#weeklyreview 02/2025

Posted on 2025-01-13 by Falko

First full work week of the new year. Of course I started with proper gym sessions. The gym but had some surprises in store. The hot water wasn’t going on Monday so I could combine gym and ice bathing 😁

Had some good rowing sessions this week and also did some high-intensity interval sessions on the rowing machine.

Close-up of a Concept 2 PM5 rowing machine monitor displaying a workout duration of 30:07, a split time of 2:22 per 500 meters, total distance of 6608 meters, and a stroke rate of 24 strokes per minute.

Close-up of a Bluefin Fitness exercise machine display, showing workout metrics: exercise time of 30 minutes, distance of 12.69 km, calories burned at 632.1 kcal, average speed of 25.4 km/h, and average wattage of 102 watts.

Meta -> MAGA

Zuckerberg caved in proactively and declared Meta is no longer doing content moderation for their services (Instagram, Facebook, Threads, WhatsApp etc.). So the shitshow that is their social media platforms will turn even worse. That’s surely gonna work out. It worked great for Twitter under first lady Musk turning it into a right-wing cesspool.

I saw first Mastodon instance admins already announcing that they’ve now finally blogged the threads.net domain from federation with the Fediverse. Threads was meant to properly federate with Mastodon and the likes via ActivityPub. But looks like that’s not going to expand much further with their current trajectory.

I’m not yet blocking Threads on my instance but rather leave it up to the individual users to set up a block for their own account.

Cold Brew

When it’s cold outside (It was snowing in Berlin this week) one can use the balcony to make cold brew coffee 😉

It wasn’t too cold though. No risk of the water freezing and cracking the jar.

A glass jar filled with amber liquid sits on a slatted wooden table on a balcony, with an out-of-focus cityscape and a blurred plant pot in the background.

fiddling with CSV files

I recently found a great tool for playing around with CSV files. Often I have to export some data from a tool to CSV format to process it further. Sometimes I just want to answer a relatively simple question. Like how many lines match a certain value in column C?

Probe is helping with that exact problem by providing an SQL like interface for CSV files (and even Parquet files). Simple binary that use open the CSV file with and start writing your queries.

↬mastodon.xyz/@johl/113775818903147100

Monitoring NextCloud All-In-On Containers

I’m running my NextCloud instance with the AOI Mastercontainer setup. To monitor such an instance, you can call a special monitoring URL that is displayed for the administrator under System Info.

However, you need to authenticate your request to the monitoring URL. For this you’re supposed to generate an access token. I was searching in the user interface for that option and couldn’t find it. Turns out that the access token is just a random string that you then have to configure as access token via the occ command line tool.

Now how to get to that occ tool on the AIO installation?

First you generate that random string using openssl:

openssl rand -hex 32

The result should be a 32 character string of hexadecimal numbers.

On the machine where your AIO containers run, you then call the main next cloud container like this:

docker exec --user www-data -it nextcloud-aio-nextcloud php occ config:app:set serverinfo token --value <your random hext string goes here>

That should set the Token for the server info URL and you can now call your monitoring endpoint with curl if you like to verify it:

curl -H "NC-Token: <your random hext string goes here>" https://nextcloud.example.com/ocs/v2.php/apps/serverinfo/api/v1/info

It should give you an XML document (unless configured to produce JSON output) with a whole bunch of NextCloud status information.

Winter finally

it had snowed already several times this week. But at least at the beginning of the week the snow didn’t last long as it was too warm still.

Tuesday evening on our way to the „Hacker Stammtisch“ there was proper rain/snow mix. Fortunately I got my rain coat „Friesen-Nerz“ and rain trousers and arrived dry. Moellus wasn’t dressed for the weather but still used the bike. R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

On Thursday the snow snow started to stay and it looked like Berlin was wildly unprepared. There roads were not cleared of the snow from what I could tell.

It did start to look rather nice on the weekend in the countryside. 3 weeks too late for a white Christmas though.

