This site is built on Hugo, a static site generator. There are many themes for Hugo sites, and until recently, I was using hello-friend-ng. I liked the look, and it worked well for my purposes. But there were some recent changes to Hugo itself, and the theme apparently is no longer actively maintained. At least, my site wouldn’t build anymore after I upgraded my local Hugo version. So the hunt for a new theme was on.

It’s Friday 13th, and I got some bad news that make it necessary for me to be at the other end of the country tomorrow. There’s one upside to the sad occasion: I get to ride on the new Nightjet train that OEBB put in service last winter. Here are some first impressions. Outside The train rolls into the station while it’s raining hard. This time last week, we were throwing the summer’s last BBQ party.

Those of us living in Apple’s golden cage know that the fruity phones offer a pretty decent user experience. But try rattling the bars, and you’ll find out that Cupertino has done a solid job of locking you into their system. One of the nicer functionalities of iOS is Airdrop. This lets us transfer files between devices over Bluetooth. It’s as easy as sending a file by Signal. But disappointingly, it only works with Apple devices.

Around here, April is when the whitewater kayaking season starts. Due to the unseasonably warm weather (ugh, climate catastrophe), I’d been out on the water a couple of times already after the winter. But today was the official season opening with our local club. So the 14yo and I went. The Saalach river is our home stretch, just over the border in Austria. The bit from Au to Unken is a perennial favourite.

I’ve been listening to Tom Waits on and off for maybe the last 30 years. Not obsessively, mind you; more whenever the mood takes me. The mood in question is typically one of sadness and weltschmerz. I’ve encountered it much less frequently in recent years, which is a good thing overall. Still, when I stumbled across a 2023 remaster of Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs a few days ago, the feelings were still all there, and the memories came back.

This is a log of my extremely unambitious running career. It’s mostly an aide memoire to myself. If I wanted to brag, I’d need to find another subject. Past runs (latest on top) 2024-03-06 (endurance) distance 18km, duration 2:30, avg speed 8:20. I wasn’t fully in shape, but it was a warm Saturday morning, and it was good to be out in the forest near the lake! 2024-02-04 (intervals) 8.04km, duration 58:39, avg speed 7:17.

Spring comes early this year. It’s the first half of March, and the days are already wonderfully warm and sunny, with highs around 16°C. This is a clear sign of the climate disaster, and absolutely isn’t great for nature. But it’s warm enough to get the whitewater kayakers stirring, assembling their gear, and heading out to the river. On Friday evening, a club mate asked “anyone up for a few runs?

I wanted a small, portable computer. Like an iPad, but running a real operating system. A Fedi friend pointed me Microsoft’s Surface range. I bought a used Surface Go off Ebay, and slapped Debian on it. This is a Surface Go, with the small print saying “Model 1824”. Seller says it’s probably a Surface Go 2, I’m guessing it’s a 1. Anyway, it’s not a speed queen. But it seems to run Gnome well enough, supports web browsing and text editing just fine - and that’s exactly what I want to use it for.

Content warning: Blatant consumerism. This is a post about espresso machines. Nobody NEEDS an espresso machine in their home. These things are an expensive luxury, and a superfluous indulgence. There are better ways to spend your money, for example by giving it to people who have less than you. The decision to buy one isn’t easy to reconcile with the desire for a better world where resources are more fairly distributed.

One of the people I follow on the Fedi shared a food pic of a starter they’d had in a vegan restaurant in Lisbon. I was hungry, so I decided to reverse engineer the thing. As it happened, I had almost all required ingredients around. This is a starter that comes with strong flavours. It should be brightly acid, salty, spicy and umami. It should combine crunchy and soft textures.