#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 41/24

Posted on 2024-10-13 by Falko

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 40/24

Posted on 2024-10-11 by Falko

Ted Lasso

I’m a big fan of the Ted Lasso TV series. So I had to improve one of our meeting rooms

let’s see how long this lasts

Nerd meet up

On Tuesday I attended gathering of some old hacker dudes. All famous names in the Berlin scene and beyond. Hard fanboy moment to meet Tim Pritlove in person. He’s an icon in the Podcast world and has single handedly established and nurtured podcasts over the decades now with famous formats like Chaos Radio Express, Logbuch Netzpolitik and many more.

Realised we’re getting old and you hardly find people with this depth and breadth of computer knowledge anymore.

flu season

Both kids were off sick for a few days this week. Looks like flu season has started. Fortunately I’m scheduled for my flu shot next week in the company.

At least that gave us some time for a walk in the park and enjoy the autumn.

Swimming

went for a swim in the lake on Saturday. Water is already quite cold. But still comfortably managed to do the large triangle. Of course had the whole lake for myself 🤣

#weeklyreview 39/24

Posted on 2024-10-11 by Falko

Obsidian tinkering

I’m using the free version of Obsidian for note keeping across my devices. Using the Community Plugin Self-Hosted Live Sync with a CouchDB to synchronise changes across the devices.

Recently the author of the plugin added support for object storage services (e.q. AWS S3, MinIO etc. ) for synchronisation. I had to give this a try as I’m running my own MinIO instance already for other purposes. The CouchDB was solely for Obsidian syncing. So using the other service would allow to reduce the number of services I have to run.

Created a new bucket and access policy and then configured all the devices with the new sync backend. So far it seems to work pretty well.

Fediverse Talk at the community college

I finally gave a little Fediverse talk at the local community college in Templin. Last time we tried, nobody actually signed up for the course. We tried a slightly different format this time. Kind of a bar camp like approach. Meeting in the little “El Caribe” restaurant in Templin and have it an informal setup with drinks and food.

This time some people did sign up and eventually we were 7 people. One couple even from Luxemburg (which be chance was sitting in the restaurant on their vacation and spontaneously decided to join in).

It was a good evening and the people were actually quite engaged and interested although they hadn’t heard of the Fediverse and its various services before. Let’s see if they eventually show up as followers 😉

70th

On Saturday we went to the 70th birthday of my uncle in Luckenwalde. That included a spontaneous detour to pick up my aunt from her retirement home as her driver had to bail out due to a family emergency. She’s partially paralysed since she had multiple strokes a few years ago. That went surprisingly smooth and she was really happy she was able to attend the birthday party. It was fun to see all the old relatives and friends. My uncle gave us a good tour of the old carpentry workshop our grandfather build and he inherited. He had also collected a whole bunch of historic items from decades ago.

On our way into the city of Luckenwalde we passed by the old house of my grand parents. To our surprise the old neighbour lady was still around and looked just like I remember her from about 40 years ago when I spent time there as a kid. Big surprise and happiness on all sides for this short reunion.

#weeklyreview 38/24

Posted on 2024-09-30 by Falko

Debugging the heating system

The whole summer I had the suspicion that the underfloor heating in one room of our flat is still on. We had dialed all thermostats down to “off”. But still the floor was somewhat warmer than in the other rooms. I blamed this on the sun shining in in the afternoon. But now that it’s colder outside and one can definitely tell if the heating is on I was sure something is broken. I opened the control unit compartment where all the pipes arrive and the valves are located. There were fortunately flow indicators on each pipe. So I could clearly see that the room in question had a constant flow of 1L/min while all other rooms were completely off. I turned the thermostat all the way up and could confirm the flow rate increase as well. But it never went down below 1L/min. Also disassembled the thermostat to check if that can be broken in this way. But it’s a simple bi-metal switch.

I’ve turned off the whole heating system now to stop the unnecessary heating and tried to make an appointment with a craftsman for repair. Earliest slots are at the end of October 😳

OS Updates

Apple released new iOS 18 and new macOS 15 (Sequoia). So it was time to update. All supported devices updates without an issue. Everything working so far. Kind of a non-event.

Exercise

I was really lazy over the summer. Partially due to the gym in the office being closed for renovation… But this week I did a longer walk (to and from the office) and a first run in the park to get into it again..

KIDS day at HERE Berlin

company invited the kids of the employees for an afternoon of fun and games. Also showing some of the stuff their parents are doing all they long 😉

#weeklyreview 37/24

Posted on 2024-09-15 by Falko

Thanks for all the fish

went swimming in the lake with the phone and also took some underwater pictures. This time apparently some water got into the phone and forced the FaceID to shut off. An error message appeared that FaceID has been disabled and phone needs service. No way to reset it.

So I made an appointment at the Genius Bar in the Apple Store in Berlin. Had hoped they can possibly diagnose and reset a flag to enable FaceID again. I’m sure once it’s dried up, it should be working again.

But of course Apple refused. They claimed it’s the most precise and sensitive function in the phone and thus can’t be simply re-enabled. Only option is a full swap-out of the phone. Which would cost more than 600 EUR at this stage. That obviously doesn’t make economic sense.

I guess I have to live without the convenience of FaceID on my iPhone now. Otherwise it’s still working perfectly fine.

Night Stand

Scott Yu-Jan, famous for his meticulous design and tinkering with his 3D Printer took on Dieter Rams for an iPhone Nightstand. Inspired by musician OVERWERK and building on his original model of the DN 40 he created a sleek iPhone night stand with a quick release button. The projects files a derivates are available on the BambuLabs Makeworld

The design is based on the BRAUN DN 40 designed by Dieter Rams

Steak

visit to Steakhouse Marzahn. Rather improbable location for a really expensive but very good steak house. As expected the guests were partially shady cliché role models of various kinds.

The food was really good though. We haven’t tried to most expensive options of course. Spending 700 EUR on a steak is too much for me.

Movie night

On Saturday I watched “The Banshees of Inisherin” with Brendan Gleeson and Collin Farrel (among others of course). A really lovely film. Beautiful Irish island landscape and quirky original characters. I can highly recommend this movie. I tried watching it in original language but switched to German to get all the jokes. Will watch it again in original now. Enjoying the original dialect very much.

#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.

Finally finished the wood stacking of the last piles from this spring. That should last for some years now…

The tomatoe game is strong again this year