Falko#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.
current state north roomcurrent state stairwaysoriginal state north roomoriginal state east roomoriginal state east room & stairways #enEN #olleeWatch #project25 #weekly #weeklyreview
🅴🆁🆄🅰 🇷🇺
Florenz 
Uckermark MacGyver 
Manny James
Brad Linder
Michael Gisiger 