https://marc.fail/posts/ Recent content in Posts on marc.fail Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us mgte.de Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:04:03 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/2024/ Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:04:03 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/2024/ Hello, World! It’s been a while and I don’t even know who might still read this weblog. 2024 has been a busy year, in both my job and family live. So here’s a quick sign that I am still alive and this blog is still here. What I’m doing Personally, I try to spend as much time with my loved ones as possible. But still maintaining some time tinkering around. Recently, I am trying to create an alexa skill, which seems to be pretty straight forward. https://marc.fail/posts/automated-deployments/ Tue, 21 Nov 2023 21:12:01 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/automated-deployments/ Until now, I used to write a blog post and just run a shell script called deploy.sh that runs a hugo build command and rsyncs the whole folder to my dockerized web server. I wrote a post about that a year ago. I was fine with that, until something in my environment broke and I had to tinker around until it worked again. So I’ve decided to re-build the deployment process using github actions. https://marc.fail/posts/zsa_voyager/ Sat, 18 Nov 2023 16:39:01 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/zsa_voyager/ As I’ve already mentioned, there is a lot to say on this topic. So I decided to write a part two about it. This serves also as a braindump for myself so I remember why things are how they are in the future. Here, you can still follow the progress of my keyboard layout git What’s in the box The keyboard comes with a case for easy transportation, a key puller, spare switches, magnetically attached feet for tilting and loads of keycaps, some blank and some with other letters having homing bumps than F and J, so it better suits Dvorak or Colemaor other layouts. https://marc.fail/posts/ergonomic_keyboards/ Sat, 11 Nov 2023 11:04:42 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/ergonomic_keyboards/ I’m not gonna lie to you, but in my opinion, keyboards suck. Period. It feels like keyboards were invented a century (or even more) ago in the times of typewriters and just adapted when those first mainframe cmputers came up. And since then, nothing ever changed. That’s strange, isn’t it? Especially when considering the overall speed technology evolves. The main problem is, that the keyboard layouts we’re using simply weren’t designed with the best ergonomics possible in mind, but with the constraints of mechanical typewriters. https://marc.fail/posts/life-update/ Sat, 04 Nov 2023 22:09:43 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/life-update/ When I started this blog almost a year ago, I was thinking about posting somewhat between at least once a month to once a week. Turns out, that was a lie. So I’ll correct that statement to posting once a year, that should be doable. In my defense, I have some other ‘projects’ going on recently. I’d call it two new full time jobs. I’d say one of them will last for at least the next 18 years and cost me a lot of sleep and will cause some grey hair. https://marc.fail/posts/frameworks/ Sun, 28 May 2023 17:04:53 +0200 https://marc.fail/posts/frameworks/ Choosing the right javascript framework to create a modern frontend is like choosing between pasta or pizza at an italian restaurant. It is simply impossible to make the right choice. For me, this is something highly frustrating. Coming from jQuery, I didn’t really understand the hype for a long time. With jQuery, we basically stick with vanilla javascript and just have a little more elegant syntax. It helped me realize things faster. https://marc.fail/posts/april-fools/ Sat, 01 Apr 2023 22:53:45 +0200 https://marc.fail/posts/april-fools/ First of april again. April fools day. It’s the day where everyone starts annoying other people with fools and it’s okay somehow. I’ve also noticed in the days of fake news and alternative facts, that it becomes more and more difficult from year to year to distinguish truth from april fools. Especially in the internet. I mean - an open letter from PETA to british rowing pushing to replace the term “catch a crab” by “liberating lobsters”. https://marc.fail/posts/digital-mountains/ Sun, 26 Feb 2023 13:51:18 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/digital-mountains/ To motivate myself to do some more sport, I signed up for the Rapha rising challenge. It is a digital event, taking place via Zwift, a software that let’s me compete with my roadbike virtually against thousands of others. The Idea is simple. Three days, three climbs, each around 1000m elevation. And to make it a bit more interesting, competing against hundreds of others is also possible and intended. I did the challenge last year and felt it would be a good Idea to do the same again this year. https://marc.fail/posts/wendelboe/ Sun, 19 Feb 2023 09:50:23 