cologne – Page 12 – Christian Frank

Sleeper trains

In the current climate (pun intended), traveling by train is the most ecological alternative.

Austrian Railways have understood this and are offering sleeper trains from Germany to Austria. Leaving Cologne in the evening, you arrive at Vienna central station early in the morning, with a full day ahead for meetings or sightseeing.

Swedish Railways have just announced plans for an overnight Stockholm to Brussels train, which would add a much needed East-West connection.

Alas, Deutsche Bundesbahn seems to ignore the opportunity.

(NJ 40421 to Vienna, 8/1/20)

Perseverance

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)

Corona & Weight

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)

Coal

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)

XFCE

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)

Plausible Web Analytics

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)

Final act

This weekend I was finally able to close the estate of my late parents and hand the keys of my childhood family home to the new owners.

May it bring joy and happiness to them!

1000

One goal of my New Year’s resolutions was to get to 1,000 posts on Instagram (and to 10,000 Tweets). I finally made it!

The 1k post was quite fittingly for my all-time favorite singers, Adexe y Nau, and their new single.

One thousand unique images and probably 10,000 hashtags …

I’ve also reached my tweeting goals; now, I need to get back into creating videos.

(Screenshot, 6/15/20)

Copenhagen, #flygskam and no masks

For a new client, I had to travel to Copenhagen last week. It originally started as a remote assignment, but we agreed on an initial, on-site meeting.

So, how to get from Cologne to Copenhagen? It’s not that far, about 370 miles (600 kilometers), about the same distance as Paris, Munich or Berlin.

Short-haul flights in Europe are out of the question. That left me with two options: Hiring a car and driving, or taking the train.

In times of Corona, I didn’t fancy the idea of spending almost 12 hours in a closed carriage with a large group of people, so I hired a car. Was that the right decision? I don’t know – I’ll revisit it for the next trip.

Here in Cologne, wearing a face mask in public places is mandatory. Not so in Denmark – there’s hand sanitizer and gloves everywhere, but nobody is wearing a face mask; shops and offices are almost back to normal. It felt somewhat strange, though.

(Face mask by Gamescomwear)

Shutdown, week eleven, lost

We’re at the end of the eleventh week of social distancing now, restrictions are easing, and the borders should reopen in two weeks. It could be a time to celebrate, but it’s not.

The institutionalized racism in the West has again led to one more death. Someone caught the murder on video, which is causing massive civil unrest all across the US. In Europe, we’re still failing to support the people at our borders, showing similar, completely inhuman behavior. Why is racism still a thing in 2020?

Black Lives Matter!

We’re also ignoring the climate emergency and fired up a new coal power plant.

Our government is looking to subsidize car ownership once again, as if we didn’t know that we need to rethink traffic radically.

Indigenous peoples all over the world are in danger because they’re protecting our environment.

I’m lost.

At least we can finally restart the weekly protests …

(Instagram, 5/31/20)