#weeklyreview 17/2026

I know, this is a bit later for week 17 review. There wasn’t too much to talk about. Very busy at work and that’s why not much time to do much other things.

It was slightly weird weather as the sun came out but it was still rather cold. Down to -3ºC in the countryside and also Berlin was rather cold in the morning. The sunshine almost made me not wear a jacket on the bike ride to the office. But fortunately I checked the weather app before.

Nevertheless we had few nice lunches outside in the sun. One time in the new Szechuan restaurant at Torstrasse/Tucholskystrasse. The menu looks very authentic and the food was rather good as well. Might do this more often.

#project25

We had a lot of scrap wood ripped out of the attic of the house. That was still on site and I want to recycle parts of it for a new shed in the countryside. In order to transport it over there we but had to remove all the nails that were poking out still. That was more intense than I anticipated. They’ve used a lot of nails back in GDR construction times. One very thick (as thick as my pinky finger) nail flipped off the crowbar and hit me in the face. Fortunately no lasting damages on my side. But that was a close call for the eye. Wear protective glasses!

By brother and dad properly decommissioned some more debris from the attic at the local dump sites. Good progress over all.

Open Stage in Templin

On Saturday night it was time again for open stage at the MKC in Templin.

As always a colourful mix of artists who gave their best. This time an old author lady recited some poems and aphorisms of her own. That was surprisingly good.

A duo did some experimental music performance that reminded me a little bit of Deichkind. Their setup crashed several times at the beginning and they almost gave up. Nobody knew whether that was part of the performance or actual software problems 🤣

My highlight was the last band named “VEB Klangschalen”. They played rock music of their own creation and some cover songs – and with much verve and energy. For a local band absolutely outstanding und surprising as I’ve never heard of them before nor knew those guys would play in a band (Templin isn’t that big, so I know quite many people one or the other way).

Again a fun packed evening.

#weeklyreview 16/2026

Back from China trip and slowly adjusting to “normal” life again. Got my ollee watch assembled and love it. #project25 updates.

back to normal

As already reported in last weeks report the China trip was awesome. Surprisingly we didn’t seem to suffer any jet lag. Neither on arriving in China, nor on the way back to our german time zone.

Slowly adjusting to my regular schedules of office and private life. Missing the electric traffic of Beijing already in noisy, stinky Berlin.

ollee watch

A while ago I ordered this nerdy project named ollee watch. A Canadian enthusiast developed a replacement mainboard for the famous CASIO F-91W series watches. That watch was my first watch after the Berlin Wall came down and I loved it. It’s still being produced by CASIO today and is very affordable and widespread.

The developer build a tiny smartwatch PCB which adds BLE connectivity, an accelerometer, and a temperature sensor. This turns this trusty little watch into a simple smartwatch and extents the watch functionality by a world clock, countdown timer, heart rate calculator, counter and even some games.

He’s reusing the existing LCD, so don’t expect fancy graphics. It pairs with the ollee App on the smartphone where you can set the features and synchronise the step counter, heart rate measurements, counters and temperature readings.

The assembly was really just a quick 10 min swap of the PCB.

The package almost didn’t made it to me. Ordered several month ago I couldn’t really control the delivery. Of course it was scheduled to arrive when I was in China. DHL sent me a notification of the delivery attempt and that it will be rerouted to the next post office and kept there for pickup for 7 days. If I don’t pick it up, they would return it to the sender.

Of course there is no contact details available for the specific post office to ask them kindly to keep it a little longer. I eventually sent my son who stayed in Berlin to go ask them in person whether they can keep it until my arrival (I also had to pay the import toll on pickup). They flat out refused. In the DHL app I saw, that by this time the package hadn’t even arrived at that post office yet, despite the notification in the app.