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/wendelboe/ I’m back in Leipzig from my short trip to Oslo. Very glad that I - for some reason - decided to take a direct flight from BER to OSL and back, which turned out to be the best decision considering that all other flights from Oslo to Germany were cancelled that day due to strikes. During the trip, I was really lucky to find a little spare time and rush to Tim Wendelboe coffee shop & cupping room. https://marc.fail/posts/alwaysupdating/ Sat, 18 Feb 2023 09:50:23 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/alwaysupdating/ So what’s the deal with all these pointless updates? There are some applications that automatically install updates almost every day (looking at you, Discord). Worst of all, these updates require you to reboot your PC or Mac to install them (looking at you, nextcloud). I mean, what year is it? 1998? I get it, some applications need to integrate with the Finder or Explorer, or do something to your audio driver, but even Nvidia can manage to update your graphics card drivers without a reboot! https://marc.fail/posts/travel/ Mon, 13 Feb 2023 18:44:08 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/travel/ I am going on a business trip this week. I’m looking forward to it because it’s to Oslo. A city with one of the most active third wave coffee scenes in the world. Unfortunately, I will have little to no opportunity to experience it. At least I will see another radio station in the world from the inside. Or as James Bond antagonist Henry Gupta says, “I hate travelling! never know what to pack! https://marc.fail/posts/hardening/ Sat, 28 Jan 2023 09:09:31 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/hardening/ A few days ago I wanted to update my blog. It turned out, that I’ve locked myself out. Not fully, but my deployment script, that builds the hugo site and loads it to the online webserver using rsync suddenly stopped working with some very cryptic ssh error message. Of course, I still had ssh access to the server, so I didn’t investigate in that direction. What I had completely forgotten: I had just changed from the default ssh port to a more unusual one and forgot to add this line to the deployment script. https://marc.fail/posts/design/ Thu, 19 Jan 2023 16:14:08 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/design/ At work I’m creating a new UI. This process takes up almost all of my mental capacity. So no side projects at the moment. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to tell you what I’m doing. That’s a pity. To get out of the tunnel, I’ve set up a WhatsApp group with two friends and we try to meet on Zwift to do some sports together remotely on a regular basis. Indoor sports are not that cool, but doing it in a group keeps you motivated. https://marc.fail/posts/update-update/ Sat, 14 Jan 2023 18:10:32 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/update-update/ A week ago my On Air Clock plugin was accepted for release in the Elgato plugin store. I had expected a few hundred downloads over the next few months if things go well. After only one week it was downloaded over 1.4k times! 🎉 It has already outperformed plugins like Facebook Live integration in terms of downloads. And most importantly, it has exceeded all my personal expectations. Nice to see that my little holiday project seems to have hit a nerve. https://marc.fail/posts/approval/ Sat, 07 Jan 2023 08:55:34 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/approval/ Yippie! On Air Clock finally got approved and listed in elgato stream deck plugin store! Here’s the Link. Finally, this project comes to an end. I learned a lot and have some other Ideas, not that I know how the creation of stream deck plugins works. After just a few hours of being listed in the stream deck store, it already got over 100 downloads. I’m happy everytime I look at my stream deck now! https://marc.fail/posts/rss/ Wed, 04 Jan 2023 21:08:53 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/rss/ Happy new year! Until a few weeks ago, I had completely forgotten that RSS still exists or ever existed. It was simply wiped from my memory. A few days ago, the verge posted an article pleading to bring back personal blogging. So, I’m more or less ahead of my time. Or maybe I did return to 2010 and before. But I like it here. I know, my blog still has no comment function (I guess there wouldn’t be much need for it), but you may write me an email if you feel the need to talk. https://marc.fail/posts/watchfaces/ Sat, 31 Dec 2022 14:56:16 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/watchfaces/ After getting the multitasking done and also storing and reading settings works, it’s now time to make the plugin a bit more versatile. I decided to make the appearance a bit more pleasing by creating different watch face options: Default No Date No Seconds No Date & Seconds Modern Minimal The first four are basically the default watch face with or without date / seconds displayed. To make things look a bit more modern, I decided to create another watch face that uses