mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Soldier of Fortune since 1979.
Apparently into endurance #running now.
Posts are deleted after thirty days. Everything worth keeping is on my website.
Less talk, more rock.
Another easy run and core training afterwards. This time I spotted some snowdrops while #running.
Flowers have a soothing effect on me. Most everything else is kind of pointless. I’m functioning, not living. But whatever. If anyone cared, they’d be there for me. I can’t do it all by myself but have to.
I guess here’s to better days that likely never come and stay.
Continuing the crocus streak, here’s a beautiful snow crocus I spotted while #running today.
I try to find beauty in small things. Like running towards the orange setting sun, listening to #InFlames’ “Stay with me”. There’s a part of me that just won’t quit. Weird.
Well, maybe I’ll be a mail carrier soon. One of the quintessentially lowest-skilled jobs around here but at the very least it’d be somewhat meaningful and I’d be out and about on a bike. Tomorrow’s the first step.
Here’s some more spring flowers that rapidly appeared on my #running route. This time some narcissuses (what a word).
Today was leg strength training day as well. It’s always a pain. Hopefully the weather will stabilise at some point so I can do the exercises outside.
Other than that I got an offer regarding a job working in a grocery store. Maybe I’ll take it. But first, tomorrow is a trial day being a mail carrier. The shift starts at 7:00. It’s going to rain.
Here’s a yellow star I spotted while #running.
Did my first real workout with the R-Pur filter mask on today. Air quality is still unacceptable around here. Wearing it for an hour is just a smidge below uncomfortable. Wearing sun glasses along with it makes you look goofy – in a bad way. I think I might eventually be able to do a half marathon wearing it but no more.
Listened to 80s #Metallica, “Master of Puppets”. Otherwise spent hours crying alone. Ain’t life grand?
Another easy run and another crocus cluster. I feel like giving up all of the time. Now that my social security is about to run out, I’ll have to find a job. Probably will have to work full time for minimum wage, which means finding the time for #running is going to be hard. It’s also about the only thing that’s keeping me from giving up. So yeah, there’re no good options.
Three choices: a place of my own, food to eat and somewhat stable #mentalhealth. Pick any two of them.
It’s amazing how many accounts I have to block on GitHub ever since the GenAI craze started. Practically every day now.
Moving my repositories off this platform was one of the best decisions of my life. When you set out to build social media for code, turns out that’s what you get.
Hamburg’s environmental conditions get more hostile by the day. As if the universe wanted to tell me to pack it in and go somewhere else.
#Running is a health hazard this way. On the other hand, it’s a prime opportunity to test my filter mask. Let’s hope it works comfortably for 22k.
Anyone living in more remote places with nature and cleaner air, like #Finland, #Sweden, #Spain or elsewhere who’d be open to host a broke middle-aged man looking for change for a couple of days?
Please boost.
While #running today, I tested a #Garmin Forerunner 256S, recording the same run than my #Coros Pace 3. On-watch details are nice, watch UI too busy for my taste, the buttons are cumbersome to use but Garmin Connect… what a freaking mess. It’s like if Microsoft was developing a cross-platform mobile app. It’s the Windows of running apps, only #Polar competes in terms of datedness. It works, does what it says on the tin, technically, but it sucks all the joy out of using it to dive into the data.
Apple became the very thing they fought against in 1984.
“The creative experience is seen as an impediment on the road to the product.”
— Nick Cave, talking to Stephen Colbert about AI
By deciding not to use any Meta product – which includes WhatsApp – I continue to experience very direct social consequences.
Since I don’t happen in everyone’s favourite (and increasingly, exclusive) messenger, I might as well not exist. It’s quite something to experience first-hand that it’s not the person but the technology which decides who we get to keep within our lives. The only interoperable options of SMS (and dare I say) calling are dead for most.
I will always be lonely I guess.
For #InternationalWomensDay, I’d like to state that it’s clear to me that the future is female and Asian. Everyone who ignores this does so at their own peril. The old white dudes are fighting it of course but they’ll eventually lose – if we don’t allow them to drag everyone else down into the abyss with them.
I’ve watched and read a lot of #SciFi in my time. However, instead of inspiring me towards a better tomorrow, it feeds the fundamental inner feeling that I don’t belong in this life at this time at all. That I may not be wrong as a human being but that I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time. That there’s no escape from feeling this. I have no purpose, reason or sense of accomplishment. That I’ll be alone forever. I say that being trapped in the wrong life for 47 years now.
@rubenerd@bsd.network Just saw your post about Gram vs. Zed. I went all-in on #Helix.
Just in case you wanted to add another editor in the mix.
I'm looking into learning Go and just came across a perfect example for why my brain can process Python but kind of refuses to grasp Go:
// Python
json_data = response.json()
// Go
defer resp.Body.Close()
data, _ := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
var json_data map[string]interface{}
json.Unmarshal(data, &json_data)
Can anyone explain to me the upside of the Go approach here? It seems like Python accommodates for what you actually want to do while Go gets extremely verbose, like C. Why?
@rubenerd@bsd.network Spotted your blog post about people assuming everyone’s located in the US. I’m willing to bet that those who do are almost exclusively people born and raised in the US who have traveled very little (if at all) abroad.
The first time I’ve seen a cold war era US-American world map in Mercator projection, so much clicked and fell into place for me. It puts the US at the centre of the world and grossly distorts the size of landmasses. See animation for an idea by how much.