#weeklyreview 43/24

Posted on 2024-10-28 by Falko

Swimming

It’s still way too warm for late October I’d say. The lake still has about 12ºC water temperature. We had a good swim on Sunday, although we were only two people of our group. Still both made it across the lake and back, which took us about 20 minutes.

Running

Sunday morning I finally took another run with a friend in the village. I had signed up for the Berlin Half Marathon 2025 via the WWF charity program. One tries to collect donations for the WWF forest restoration project and once you reach at least the target of 300 EUR, you can get the ticket for the half-marathon.

So the shit gets real now 😉 I’d try to not only finish the half marathon, but also with a target time of under 2hrs. Finishing is not the problem. Did this several times before. But running fast is my issue 😀

Regardless whether I’ll get a ticket for the Berlin half marathon or not … I’ll run at least one half-marathon in April 2025. Thats my pledge.

Subscription tracking

Moellus found a nifty little open source tool to track your subscriptions and provide sing statistical insights. It’s called Wallos and can be easily self-hosted. Of course I set one up for myself. It provides stats about your regular spent, the top categories etc. It can also send you reminders when renewal or cancellation is due.

Container monitoring

Found a toot with an interesting graph on container workloads. The author pointed me to “Beszel” – an open source lightweight monitoring tool for container environments. Of course I needed to test this out and it was really easy to install.

↬chaos.social/@vanilla_chief/113350730869041478

WordPress + ActivityPub

Had to dig a little deeper into the ActivityPub Plugin for WordPress as my last posting triggered a discussion about ContentWarning for post.

It took me a while to figure out where exactly the CW would be set for a post. It’s actually on the “Post” Settings under “Fediverse”

I was also wondering why my replies from WordPress to comments that came in via the Fediverse did not show the user handle of the person I’m replying to. They are pinged via ActivityPub, it’s just not visible in the Web UI of Mastodon as a visible mention. It’s rather a meta data field that Mastodon UI just doesn’t display. The is an ongoing discussion on the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress to possibly handle this differently.

Cinema

while cleaning her room, kiddo found a voucher for the cinema that was going to expire soon. So we picked a movie to watch. We settled on the latest “Beetlejuice” movie from Tim Burton. Just a week ago we had seen to original one on TV and the new one features actors kiddo likes from other Netflix shows (Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega).

The movie wasn’t that bad actually. At least mildly entertaining.

We went to the UCI Luxe Cinema at the Eastside gallery. That building is just a few years old. But it’s really kinda disgusting already. It’s trimmed for masses with self-serve automatons for beverages and tickets etc. The floor is quite dirty. Popcorn all over the place. The bathrooms, while visibly clean already start to break apart. Tiles fall off the walls and have cracks. Seals around the sinks do not fit anymore. Looks the building was done without quality control and no attention to detail. That’s a shame for a building that is just a few years old.

Preparing for Winter

On Saturday I cleaned up our tomatoes and harvested the last batch of fruits from the plants. Cleaned up all the pots, saved the soil on the raised beet for next years and stowed away the pots. Finally burned some old twigs and branches to have a clean slate for winter (there is more than enough foliage and heaps of branches in the forest behind our property. So no need to store that on our property for the wildlife.)

Our bees also enjoyed the warm and sunny day.

#weeklyreview 35/24

Posted on 2024-09-05 by Falko

Last week of school holidays in Berlin/Brandenburg. Kids were enjoying the last days in the countryside before going back to Berlin.

Bread & butter

My uncle pointed me to the webshop of Bäckerei Philipps for really good sourdough bread. It reminded me of the “Sylter” from Jochen Gaues which one could order online a few years ago. So I gave it a try and it eventually arrived on Monday.

A pure delicacy. Soft and crunchy (if refreshed in the oven or slice by slice on the toaster) and so tasty. I think I lived off that big loaf the whole week as my only food supply.

That’s surely a luxury one can’t afford every week (unless the bakery is within walking distance). But if you like to get a really good sourdough bread, I can wholeheartedly recommend this one. It lasted they whole week just sitting on the counter in it’s plastic bag.

I had ordered the 360º LAIB natur and the 360º LAIB Groument Stange. I usually just used butter and salt. Sometimes our family honey, but nothing fancy. The bread is tasty enough to stay on its own.

Final Wood

Eventually finished the stacking of the remaining firewood from earlier this year. That should hopefully be enough wood working for a while. Next step will be restacking the piles into the shed once they have dried for a year or two.

Harvest Season

Our homegrown tomatoes are ripe and provide us with a wide variety. Different colors, shapes and flavors. I’m usually not into raw tomatoes, but I tasted these large red ones with mozarella, oil and vinegar and they are super tasty. Rather sweet and firm flesh.

My wife is getting random seeds from a lady from the internet. As one can’t officially sell seeds in Germany for the bloody agrar lobby, it works on a donation and exchange basis. The seeds are usually of old types and industrially optimized tomatoes. Such a luxury to be able to grow our own. It’s quite a bit of effort and if one runs the numbers probably not “economic”. But that math might be flawed given the environmental impact of industrial style food production etc.

Survival in Brandenburg

On Saturday evening a friend of ours and me attended a movie night in the LeuteHaus in Milow, north-west Uckermark. The german movie “Überleben in Brandenburg” by Zoltan Paul was on show and one of the actors attended and stayed for a little conversation after the movie.

I like the movie very much as is was comedy with some contemporary aspect to the current political battles in the east of germany. Many scenes and situations resonated with the audience. Also had some real good conversations about the movie, the making of it and life in Brandenburg in general with László I. Kish, one of the actors.

#weeklyreview 34/24

Posted on 2024-08-26 by Falko

Was working from the countryside this week. Kiddo had a friend from school over for camping on our grounds for 3 days. That was fun. The weather was good and they went swimming several times a day.

On Wednesday we attended the opening concert of the “be:fes classic music festival”

This festival takes place since more than 20 years on the grounds of the former soviet military airport in the Uckermark.

You can listen to the whole concert on the DLF Kultur Podcast

Friday we picked up the middle kid from his hiking trip to Norway in Hamburg. Took the chance to have a stroll around the Elbphilarmonie. It’s was a beautiful day with strong winds.