If you are searching for a European OpenRouter alternative that also supports audio transcriptions, cortects might be an alternative. Given the recent controversial developments at OpenAI, and as I was already on the search for European alternatives, I deleted my OpenAI account and switched to Cortects for the few places where I need an AI API. The UI and feature set still aren’t as polished as OpenRouter, but at least it has the audio transcription endpoint, which I use for a voice-to-text Telegram bot. For now, I mostly use the Mistral models.

Warm weather, a bit of sun, and a Saturday without appointments. A perfect day for one more longer bike ride this week. For me, today meant heading out through the surrounding area, including through a valley (Reitlingstal) that I always find beautiful to ride through, but also for hiking. (Here are also some photos from November.)

Today I tried my new Magped pedals for the first time. Why Magped and not proper clipless pedals? I’ve already had bike accidents and appreciate being able to free myself better in emergencies to avoid falling. And yet today I still managed to damage my new shoes a bit right away, because when starting off after a traffic light, I got caught on a pin of the pedals. 😅

The tour was nice; even the climbs in between were okay. Only on the last part was there quite a headwind that slowed me down and made me tired.

First ride with my favorite bike this year. Just a quick round around the local airport. But I saw Highland cows on the way, a beautiful sunset, and got to breathe fresh air. It’s finally a bit warmer again. And most important: It’s not dark already at 5pm!

To decrease my reliance on US-based services, I just switched to Actalis, a fully European CA. They offer unlimited, free domain-validated certificates via ACME, making the transition seamless.

While I’m grateful for the massive innovation Let’s Encrypt brought to the web, it feels good to rely on one less entity subject to the CLOUD Act, especially for a piece of infrastructure as critical as the trust chain.

That’s the weather for me lately. Either so cold or so wet. And always so dark. It’s no wonder I hardly ever leave the house and even have my groceries delivered. I can’t wait for spring to arrive again. 🌞

Just migrated some storage buckets to Hetzner’s S3-compatible Object Storage and also set up OpenCloud. Looks nice so far, much better than what I remember about NextCloud. Let’s see if I will migrate from OneDrive already a few years before my Microsoft 365 subscription expires. Sovereignty, Digital Independence, etc…