A snowy urban street scene at dusk with cars driving along a wet, slushy road. Buildings line the street, illuminated by streetlights. A person walks along the snow-dusted sidewalk under a dim sky.

A yellow articulated bus is driving through a snowy intersection at dusk. The street and surrounding area are covered in snow, with faint lighting from streetlights and buildings, creating a wintery urban scene.

Herbstgold

On Saturday there was a documentary film evening organized in our village. Two films were on display. A short animation film by Adrienne Zeitler called “Die Frau und Landschaft” and a documentary by Jan Tenhaven called “Herbstgold“.

The latter was about really old people still competing in Sports. Very lovely movie with unique characters and touching stories. Really funny at times.

An elderly man is in mid-action, holding a discus in his hand. He wears a white sports t-shirt with an insignia and a race number "M100 1" attached to it. The background shows a netted sports field, suggesting a competitive event.

An athlete is lying on a yellow mat, appearing to have just completed a pole vault. The athlete is wearing a blue and white uniform and spiked running shoes. The pole is resting beside them. This scene is displayed on a screen in a dimly lit room.

Studio Ghibli Mucke

and last, not least some tunes from Joe Hisaishi that K2 was practising

#weeklyreview 01/2025

Posted on 2025-01-10 by Falko

Silvester

early afternoon we’ve got the admittedly slightly crazy idea to watch the official fireworks at Binz on Rügen island. So we hit the road to be there by 6 pm and watched it with hundreds of other people at the beach of the Baltic Sea.

Been back for our own little Sylvester dinner with cheese fondue by 10:30 pm. Fortunately it was relatively quite in our village and we were in bed right after the mandatory cheers at 12 o’clock:D

Nighttime beach scene with people walking along the sand. In the background, illuminated buildings and a lit-up pier create a vibrant atmosphere. A carousel and colorful lights add a festive feel, and the sky is overcast.

Silhouetted figures watch a large, colorful fireworks display in the night sky above a waterfront. Bright orange and blue fireworks illuminate the scene against the dark background.

Back to (school) business

Heading back to Berlin on 1st as the rest of the week was officially no holiday for the school kids. Slightly stupid if you ask me to get back to school for just 2 days. I bet many kids and even teachers were probably not showing up because of holiday induced “illness”.

Bots talking to bots

Looks like Meta is going to allow A.I. bots on their platforms to appear as “normal” user accounts. What could possibly go wrong?

On 27 December, Meta’s vice-president of product for generative AI, Connor Hayes, told the Financial Times that a new set of AI products would allow users to create AI bots that “exist on our platforms… in the same way that accounts do”. The bots, he explained, would “have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content”. Before long, it is probable that much of what is posted on Facebook and Instagram (and perhaps to a certain extent WhatsApp) will not have been written by a human being. Bots talking to bots, sharing AI glurge, and upvoting is “where we see all of this going”, Hayes told the FT.

Source: https://www.newstatesman.com/business/2025/01/mark-zuckerbergs-fake-internet-empire

3D Printing resumed

I was neglecting my 3D printer for several month now. But today I needed a frame for a pop filter for a microphone. Found a model on printables, sliced it and spend about 1 hour debugging the networking of the RaspberryPi running Mainsail & Klipper.

But finally the printer just delivered without any issues. No calibration or other maintenance needed.

A 3D printer in action, laying down a white filament on a circular shape on a PEI-coated print bed. Various wires are visible around the print head, and the printer's mechanical components are highlighted.

A 3D-printed circular frame with a small handle-like extension is placed on a 3D printer's build platform. The surface reflects light, showing minor scratches, and the printer's control pad is visible in the background.

Subskription tracking

My friend Boerge pointed me to a software to track ones subscriptions. Of course is installed it as a self-hosting service. Recently introduced another friend to it and she seems to like it. In the wake of that I created a little introductory video.

Service overview

Also related to that friend starting to use one of my self-hosted services, I thought it’s about time to create an overview of all the services I do self-host. Mostly for myself, because I sometimes forget that I have a certain services and then I can’t always remember the URLs …

I wanted this to be a static site as it’s really just a simple overview. So I decided to look into HUGO CMS again. Which is a static site generator CMS.