I filled out the authorisation form for my son to pick it up at the post office. But wasn’t sure he actually was able to make it. The DHL app sent me a notification that they’ll only keep it two more days on last Friday. Which wasn’t the full 7 days they promised initially as the parcel was still in transit until Wednesday. But apparently they counted from the delivery attempt the week before on Thursday. Drama unfolded. Fortunately I extracted the information out of kiddo that he was able to pick up the parcel actually. Phew … that was a close call.

But shame on DHL for offering no way to get into contact with the post office, for miscalculation of the storage period and sloppy security. Anyone could have filled out the authorisation form. They obviously couldn’t check the proper signature and I wouldn’t have been able to issue a proper signature as was 9000km away ….

Gödel, Escher, Bach

My friend @gemlog told me about the apparently famous book by Douglas R. Hofstadter about these icons of science & art. I was searching for the ebook version but couldn’t find it. I had access to a PDF, but that didn’t render well on my screens. So I ended up ordering a physical copy of the book. This also arrived during my vacation.

I didn’t know that it’s such a huge book. The bible would look like a Reclam book against it 😀

Looking forward to start reading this. But first I have to finish the Bell Hooks book.

#project25 updates

The attic buildout comes to a finish. The drywalls are all up, majority of the wiring done and sanding and plastering of the walls in progress. Unfortunately the plumper is on vacation which delays the finish of the bathroom and floor heating system.

#weeklyreview 13/2026

Final week before the China vacation, so still a bit of organizing to do: getting all the paperwork ready, booking the last trains as they can be available, and giving the last instructions to the craftsman for the house.

Obviously did a very good run on Sunday with a friend in preparation of his half marathon. That was a, I think, almost 18 kilometers run on the countryside and it was surprisingly easy. I hadn’t expected that because I wasn’t really training for anything and skipped a lot of my usual runs. But yeah, that went well, was a really good run in the countryside. Maybe the two bananas I had the day before helped there.

Also got the hardware delivered for my #MeshCore course in April in the community college in Templin and tried that out. That one worked. Really good reception here in Berlin and I saw there’s actually another MeshCore node in Templin beside my own. So looking forward to that after the vacation and let’s see whether we can get some connectivity in Templin going. My friend is also preparing the next Digital Independence Day in Templin that’s taking place on Easter Sunday. So that’s still going to happen. Also looking forward to the next session of that after my vacation. I think we’re going to focus a bit more on Linux there as there was a lot of interest around that one. Also attended the yearly gathering of the hunting community. All owners of forests are mandatory members of that hunting community. That was fun and delicious.

@controlfreak

100%, when people complain about this #NZPol government failing to fulfil their election promises, I am always quick to point out that they are in fact fulfilling their promises and obligations to the foreign interest groups such as #AtlasNetwork and #Project25 which funded their election. The gullibility of the average NZ voter is astounding.

#weeklyreview 11/2026

Summary

Vintage Hardware, community college again, first idea of walls in #project25 and planting tomatoes and chillies.

Vintage Hardware

This week was apparently the week of vintage hardware. My very good friend Slamr gifted me an old PlayStation Portable that was so old that it’s still using mini discs as game cartridges apparently. They’re called UMD a Universal Media Disc or something like that. Really cool thing and a few games: Gangs of London Grand Theft Auto and so on I just had to swap out the battery as the old battery was a little bit swollen and I had to fear that that thing explodes during low charging and now it’s perfectly working again. That is really fun.

The other thing that I had to replace this week was my old trusty home server. I was trying to upgrade to PeerTube v8 and that wouldn’t run on my old CPU which is a Intel Core 2 Duo. I tried to recompile the software but that also didn’t work because inside a docker container it would dynamically pull some other software that isn’t compiled for these old CPUs. So Moellus coerced me into finally buying a bit newer hardware and recommending the Lenovo ThinkCenters. These I also have already seen recommended by Jan Wildeboer of RedHat so I finally gave in and found one on eBay and got a ThinkCenter M910x something with an Intel Core i5 CPU and 8 GB of RAM. That was pretty nice and that came on Saturday and I just really had to swap the SSD hard disk from the old machine to the new machine and it booted after I switched the BIOS to legacy support. The only other thing I had to change was a hard-coded network interface name and then it just worked. New machine shiny and new not really new right? It’s a used machine off of eBay though, but for my home lab it’s new and yeah it’s running. I can just use the Peertube latest official images, don’t have to fiddle with the CPU, don’t have to recompile for myself. This is pretty neat actually.

