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…

Welcome, Kev, to the group of bloggers building their own blogging systems because all other options didn’t exactly fit their needs! 😄

Even though Kev is no professional developer, the project looks remarkable! Maybe not being a professional developer is what prevents you from simply building just another blogging system tailored towards developers. It took me five years to finally write good (or at least somewhat good) documentation. Kev did it right away for Pure Blog (also with videos!).

Is it your final blog migration, Kev? I also migrated my blog a couple of times before I started building GoBlog. Since then I haven’t thought once about migrating again, as whenever I have the need for a new feature or some change, I can simply implement it myself.

I finally moved my blog to the new domain. I wrote extensive code and integration tests in GoBlog to ensure nothing breaks and to move all ActivityPub followers to the new handles, but you never know. 🙈 So far it’s looking good though… Hello from janlukas.blog! 👋

Ava perfectly captured how I feel about saving the planet:

I can only speak for myself, but adjusting my consumer behavior to my values as much as is possible for me in my position isn’t misdirecting me, it’s keeping me focused, actually. It’s making me aware again and again of what world I want, what I stand for, what I personally fund and my impact. I hold governments and industries accountable as much as is possible for me through recycling, veganism, not having a car, not flying, etc. and demand systemic change to the options given to me (voting and money, which are not enough, but hey). That doesn’t mean I am never frustrated or feeling hopeless or like it’s all for nothing, of course.

Her words highlight a crucial point: we need both systemic change and personal action. More regulation is necessary to force corporations to protect the planet, but where possible, individual choices matter too.

Just because we are free to do almost anything doesn’t mean we should. I have the freedom to eat meat every day, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice. The government won’t ban me from overconsuming it, but if I do, I’m not just harming my health – I’m also contributing, in my own small way, to environmental destruction.

It’s surprising how much I can reduce the amount of spam that Rspamd needs to filter – whether it ends up in my junk folder or even my inbox – just by blocking certain recipient addresses. Using unique email addresses for each service, like “deezer @ example.com” for Deezer, was one of the best decisions I made, especially combined with a catch-all address.

For example, Deezer had a data leak a few years ago, which led to a flood of spam targeting the email I used for their service. Fortunately, with Postfix, I can simply reject emails sent to that specific address, keeping my inbox much cleaner and reducing the workload for Rspamd.

I was just looking at SSD prices and wow, have they gone up! Last year in May I ordered a Crucial P5 Plus with 1 TB for 79,99 €. In the late summer of last year, the price was as low as 59,90 €. But now the lowest price I can find is 92,81 €, the second lowest is 134,28 €. 😱 Seems like I should wait a bit before buying a new drive to back up all the tape videos…