I finally pulled the trigger and moved all my Fediverse followers from j7s@j7s.me to en@jlelse.blog, I only used the former account to share my blog links anyway. If you were following me for my German posts, please take a look at de@jlelse.blog. Have a nice day! 😊

Today’s date, 24.12.24 (using the German date format, DD.MM.YY), is special in a quirky mathematical way! Notice how 12 (the month) is exactly half of 24 (the day and the year). This symmetry adds an extra layer of charm to an already magical time of the year. It’s a rare alignment that makes this Christmas Eve uniquely memorable.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I hope you have a wonderful day filled with peace, joy, and moments that make you smile. Happy holidays to all! 🎄

It’s not a winter wonderland out here, but with Christmas and winter coming soon, maybe a little snow on my blog isn’t a bad idea. I’ve just programmed a snow animation for another project and thought I could reuse the code in the form of a simple GoBlog plugin. ❄❄❄

My list of domains is constantly changing. Sometimes it grows, and sometimes it shrinks as I let go of a domain I no longer need. The good thing is that letting go of a domain makes room for new ones. Just yesterday I made a spontaneous purchase of another .de domain: jan-lukas.de, to go along with janlukas.de, which I already own and sometimes use for emails.

Sorry to all the other Jan-Lukas’ in Germany, but this domain is now mine! I’ve been watching its availability for a while. It seems to have been registered and parked with various domain selling services since around 2013. Now that it’s finally available, I grabbed it. For now, it will redirect to my blog.

That’s it for work in 2024. Vacation! And next year will (probably) start with an AWS training course.

You know what’s amazing about programming? The power to automate boring or repetitive tasks effortlessly. Renaming hundreds of files, downloading GPX files from Komoot, or updating the visibility of countless statuses on Traewelling – sure, you could do it manually, but why would you, when you can write a quick script to handle it for you? It’s hands down the best life hack I’ve ever discovered! Big thanks to my parents for putting me on this path!

It seems like every app is offering a “Spotify Wrapped”-style yearly review these days. One app where I genuinely find the results fascinating is Träwelldroid, which I use to log my public transport journeys on Träwelling. While the average German drives roughly 10k kilometers per year by car, I traveled approximately 9600 kilometers using public transport, spending a total of 4 days and 8 hours in transit. This is particularly noteworthy since I commuted less frequently this year and didn’t do any interrailing. Sadly, there is no comparison with last year.

I’m tired of spam emails flooding my inbox, so I decided to take inspiration from Kev’s approach. I noticed that many of the spam messages were being sent to the email address I published on my legally required imprint.

To combat this, I now include a random email address on my imprint page, which I can update regularly. In my mailbox, I’ve set up a Sieve filter rule to reject any emails sent to the same subdomain but addressed to a different email.

This way, whenever I notice an increase in spam, I can easily update the contact address and adjust the filter rule.

To avoid confusing legitimate senders, the rejection message returned to the sender’s server (and typically forwarded to the sender as well) includes instructions on where to find the current email address or alternative ways to contact me.

Here’s hoping this strategy works!

Yesterday, I watched some cycling videos and that somehow gave me some motivation to do at least one more short bike tour this year. Today, I did a short round around the city and saw some new places. With 5° Celsius and some sun, the temperature wasn’t the best, but at least it didn’t rain. To keep the motivation high, I listened to some music with my new headphones.

Has someone a) found a bug or security hole in GoBlog or b) actually sent well over 5 million requests to my site to like my post about how to export GPX files automatically from Komoot? 🤔