kiko.io Posts

SVWW vs. Großaspach @ 2026-10-24

2026-10-31T17:34:27.000Z

7:1

It’s been exactly seven days since I got to experience a little miracle, and I’m writing about it only today because I simply didn’t had time this week ;)

All SVWW fans were hoping that the new coach, Jochen Seitz, would get the team back on track and that the new signings would fit in well within the squad. But what they all conjured up on the pitch last Saturday not only makes us forget the poor start to the season, but also has us dreaming once again of promotion to the 2nd Bundesliga…

Yes, it was a really, really good game, and we broke two 3. Liga records in the same game: the most goals in a single game and the most different goal scorers in a single game:

16th minute: Marcus Müller
30th minute: Florian Hübner
35th minute: Roberto Massimo
50th minute: Fabian Greilinger
66th minute: Raul Paula
72nd minute: Gino Fechner
91st minute: Robin Kalem

What was impressive wasn’t just the goals, but the defensive performance combined with a newfound aggressiveness and determination on offense. It was just really exciting to watch, and of course we’re not promotion contenders yet, and we’ll have our share of bad days and lose games again, but the mere fact that Marcus Müller has finally broken his scoring drought gives me hope that in the club’s 101st year, in 2027, we’ll be playing against Bochum, Karlsruhe, Hannover, or Pauli in the second division again.

P.S.:
Today’s away game against Verl just ended, and we won again: 1:4! We are now unbeaten in six games! I think that’s a new club record for the best start by a new coach :D

⇾ Match report on kicker.de

SVWW vs. Alemannia Aachen @ 2026-10-14

2026-10-17T10:40:25.000Z

3:0

English weeks in the 3rd Bundesliga. Away at Ingolstadt on Sunday, at home against Aachen on Wednesday, and away again in Regensburg on Saturday. The new manager, Jochen Seitz, seems to have made really good use of the long international break, as the team was already 2 goals ahead in Ingolstadt, then conceded an own goal and a counter-attack, before scoring two more goals in the last minutes to make the final score 2:4. Hats off to that mental strength!

On Wednesday, Alemannia came to Wiesbaden and we were able to witness this newfound desire to score goals at close range.

We arrived at our seats a few minutes late, as we’d had to finish our stadium currywurst first, and then watched a match that was intense right from the start, with plenty of tackles and a bit of niggly play on both sides. Wehen stood strong and fought for every ball, which hadn’t really been the case at the start of the season.

For me, Greilinger stood out most in the first half because he worked tirelessly up and down the pitch. In the 24th minute, everyone’s heart skipped a beat when Schleimer, 50 metres from goal, noticed that Aachen’s keeper had strayed a little too far off his line and simply took a shot. The ball flew just centimetres past the empty net and so, unfortunately, couldn’t qualify for Goal of the Month.

Shortly before half-time, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll just pop out and get some more drinks,’ and I was almost back when, in the very last move of the half following a corner, the score became 1:0 – thanks to none other than Lukas Schleimer!

At the start of the second half, Aachen ‘stepped up’ the pace a bit and picked up a yellow card or two as a result. It didn’t do them any good, though, because despite our poor Marcus Müller once again trying EVERYTHING on Wednesday to score his first goal for SVWW, he at least won a penalty in the 51st minute, which Fechner converted with ease.

Roberto Massimo, one of our new signings, was the standout player for me in the second half, and I’m really becoming a huge fan of this young man. It was he who finally put an end to Aachen’s hopes in the 77th minute, when he kept his cool one-on-one with the keeper during a counter-attack and made it 3:0.

In this condition, the team might not be promotion contenders by the end of the season, but they’ll certainly be found much higher up the table than their current 13th place. Above all, though, they’re exciting the fans again. If only Müller could break his duck now…

⇾ Match report on kicker.de

We are being played against each other

2026-10-11T10:12:00.000Z

That’s pretty much the best text published following the election of the German far-right party to the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt a few weeks ago.

(Best in the original German version)

FCK AFD …

Link Journal 26-09

2026-10-03T12:49:41.000Z

Over the past month of September, I’ve collected 12 links for my link journal.

