My new piece of fitness equipment is finally here. In all its glory, standing there to remind me every day to get a workout in. Now I don’t even have to go to the gym, because the gym is already at home.

New year, new fitness motivation? I ordered a foldable pull-up and dip power tower. 😅 Let’s see if it is actually foldable enough to not take too much space in the apartment. And let’s see if it’s just going to be another piece of fitness equipment being mostly unused.

Ich mag ja gerne YouTube-Serien. Besonders solche, die nicht zu profimäßig organisiert und produziert sind. Eine solche Serie, die sich ums Fahrradfahren und Bikepacking dreht, ist “CHASE!”. Sechs Freunde starten in München und fahren einige Tage lang in sechs verschiedene Richtungen in Europa. Das Schöne daran, wie ich finde: Die meisten haben bisher nicht viel Raderfahrung, nur wenig Vorbereitung und starten einfach drauflos. Am ersten Tag schon mehr als 200 Kilometer.

I couldn’t resist buying a new domain! 👀

When I rewrote my “About Me” page some days ago, I was thinking about how long I’ve already been blogging. My thought was 2016, so about 10 years. But reading about another blog birthday piqued my interest again, and I did some more research.

Many are taking the start of the year as a chance to update their “default apps” lists. I created a post listing mine in 2023. But as I also had a list of “self-hosted services” I use, I decided to merge those lists, and you can find it on a subpage of my /uses-page now. There are also separate lists about the hardware and the browser add-ons I use. And I know, I should find an alternative for OneDrive. I was thinking about switching to a self-hosted OpenCloud with S3-storage at the latest when my M365 license expires in 2028.

I took some time today (since I have the day off for a public holiday) to update the “About Me” page on this blog and make it a bit more personal. It should now offer a good way to get to know me without ever having met me in real life. 😄

Letztes Jahr im Frühjahr, als wir unsere Schottland-Reise geplant und uns aufgrund der Unterkunftspreise auf Skye spontan dazu entschieden haben, auch ein paar Tage zu campen, bin ich im Zuge der Recherche auf den Kanal von Stefan Berger gestoßen. Mittlerweile ist es einer meiner Lieblingskanäle auf YouTube. Ohne Clickbait und schön entspannt (perfekt geeignet zum Schauen beim Frühstück am Wochenende oder Feiertag) zeigt er die Schönheit der Berge in Österreich, testet und vergleicht verschiedenes Outdoor-Equipment (von günstig bis teuer), zeltet auf Berggipfeln (immer dabei: eine Lichterkette) und macht manchmal sogar Bikepacking. Absolute Empfehlung von mir! 😌

Even as an adult, you’re allowed to go sledding! No sooner said than done. Today, with a lot of new snow, I drove out to the Harz Mountains. I hiked up from Bad Harzburg to the Molkenhaus (about 2 kilometers) and then took the sled back down on the return leg. It’s the very same sled my parents used to pull me on through the Harz when I was just a little kid. It was fun! ❄️🛷

Dieser Vortrag ist interessant, verwundert mich aber auch so gar nicht. Irgendwelche abgelaufenen oder Fantasiedomains nutzen, die aber einfach von jedem registriert werden können. Zeit, dass sich gov.de durchsetzt. Naja, Internet ist halt noch Neuland.

Some in my blogging circle have already published their 2025 year in review, so I want to continue my tradition since 2019 and write a review of my own. But first, a few words about the past month.

Einige in meinem Blogging-Zirkel haben schon ihren Jahresrückblick 2025 veröffentlicht, also will auch ich meine Tradition seit 2019 fortführen und einen Jahresrückblick schreiben. Aber zuerst ein paar Worte zum vergangenen Monat.

Having multiple side programming projects is a good thing. While I enhanced GoBlog with some security features in the recent past (multiple passkeys, hashed passwords, etc.), I worked again on another project, which I haven’t touched in almost two years. My URL shortener. I did some maintenance but also added some quality-of-life features. This time I worked with Raptor Mini in GitHub Copilot. On the small code base, that model worked quite well.

I should have set up something like this earlier, but now I finally did: Uptime Kuma. I currently host it on my home server and let it monitor my main VPS, my mail server, and some self-hosted services. Simple to set up and configure with SQLite!

Somehow1 I got access to GitHub Education again, which includes access to GitHub Copilot Pro. While I was using Kilo Code with OpenRouter in the recent past, I wanted to try Copilot again since it doesn’t cost anything extra for me.

In der ARD-Mediathek gibt es eine Doku zum Thema Pendeln. Dazu habe ich ein paar Gedanken:

The second-to-last month of the year is now over too, so it is time to take the monthly look back.

Der vorletzte Monat im Jahr ist nun auch vorbei, Zeit also, den monatlichen Blick zurückzuwerfen.

Today marked my last full working day (tomorrow I will just hand back in the equipment) at my current employer in the automotive industry. Next Monday, I will start a new job in another domain.

GoBlog not only has a new README file on the repository (replacing the old, cluttered, incomplete documentation) but also has a new share button implementation. No more relying on third-party services for that basic functionality!

Today I did another bike tour, following several I’ve taken recently. I didn’t blog about those, although they were quite nice and I truly enjoyed them, now more appropriately dressed.1

I think I did not blog about it, but I switched back to a self-hosted AdGuard Home instance quite some time ago from NextDNS. To reduce my number of subscriptions, but also to increase my control over important infrastructure I use.

Today, with the weather at a nice 19 °C, I took the chance for another bike tour. I had tried out my new, warmer cycling clothes yesterday during a long break from work, but since the weather will be much colder soon, I really wanted to get this second ride in.

I finally have the Internet Phone Book as well. Ordered from Hyper Hypo in Greece because that was the only place with stock. Lots to explore for quiet moments!

After September, now October is gone too, one more month, and not so long anymore until the next year. Even if it is already the third day in November, I still quickly want to fulfill my chronist duty.