#weeklyreview 04/2026

week04: 2026-01-18 until 2026-01-24

Summary

I picked up a CASIO A168WA-1 watch & love the simplicity and battery life, though I’ll still need to grab my smartwatch when I actually want to track workouts. My automated Mastodon setup is working like a charm; N8N wakes up my Jenkins PC when there’s a new release, and everything updates itself in under 12 hours without me lifting a finger. The attic renovation is looking great now that the roof tiler’s finished with the windows and prep work. Also made some solid Gulasch this week and I’m still working through that Lucia Berlin book. More Ice skating on the weekend.

Old school

Finally got myself an old CASIO watch again. Noticed that the good old vintage watches became popular again. My first watch was the famous CASIO F-91W back in the 1990s. Several years battery life, water proof, sturdy, functional. Had several other CASIO watches after that. Up to the slightly bulky ProTrek with altitude and temperature sensors before GARMIN started to make Forerunner watches.

Now my son started to wear the CASIO A158 and triggered me finally getting one again as well. I had the F-91W in my shopping cart for some years now. But eventually settled for the slightly classier A168WA-1. The A158 is very similar, but to me the light just wasn’t working well enough to be able to read the time in low light condition. The Illuminator backlight of the A168WA works much better for me.

Let’s see how long this will last on me. I like the simplicity and no-worry battery life. It’s also quite affordable and durable enough for me to not worrying about wearing it in all activities.

Only drawback is that I’d have to put on a smart watch for exercises again explicitly to track the heart rate and effort.

Automation

Last week a new Mastodon security release was published. My server is running with a slighly modified version to allow for posts with 5000 characters. So for evey release I have to build a new docker image for my instances. The process of checking out the Mastodon repo, patching the sources, building and uploading the docker images is automated with a Jenkins server. That Jenkins server is an old desktop PC that’s really only used for this purpose and doesn’t have to run all the time. But when there is a new Mastodon release, I want to be able to build the new images as quickly as possible. Especially for security updates.

I’m using N8N for this part. A workflow uses the Mastodon Release RSS feed as a trigger. If there is a new release, the N8N workflow will send a Wake-on-LAN signal to my Jenkins PC and wake it up. Jenkins will do it’s job and produce the new docker images and publish them to my docker hub. On my servers Watchtower (and now a clone of the original, see last weeks post) is checking the running containers whether there are updates to their images available. If so, it’ll pull these images and restart the container.

That automation worked well again for the last Mastodon security update and brought my instance up to the latest release in less than 12hrs without me having to touch anything 🙂

Cooking

Felt the craving for Gulasch (beef stew) this week and set up a large pot for our weekly family dinner. As a side I used carrots and german dumplings. The kids each had 2 refills … so wasn’t that bad apparently.

I like those carrots. It’s really just sliced carrots and a tablespoon of butter in a pot. Cook for about 15-20 minutes until the carrots are soft to your liking. Super simple, super delicious.

Also the stew is pretty simple to make if you just obey some simple rules and have enough time of course. The secret ingredient to good food is usually patients 😉

Mini BnB

On Thursday we had a mini Beer’n’Burger meetup with a slightly reduced crew. Nevertheless delicious burgers at Rembrandt Burgers in Friedrichshain. Still shocked that our friend didn’t knew the Maulfwurfn by René Marik (who’s also outspoken against AfD and other Nazis 🙌).

#project25 updates

The roof tiler is done with his work in the attic. All new windows are in and the roof constructions is prepared for the insulation. It’s a really nice and bright space up there at the moment. Tempted to just turn it into a loft 😉

Ice Skating

This week was rather cold and the ice on the lake got thicker again. As it was thawing a few days the week before, the surface now was rather smooth as the melted water just froze again. Best conditions to go ice skaing again. At some spots the ice was so clear I could see the vegetation below the surface. Some hexagonal air enclosures caught my attention.

Learning

mmh, can’t really recall anything particular learning in that week. Should probably take a more explicit effort next week.

Reading

Still making steady progress with “Manual for Cleaning Woman” by Lucia Berlin.

Today's photo: Weesperzijde | Amstel between Omval and Hogesluis (1892 - 1893).

[EN] To the right are houses along Weesperzijde, and the entrance to Grensstraat.

[NL] Rechts huizen aan de Weesperzijde, met rechts de ingang van de Grensstraat.

Via https://020apps.nl/olie/random/ #Amsterdam #JacobOlie #Weesperzijde #AmstelbetweenOmvalandHogesluis #iceSkating #iceSports

Nordic #IceSkating in #Berlin .

I guess, I have been waiting for such conditions for about 20 years. It finally happened.
What an amazing nature experience. 🥰🤩

Been #iceskating yesterday with the whole family on a bigger lake - took me right back into childhood 😍
Will be going out for a walk now to a local pond with the iceskates in a bag, hopefully the conditions will be good as well ❄️

#winter