2026-09-01

MicroLighter - Syntax Highlighter

css-tricks.com

CSS JavaScript

Syntax highlighting for code blocks without the complicated markup, spans, classes, and bloated JavaScript, courtesy of Uncle Dave.

MicroLighter - A zero-dep syntax highlighter

davatron5000.github.io

GitHub - davatron5000/microlighter: A zero-dep syntax highlighter that uses the CSS Highlights API

A zero-dep syntax highlighter that uses the CSS Highlights API - davatron5000/microlighter

github.com

2026-09-08

Animating CSS Grid Layouts with CSS Anchor Positioning

www.bram.us

CSS

At CSS Day (back in June), someone asked me how Brave (the browser) might have built their New Tab Page which features some tiles laid out in a grid. While the grid is nothing spectacular, something special happens with it when you resize the viewport: as the available space changes, the grid nicely reorganizes itself in an animated way. The animations are also interruptible, so no View Transitions seem to be at play.So, how did they do it? I’m not sure. But if I were to recreate it, I’d use CSS Anchor Positioning with regular CSS Transitions on top.

2026-09-11

I changed my license

bergie.iki.fi

Publishing

In the last 28 years of publishing software, I’ve had three distinct eras of software licensing. All of my recent stuff is available under the European Union Public License 1.2, and I thought to explain why.

2026-09-11

Introducing mermaid-element

www.bram.us

WebComponents

Today I learned that CodePen supports Mermaid diagrams — Chris Coyier has a a whole collection with examples here — and I also learned that there is no custom element to easily include these in your markup … so I built one.

2026-09-15

Container style queries and advanced attr ..

utilitybend.com

CSS WebComponents

Wiring HTML attributes into CSS with advanced typed attr(), and letting container style queries pass that state down to child components.

2026-09-15

Introducing rich-input, a GitHub-like search, filter text input to embed on your site

www.bram.us

WebComponents

While working on a side-project to better navigate and search through my record collection, I found myself in need of a rich search input: one that accepts free-form text alongside structured filters like artist:“Aphex Twin” or label:“Warp Records” — You know, like the one you see on GitHub when searching/filtering issues. When I quickly realized a standalone custom element for this didn’t exist yet, I nerd sniped myself into building curating one.

2026-09-15

Pure CSS halftone patterns

codepen.io

CSS Imaging

A project overdue. As an 80's/90's kid, I was obsessed with printing technology - and especially halftone patterns. I've long theorized that these pat

2026-09-15

The Browser's Main Thread Is Expensive

kciter.so

JavaScript

What comes to mind when you hear "frontend optimization"? For most of us it's things like reducing network requests, shrinking the bundle,…

2026-09-16

Remove start and end margins with the margin-trim property

rachelandrew.co.uk

CSS

A frequently asked multiple-column layout question is why a new paragraph at the start of the column has additional space above it.

2026-09-24

TC39 Iterator Helpers Are Now Baseline 2026

dev.to

JavaScript

TC39 Iterator Helpers Are Now Baseline 2026: Replace Your Lodash Chains With Native Lazy...

2026-09-28

12 CSS features you can use today with no build step

flaviocopes.com

CSS

Modern CSS features that replace Sass, PostCSS plugins and JavaScript hacks: nesting, :has(), container queries, subgrid and more, checked in September 2026.

2026-09-29

Lazy Loading Images and Media - How Far Ahead Browsers Fetch

calibreapp.com

HTML Images

How far ahead Chrome, Firefox and Safari fetch lazy media, why a lazy hero image slows your page, and where to use lazy, eager and fetchpriority.

Late September

2026-09-27T17:14:53.000Z

The last few days of September, and summer is showing one last time what it’s capable of this year: 28 degrees Celsius. People are flooding the city in T-shirts, the parks are packed, and scooters are rattling through the streets. Oh, how I’m going to miss this…

It’s much the same in Thomas’s garden. All the insects are determined to make the most of the summer before it’s irrevocably over for this year. At least, that’s what we all assume, but climate change brings its share of surprises. Maybe I’ll post something similar in a month…

Pixel Area x:79,y:33

2026-09-26T10:39:00.000Z

There are certain ideas that keep popping up. Like websites where you can reserve/buy/bid for pixels on a more or less large area. Alex Tew probably started this back in 2005 with his Million Dollar Homepage.