The result can be found here: https://www.explain-it.org/

It’s still work in progress, but I’m happy with the start.

A webpage titled "Explain IT" displays six project cards, each featuring an image, title, brief description, and a date. The projects include tools and services like Solidtime, Matrix/Element, Tandoor, KitchenOwl, PlantUML, and Teammapper. Navigation links for “Deutsch” and “English” are visible on the left, and "About" and "Contact" links are on the right.

#weeklyreview 52/2024

Posted on 2024-12-30 by Falko

Spotify is evil

I watched most parts of the documentary “The Playlist” about Spotify on Netflix. And the founder Daniel Ek doesn’t come across as someone I’d want as a friend. Their customer support sucks and now I read this article about how they betray real artists with their own fake artists.

As a user I still like the simplicity a single app for all my listening desires brings. I also like the idea of paying per use. Means I don’t have buy an album upfront but rather pay for the times I’m listening to tracks. I don’t know the economics of this model and whether it could ever work out as artists hope it would.

But it looks like something needs to change to make this whole setup enjoyable again.

Smarter, not harder

Renewable energy sources are the future and many countries pushing to reach their goals in building out these sources. But the planning approaches are not yet adopted to actual use. A new study shows that a more fine grained planning approach can improve the actual use of the generated energy and thus avoid the need for costly storage solutions.

Christmas – too much food

Oh there was too much food involved on Christmas. We had a duck and cooked it on low temperature (80° C) for several hours. Red cabbage was prepared a day ahead. Roast potatoes as a side and fruit salad, Tiramisu and Mohnpielen as dessert. The duck came out good this year. Crispy on the outside, tender inside.

A roasted duck in a black pan is on a table with a red and white checkered tablecloth. Surrounding it are a dish of golden roasted potatoes, a bowl of red cabbage, and empty place settings with glasses and plates.

A close-up of a crystal glass with geometric patterns, containing ice cubes and amber liquid, placed on a red and white checkered tablecloth.

Shrinking

Was binge watching “Shriking” on AppleTV+ over the holidays. Really lovely show. I like the characters and the acting. One thing that stroke me as a bit too much is, that almost all of the characters where a bit too quick-witted. I mean I love snappy comments and catchy dialogues. But I think this show has taken it a bit too far. Nobody I’ve met so far is that quick and fluent. Especially not in that density of characters. You might have one or two friends which are quick-witted. But all your friends & family? C’mon.

Still a nice show though. And the final episode… I think I’ve got something in my eye watching that. Bill Lawrence certainly is a wizard of his trade.

Bike Ride

After all that food I had to do at least some exercise. As I also got a brand new bike helmet from Santa, I took my crappy bike for spin in the countryside. 30 km in 90 min across gravel and roads. My favorite songs on the headphones. Can hardly get any better than this.

A black-and-white image showing the view from a cyclist's perspective, focusing on the handlebars and road ahead. The cyclist's hands grip the handlebars, and the blurry motion suggests movement on a smooth, empty path.

A long, wet road stretches into the distance, flanked by barren trees and grassy fields under an overcast sky.

Open Stage

On Saturday we attended the last open stage event in the MKC Templin. As always it was good music and interesting artists. This time it ranged from solo singers from Norway, renaissance tunes, handpan + flute, Rock’n’Roll to German Rap and songwriter music. Always amazed of the bandwidth they manage to bring on stage.

This time I particularly like that there was a “FCK AFD” sticker prominently placed on the Laptop on the stage. The AFD threatened the MKC in Templin with defunding because they were not allowed to rent the venue for their party shit.

A dimly lit stage with blue curtains, equipped with musical instruments like microphones, a keyboard, drums, and guitars. The stage is framed by red curtains, and the audience is seated in the foreground. A small paper sign on the stage front notes a date: 08.02.25.

A person is playing a handpan drum mounted on a stand during a performance. Sheet music is on a stand nearby, and a toy lion is visible in the foreground. The background features a blue curtain and stage equipment.

