2020-10-21
I finished reading another four books. But i only liked two, without jumping pages or a lot of speed reading: "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens and "The Last Anniversary" by Liane Moriarty. I really enjoy reading now, if i can build a good connection to the story. It is a different experience, compared to listening or watching.
I get more control or freedom about the visuals in my head, unlike in audiobooks or movies, where everything can be messed up by voices or actors interpreting the script, basically stripping off the wiggle room that makes every book unique to the individual reader. I like to relate to characters, and do the coloring by myself.
Another year is over for me, with more white hair and more weight on the scales. I will never be a supermodel or yoga instructor in this life, for sure. My foot no longer hurts, but i will be more sensible, and not go full yoga anytime soon.
2020-09-28
I finished reading another three books. I prefer reading female authors, because they are more sweet and have more thoughts, at least the ones i choose to consume anyway. Lucky me that words are free on the internet, while the real world somehow gets more expensive, even with all these advances in technology. For example, Germany is going to raise the price for ID cards next year.
Monopolies are terrible. I will just get more frugal, and not buy things. This is why i like to code. It doesn't cost me much. Computer, input and output devices, electricity, and time. Maybe someday they will discover digital certificates to replace plastic cards. It would be better for the environment, and more efficient too.
Governments pretend to stand for order, but they love chaos. It gives them the reason to exist. And if they don't find it, they create it, just to make you feel bad. Leaders can never be wrong, they are the good ones after all. And people pretend they are always right.
I got really spoiled after reading my latest books. And i cleaned up my Calibre library, by removing books i will never consume. If i had read the following first, maybe i would like them even more:
- "Leaving Time" by Jodi Picoult
- "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
- "The Book of Lost Friends" by Lisa Wingate
2020-08-30
I have been using Windows for more than two decades. But it's slowly getting to look like Android or Apple, in a bad way. The new path to run their operating system on Arm architecture is a sign of change, something Microsoft never was famous for, to support all apps ever written. For some time, i'm writing my tools in Perl only, to make them portable. I also made my workflow less dependent on apps that exclusively run on Windows. And things that i would have previously written in Batch or PowerShell, i now write in Unix shell script, or to be more precise, in Bash.
After having successfully moved from my Managed Server to a server managed by myself, i learned to embrace Linux. I have five Raspberry Pi's running here, plus four on standby. Developers all over the world keep this operating system moving, similar to the International Space Station. And i got Pro Pinball Timeshock to run on it too, thanks to DOSBox.
I'm not watching movies, TV shows, or listening to podcasts anymore for quite some time. There is just nothing new coming out. All those low hanging fruits are picked and recycled a lot. My own life is more interesting to me, because i'm an original. And not having an expensive streaming account makes it easy for me to only consume things that come to me by themselves.
2020-08-29
After putting my leg to rest often, and taking a warm foot bath every day, it got a lot better lately. And i finished reading another book. I think it will get harder to find something interesting. Because it had such a good balance between sweet and salty, almost spoiling whatever comes next. Here are some sentences from "City of Girls" by Elizabeth Gilbert i liked and can relate to:
- Fascinated enough by clothing to want to learn
- I took the Singer with me to boarding school, where it gave me enormous power
- Sometimes it takes a very long while to figure things out
- Nobody had ever called me kiddo, and for some reason it made me want to run into her arms and cry
- Theater critics did an excellent job of not noticing our existence at all, which was probably best for everyone
- They were designed to make people happy without making the audience work too hard to understand what was going on
- So I used the scavenging skills I'd honed at the Lily Playhouse to create works of beauty out of precious little
- He was a man who did nothing casually, thoughtlessly, or carelessly. He was from a poor immigrant family; he couldn't afford to make mistakes
- He was embarrassed to be working in a job that was so far below his intellectual capacities
- But the world doesn't care about your rules, or what you believe
- He had such darkness of his own that nobody else's shadows scared him
- Those words all describe something that we were not
- Frank found that if he splashes hard, he could push the fire away and create a small spot in the Pacific that was not on fire
- Do you want to know what it actually means? It means nothing
- It didn't mean anything. We all still loved him
2020-07-26
I read some books in recent months, and not all i liked. I really tried hard, and hoped i would enjoy her sister's work as well. But i had to force myself to get through this. It was dry, like written for theatre. I hate going heavy on dialogue, without enough thoughts. And these are the latest books i consumed:
- "The Testaments" by Margaret Atwood
- "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë
- "Daddy's Gone A Hunting" by Mary Higgins Clark
- "Before We Were Yours" by Lisa Wingate
Except for Emily, all others are more or less random choices. But i got lucky with the last one. After each time i paused, i was looking forward to reading it and hoping for a happy end. I took them to my bed, the best spot for an e-book reader. Room light off, reading light on, and diving into somewhere else.