Oleh Providnyk is a little more modest in this regard and recently made Pixel Area available to the net community – a 100x100 grid on which anyone can claim a pixel (for free!) as a link to their own website. A kind of two-dimensional webring for browsing and exploring.

Each pixel belongs to a real person and links to whatever they have online: a blog, a project, or just a small site they made.

… from https://pxlarea.com/#about

Nice idea, and although it’s vibe-coded, other good projects are too these days, and this kind of AI use doesn’t leave you with an uneasy feeling or cause any harm. In the end, I agree with Joel, where I found the link:

At the end of the day, it is a glorified and super cool blogroll, and I honestly can’t have enough of those.

Here’s my little pixel:

Who is my (pixel) neighbor?

I am on Pixel Area too! Despite a few caveats, I think it's neat, and perhaps you'll want to join me as well?

joelchrono.xyz

SVWW vs. MSV Duisburg @ 2026-09-20

2026-09-23T11:12:51.000Z

1:4

It’s like a curse… on the first matchday after the coach was fired, the guys (finally) scored 2 goals and beat Fortuna Köln at home to nil, only then to concede 3 goals at home against Duisburg within 15 minutes of the first half just 4 days later. OK, MSV is currently at the top of the standings and on a hot streak, but the ease with which they outplayed our defense was shocking. Like a hot knife through butter.

Although the 1-3 goal just before halftime and the team’s determination early in the second half were bright spots, but when our new forward Marcus Müller shoots straight at the goalkeeper when he’s all alone in front of the goal and the others aren’t exactly impressing with their accuracy either, you can’t complain about losing to an efficient Duisburg team.

For me, the most memorable scene of the game was the 1-4 goal in the 54th minute. Not only did the Duisburg player tunnel our aforementioned Müller, who, frustrated, just stopped moving, then skillfully dribbled past another player, and had his shot from a tight angle blocked only by a defender’s falling body, but the ball rolled right back to him, and he scored from an even tighter angle. Slapstick.

You could see just how frustrated our players were (with themselves) five minutes later. A Duisburg player made a very hard tackle to win the ball and took off sprinting. Max Brandt had no choice but to tackle him just as aggressively, using his whole body. Tarik Gözüsirin, our captain, who had run up with him, smashed the ball into the opponent, who was now lying on the ground. A clear red card and a three-game suspension. Thanks a lot.

Today, they’re announcing who the new coach will be. The poor guy has quite a bit of work ahead of him…

Update: It is … Jochen Seitz, the former coach of Lok Leipzig, who tragically failed twice in a row to achieve promotion to the third division. Well then, welcome to the 3. Bundesliga … and please make sure it stays that way, at least.

⇾ Match report on kicker.de

SVWW vs. Waldhof Mannheim @ 2026-09-13

2026-09-15T17:02:22.000Z

0:1

I’m a little ticked off. We had a terrible start to the new season over the first four matchdays; we’re in last place with only two points, and on Sunday we had the chance not only to play a good game at home against Mannheim but also to win, since Waldhof was only in 15th place with just 4 points at that time.

The coach showed courage in his lineup, starting 4 of the 5 new players (Massimo, Brandt, Müller and Paula) and the guys pretty much had the game under control from the start. The effort and the will to win were definitely there. Fabian Greilinger made a lasting impression on me with his sprints up and down the field during the entire game, until he was substituted. I think he must have gained some oxygen on the bench.

Then, in the 20th minute, the opposing team produced a little piece of art: After a corner kick, a Mannheim player attempted a bicycle kick but didn’t hit the ball cleanly; another player tried to pick up the rebound in the exact same way and scored a spectacular goal to make it 0:1.

Yo, stuff happens, especially as it was a beautifully scored goal. But what can’t happen is that the team continues to dominate the game, yet either fumbles the ball in the penalty area or simply fails to find the goal, which is over 7 meters wide. The constant ‘Uuuu‘ and ‘Oooo‘ every time another shot went wide was testing our nerves.

After 85 minutes, my wife and I left, partly because we had other plans, and partly because it was clear to us that the guys definitely wouldn’t manage to score today.