#project25

Project25 progressed to the point that we now can see the actual walls up in the attic. Last week, we finally found an acceptable solution for everyone to put the walls up and where all the pipes would go for the bathroom and stuff like that. And yeah, now we have the scaffolding, the structure for the walls ready, and on the weekend, we were hauling up the drywalls to the attic so that the craftsmen can actually put them in place. Yeah, it’s coming together finally.

Community College

On Thursday, I gave another session on the community college in Templin. The topic was privacy and alternatives to large corporate capitalist media services, obviously. We were in the local cafe El Caribe in Templin. There were a total of 8 people including me and the host. It was a good crowd. The right size for the bar, and it was a lively discussion. People were interested in what are the alternatives. I talked about Mastodon and the Fediverse in general, and we were talking about how to get into the Fediverse because there are still some hurdles to overcome. The first thing you have to decide on is which server to join and all these things. But I tried to explain to them why one should take that effort and make it a conscious decision, and not just go the convenient route. Because I am convinced this is a sustainable thing, the Fediverse, and it’s worth the effort to build a natural social network there. Yup, that was fun!

Plant season started

We’ve started to grow chilies and tomatoes again quite a few weeks ago already. They were large enough on the weekend, so we could repot them into the first soil-based pots. That’s what we did on Saturday to put these little plants into their new homes and keep growing them inside still because it’s still too cold outside. But they will make for a nice jungle in the summer in front of the house.

#weeklyreview 09/2026

Summary

finally some warmer weather. Good progress on #project25. BnP and Bagpiper at the open stage in Templin.

Is it Spring yet?

The temperatures steeply climbed from well below -10º C to almost 20º within the last 14 days. That led to large scale thawing and new lakes and rivers. As the ground is largely still frozen the thawed water doesn’t seep into ground. I saw several streets and paths being flooded and large puddles on the fields.

The lake in Templin still had about 20cm of ice on top.

#foodporn

Got the kiddo hooked on dried bananas. As the kids only eat the perfect spotless Pantone 13-0941 TCX colored Bananas, we usually have many bananas left the kids wouldn’t normally eat. So I put them in the dehydrator and then they can’t snacked away easily.

On Thursday we had another session of the Beer & Burger crew… alas this time we met in a Pizza restaurant and had Pizzas. Also nice for a change.

MeshCore

Gute Zusammenfassung und Erklärung der Regions und Scopes in MeshCore https://meshcore-de.fyi/meshcore:allgemeines:regions Damit soll das Grundrauschen im MeshCore Radionetzwerk reduziert werden und weiterhin eine hohe Zuverlässigkeit der Paketübertragung gewährleistet werden. #meshcore @falko

#project25

Did an impromptu wrecking session on Saturday to take out the old floor in the attic and remove the super brittle styrofoam. Set up a signal group for all people who carelessly offered help in the past. And to no one’s surprise they actually showed up and helped getting the work done by about lunch time.

Open Stage Templin

Another very session of the open stage in Templin. Awesome performances by a just 14-year old girl, a bag piping bus driver, the school band of the local Gymnasium and even some professional musician (of course he performed for free as all the others).

Always great to see the enthusiasm and talent the people on stage display. But also heartwarming to see how much sweat the organising team puts into this event. Unfortunately too few people seem to appreciate this little gem of entertainment as there were still some seats left in the audience.

For something this good and for free I expect the house to be overcrowded on every occasion.

Digital Independence Day Uckermark

Last preparations for our first session of the Digital Independence Day on the weekend in Templin. I’ve set up a Wiki to collect material an populate as we go.

