesting for him. Finally meeting a bunch of likeminded nerds to converse about math and computer science problems….

The journey back but gave him the full dose of german railway incompetence. The first train had to stop at a rather rural train station as the way ahead was blocked by some accident. So they (fortunately there was another kid from Berlin that attended the same event and was traveling together with K2) had to find and alternative route. Since trains were not operating anymore on this station, they had to take a bus to the next bigger city. There they tried to catch the next train to Mainz and Frankfurt/Main. But of course these trains were overloaded and delayed as well. Getting much too late into Frankfurt that evening, there was no fast train going to Berlin anymore. Instead they were parked with an overcrowded train a bit outside Frankfurt for half the night. Just to get back into Frankfurt very early morning and then try to head east towards Berlin. But of course that route didn’t go smooth either. Train had issues and got cancelled to continue to Berlin in Leipzig. Another change. Eventually after almost 24hrs he safely arrive at home.

Reunion

On Thursday evening two ex-colleagues had organised a reunion of our teams at Nokia/HERE in a beer garden. It was quite a large turn up and heartfelt meeting with all the good friends we made over the last almost 20 years.

It was really nice to see all those folks again and chat about the good old times. I’m tempted to say this was one of the most competent and powerful teams I’ve met in my professional career. And the other folks seem to agree as well, now that they have moved on to other companies. Many realise that despite the complaints we had back in days together as a team, we were rather advanced and at the forefront of technology and witchcraft. In their new companies they stepped back several years and have to start all over again to convince people about certain technology and ways of working advantages.

Roofing ceremony

On Saturday our neighbours invited us to the roofing ceremony of their barn building. That was lovely and funny. Their property is like a fairytale garden with so much stuff laying around and being collected and arranged. Chicken pens and gardens, wood carvings, playgrounds, herbs and flowers etc.

One native guy got drunk and excited about a new drink he “invented”. Eventually he had too much of it and we had to carry him home. As he’s in his 70s already, we wanted to make sure he makes it back safely to his bad although it was just across the street.

Random Pictures

Rezept: Gulasch

Mir ist aufgefallen, dass die Deutsche Küche in der Gastronomieszene sehr reduziert ist. Man bekommt vielleicht ein Schnitzel (OK, das ist österreichisch) und im Hofbräuhaus ne Schweinshaxe. Aber das war es dann auch schon.

Dabei gibt es doch so viel mehr was die meisten noch von früher kennen. Bei uns zu Hause gab es z.B. am Sonntag des öfteren Gulasch mit Klößen und Rotkohl. Ein sehr leckeres Gericht welches noch dazu sehr einfach zuzubereiten ist.

Zutaten

Bitte kauft nur Bio bzw. ökologisch/nachhaltig und fair produzierte Zutaten. Das schmeckt erstens besser und zweitens sorgt es dafür das alle an der Produktion beteiligten auch davon Leben können und i.d.R. die Umwelt weniger belastet wird.

  • Ca. 1kg Gulasch Fleisch
    • Gibts oft schon fertig in Stücken von 2-3cm Größe geschnitten
    • Kann gemischt von verschiedenen Tierenarten (Rind, Schwein, Strauss etc.) sein
    • Sehr lecker auch als Wildfleisch-Variante
  • Ca. 500g Möhren
  • Ca. 150g Tomaten
  • Ca. 30g getrocknete heimische Pilze (optional)
  • 1 Teelöffel Senf (optional)
  • 1 Knoblauchzehe (optional)
  • Salz nach Geschmack (ca. 5g)
  • Öl zum Anbraten (z.B. Olivenöl)

Zubereitung

Zuerst sollte man das Fleisch abwaschen und gut abtrocknen. Ich weiss das klingt nervig. Hat aber seinen Grund. Am Fleisch haftet oft noch Fleischsaft in dem sich gerne Bakterien vermehren. Durch das Kochen werden die zwar in der Regel abgetötet, aber je weniger davon im Topf landet, desto besser.

Das Abtrocknen ist wichtig, da wir beim Anbraten Röstaromen (das ist die brauen Kruste die sich beim Anbraten bildet) erzeugen wollen. Diese entstehen nur bei hoher Temperatur. Ist das Fleisch zu nass, dann kocht lange Zeit nur das Wasser und gart das Fleisch. Aber es wird nicht gebraten. Wir wollen das Fleisch aber anbraten um den Geschmack heraus zu kitzeln.

Die Möhren waschen und in ca. 2-3mm Scheiben schneiden. Tomaten würfeln, Knoblauch nach Belieben pressen oder auch in kleine Scheiben schneiden.

Das Öl in einem großen Topf oder Bräter heiß werden lassen (es ist heiß genug, wenn ein Holzlöffel den man rein hält kleine Blasen bildet.) und dann das Fleisch dazu geben. Das spritz und zischt ordentlich, also für Spritzschutz sorgen. Immer mal wieder umrühren, damit die Fleischstücke von allen Seiten ein bisschen braun werden.

Sie müssen nicht durchgebraten werden, da sie ja ohnehin noch etliche Zeit kochen werden.

Fleisch scharf anbraten

Nachdem das Fleisch angebraten ist, gibt man zunächst ca. 1L Wasser hinzu. Dann alle anderen Zutaten hinzufügen kocht das ganze nochmal auf. Nun die Hitze reduzieren und das ganze ca. 2-3 Stunden leicht köcheln lassen bei geschlossenem Deckel.

Zwischendurch immer mal wieder umrühren damit nichts am Boden ansetzt und anbrennt. Deswegen auch bei geringer Hitze köcheln lassen, da dann die Gefahr des Anbrennens nicht so groß ist. Auch abschmecken kann man zwischendurch. Bei Bedarf etwas mehr Salz oder noch Wasser hinzufügen. Auch die anderen Zutaten können in ihrer Menge variiert werden. Das Rezept ist ziemlich gutmütig und nimmt es mit den Mengen nicht so genau. Am Ende ist es eigentlich immer lecker.

Fertiges Gulasch mit Klößen

Nach 2-3 Stunden sollte das Fleisch noch nicht Auseinanderfallen aber denn so weich sein, dass man es mit der Gabel zerteilen kann. Das Gemüse ist ebenfalls sehr weich geworden.

Dazu passen wie gesagt Klöße aber auch Kartoffeln oder sogar einfach nur eine Scheibe Brot. Wer die Stücke in der Soße nicht mag, kann auch das Fleisch rausfischen und dann die Soße durch ein Sieb reiben. Dabei löst sich das restliche Gemüse auf und es bleibt eine sehr würzige aber stückfreie Soße übrig.