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Aug 9, 2018 ∞

Books I enjoyed reading

Since I love reading I thought I switch things up for today and share a small list of books I enjoyed (and why I enjoyed them).

All links are no affiliate links.

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Aug 8, 2018 ∞

Maintenance and janitorial activities

You walk into a room. You haven’t been here before but you need to find something. Your friend told you, that you’ll find it there: “It has to be there somewhere. Please just take a thorough look around!”. You find old snack boxes , papers upon papers and stuff that you wouldn’t want to touch because it looks like it might already be alive. A distinctive smell permeates the room. You don’t want to be in here for too long. But you want to find the thing…! After looking around for 10-15 minutes you notice that you lost track of where you’ve already searched before. The whole mess is just too much for you.

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Aug 7, 2018 ∞

Premature optimization

Yesterday I told you about our struggles with the new door bell. While, sadly, this state is still unchanged, there’s another story there that relates to software development: The new door bell needed some power. The old one did not need this much power (230 volts), so there were no appropriate power cables laying around. That’s why we cut a different cable that lay in the vicinity but usually powers the automatic gate for the car. The plan was to have something like a t-shaped connection between the cables. So the gate would still have power, but a new cable would lead to the door bell and everything would be fine™. So I cut the power cable to the gate. What I did not know at the time was, that there are literally t-shaped connectors for power cables (not an affiliate link, just for reference. Don’t buy it! 😉).

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Aug 6, 2018 ∞

Spaghetti wirings no-one knew about

Over the course of the weekend we tried to install a new door bell for our house. The old system is really old, falls apart and works only some days. So we bought something from a respectable German engineering company named Gira. They make high quality products and we had prior experiences with their parts. We also happen to really like their clean design language. The reviews online spoke about easiness of installation, “connect just a few wires”, nothing can go wrong there.

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Aug 3, 2018 ∞

Let's practice together

Where I sit writing this email, today is Friday. So tomorrow the weekend starts. Do you already have plans for the weekend? Perhaps we’ll go to the lake, because it’s scorching hot in Europe these days. But I will also continue with my “Automation project: Factory 0.1”.

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Aug 2, 2018 ∞

The bullshit web and our responsibility

My home computer in 1998 had a 56K modem connected to our telephone line; we were allowed a maximum of thirty minutes of computer usage a day, because my parents — quite reasonably — did not want to have their telephone shut off for an evening at a time. I remember webpages loading slowly: ten to twenty seconds for a basic news article.

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Aug 1, 2018 ∞

When do you know enough?

“When did you reach the point where you didn’t need to read another research report, didn’t need to absorb another scouting analysis, didn’t need to stop by the bookstore… because it simply wasn’t useful or efficient to learn another thing about your field?”

This question was posed by Seth Godin. Seth is big in marketing and entrepreneurship. Perhaps you already know him.

This question is a deep one.

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Jul 31, 2018 ∞

Professionalism

This morning I was visiting the hospital with my pregnant wife. She’s in the 39th week and over the course of the weekend we had some concerns regarding the health of the baby. So we went to the hospital to have everything checked. They made a CTG for the heart and vital signs of the baby.

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Jul 30, 2018 ∞

The 4-day workweek

In this enlightening article from the New York Times, Charlotte Graham-McLay reports about a company from New Zealand that tried something out. They switched all their employees to work only 32 hours per week instead of the regular 40 hours. All of them still received the same salary for 40 hours though. What they found was that their productivity increased and the employees got the same amount or work done. Sometimes even more. To reach this level of productivity, they reduced meeting times, didn’t leave early or took longer breaks.

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Jul 27, 2018 ∞

Sorry to say, but you’ve been hacked

Please excuse this email’s subject line. Did you receive an email like that before? As I wrote a few days ago, I did.

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Jul 26, 2018 ∞

Things happen for a reason

I am currently reading a very interesting book: “Principles” by Ray Dalio It was recommended to me by several sources, most notably by Sebastian Marshall. Sebastian focuses a lot on personal improvement in his work. I value his ideas and ideas very much. So it made sense to me to follow his recommendation to read this book.

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Jul 25, 2018 ∞

Test driven development

Test-driven-development. There’s no other way to do this.

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Jul 24, 2018 ∞

Software development on construction sites

A few days ago, a friend told me about the construction site that is located right outside the window of his living room. He was, understandably, complaining about the construction workers starting their shifts at seven in the morning. They make all kinds of noises and it’s costing him his nerves.

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Jul 23, 2018 ∞

Did you just click the link?

perhaps you remember one of my last newsletters, back when I wrote them from the 5minutenpause.com domain. I told you that I switched the content format to plain text and that I do not track click and open rates anymore. Well I do again.

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Jul 20, 2018 ∞

GDPR, or: How I stopped worrying and love my users

A few days ago I received an email from my bank where I keep my business account (n26 if you want to know), informing me that my personal details including email address, first and last name and telephone number were stolen during a hack that occured at Typeform.

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Jun 13, 2018 ∞

Riding 100 Miles* on a 102-Year-Old Bike | Outside Online

While cycling technology continues to improve, one can easily argue that, aesthetically speaking, the bicycle peaked 40 years ago and it’s been downhill ever since. The start line was a sea of vintage machines in beautiful hues, straddled by aging… weiterlesen →

Jun 11, 2018 ∞

Link: Compass Maes Parallel 31.8 handlebar

In seiner Serie „Beyond “Compact” Dropbars“ stellt „Bike Hugger Mark V“ Alternativen zu den bekannten Dropbas vor. Hier ist Teil 3. Once upon a time in the mid-20th century, there was a handlebar known as the “Maes” that essentially established… weiterlesen →

Jun 10, 2018 ∞

Fahren in der Dunkelheit

Es ist soweit. Ich bin süchtig. Radfahren ist meine Droge geworden. Durch den Wind fahren, neue Orte erkunden, andere Dinge sehen. Das alles auf dem Rad und möglichst ohne Ende. Ob mal schneller oder ohne Blick auf das Tempo. Und… weiterlesen →

Jun 9, 2018 ∞

Nachtrag zur MSR Zeit

Ich schrieb bei meinem MSR Bericht, dass meine reine Fahrtzeit 9h irgendwas betrug, und die Gesamtzeit unter 13h lag, dass aber ja nur die 9h zählen würden… Ich habe mittlerweile gelernt, dass es beim Brevetfahren genau anders herum ist. Es… weiterlesen →

Jun 8, 2018 ∞

Familienkompatibel fit bleiben

Ich war mit der Familie im Urlaub. Wunderbar auf Griechenland. Leider halt ohne Rad. Also nutze ich das gleiche Training wie so häufig im Winter prä-Zwift: Laufen. Ich habe also wieder Muskelkater im Bauch und an anderen Stellen. Radfahren ist… weiterlesen →