#weeklyreview 07/2026

Very busy week again with several projects in parallel. Highlight was certainly the “Heros” show at the Berliner Ensemble with the whole family. Sorry only a brief update this week

2026-02-15 08:58:35

A rare weekend in Berlin. Haven’t spend time in Berlin on the weekend in ages. Roamed through the Simon-Dach Kiez and it still seems bustling with live. Many good bars and restaurants and shops from the looks of it. @falko

2026-02-16 22:25:56

“Heroes” mit Alexander Scheer im Berliner Ensemble. Es war eine großartige Mischung aus Musik, Theater, Geschichte und Literatur. @falko

On Friday I was invited to a German tradition “Feuerzangenbowle” over a friends house. One of those weird customs where you soak a sugar cane with rum and set it on fire. The sugar will partially melt and seep into the underlying pot with hot and spiced wine. The whole things was garnished with good friends and delicious food

#project25 update

Insulation in the attic almost finished. And it’s working quite well already. Given the record low temperatures this week.

#weeklyreview 07/2026

February 8th – 14th, 2026

Summary

Somehow super hectic week. That’s why I only got to post last weeks review yesterday. Struggling with project management or the lack thereof in the office. More AI fiddling that I’m rather happy with. Good progress on #project25 and the China vacation plan. Also still enjoying the book about the Vienna Circle a lot.

AI, AI and more AI

This is a big topic for me right now. At the office of course but also in personal experiments.

Fediverse journaling plugin

With help of AI coding I’m getting to realise many small ideas I had but would never have had the time to realise. This week I’ve create a little WordPress plugin to use the fediverse as a journaling assistant.

I spent a lot of time in my fediverse clients (mostly Mona, IceCubes or the Mastodon web interface). So why not use that as an input channel for my weekly blogging. I tried different other approaches over the last few months to recollect what I was busy with during the week. Having scripts collecting my Mastodon posts over the weeks and compiling them into a weekly overview page for instance. So I thought it might be useful to just sent message in the Fediverse to my blog for journaling.

I’ve got the ActivityPub plugin installed and thus my Blog is just a normal account in the fediverse that I can mention or sent messages to. I’ve wrote a plugin in which I can authorise specific fediverse users in a WordPress author profile. If these fediverse users mention the WordPress author profile, that post gets appended to a weekly draft post on the Blog.

Now whenever I have something noteworthy, I’ll mention my blog account in my fediverse post and it gets automatically appended to a weekly review draft. At the end of the week I already have a list of things that bothered me during the week.

The code can be found here.

Some snippets from this weeks journal:

2026-02-11 17:37:06

I’d call it “vibe project management” where you just pretend to have a project plan. It visually looks like project plan. But factually it doesn’t make any sense because it has been created with Photoshop for Powerpoint …@falko

2026-02-12 12:59:10

@Nico prinzipiell läuft es. Genutzt wird das Modell jetzt von einem Pi Coding Agent der in einer Debian VM läuft 🙈 @falko

I’ve tried my luck with an open weight coding model and the Pi Coding agent. Downloaded the qwen3-coder-next:latest model for Ollama. That’s a whopping 51GB in size as barely fits into my physical memory. The Pi coding agent was running inside a virtual machine. It works in principle… but is so slow that a reasonable test wasn’t really practical for the moment. Have to play a bit more with it. With that setup one could theoretically realise a fully offline coding agent. But I guess some more beefy hardware is needed. Although an Apple Silicon M2 Max isn’t really a slow machine.

Project Management in the age of vibe everything

To be honest, this has started much before AI and vibe coding became popular. The tendency to make up project plans with tools that are not meant for project planning. Most notorious in this field are Project Plans in Excel, Powerpoint or JIRA.

Why am I so upset about it? In my eyes a project plan helps you prioritise and visualise work by listing the tasks and milestones and putting them in chronological order. You define dependencies between tasks and maybe even resources. Once that has been established (and I don’t say this is trivial to collect) you can use proper project management software to identify the critical path of your project. That is the one sequence of events that you have to focus on. All the others will not move you necessarily closer to your project end (because they’re not on the critical path) until the items on the critical path are not finished.