Sometime between me doing too much yoga, and neighbours doing loud construction work, i injured my foot, and it is not up to potential since several months. I put a little more weight on the scales, since i can't move a lot. But i found something to do, and i got into day trading.
It was my first time, and it is true: "Everyone is a genius in a bull market". This is why i almost lost all my gains, and later, focused more on value stocks, which got me to a two percent return. I wish i had tried it earlier, and bought some Apple or Tesla. But then again, i never said i'm smart.
2020-06-14
Before i was born, dad had sweaty hands. Maybe a coincidence, or i was the cure. Mom told me he used to make typewriter rust, while working in Hong Kong, doing paperwork for his uncle's import and export company. Forty years ago, he came to Germany with the hope to work in the kitchen, where sweaty hands don’t matter, since everything is wet anyway. On cold winter days, his sweat would freeze. And mom stuck to him.
My father was into electronics too, but this issue prevented him from going in this direction. Now, for almost two decades, his hands are rather too dry, with occasionally cracked skin. Because during his shift, he has to clean them a lot, for handling and checking manufactured goods in the factory. He has been working there for 18 years, always ready when they call, around the clock. I never had sweaty hands like that. Lately, i got more into electronics, and i like to think this makes him happy.
Since he started working for Kautex in 2002, he had no real vacation. The only time he took a break was when his brother was about to die in 2015. He booked a flight to Hong Kong to see William Cheung, a Senior Project Manager at Hong Kong Construction. The last time he saw his little brother was 7 years ago, in 2008. And that's only because we had to renew our HKID cards and do some paperwork. My father slept on a sofa in the apartment where my grandma and my aunt have been living. He stayed there for 7 days to say goodbye. Mom and i stayed in Germany, because she had to work, and plane tickets are not cheap. Rest in peace, uncle William.
2020-06-07
There is a sentence in German saying: "The grass is always greener on the other side". You may assume that it is better somewhere else, without really knowing it. Back then, in 2008, i participated in a The American Dream lottery, and i got the chance for a Greencard. But me without knowing anyone there, and me being someone with no good English, while scared about the world, i have not pursued it further. Instead, i got back to basics, and learned some origami.
I think this did something to me, with all the folds, combined to a real thing. Now, seeing the world slowing down and speeding up again, i get to see that this better place does not exist, not at this moment in time. Most suffering on Earth is artificially created, to make profit, or to enable progress. And the only thing i can change is me, accepting that i don't need much, although sometimes hungry. I'm alive, and there are still things to do in the long run.
2020-05-29
Lately, my Duck DNS address sometimes did not work, after two years without any problems. Maybe some issues with their name server. Probably too much load, because i see that others are enjoying it too. Since i get to use this service for free, i'm thankful and not complaining. I'm only making my GIF animations available through that web address, so it’s not a big deal.
But motivated by other users, who are affected by this too, i wrote a shell script to automatically update the DNS management in Cloudflare through their API, basically mirroring the functionality of Duck DNS, by sending the current IP address, and getting all the things connected again. This is reliable enough for my Raspberry Pi. And yes, the subdomain was inspired by Star Trek.
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