Finally, a nearby burger joint that has tasty Beyond Meat burgers readily available!
(Barbecue Burger, Freddy Schilling, Quartier Latin)
Climate Pledge
Here are my five pledges to support climate action in 2019:
- I will not renew the contract for our family car
- I will stop flying for vacation, and minimize air travel for business
- I will avoid using single-use plastic items
- I will buy fair-trade and carbon-neutral wherever possible
- I will go back to a vegetarian life once I have reached my target weight
What do you plan to do?
(#SoKoFuture)
Fridays For Future Summer Congress
Over the last five days I had the honor and pleasure to be able to support the Fridays for Future summer congress #SoKoFuture in Dortmund as a volunteer.
And was I in for a treat!
I have never seen so many people being so kind to each other, working all day diligently and earnestly on the most pressing issues of our time, and coming up with ideas on how to save our planet – people, especially politicians, who belittle these efforts should be ashamed.
The center-right paper “Die Welt” called the congress the Political Woodstock – I think that’s quite a fitting description.
After spending this time with all these young people I know for sure that a different world will be possible.
The Fridays deserve our full support!
(Closing ceremony)
Freelance Rancher
After a brief stint at a small consultancy in Cologne I decided to go back to working as a freelance IT architect and consultant, with my favorite open source cloud projects, Rancher and Kubernetes, and everything else cloud native. I have also submitted a couple of papers to regional conferences.
From August onwards I’ll then have two more years at University, and during that time I’ll need to figure out whether I should be starting my own business, continue going solo, or try to find full-time employment again. Main goal: Get my kids through college. And enjoy my work.
On that note: I’ve passed all exams so far and am happy with the results!
Android Pie Backup Now grayed out
This week I migrated my phone from a Nokia 8 to a Nokia 9 PureView, for the impressive built-in camera.
After completing the migration I found that I was unable to perform a backup – the Backup Now button was grayed out and all items were in “Waiting to backup” (except for Contacts and Photos, which operate independently). Google to the rescue!
I found many good posts, some recommending to temporarily disable Screen Lock. That worked – I then had a valid backup in Google Drive.
After I re-enabled the screen lock, though, the button became grayed out again – back to Google.
Several people recommended setting up Smart Lock, so that the phone unlocks itself, for example when you’re at home.
Enabled Smart Lock, no change, button still grayed out. Bummer.
This time though I decided to give it a couple of days – a good idea, since there seems to be a timer involved, too.
Issue is now solved, the phone performs automatic backups, if
- it’s at home and automatically unlocked, and
- the last backup is more than a day old
Good enough for me. But I will regularly check in Drive from now on …
Server housekeeping
From time to time it does make sense to clean your computer systems, literally speaking.
Especially if you run them in a domestic or office setting, any system with a fan will collect dust. A lot of dust.
Nothing a can of pressurized air, a hoover and a set of baby wipes can’t fix though .
Did anyone say weekend?
Spiderman: Far From Home
What a ride – first, Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse, probably the best animated movie this year with a lot of fresh ideas, then, Avengers: Endgame where Peter took the mantle from Tony Stark. And now, Spiderman: Far from Home
Far from Home is a great reboot of the Spiderman universe, portraying a cool super hero fit for the 21st century; at the same time it also showed a lot of continuity and references to past Marvel movies for fans, old and new alike
Highly recommended – go watch it, but stay until after the credits!
(Movie poster outside of Metropolis)
Paintball
There’s always a first time for things – for us it was the first time for playing paintball this Friday.
We went to Paintball Revolution in Ennepetal, as they offer markers for 14- to 18-year-olds.
The staff on site was great, plenty of playing fields and game ideas, we played for hours – highly recommended!
(Paintball Revolution)
Sherwood
Through the original family option of Google Play Music All Access we were migrated to YouTube Premium (YouTube Red in some geographies), and with this we also got access to YouTube Originals, which includes a variety of high-quality mini series.
One of these is Sherwood – loosely based on the legend of Robin Hood, the series is set in a world where the climate catastrophe has already happened and most of the world is flooded, it chronicles the adventure of Robin and her friends in their fight for justice and equality against the Sheriff of the upper city.
Very relatable characters, good storytelling and great animation make this a fun series to watch – highly recommended!
(YouTube – Screenshot from Sherwood S1E7)
Red Hood Fan Series
Until recently I did not know that there were such things as fan series – boy, did I miss out!
I would like to highlight one in particular, the Red Hood Fan Series which is set in DC’s Batman Universe, following the adventures of the three Robins – Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Damian Wayne – in their quest to take back Gotham from the Court of Owls
With professional camera, high quality editing and great actors such as Cameron Judd (as Damian Wayne), Ian Lang (as Jason Todd), Nadav Jackson (as Colin Todd), and Madden Zook (as 7B05), the series is a must to watch
Season 2 was financed by a Kickstarter, which I missed, but I’ll definitely be in for season 3!
(Instagram @redhoodfanseries)