It will also help you assess the effects of time lines slippage. How does that the affect to overall project timing? Or you can identify bottlenecks in your plan due to resources overload. So all good things that you management usually wants to see and from you as a project manager.

Yet, many project plans are just vibe fiddled with the likes of office software. So it just looks similar to a project plan visually. But these tools don’t help you actually manage your project. They just visualise what you think your project plan is. Not backed by hard data.

The most hilarious experience in this context was my conversation with the Atlassian Rovo AI assistant on the topic this week. Asked whether JIRA can be used for project management it of course answered that JIRA is actually best for this. Then probed how chronological order and critical path can then be managed it needed to back off and admit that you can’t do that in JIRA without lots of add-ons and/or paid extensions.

What puzzles me is, that this kind of “let’s just wing it” project management is accepted in many companies. My theory is, that management knows precisely that their demand for speed, quality and resource usage is completely unrealistic. Too much work get’s committed with too little resources. Milestone be set before the actually planning happened because it was promised to a customer or C-suite guy. Proper project management would proof with hard data that the timeline is totally unrealistic.

But with just vibe coded project plans they can just press and demand. And people obey with over-hours and compromises in quality and features.

Rural restaurants

On Sunday we’ve been at the lovely Kastanienhof in Flieth. A traditional village restaurant with traditional German food. It was really delicious and at a very affordable price range. For the three of us we payed something around 60 EUR in total including drinks and my starter. That’s about as much as I pay for me alone in Berlin when having BBQ ribs at Chicago Williams 😉

That Sunday morning I was helping a friend to put a new hard disk into his laptop. I needed more space and fortunately bought the new NVMe SSD already back in November. The same 4 TB disks now costs more than 100 EUR more thanks to the AI hype.

It had to be a Windows 11 installation as that’s what he had to use for his work. I’m not judging. It went surprisingly smooth. We’ve created a bootstick from the existing installation with the Windows 11 installer. He had already looked up a video on how to disassemble the laptop. That was a huge timesaver as the HP Laptop had 5 hidden screws that we had to uncover under the rubber feet.

New disk in, booted from USB and started the installation. After about 15 min the new OS was running and could start to install the needed software from scratch. He knew all his accounts and password and so we were done in a few hours with the whole setup. I honestly expected more fiddling needed.

China here we come

The planning of the upcoming China trip progresses. I’ve contacted a few friends in Beijing and established communication via WeChat with them now. We had stayed in contact loosely via Facebook and LinkedIN. Both services are just bad … for various reasons. But we switched to Chinas most popular chat app. They immediately offered pick up service and are generally excited to meet again. We’ve also got the rest of the schedule mostly sorted and now need to book the hotels and tours. It’s getting real.

#project25 update

This week the insulation material for the attic arrived and work is supposed to start next week. We quickly unloaded the stuff and placed partially into the attic and living room for convenience.

Unfortunately I noticed that the heating seemed to have stopped. It’s hopefully “just” because of low fuel level in the oil tanks. I had initially only bought 1000L back in June 2025 expecting this to last about a year.

I really have no experience with this kind of heating system. We didn’t spent much time in the house yet so the heating was set to winter mode most of the time. But then we also had a pretty cold winter so far and not insulated attic is kind of open to the lower floor norw. I’ve tried to seal it as good as possible with styrofoam plates. Still the heating seems to guzzle a lot of oil… that soon needs to be replace by a proper heat pump system.

14 at last

Kiddo turned 14 this week … of course they grow up so fast 🙂

Learning

Learned (rather got it confirmed) this week from our doctor that ADS & depression is much harder noticed in women because they’re much better at blending in and make an effort to just play along to expectations. That of course is taxing and taking lots of energy which makes their symptoms even worse.

Reading

no changes over last week