#weeklyreview 51/2024

Posted on 2024-12-24 by Falko

pushing through the last work week of 2024. Almost finished the project I’m working on with just a few things left to be pushed into 2025.

In general I conclude that I personally find it much harder to work solo on a project than to tandem with a partner. That being said, this is true for project and program management work, not necessarily on technical tasks.

While technical work is mostly solving a particular technical problem that you can approach by various solo techniques: reading documentation, trial and error, experimenting etc.

With project management and program management there are also well known patterns but they require certain structures in the organization to exist. If theses structures do not exist, you have to get creative to compensate. Often this involves talking to people, explain stuff, get feedback and drive conclusions and decisions.

All this I find easier when I have a peer that I can work and reflect with. Mutual encouragement, reflection and support.

This book should have been a blog post

I was reading “Thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman. I truly interesting book about his research on the inner workings of human thinking.

But for me it’s rather repetitive and thus I decided to put it down for the time being. I didn’t made much progress lately on it. And while talking to a good friend about the book he had the same issue and said “This book should have been a blog post”. Don’t get me wrong. It’s very important work and eventually earned Kahneman a Nobel prize award. But I need to move on for the moment and read something else. I might finish this one later.

My next book is “The dawn of everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow.

A breathtakingly ambitious retelling of the earliest human societies offers a new understanding of world history

Dinner with friends – again

On Tuesday I had the privilege of another dinner at my friends house. Together with another friend of hers we enjoyed Mac & Cheese and good conversations.

Although I had to really focus to understand the English accent of the other guy. It sounded familiar but I couldn’t initially tell why. Later I learned he’s from Manchester. That’s also where the Oasis brothers Gallagher come from. And their accent is also almost incomprehensible

View of a city street with historical buildings, including a dome and prominent television tower in the background. The road is wet, suggesting recent rain, and has a marked bike lane. There are streetlights, a few pedestrians, and vehicles on the road. The sky is cloudy, adding a moody atmosphere.

A city street scene featuring the Berlin TV Tower in the background, a historical building with a green dome in the foreground, and street lamps lining the road. People and vehicles are visible along the street, creating an urban atmosphere.

Christmas shopping

On Thursday I did some last bits of Christmas shopping at the Dussmann Kulturkaufhaus. That’s always a treasure chest of magic. One always gets out with more than originally planned. Kind of like the IKEA for cultural goods.

A calendar page displayed in a store, featuring an illustrated outdoor scene with a wooden table and chairs under a tree. Sunlight filters through the foliage, casting shadows on the ground. The illustration is titled "Daheim" and is created by Kat Menschik for 2025.

Village advent events

On Friday it was our turn for this years living advent calendar in our village community. This year instead of being a host ourselves we joined forces with a few people from our village and organized the public event at the weather hut in our village. We brought hot wine , beer, cake, curly kale, dim sum and other stuff. Had a fire pit and luck with the weather.

Overall a very lovely evening with delicious food and good company. Good to see this community effort and spirit growing the third year in a row now.

Over all we had more people hosting events this advent and more people attending. People who hadn’t hosted in previous years and also an bunch of first time attendees.

On Saturday the final event took place in the neighboring village with self baked bread and self baked Stollen. Rather delicious.

People gather around a warm fire in a barrel at night, in front of a wooden pavilion with lit interior. The scene has a cozy, social atmosphere, with people dressed for cool weather.

A tray of sliced, baked dishes topped with cheese and vegetables is placed on a wooden table with a striped napkin beside it. The setting appears to be an outdoor gathering with people standing nearby, and a drink container is visible on another table in the background.

#weeklyreview 49/2024

Posted on 2024-12-10 by Falko

More Gymming

totally enjoying to be back in the gym. Of course over exercising according to my fitness apps. But it’s so good to use and feel the body work.

A display screen on a Bluefin Fitness exercise machine shows user data, including an exercise time of 39:13 minutes, distance of 20.02 km, calorie burn of 1029.6 kcal, average speed of 30.6 km/h, and average wattage of 128 W.

