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.

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.

As everyone recommends Signal as a Telegram alternative, I actually gave it a try again. Turns out it still does not support multiple devices, even unlike WhatsApp.

But after some more research, I found Molly, a Signal fork for Android that adds some features like multi-device support, but uses the Signal servers. I am not sure if it violates the Signal Terms of Service. But as long as Signal only supports Desktop or iPad as linked devices, I need to use this, as I want to be reachable on my second phone as well.

Before I start annoying friends and family, though, let’s test it first. You are welcome to message me and say hello! 😊

https://jlel.se/signal (I might invalidate this link though, when I receive too much spam.)

As I want to use my blog as my central web identity, I now updated my blogroll to also show all the microblogs I follow, whether these are real blogs, Fediverse or Bluesky profiles. Aren’t starter packs also just a new form of blogrolls? To follow all the blogs in my list, all you need to do is import the OPML file into a feed reader.

Walking in the sunny park is like balm for the soul. 😌

Same spot as always. 📸

I can’t really explain why this is happening, but I noticed that my home server is now idling at 7 watts instead of 13 watts as before. I checked powertop, and it seems that the CPU is staying at C7 (pc7) for about 85% of the time, which seems to be the most power efficient state.

Maybe it’s a result of moving my Baïkal instance to my VPS or some other updates? Maybe Home Assistant or Tailscale? The operating system is still Ubuntu 22.04. What else could explain almost 50 percent power reduction without any hardware or major software changes?

Update: I found a likely source: When the powered-off TV is connected with an HDMI cable to the DisplayPort adapter plugged-in into the home server, it idles at about 13 watts. When I remove the HDMI cable from the DP adapter, it goes back to 7 watts. So it might have to do something with the integrated GPU. I guess, I will leave the TV disconnected unless I really need it.

I captured the first real snow this winter this morning ❄️