Space: The final frontier.
These are the voyages of the Mars Rover Perseverance. Its two-year mission: To drill and search for signs of past microbial life. To boldly search where no one has searched before.
Follow the launch and the full mission on Nasa’s Mars website!
And get your boarding pass 😎
(Perseverance Boarding Pass, 7/26/20)
So far, knock on wood, I have been able to (almost) maintain my weight during the Corona pandemic.
Although we’re not under lockdown anymore, I spend most of my days indoors at my desk – there’s no commute, no shopping, no going out to the cinema, no meeting with friends.
The one app that helps me maintain a healthy dose of exercise is Pokémon Go. A virtual buddy helps me to socially distance while playing, and the gamification works well, compelling me to walk long distances every day. And there’s no end in sight, neither for the pandemic nor for the game.
So – thank you, Niantic!
(Shiny Gastly, Community Day, 7/19/20)
Our government recently passed a law that guarantees several large corporations, such as RWE and LEAG, the right to mine lignite until 2038. It also awards them huge compensation for shutting down money-losing plants.
There’s no need for coal-firing plants to generate electricity – it’s even not commercially viable anymore.
Instead of protecting the environment and its people, our government subsidizes a couple of big companies and violates the Paris accord.
We’ll ask the EU for help.
(Getting ready, 7/10/20)
A couple of weeks ago, I built myself a second desktop workstation, based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and the XFCE desktop environment.
The workstation is fanless, with a low-power CPU. And fast!
I am so happy with my new setup’s performance and usability; if it weren’t for Microsoft Office, I’d switch for good.
(Desktop, 7/13/20)
I recently wrote a short paper on web analytics with Plausible for my university:
Usefulness of open-source tools for web analytics in E-Marketing
Plausible is a fairly new tool, it’s open-source and fully GDPR-compliant; it has a small, fast-loading script and does not need cookies.
Highly recommended!
(Screenshot, 6/20/20)
I love the arts. And I try to create. But, I’m artistically challenged.
To make up for this, I support creators on Patreon. Here’s my current lineup (in historical order):
If you haven’t subscribed to them yet, do it today – they make great content and are fun to watch!