Treadmill display showing exercise data, including a 30-minute duration, distance of 17.22 km, 817.3 kcal burned, average speed of 34.4 km/h, and average power of 132 watts. The control panel features illuminated start, pause, and stop buttons.

It was also raining quite a bit this week so that I had to dress up properly to not arrive completely soaked in the office. But you know I like weather 🙂

grey beard gathering

This month hacker gathering was smaller than usual. But nevertheless fun. Learned about TypeScript and an Intel 8080 hardware debugger.

BnB crew Christmas party

Our famous Beer’n’Burger crew met to cheat on the burgers and have goose instead at the Prater Garten restaurant. Awesome as always and delicious.

A group of people seated at a table, sharing a meal. The table is laden with a large dish of roasted meat garnished with red berries, a bowl of yellow dumplings, glass mugs of beer, and a bowl of gravy. There are also various condiments and utensils visible.

A small Santa Claus figure wrapped in red foil stands on a wooden table, surrounded by keys and a white mug with a graphic design.

Farewell party

On Friday evening we had the farewell party of my best friend. She’s leaving for Australia for a few week. It was just mind blowing 😉

Event Hoppping

On Saturday we went event hopping. There was of course the living advent calendar in the village that we attended. Also visited an exhibition opening in the MKC in Templin and eventually joined the open studio of the lovely Silke Schmidt where I took the selfie with my spirit animal :D.

A man with a beard, wearing a beanie and colorful scarf, is smiling next to a large polar bear sculpture.

new gadget

Got a new gadget from one of the villagers for free. A food dehydrator 🙂

Wanted to get one for quite a while already but never committed to buy one. Now I can make my own dried fruits and maybe even dried meat

A food dehydrator with sliced apples arranged on the transparent drying trays, set on a workbench surrounded by tools and wires.

#weeklyreview 48/2024

Posted on 2024-12-03 by Falko

Started the Sunday with a run through the rainy forest. Thought my running partner would bail out due to the rain, but he didn’t. That’s why I like partners in crime with sports activities. I would have not have run that morning as it was really too wet. But cancelling a commitment to a friend – no way.

View of a person walking on a grassy surface, wearing black shorts and gray running shoes. — running on the wet ground

A misty field stretches into the distance, bordered by a dense forest under an overcast sky. The ground is a mix of green and brown grass, with a narrow path visible on the left. A few buildings are faintly visible at the forest edge in the distance. — running on the wet ground

And of course we went swimming afterwards. The week was rather cold and even had a bit of snow. The lake cooled down to 4 – 6ºC

Finally the gym is open

After almost half a year of renovation, the gym in the office is finally open again. I know I’m spoiled, but I did miss my almost daily training sessions.

Did three days in a row this week plus running in the evening with a friend. That doesn’t compensate for the laziness the last couple of months, but it’s a start.

Close-up of a Life Fitness exercise machine dashboard inside a gym, displaying workout data like distance and time. The background shows a rainy cityscape through a large window.

Display screen of a Bluefin Fitness exercise machine showing workout statistics: exercise time of 24:10 minutes, distance of 13.87 km, 1000.1 kcal burned, average speed of 34.4 km/h, and average wattage of 202 W. The screen also has options for playing media files, and there is a blurred window view in the background.

HERE Winter Party

On thursday we had our office winter party. That was fun and I met some colleagues and friends from Eindhoven as well 🙂

A lively nightclub scene with people dancing and mingling under dim lighting. In the foreground, a glowing red sphere with the number "43" is prominently displayed, adding a distinct focal point. The background shows a busy bar area with decorative elements and ambient lighting.

