Jan-Lukas Else

Tech, life and everything else

💭 Thoughts

Welcome to the Thoughts section of my blog. Thoughts are better kept on my blog than on Twitter or other online platforms.


Planning for Scotland, second try

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

My fiancée and I were in Scotland in 2023 on an Interrail trip. But with some bad luck, we got COVID-19 after half of the trip and had to go home and recover. We always said we wanted to finish our trip in one of the next years.

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New bike season

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

Yesterday, I started my new bike season and took my bike for a fun ride of about 25 km. I rode the first part of the “Städtepartnerschaftsradweg Braunschweig - Magdeburg” (City partnership cycle path Braunschweig - Magdeburg) between my hometown and a village called Königslutter. The weather was perfect and I truly enjoyed it. For the way back, I took the train that I reached just in time.

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Mandated use of AI at work

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

Although I also use AI for some features on this blog and sometimes chat with some AI agent (whether it’s ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot or GitHub Copilot), I have mixed feelings about its mandated use at work (Shopify is just one company doing it).

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Extending my Komoot export script

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

I’ve taken another look at my export script for Komoot (original post), now that Bending Spoons has acquired Komoot. I’ve extended the script to also download cover images and, if available, an image of the map – I found that in the API responses.

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What’s minimalism?

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

We live in a world where buying and owning stuff is the default. New clothes? Sure. Another gadget? Why not?

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Self-hosting my emails again

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

After three years with Purelymail, I’m back at self-hosting my mail server. Not because it’s cheaper (it’s actually much pricier to pay for a VPS), but because my mails are now hosted in Europe (who knows what happens next in the USA), I have more control to configure things how I want, and I can comply with GDPR.

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4000 km with my pedelec

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

Today, after a short evening shift in the old/new apartment, I reached 4000 km total distance with my Pedelec (the only legal option for an electric bicycle without insurance in Germany – up to 25 km/h is supported by a motor when pedaling).

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Blocking AI bots ⛔

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

Every few months, I inevitably catch a cold or some other virus and end up stuck at home for a few days. Right now, I’m in one of those phases again. Thankfully, this time hasn’t been too bad, and I’m already on the mend. After a lot of Netflix marathons, I realized I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing – I’m the kind of person who needs to feel productive, even when I’m under the weather.

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Initial thoughts about Bluesky

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

There’s a lot of noise about Bluesky recently, it seems like they passed 20 million users, with more than 1 million new users daily recently.

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My next Fediverse migration?

Published on in 💭 Thoughts

I currently use GoToSocial (with my numeronym domain) next to my blog, but it always confuses me where to post what. That’s why I want to move to my blog as my sole Fediverse identity. But before that, I wanted to implement another Fediverse feature in GoBlog: support for the new fediverse:creator meta tag.

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Jan-Lukas Else