My September ‘20 in Review

September is now also coming to an end. So again a new monthly review. Meanwhile this is already the ninth one, which shows that writing these summaries has really become a habit.

What has kept me busy this month?

I spent a lot of time after work and sometimes on weekends developing my own blog software. The progress is good and I think the next review will not be published on my old Hugo-based blog anymore, but on a blog that uses my own content management system. It might be a bit strange, but I am actually a bit hyped. I’ve been developing this software for weeks now (whenever I have the time and inclination) and slowly the goal is in sight on the horizon.

As for my blog, I wrote an article this month that went a bit viral and brought me about four thousand hits and maybe a few new subscribers (which I can’t check, though, since there is no follower metric or anything like that). In that article I described my new programming workflow. I now rent a server on which I can program remotely. No more setting up and keeping the development environment up-to-date on all devices I want to program on!

Something annoying happened to me: The hard disk of my cloud storage, which I had placed at home, suddenly showed some errors and didn’t want to work properly anymore. That made me decide that I no longer keep all my files at home on my own cloud, but mainly on a hosted version of Nextcloud from the provider Hetzner. I think when it comes to important data, I should leave it to professionals who make sure that all data is not suddenly gone due to a hardware failure. Fortunately, I still had backups that I could restore.

Apart from that, I bought some new electronic devices this month. On the one hand a new smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite. And a new keyboard and mouse (again).

I really really like the smartphone. Everything runs mega smoothly and like clockwork. A lot of great features, like NFC, which is why I paid almost exclusively in stores with my mobile phone this month. Or a camera that takes really good pictures (you can see some of them here or here). The camera is rather secondary to me and the 3 cameras on the back are a bit exaggerated, but I don’t want to complain, the photo quality is quite ok. And GPS works fine too! No more of these constant GPS disconnections and “signal lost” messages while navigating, which also caused me to get lost a few times.

But it’s not only the Galaxy that I like, I also like my new keyboard and mouse. Both from Logitech, once the MX Keys and once the MX Master 3, both can be connected to up to 3 devices via Bluetooth or alternatively via a USB receiver and allow easy switching between the connected devices. For example, I don’t need to change the keyboard and mouse on my desk after work, but press a key or button on the keyboard and mouse to connect to my private computer instead of my work laptop. The typing feel on the keyboard is also really good, it’s very easy to write with and a little bit it also leads to me producing a little more text from time to time (like this review 😂). Also the feeling when using the mouse. At first I was a bit skeptical because I used a pretty flat mouse before, but the MX Master 3 seems to fit the shape of the hand really well. The mouse wheel is especially cool because it has a quick scroll mode, bump once quickly and it spins until you stop it, advantageous to scroll to the end on long web pages or in long documents.

Nevertheless I did not only buy electronic devices, but also something completely without electronics: a new bicycle helmet! Bicycle helmets are really important and can save your life. When I ride without a helmet, I always have a bad feeling and I think to myself, what would happen if an accident happened to me just when I’m riding without a helmet? I had to order a helmet on the Internet, because I needed one in XL and my old helmet somehow never really fitted. Apparently I have a rather large head circumference, which makes me always look for a larger size when ordering caps and helmets.

Enough with the technology and shopping, let’s move on to another topic that moved me in September:

In the middle of the month I was at my grandmother’s 80th birthday party, we were about 30 people. We went there early on Saturday morning, then back home again on Saturday evening. After all, my girlfriend and I wanted to go to a village festival organized by her grandmother on Sunday. However, it started on Saturday evening that suddenly my nose was running. Nothing unusual, after all, nose running is something completely normal at this time of year. From Saturday to Sunday, however, I could hardly sleep and Sunday I felt quite bad. I had a bad cold with fever up to 39°C. On Monday I went to the doctor, had to go through the back entrance and was finally tested for Corona and put on sick leave for a week. Luckily the test was negative (🇩🇪) and contact tracing and the whole procedure was spared me and I just relaxed and recovered for a few days.

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