Today, I did my longest bike tour this year so far. I went north to a lake in a neighboring district, mostly following the Weser-Harz-Heide route, which I already partly followed on my journey from Kassel to Braunschweig last year. There I sat down on a bench for half an hour and then returned. I had plenty of headwinds on the way there and a bit of tailwind on the way back, although the wind was mostly from the side. This time, I luckily did not mess up the OsmAnd tracking. Despite the wind, it was a lot of fun!

If you’re reading this, it seems that my GoBlog Telegram Bot (just another embedded plugin) is working!

This new bot probably has no real use, but it was a good experimental project to try and get a bit more familiar with the current state of GitHub Copilot, especially as we can now use it at work.

Probably the biggest use is for uploading photos from my phone. I can just send them as files and get a link back. But I can also send text and it publishes it. Even with frontmatter to configure parameters for the post.

Regarding Copilot: For whatever reason (maybe my adblocking DNS?) the VSCode extension keeps asking me to log in again, but still works for the non-chat features.

However, I am still a little worried that AI will make my work obsolete.

Yesterday, before our second (and last) move today, I took the opportunity to take a relaxing ride on my bike along my running route from some years ago and enjoy the nature.

It’s a bit sad that I can’t run anymore without getting pain in my knee, but riding the bike is also fun and gentler on the joints.

On Wednesday, I will hand over the flat and then the time with two flats to manage is finally over! More time to bike! 😄

To reduce my dependence on USA-based products, I switched from using the OpenAI API to Scaleway’s Generative API for my blog. Not only is it cheaper, but it’s based on open-source models, hosted in Europe. 🇪🇺

It was straightforward to just add an option to change the REST endpoint in my GoBlog plugins, and then use Scaleway’s API for creating the post summaries and the image descriptions. For the post summaries, I am now using llama-3.3-70b-instruct, for the image descriptions pixtral-12b-2409.

Let’s hope that there will also be a model that supports audio transcriptions until April 2026, so I don’t have to renew the credits on the OpenAI API for my Telegram Voice-To-Text bot. 🤞

This time it’s just a station to change to another train. Another hour and a half to my new/old home station.

I visited this place four years ago, but today my family and I went to the Todtnau Waterfall again. This time there’s a new suspension bridge from which you can see the waterfall from above and get an even better view of the valley in the black forest.

I was also happy to be able to wear my hat and sunglasses again (sun, almost blue sky and 20 °C!) and record the walk with OsmAnd.

Enjoying the nice weather, my monthly review will be a little late. 🌷

Part 1 of the move (Kassel to Braunschweig) is complete. Today we dropped off the van, handed over the apartment, and took the opportunity to take one last walk through the nearby park and nature. Part 2 (second home to new primary residence) will follow soon.

I did not want to miss the chance to take one (maybe) last picture of this beautiful symmetrical view.

Just a few more days before I leave Kassel after two and a half years. Feeling grateful for everything this city has given me and excited for what’s ahead!