Angela Merkel

On Tuesday there was a book signing event at the Dussmann Kulturkaufhaus with Angela Merkel. She would be signing her Memoir called “Freiheit”. I showed up one hour earlier to get a spot in the line and a chance to get the book signed. It was a bit chaotic on site. There were queues in the ground and first floor. I tried to find the end to enter the queue. But turned out both queues had turned into a circle with no end or beginning. Asking the staff didn’t help. They were unaware and unorganised at this point in time. But slowly realising that they had to step in. So the just split the queue in the lower flow and guided the ever growing number of people to start forming a queue outside. So I had to wait a bit outside the entrance the queue was quickly growing around the block.

I waited about 1,5hrs in the queue and signing had started meanwhile. But the queue barely moved 4 meters. Eventually a store manager came outside and announced that the people waiting outside will not make it as there are far too many people waiting. Apparently more than 500 people had queued inside already and there was probably the same amount waiting outside. Merkel only was scheduled for 1,5hrs.

So I left without a signature. Will have to catch up with here somewhere in the #Uckermark 😉

A person holds a book titled "Angela Merkel: Freiheit" with a photograph of Angela Merkel on the cover. The book has a blue background, and the person holding it has colorful nail art.

Cooking

made a “proper” pasta bolognese from scratch. mmmhhh , that was good.

Chopped carrots and onions being sautéed in a pan with a wooden spoon.

A skillet on a stovetop contains browned ground meat being sautéed. A wooden spatula rests in the pan, and a bottle is pouring liquid onto the meat.

Christmas tree

On Saturday we had our traditional Christmas tree decoration in the village. As every year, the people of the village gathered around the tree that was donated by of the villagers. We brought some snacks, cakes, bbq, hot and cold drinks etc. and were enjoying to community event.

Our village even managed to have Santa Claus for the children again this year (there was a dispute between the man that used to organise this the last years, and so the former Santa was cancelled this year. Big drama in the village).

A person dressed as Santa Claus stands on a residential street, wearing a red suit and hat with a white beard. They are holding a large green sack adorned with a Santa face. In the background, there are houses with brick roofs and a garden area.

A person wearing a plaid shirt and a bear hat decorates an outdoor Christmas tree with glowing string lights and ornaments. It's early evening, with a darkening sky and trees in the background, giving a festive and cozy atmosphere.

#weeklyreview 47/2024

Posted on 2024-11-25 by Falko

Of course the week started with swimming (for this series of weekly reviews I’ll take the Sunday as start of the new week). Not all the way across the lake as it’s getting a little chilly in the water now and we didn’t had that much time.

Coding

while writing on last weeks review it nagged me that the WordPress blog posts don’t have image descriptions. I know it’s just me being lazy to put them in in the first place. But I’m meanwhile spoiled by IceCubes app which can autogenerate image descriptions.

So I started chatting with ChatGPT about writing a little helper program in Rust which would get an image description from the OpenAPI API and then upload the picture to my WordPress and put the description as well. It slowly took shape but didn’t quite get there apart from it getting late in my day …

A cartoon polar bear sits at a desk using a laptop, with a chalkboard in the background featuring a mix of symbols, drawings, and indecipherable text. — generated illustration with DiffusionBee

I was about to give up and sent a toot before closing my laptop. But then someone replied that they had more success with Claude.ai instead of ChatGPT for Rust programs.

↬mas.to/@ingenieur/113506074188779262

And indeed. The code seemed much better and I got a first working version that night. You can find the code and some pre-compiled binaries on my Forgejo instance.

To process multiple files I used a simple shell loop:

No thinking where to take this next. I’d like to update the image descriptions of the existing images in WordPress. Could do this from remote as well. But an actual WordPress plugin probably makes more sense here.

Other idea is to use a local LLM to generate the image description so you don’t need to upload the images to OpenAI.

This is really a rabbit hole. But programming is much more satisfying the herding cats as a project/program manager ….

And because self-hosting is fun … I also set up an instance of Asciinema. The “shell cast” above is an example of this.

Walking

Since the office gym is still closed I’m missing out on a lot of exercise 🙁

Started walking to the office more often. It’s a 4.5km walk in one direction. So adding up close to 10km of walking per day. Not too shabby. Now that the weather is turning colder and more rainy it’s even more fun 😉

A person wearing a coat and headphones stands outside looking up, with a gray sky overhead. Tree branches with leaves are visible on the left side of the image. It appears to be raining lightly, as droplets are visible on the coat.

