Just because I need to hear it: I do not need a new iPad mini and/or a Mac mini. Really. I’m fine with all I have.
Something tells me that I will think about/refer to this post a lot.
We made it. 2024 is almost over.
(And yes, I know it’s just a random date and I know things won’t magically change because we now write a different number, but come on. It’s still something. Don’t spoil the fun, random internet pedant that I made up in my head.)
Anyway: the next time I post weeknotes, it will be in 2025, which means I actually made a whole second year of writing them every single week. Sometimes a bit longer, sometimes a lot shorter. I experimented with different styles, I tried to send them out by email, which felt always very weird, and I posted some of them to Instagram, which felt even weirder.
As with many habits this one only works because at its core it is very simple. Write a few words, copy/paste into a website. Click publish. It’s (more or less) always on the same day. I have a bit of social pressure from my friends at the café. And frankly, that’s what it takes for me to build a habit.
So this week was all a bit of a blur – last week I talked about how I didn’t feel very christmas-y, which resulted in me completely bungling the whole gift-finding process. Luckily I had Monday off, so that’s when I got up early, drove to Freiburg and just semi-randomly bought things for everyone until the city got too full. Not my best performance, but sometimes that’s what it is.
The Christmas days were the way they are – I do like my family quite a lot, but it can be a bit much. So at some point I just had to hide inside and spend a whole day building trains in Factorio. (I still didn’t get to a second planet. The update is two months old now. Good god!) And now it’s Sunday, soon it will be the next year and that’s all just fine as well.
Last work week of the year and oh boy. Right now I’m just glad that’s done and dusted.
I’ve been procrastinating that long post about my November trip by going through the photos again and posting more to my photo blog. And because every yak needs a good shaving that means that I can now post photo dumps and that it is possible to navigate through the photos with the arrow keys. Very nice. I also added a whole bunch of caching to the image resizer, so hopefully the janky loading of the photos isn’t as much or a problem anymore.
I still don’t feel very Christmas-y and the constant wet grey darkness is really getting on my nerves, so most of the time I’ve just been moping around. Alas, a few plans for next year are taking shape, so I’m looking forward to whatever these might bring.
I posted a whole bunch of photos over on my photo blog: planespotting at Tân Sơn Nhất airport in Ho Chi Minh City and my first 24 hours in Bangkok. Mostly as a means to procrastinate the long blog post I wanted to write about that trip. I immediately ran into two bugs in the software that powers that page, so well done, me.
The whole Peak Design thing is a bit annoying, no? I didn’t really follow the news too closely, so while I did idly wonder, if Peak Design would comment on the fact that the guy who shot that CEO wore an Everyday Backpack, I really didn’t think that their reaction would be vorauseilender Gehorsam. (which in this case could be translated as “anticipatory bootlicking” I guess?) And based on the post on their blog, they did not anticipate that people weren’t too pleased with their reaction. Interesting times.
Week fifty? Good grief.
Just after I wrote the last notes, my stomach decided to act up, which pretty much messed up my Sunday and my Monday. The less we say about the remaining work week the better – WordPress keeps being a pain in the ass in every way possible. At least I got to drive up to Köln and solve a few issues in person.
On the way back, I managed to visit a good friend who I don’t see enough, so that was nice. And now I’m back here, Factorio is running in the background and once I’m done with these notes, I’ll hide in there again.
Oh wow, it’s almost mid-december. Do you have all your Christmas gifts, yet?
Not much to talk about again this week, it’s been a grey week, so I’ve been doing my usual cocooning.
(Is this the new record holder for shortest weeknotes post, yet? I’m sure I can beat it somehow.)
Last year’s was somehow more fun. And now yours!
Today I installed WordPress Popular Posts here on my blog because a client of ours has been running it on their installation and I wanted to see how it acts with a more blog-y kind of page. Now usually I do not have any kind of tracking here, I don’t really care and frankly don’t want to know. And yet, immediately when I looked at the data the plugin collects (which is super minimal) I could feel the little devil on my shoulder ask: “I wonder where these people come from? Do they leave? What do they click on? Do they come from Google? Have they been here before?” and knew I had to uninstall that plugin immediately.
Why are humans so nosy? I don’t have anything to gain from knowing all these things and looking at visitor numbers going up or down.
