It’s been one week since I got my new walking pad, a King Smith WalkingPad Z1. I bought it refurbished on eBay with a couple of coupons, which brought the cost down to about 194 €, saving me about 100 € from the new price. In just the first week, I’ve already averaged more than 10,000 steps a day, all without even going for a walk outside. I think that’s pretty great.

In the mornings, I walk for an hour while I work, and then again for another hour in the early afternoon. Sometimes I wear shoes, sometimes I’m barefoot. By the end of the day, I can really feel it with a little muscle soreness.

While a walking pad won’t replace a real workout, I recently realized I wasn’t moving enough. I have a standing desk, but neither sitting nor standing all day is good. But moving is. So far, I feel like I have a bit more energy and can focus better.

I also bought two new small upgrades for my bike. I got a new bell because my old one was pretty quiet and people often didn’t hear me, which wasn’t very safe. I also replaced my grips with Ergon GP3-L Evo BioKork ones. The grips are more ergonomic, and the bar ends give me an alternative hand position on longer rides.

Yesterday, while my fiancée was attending a work event, I decided to explore a cycling route around Braunschweig. It was approximately 53 km through relatively quiet areas, including many forests and fields. The paths were often bumpy and not suitable for high speeds, but I prefer enjoying nature anyway.

The bike handled the task well. No squeaking, no other problems. However, I apparently didn’t drink enough or eat anything during the ride, so I was really exhausted afterwards. Unfortunately, I sometimes make this mistake, but hopefully I’ve learned my lesson this time.

The navigation wasn’t ideal this time either. Because the route was based on a published route on Komoot, I made my adjustments on Komoot, downloaded the GPX file, and imported it into Osmand. However, something messed up the directions. Osmand kept telling me to turn left when I should have turned right. This caused a lot of confusion and a few wrong turns.

Nevertheless, it was a nice ride and I enjoyed doing some exercise outdoors again!

My Komoot export script has become quite popular. It was shared on a subreddit a few months ago, and I received many requests and comments about it. This morning, I decided to do some “guided vibe-coding” (I told Copilot what to implement, then checked and modified the result) and extend the export script. I replaced the static variables with CLI options for the credential file and download directory, added new flags to add the title to the file name and download planned tours. I also improved the readme to better explain how to acquire the necessary credentials and run the code.

See my original post about the script, the last update, and the source code.

My email server works perfectly for almost everyone. I’ve got all the security measures: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, DNSSEC etc. My IP isn’t on any blocklist. Yet, with giants like Outlook and iCloud.com, my emails consistently hit spam or get outright rejected. The fix? An AWS SES relay, just for them. Suddenly, mail from Amazon gets through. This is pure tech oligopoly garbage, forcing us through their gatekeepers! /rant