A person walking on a sidewalk with one foot visible. The surface consists of large stone slabs on the left and a cobblestone pattern on the right. A few small leaves are scattered on the ground.

Updated my nails again as the color faded and crackled.

A hand with bright red and rainbow-painted nails rests on a wooden table near a full beer bottle and a glass of beer, both placed on branded coasters. Another person's hand is visible in the background.

First snow

This week we finally had some snow. It didn’t stick in Berlin, but the on the countryside one actually had a thing white blanket over everything. Even when we arrived there on Friday evening there was still some snow on the sides and roofs. The low sun made for some incredible sundowns in the late afternoon.

A vibrant sunset illuminates the sky with shades of orange and pink above a dense cluster of trees with varying foliage colors, including dark greens and yellows. Some bare branches are visible, indicating a transition into autumn. The overall scene evokes a calm, serene atmosphere.

On Saturday we had our annual “Vereinsfeier” at the house of some friends. Always lovely to see the people from the village and have them bring all sorts of food and chat away into the night.

A pink deer head sculpture with lit candles on its antlers is placed on a wooden table beside a bowl filled with cables and papers.

#weeklyreview 46/2024

Posted on 2024-11-19 by Falko

it’s getting cold outside

Swimming on Sunday was again a little colder than the weekend before. The whole week had rather low temperatures even during the day. So this Sunday the lake water had around 8º C while the air was around 0º C.

Still managed to cross the lake without dying 😉

Procrastination finished

I finally finished my blog post about setting up SSH access with FIDO keys. That was in the drafts folder for a couple of months now. I’m using my two Token2 hardware tokens wherever possible now. Also for SSH connections. Tiny bit annoying to enter the PIN all the time, but better getting used to this additional layer of security.

Cleaning the cemetery in the village

On Saturday the people of the village joined forces to clean the cemetery of the fallen leaves and other stuff. We were also again cutting down some trees that have grown too much. Always a fun event working with these people. It’s a lovey mixture of old residents who spent almost their entire live in this tiny village and then “immigrants” of various age and place that either moved their or have a weekend home in the village. Everyone gets along really well and helps the community. Of course it’s celebrated with some beverages (mostly beer ) in the end.

The kids had fun jumping and diving into the large piles of leaves. The adults had fun using their machinery to cut and shred the trees :D.

A rural scene featuring a grassy yard bordered by a low chain-link fence. Piles of fallen autumn leaves are in the foreground. Several large trees, mostly bare, are scattered across the yard. In the background, there are traditional wooden buildings with tiled roofs, and a small bench is visible. The sky appears overcast, suggesting a chilly autumn day.

A large pile of fallen leaves is gathered along a dirt path, bordered by a wire fence. In the background, there is a house partially visible through bare trees and patches of green foliage.

In the afternoon some friends and I did an additional brief swimming session in the lake. The water hasn’t cooled much since last week. Was good enough for a short dip.

Calm lake with clear, shallow water in the foreground, surrounded by tall reeds on both sides. The distant shoreline features a forest of leafless trees under a cloudy sky.

PopChor is rocking on heavens door

Saturday evening we were attending a concert of the PopChor Templin. That was really nice. If it hadn’t started an hour later than originally scheduled, we would probably have stayed even longer for the two bands after the PopChor. Some impressions from their previous concerts this year can be found on YouTube.

#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 44/24

Posted on 2024-11-04 by Falko

Wellness day

Sunday started with a good run in the forest. Further preparation/training for the 2025 Berlin Half-Marathon, in which you can still support me over at the WWF ActionPanda page.

It was partially like running on the beach in sand. The forest keepers had dug up many pathes in the forest because they were quite damaged from the heavy wood hauling trucks.

After the run we had our weekly swimming gathering and I crossed the lake at about 11ºC without any issues still. A friend invited me over to his sauna that he had already fired up in anticipation of the shaking from the cold swim. We had really relaxing two session at nearly 90ºC watching out into the sun lit autumn forest.

