Oh, the post-vacation blues hits me hard this time. Of course it doesn’t help that going from 35°C to (up to) -10°C is quite a jump. I had to travel for work right away after coming home and while during that time only my nose communicated its displeasure, once I got home, it turned into having a proper cold.
So basically since we’ve last seen each other, all I did was drive, work, hang out with friends, (that part was nice) mope around on the couch and sleep. While feeling supremely sorry for myself, which isn’t too helpful. So for now I’ll make myself another cup of tea and hope for this frankly embarrassing state of affairs to be over soon.
Latest linkblog entries
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Advice for notable people who hate their Wikipedia photo • Or have someone take it - there's plenty of amateur photographers out there who'd probably be in for it. #
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A Website To End All Websites | Henry From Online • Everybody linked to this lately and it's not hard to see why: it is very pretty and it says people should have websites. #
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Backing up Spotify • I guess that's what they call offsite backup. #
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Meet the man archiving Bangkok’s fading history, one YouTube video at a time • A new Bangkok Pat video is usually a must see for me. #
I managed to reach the finish line in 4th place. Only 20 days after the winner!
I often wake up with a random song as an earworm – and now I note them down for your enjoyment.
This morning it was Sailor, Sail On by Atarashii Gakko!
The last three episodes of Roderick On The Line (607: Buffalo Sober, 608: Texting Bitch Face and 609: A Mule with a Checkbook) work great as a trilogy. The conversations and thought technologies in them are good examples why I love this podcast so much. (I’m not too sure if they’re good starter episodes, though. They could well be.)
A few things as long as they’re still fresh in my mind:
- Labubus are still everywhere in Bangkok. It felt like every mall had a Pop Mart experience and there were long queues in front of all of them.
- The Peak Design travel backpack is annoying. I’ve had this thing for a long time now and there hasn’t been a single trip where there wasn’t a small grievance. It might be a skill issue but I’ve had issues with the front and back zipper and the soft walls every time I actually had to use that thing quickly. Also: why doesn’t the main compartment have a properly lockable zipper?
- If you’re in Bangkok and need to get around with a bit more fun than just taking a Grab, get the Muvmi app. You can order a little electric Tuktuk and while it doesn’t sound as fun as the millions of other Tuktuks on the road, you’ll also don’t have to haggle for the price.
- The pre-paid Rabbit card for the trains in Bangkok needs a KYC verification for each top-up. Not annoying at all.
- I might have had the best smoothie in the world. It was almost a religious experience. When I wanted to get a second one a few days later, the store was closed for a few days. Maybe a sign of the universe that certain types of happiness can only be found once in a lifetime?
- All the cool kids either use Fuji cameras or old compact ones. I’ve seen a couple of people with Nikons and Canons, surprisingly few other brands, including Sonys.
- More to come on the subject of cameras and photography in a separate blog post.
Happy New Year! (It’s still okay to say so until the 6th, right?) Anyway – I have already gotten some feedback on the very pink look of this website and it was mostly: maybe turn it down a little. I might just do that – not by changing the pink but by tweaking other elements to make it a bit more harmonious.
Anyway – as I’m typing this, I’m at Suvarnabhumi Airport waiting for my flight to bring me back home. The week in Bangkok went by pretty fast – and somehow not fast at all. I did have some time to ponder life – an activity that I usually try to suppress by all means necessary. I’m just not too sure what to do with the many open-ended ideas and questions.
The New Year’s celebration was a bit funny. Some people camped out starting in the afternoon to get a good view of the big firework over the Chao Phraya River. I didn’t – I took a nap until eleven PM, walked over to a pier, saw a tiny bit of fireworks between a tree and a building, walked around a bit and was back in bed by 12:30.
I joined a group sightseeing tour for the first time in my life and it was quite an experience. At some point the other people in the tour turned out to be more interesting than the actual sights, but maybe that’s just how it is.
To be quite honest: I could use roughly two to fifty-two weeks for my own code.
Eagle-eyes visitors of this blog might have noticed that I have different colors here every year. I might or might not have used colors that a certain company deems to be the color of the year.
Alas, that color of the year for 2026 is white. I can’t do that. Not only because my blog would look like the corporate website of an undertaker but also just because.
So screw them, we’re doing the most pink I could find.
Here we go, the final week of the year.
As I pondered already all the way back in June I wasn’t near any family on Christmas for the first time ever. Instead I was near a beach with friends, having BBQ at a resort while a band played Modern Talking cover songs. Ho-ho-ho. I had a great time, but let’s see if the logistics work out differently next year. Because I’m already thinking of the beach. Or frankly: of sitting underneath the trees near a beach, reading and having a drink. That was rather enjoyable.
Besides this I was mostly hanging out in the center of Ho Chi Minh City, good food, good company, 10/10, no notes.
This was a week of a lot of travel and not much sleep. I was in Köln and had a great dinner with da boys (sans Dino-Dominik, sadly) and just now I had a phở on a little plastic chair next to a busy intersection in the middle of Saigon. Fantastic end to a very weird week.
Sleep review, December 14th to December 15th 2025: (Note to self: Don’t only write these when something was wrong.)
What a weird one. I woke up three times from strange nightmares. This morning I still feel well rested. I don’t understand.
🤷🏻♂️/10
The end of the year is rapidly approaching.
As expected this week was a bit busy, but I think I’m more or less on track with my tasks. Still more busy days ahead. (Of course it didn’t help at all that instead of doing anything useful I looked into POI categorisation in OpenStreetMap data all day long yesterday. Good god.)
Another week done. No, I haven’t gotten all the Christmas gifts, yet, so next week will be a bit busy.
Besides this, not much to tell. I finally managed to cut together a few clips from our family hiking weekend in October and I was a bit weirded out by how much faster and more enjoyable that was on my old gaming PC than on my newer Macs. I guess that beefy GPU actually does have some uses besides Automobilista 2.
Sleep Review, November December 1st to November December 2nd, 2025: Don’t even ask. Turns out that eating two little satsumas (or maybe mandarin oranges? Who knows, they label all of them as those and I don’t really know the differences.) just before going to bed give the body enough to do to keep it from falling asleep. A lot of tossing and turning, not a lot of proper sleep.
1/10