This is going to be a fun one: I woke up around 4:30am just to fall back into short 30 minute naps with extremely vivid and intensive dreams. I’m absolutely beat – not so much because of the lack of sleep, but because I feel like I already experienced two or three days worth of input that still needs processing.
Another week over, another week without a lot to talk about. Automobilista 2 has a new update that took up quite some time, I played some Satisfactory with Teymur (Who by the way celebrates his 100th weeknote this week!) and besides this I was reading a lot more than usual. (Nothing worth mentioning, though. Dumb spy and detective novels. Fast food for the brain. But eh. 🤷🏻♂️)
I warned you all that more posts about my trip to South-East Asia would be coming and hey, I haven’t given up on it. But first I need to finish the “More than one photo at a time” feature on my photo blog. And uh. I also wanted to write my own CMS, if I remember correctly? Why do I do this to myself? (Meanwhile I also started to wonder if I should write my own personal finance manager tool. I’ve tried so many now and every one of them has something I don’t like. UGH!)
These weekends creep up on you, hm?
Besides a whole lot of snow and a surprising amount of jet lag there’s not much to talk about. I didn’t even get to consume a lot of media because I slept so much – the moment it gets dark out, I’m sleepy and oh boy, does that work well with winter. At least my Apple Health app keeps telling me I slept enough? Well, thanks.
Another week over, huh? And here I am, back in grey, cold, rainy Germany again. What a bummer.
After one more day in Vietnam I flew over to Bangkok and spent a few days there – and much to my surprise it took me quite a while to warm up to this city. Everyone I know who’s been there told me how amazing it would be and so maybe I came in with too many expectations.
On the first day I mostly wandered around, had some lunch that also wasn’t quite as amazing I was hoping for, took the train here and there and ended up in an extremely crowded street in Chinatown, which didn’t quite work for me in my mood that day. So yeah, complicated first day. For a while I was wondering if I wandered into another situation that I started to think of as Cities Skyline situation – on paper everything is exactly made for me, I like watching other people experience it, but once I try it myself, I just can’t get into it.
Things got a bit better on the next days, though – I visited the Grand Palace, which is absolutely breathtaking, even when it is of course packed with other tourists as well. Just the murals alone entertained me for an hour or maybe even two. Going up and down the Chao Phraya with the express boat is good fun, too, and the rest of the day I kinda bummed around the city, had lunch in the middle of the Pak Khlong Talat flower market, which was extremely busy because of the Loy Kratong festival which was about to happen and all in all had a much better day than on Wednesday.
Friday was a pretty chill day – my plan was to look at the two big parks, alas the rain had other plans. So I mostly looked at the rain and at the huge city model. I was very impressed. After I did some souvenir shopping and had lunch, I managed to visit the big Loy Kratong festivities along the Chao Phraya. It was all quite a blast, including a change of boats in the middle of the river. (Don’t ask. I didn’t.)
And now I’m back. Yay? Next week I’ll be back with complaining about the weather and work again.
And I warn you, there will be more posts about this trip as I process it. I have a big document with notes in my drafts.
A few days late – but with good reason. I was at the beach and really couldn’t be bothered with writing weeknotes on Sunday. I’m not even going to apologize for that.
When I left you last time, I just arrived in Kuala Lumpur, where I spend a few days. I had a good look at the Muzium Negara, a better look at all kinds of food, met up with a friend of mine and without much warning, it was Tuesday and I was back at the airport already. I do have a long list of notes about those four days (and my complicated feelings about being back in KL again) and they’re going to be a separate blog post back when everything catches up with me.
After KL I landed in Ho Chi Minh City and since I landed quite late, I didn’t really do much: marveled at the city from the safety of my Grab car, checked into my AirBnB, had a quick walk around the neighborhood and dropped straight into bed.
And somehow this had not adequately prepared me for the next day – the pure amount of people and stores and motorbikes and smells and sounds and sights was quite something. And so I didn’t do anything besides walk around all day, take a few pictures and have coffee until it was time to meet friends for dinner.
One more day of being a museum-visting tourist later and I suddenly found myself folded into a bus to the seaside, which was just excellent. I swam in the ocean and in the pool and had good food and took a bunch of instagrammable photos.
And that was a great and week. I’ll mention yesterday and today in the next note, and just as with KL, I do have a whole bunch of notes for Vietnam that will end up in a post on their own.