To round up the perfect day my wife and I went for ice cream to Prenzlau 🙂

Mushrooms

On Monday I took one meeting for a handover to a colleague while I’m on vacation. But after that, kiddo an me went to pick some mushrooms. We were looking for a specific kind, the porcini mushrooms, which is supposed to be rather delicious. There are quite many mushrooms around in the forest at this time. I know a few types and like searching them. Not too big of a fan for eating them though. So we focused just on the porcini and found a whole basked full.

Vaccination

On Tuesday we took to chance to get our COVID-19 vaccination refreshed at our local doctor. More than half the family lined up on the bench to get our jab. Must have been a funny picture, but no photo unfortunately.

Everyone tolerated their shot quite well. Little bit of pain on the stitch site and slight feel of fever on the first day.

I did not rest on that day but instead drove 350km to do the groceries for a friend with severe ME/CFS and pick up our oldest kid from his final exams in Berlin.

There were dozens, maybe hundreds of students outside the Messe Berlin to celebrate the last exam with sparkling wine and music from their mobile. Seems to be a thing.

While in Berlin we also had dinner at a nice indian restaurant in Lichtenberg together.

More doctors appointments

Wednesday the other half of the family had their doctors appointments in the city. My wife got her quarterly doses of iron infusion and the big kiddo had his stomach issues checked. Apparently he catched a bug that’s currently circulating and causing diarrhoea. But he seems over the hump already.

Delivered him to the train to get back to Berlin.

Later in the afternoon I secured our water pipes for the winter. That means emptying all the hoses and stow them away in the shed. Also emptying the pipes and turn off the well pump. While at it… dig up the roots of some plants my wife wants to keep and store the bulbs down in the well shaft for winter. There it’s dark and frost free.

To round up the garden work I helped two old chaps from the village to rake the leaves around our cemetery at bring them to the central collections place at the end of the village. Always fun to work and chat with these old people. They always tell stories from the old times in the village and joke around. And of course it was rewarded with an after-work beer.

Breakfast

There is a quite good hotel near our village and we always wanted to try out their breakfast buffet. I like hotel breakfast as it’s like brunch. You have a larger variety of stuff to taste from and you wouldn’t usually take that level of effort at home for breakfast. Also … no cleaning of the kitchen needed afterwards 😀

So we reserved a table and showed up early. Of course the buffet was quite nice. But even nicer, was to accidentally meet and old friend of ours who happen to be the director of the Hotel :). So we spent the whole morning chatting and having breakfast. I can deal with that…

Cron vs. Queue

I have a backup job started via CRON on one of my machines. Every once in a while the machine seems to get into high load but low CPU usage stage. Upon checking I figured that this CRON job (an rsync job) seems to hang. But every hour a new process is started and just piling up.

So today I’ve finally switched from simple CRON to a job queue. Instead of starting the backup process by CRON, it’s added to the queue by CRON. Under normal circumstances the queue would be empty and the job started right away. If the previous job isn’t finished yet, then the new job is just queue but not yet started.

I’ll add some monitoring for the queue length too. To install the tool:

sudo apt install task-spooler

Then one can simply add jobs to the queue by calling:

tsp <command>

If the command is called without any parameters, it displays the job queue:

$ tsp
ID   State      Output               E-Level  Times(r/u/s)   Command [run=0/1]
0    finished   /tmp/ts-out.z5XJRx   0        458.62/3.54/13.42 /usr/bin/rsync -rv --delete --exclude=database/ /home/daemon/paperless-ngx/ /opt/synology/nas/linux/daemon/paperless-ngx/

Mastodon Tools

Found two useful Mastodon tools from Ralf Stockmann. One is the Mastowall which displays a whole browser page of toots which contain a certain hashtag. Refreshing on a regular basis. So you can follow live events etc.

The other of his tools is Mastothread, which splits up longer posts into smaller toots so they fit into the posting character limit of your Fediverse instance.