the button size more optimal and has a cleaner look, which I decided to call ‘modern minimal’ (ok, it’s not that creative). https://marc.fail/posts/multitasking/ Tue, 27 Dec 2022 00:10:09 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/multitasking/ Welcome back to part 3 of my stream deck plugin development journey. After I managed to use my canvas code and actually update the display, I thought I had done the most difficult part. But how wrong I was. After implementing input fields in the property inspector to change HEX colors of the plugin, I immediately found out, that the plugin is only run as a single instance by stream deck. https://marc.fail/posts/canvas-to-base/ Mon, 26 Dec 2022 09:43:44 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/canvas-to-base/ After I built and refined the canvas drawing routines for the on air clock plugin on stream deck I’m planning, I’m now back to bringing the code actually to stream deck. And I was successful, at least partially. As written in my last post, I failed to understand how they are updating the view of the stream deck plugin. As an ambitious athlete, I can’t admit defeat so easily and kept digging. https://marc.fail/posts/canvas-drawings/ Sun, 25 Dec 2022 09:54:32 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/canvas-drawings/ Recently I got myself an Elgato Stream Deck. I’ve had some fun configuring it, but - besides some scripting functionality - I was missing a decent On-Air Clock for one of my keys. Coming from the broadcasting industry, I have to say that I love those kind of clock faces. They emit this distinct feeling of a studio and everything associated with it, which I love (as well as studios in general). https://marc.fail/posts/artificial-intelligence/ Wed, 21 Dec 2022 17:09:43 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/artificial-intelligence/ I’m currently thinking a lot about AI. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been watching AI tools and use cases progressing actively the last years. But within the last months, the first AI tools were released or at least partially released even for consumers and nerds like me, that could make a tremendous difference in how we work and live. I asked Dall-E 2 to paint a Robot painting a robot. © - Who to credit? https://marc.fail/posts/access-log/ Sat, 17 Dec 2022 00:25:30 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/access-log/ Logging and statistics are quite a sensitive topic nowadays. Some say knowing how many users and generally just how users use a particular service is important to build better products. Others say that analyzing product usage is equivalent to spying. I’d say - as a product developer and also a fan of data protection - the answer lays somewhere in between. It’s not so much about how and if data is collected. https://marc.fail/posts/speciality-sweetspot/ Mon, 12 Dec 2022 20:11:11 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/speciality-sweetspot/ I visited Hamburg last weekend. Primarily to watch the musical Hamilton, which was awesome. But I’ve also been visiting some spots where you can enjoy a great cup of speciality coffee, handbrewed or flat white, no matter, always a decent sip. Five or even more years ago, that was a secret tip to visit those spots. And there weren’t many. Probably I’ve spent more time sipping flat white or handbrew at tørnqvist (the bulli or the pop up store), nerding around with Linus about coffee, or the original elbgold roastery, also enjoying some amazing cheesecake with my flat white. https://marc.fail/posts/marchie/ Thu, 08 Dec 2022 20:12:17 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/marchie/ Recently I decided to start a blog based on hugo and archie theme. There I mentioned that I liked the Idea of versioning the whole website and it’s contents using git. But I totally messed up the repo by trying to clone the theme’s repo to my own repo and apply changes locally. I expected the whole theme files, including changed ones, would then be pushed to my own repo. Turns out: nope. https://marc.fail/posts/hugo/ Sat, 03 Dec 2022 18:56:55 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/hugo/ Recently I was looking for an alternative to the boring, feature-bloat and slooooow wordpress. Hosting wordpress is a nightmare nowadays, and using it has become a true pita. I don’t need all of those features. I hate, that it requires so many plugins to work correctly. And I hate, that I have no or less control about what it is doing in the background. And I really hate, that every update brings even more complexity and features I really don’t need. https://marc.fail/posts/hello-there/ Sun, 27 Nov 2022 17:13:52 +0100 https://marc.fail/posts/hello-there/ This is my new weblog. After Twitter and everything else are evil nowadays, I’m now just back to the roots. My first intention to build this blog was, because I wanted to try out the flat file framework hugo. I blogged my first time in 2010 or so. At that time it was about music, I had the blues, so to say. My great role model at that time was the Boschblog.