Yesterday and this morning I worked from the office rather than from home due to planned power interruptions. Impressions: My monitor at home is better, my chair is more comfortable and at home it is quieter (there is construction work in the office right now). Only the Internet is much faster in the office.

James is trying to eat less meat:

Each burger we consume comes with a at least of costs baked in: the direct cost of a life of the animal and environmental (cutting down forest to make room for cows, shipping animals across an ocean to get processed in a foreign country, just to be shipped back to their origin for sale).

If you can change your default, you can make substantial changes with significantly less effort.

Likewise, I’ve changed my defaults for meat. As beef as it has a higher CO2 footprint per kilogram than pork or chicken, I mostly stopped buying beef and replace it with pork or chicken. Default changed to not beef. The other default I’ve been working on default: no meat.

I myself barely eat meat either, my default is “no meat” as well. And to be honest, I don’t miss anything, I’ve never eaten much meat.

Vegetarians or vegans often have to deal with arguments that without meat they would lack vitamin B12, for example. If only those who make such arguments knew that many additives are also added to the animal feed…

Vitamin B12 must also be added to some animals

It’s more complicated with pigs, says Ingrid Vervuert: “Apart from milk, eggs and fishmeal, no animal products may be fed to pigs. As a result, the normal feed spectrum for pigs is poorer in vitamin B12.” Therefore, vitamin B12 is added to the feeds of these animals, as well as poultry - for the same reasons.

– Quarks (Translated with DeepL)

Someone gave me the tip (thank you!) to use VLC to play YouTube videos with my Chromecast. Although it is possible to stream YouTube videos directly in the VLC Android app itself, it somehow doesn’t work in combination with the output to the Chromecast. An alternative is of course to first use NewPipe to download a video and then play it on the Chromecast using VLC.

However, I have now found another possibility. In Windows, you can also use Microsoft Edge to stream YouTube videos to the Chromecast. There, they are not opened with the YouTube app (which constantly shows me ads), but only with a video player. I have now tested this with a few videos and did not see any ads. Whether uBlock Origin also plays a role in the Edge browser, I have not tested.

Update: I came across SmartTubeNext, which does exactly what I want. YouTube Premium and Premium Lite are not options for me, as Premium Lite is not available in my country and I don’t need the music in Premium, as Deezer is my music streaming service of choice.

I regularly watch videos on YouTube via my Chromecast with Google TV. But I feel like I’m seeing more and more commercials. It’s almost like private television, where every video is interrupted every few minutes with advertising. And most of the time it’s two commercials in a row that can’t be skipped. I think I have to think about an alternative solution for YouTube…

James replied to my programming post.

If I had to describe coding in one word, the word I would choose is “empowering.”

Yes, that’s the right word!

Being able to write a simple Python script can save time, sure. But it can also be incredibly fun. One can make a game with code. Or build a website. Or do a repetitive task that may be tedious.

Sure, after all, programming is a lot of fun, I think. 😁

Today we went to the zoo spontaneously. 🐒