My 5G internet has worked again flawlessly since Friday afternoon. I have the suspicion it’s because, since today, there are new laws that define when mobile providers underperform and people have the right to reduce their bills; but it might also be just a reconfiguration or upgrade of cell towers nearby. I noticed the internet got faster as well, now with download speeds often about 400 Mbps (instead of 350 before, with a contract limit of 500) and upload speeds of 60 Mbps (instead of 35 before, with a contract limit at 50). So at least in one direction I get more than I paid for. 😅 But on Thursday I will also get a fiber connection and can set up dual WAN then.
Mental dump
The last days I was quite busy mentally. So here are some thoughts I just need to write down to get them off my head and give you something to read. 😄
When I switched to Linux, I also enabled that Firefox setting to disable custom fonts on websites. And you know what? It actually looks better this way! No broken fonts, because some fonts are mapped to ugly fonts. Just my default font, which is Noto for now.
A few relaxing days on the coast
We spent our first vacation this year in a small flat on the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony. It was windy at times, but generally quite nice and relaxed. We visited a couple of museums, saw a few small towns in that area, spent a couple of hours at a seawater pool, and also did a boat trip to watch seals.
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Blog discovery sites
While I, personally, blog less these days than when I was younger and had apparently more spare time, I have the feeling there’s some kind of resurrection of the blogosphere and IndieWeb these days. At least it feels more visible again. I came across a couple of new blog discovery sites recently, so here’s an incomplete list of sites (old and new) I know of in no particular order. Some I might have already shared before. You are welcome to comment more, and I’ll add them.
I’m currently on my third or fourth attempt to protect my Forgejo (formerly a Gitea instance) from AI crawlers and other bots. Yesterday, I set up Anubis, that bot firewall you now see on some sites, and it actually seems to be helping. Let’s see how long that lasts…
Anyway, due to the price hike, unused resources, and the fact that rescaling is finally possible again at Hetzner in Falkenstein, I downgraded my VPS to a smaller instance. And I’m not about to let those annoying AI crawlers take my blog offline. They can scrape my source code from GitHub; I’ve got mirrors for most repositories there anyway. 🙄
My March ‘26 in Review
Another month gone; time flies…
I’m back to Ubuntu and Linux on the desktop! 🥳
The spare time this weekend, I used for migrating my laptop to Ubuntu 26.04 (beta). With the Windows 11 installation continuing as a QEMU/KVM virtual machine in case I still need Windows for some things.
Will I switch back to Ubuntu?
I re-enabled my old trusty 2013-manufactured Lenovo ThinkPad S1 Yoga which I used during my studies. I had Ubuntu 24.04 installed on it for some time but never really used it. But now, I upgraded it to the latest development build of Ubuntu 26.04 to check the current state of Ubuntu and Linux on the desktop. And to check if I really switch to it as my main operating system.
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In 2020, during the pandemic, I spent 50 euros on a 1080p webcam. It worked fine, but I rarely used it: most calls at my old job were audio-only. Fast forward to 2026 and my new job: video calls are much more common. So I invested another 50 euros in a refurbished Logitech Brio 4K. The upgrade is night and day, especially in my north-facing office, where lighting isn’t ideal. The Brio’s low-light performance and 4K clarity really impress me so far. Sure, the recommended price is much higher, but this deal on eBay was worth it.