Tech, life and everything else
Recently, I noticed in my blog database export that a couple of ActivityPub users unfollowed. All at the same time. It was strange. Until I noticed all were GoToSocial (GTS) users. In the logs I found the reason: GoBlog failed to deliver some updates to the users, and so the accounts were marked as dead and removed after twenty failed tries.
My new piece of fitness equipment is finally here. In all its glory, standing there to remind me every day to get a workout in. Now I don’t even have to go to the gym, because the gym is already at home.
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New year, new fitness motivation? I ordered a foldable pull-up and dip power tower. 😅 Let’s see if it is actually foldable enough to not take too much space in the apartment. And let’s see if it’s just going to be another piece of fitness equipment being mostly unused.
The pull-up bar for the door frame that I used in Kassel unfortunately doesn’t work with the doors in this apartment. And I’ve screwed enough things into the walls to know that the walls here are a disaster.
I couldn’t resist buying a new domain! 👀
I chose janlukas.blog as I’m considering rebranding my online presence. I want to move away from the nickname jlelse towards a stylized version of my first name. It also feels much more future-proof, especially if I end up taking my future wife’s last name.
What will probably be even more difficult than deciding on a surname is moving the blog. Moving an ActivityPub instance to a new domain is no easy task. (If you have already done that, please tell me how.)
Fun fact: While Jan and Lukas have long been the top boys’ names in Germany, the name Jan-Lukas with a hyphen is not that common after all. janlukas.de and jan-lukas.de were also still available, before I registered them.
When I rewrote my “About Me” page some days ago, I was thinking about how long I’ve already been blogging. My thought was 2016, so about 10 years. But reading about another blog birthday piqued my interest again, and I did some more research.
Many are taking the start of the year as a chance to update their “default apps” lists. I created a post listing mine in 2023. But as I also had a list of “self-hosted services” I use, I decided to merge those lists, and you can find it on a subpage of my /uses-page now. There are also separate lists about the hardware and the browser add-ons I use. And I know, I should find an alternative for OneDrive. I was thinking about switching to a self-hosted OpenCloud with S3-storage at the latest when my M365 license expires in 2028.
I took some time today (since I have the day off for a public holiday) to update the “About Me” page on this blog and make it a bit more personal. It should now offer a good way to get to know me without ever having met me in real life. 😄
Even as an adult, you’re allowed to go sledding! No sooner said than done. Today, with a lot of new snow, I drove out to the Harz Mountains. I hiked up from Bad Harzburg to the Molkenhaus (about 2 kilometers) and then took the sled back down on the return leg. It’s the very same sled my parents used to pull me on through the Harz when I was just a little kid. It was fun! ❄️🛷
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Some in my blogging circle have already published their 2025 year in review, so I want to continue my tradition since 2019 and write a review of my own. But first, a few words about the past month.