It’s been one week since I got my new walking pad, a King Smith WalkingPad Z1. I bought it refurbished on eBay with a couple of coupons, which brought the cost down to about 194 €, saving me about 100 € from the new price. In just the first week, I’ve already averaged more than 10,000 steps a day, all without even going for a walk outside. I think that’s pretty great.

In the mornings, I walk for an hour while I work, and then again for another hour in the early afternoon. Sometimes I wear shoes, sometimes I’m barefoot. By the end of the day, I can really feel it with a little muscle soreness.

While a walking pad won’t replace a real workout, I recently realized I wasn’t moving enough. I have a standing desk, but neither sitting nor standing all day is good. But moving is. So far, I feel like I have a bit more energy and can focus better.

I also bought two new small upgrades for my bike. I got a new bell because my old one was pretty quiet and people often didn’t hear me, which wasn’t very safe. I also replaced my grips with Ergon GP3-L Evo BioKork ones. The grips are more ergonomic, and the bar ends give me an alternative hand position on longer rides.

Yesterday, while my fiancée was attending a work event, I decided to explore a cycling route around Braunschweig. It was approximately 53 km through relatively quiet areas, including many forests and fields. The paths were often bumpy and not suitable for high speeds, but I prefer enjoying nature anyway.

The bike handled the task well. No squeaking, no other problems. However, I apparently didn’t drink enough or eat anything during the ride, so I was really exhausted afterwards. Unfortunately, I sometimes make this mistake, but hopefully I’ve learned my lesson this time.

The navigation wasn’t ideal this time either. Because the route was based on a published route on Komoot, I made my adjustments on Komoot, downloaded the GPX file, and imported it into Osmand. However, something messed up the directions. Osmand kept telling me to turn left when I should have turned right. This caused a lot of confusion and a few wrong turns.

Nevertheless, it was a nice ride and I enjoyed doing some exercise outdoors again!

Instead of doing another Freeletics workout this week, I took advantage of the great weather outside and challenged myself with some uphill biking. It definitely pushed me to my limits, but it was worth it! And it worked, even though my bike only has eight internal gears.

Today, after the daily standup (without standup though), I went to pick up my girlfriend’s exam paper. But instead of using car sharing or the bus, I decided to go there by bike. This time with my older city bike. Faster than the bus, cheaper than car sharing. And it was a nice break from work. Hurray for flextime and working from home, which makes this possible for me!

Reduce – Reuse – Repair – Recycle

In my second apartment, I really like sitting in the winter garden (more some kind of balcony or loggia but with windows) in the evening and looking outside. The neighbors aren’t very close, and you can see the sky well. It’s very relaxing to sit here in the dark, thinking and enjoying the time.

If you haven’t already noticed (though why would you?), I have finally merged my homepage into my blog. Why? Well, I believe it doesn’t make much sense to keep them separate. My homepage had only a few pages, and elements such as my “About Me” page and collections of things I use are well-maintained on my blog as well. Some pages were also deleted during this process, but I made an effort to preserve links where possible.

In my opinion, it’s more beneficial for me to consolidate most of my content on my blog, reserving a separate site for a professional portfolio. However, I’ve already set this up at jlelse.com.

In general, I hope this change will cause less confusion in the future and reduce the complexity of my online presence and self-hosting.

Some impressions from the Krka National Park in Croatia. 🇭🇷

Today we made 30 thousand steps. 💪

After all those steps today, tomorrow is time for some chilling on the beach. ⛱️

We arrived here completely without flying. 🛤️ But I’ll write more about that, when I’m home again…

I should have attended the Homebrew Website Club London / Europe in June, after all they talked about maps, a topic I have some experience with. James uses Leaflet to create maps with his visited coffee shops. 👍

I was just about to write a long response to a discussion I saw online. But while writing it, I realized that I have an opinion, but I can’t express it properly and somehow I don’t have anything to contribute. So I deleted my draft. I don’t have to give my two cents on everything. 😅