The weekend resulted in yet another loss, and a day later, the coach Daniel Scherning was fired. Maybe the team really does need a shot of fresh energy, because things couldn’t stay that way. However, I also see cause in the management, as integrating five new players effectively into the team just before or even after the start of the season is difficult, if not impossible. My wife thinks the decision is crap, though… we’ll see.

⇾ Match report on kicker.de

Money for something worthwhile

2026-09-12T10:25:13.000Z

If you really think about it, we spend loads of money on all sorts of crap that doesn’t really enrich our lives.

Every morning, I’m out and about somewhere in the Fediverse on my smartphone whilst sipping my first/second/third coffee. At the moment, I’m mainly into photos. At 8.00 am, the bot behind @FotoVorschlag posts the topic of the day and I scroll through my photos to find something suitable. I’ve already posted many of the potential pictures on my favourite platform, Vernissage, so I end up getting lost there for a short while too, liking the latest shots from the other crazy photography enthusiasts. What does it cost me? Basically nothing… and that’s the (solvable) problem…

From the very beginning, I’ve been drawn to the work of Marcin, the creator of Vernissage. It is far more user-friendly than Pixelfed, the Fediverse front-runner in this segment, and is also continuously maintained and actively improved behind the scenes, whereas others merely make announcements. As of today, I have published 428 photos on Vernissage.

Every month, Marcin publishes a Financial Report and his out-of-pocket costs for the project ALWAYS exceed his personal financial contribution. Now, one might object, ‘Well, that’s just how it usually goes with passion projects‘, but it’s simply unfair. I get my little dopamine kicks in the morning when 20 people have liked one of my photos, and Marcin pays for that. On the other hand, I have expensive TV streaming subscriptions from multinational corporations that I use two or three times a month. The balance just doesn’t feel right to me anymore…

Decision: the subscriptions are being cancelled and I am now (probably the first) PRINCIPAL SPONSOR of Vernissage on Patreon …

I’d appreciate it if just a few people would join me there, so that Marcin at least doesn’t end up losing out. Regardless of that, I’d be happy if the project were supported by the European initiative NLNet … Marcin: Apply for a grant, Next deadline: 3 November

It’s so important that niche projects like this have a future, even though I know everything comes to an end and Marcin will eventually pack up because he realises he has a life outside this. By supporting him, I just want to push that moment back a little … for my own pleasure. From one human being to another.

Early September

2026-09-07T15:45:06.000Z

Late summer in Germany is back to normal, following the sweltering heat of the last three months. A pleasant 26 degrees Celsius and already cool nights of around 14 degrees. We’re prepared for anything, though, and I will shed a tear or two in memory of the heat. I’m a sun-lover through and through.

Thomas really did himself a favour last year with his new drip irrigation system. His plants are looking absolutely splendid and are competing to see which can bloom the most. There’s a constant buzzing and humming all round, and I have to be careful not to disturb all the insects whilst taking photos. I will defininetly coming back later this month …

Potsdam

2026-09-05T16:00:48.000Z

My wife and I spent our summer vacation this year on the Polish Baltic coast. It was a welcome relief from the unbearable heat in Central Europe. As the 8-hour drive seemed a bit too long for us, we stopped off for two days on the way up in Potsdam, the former royal residence of the Prussian kings, foremost among them Frederick the Great, who shaped the country like no other.

The city is right on the doorstep of the mega-city of Berlin, but has largely retained its old charm, which is no doubt due to the fact that it was part of the former GDR until 1989 and it was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall that the city’s tourist potential could be fully exploited.

The absolutely dominant attraction is undoubtedly the palace complex of Sanssouci, which was built from 1745 onwards by none other than Frederick himself and which, 281 years later, still impresses us too. A nice detail is Frederick’s tomb, which has (finally) been located at Sanssouci since 1991, because the Germans still place potatoes on it to this day in honour of their ‘Old Fritz’, as it was he who popularised the most German food in the country.

Link Journal 26-08

2026-09-03T11:02:12.000Z

Over the past month of August, I’ve collected 13 links for my link journal.

2026-08-01

Cheatsheets for flex, grid, anchor positioning and invoker commands

polypane.app

CSS

For CSS Day this year we created a set of cheatsheets explaining Flexbox, Grid, Anchor positioning and Invoker commands. They came out beautifully and a lot of…

2026-08-02

An Introduction To CSS Scroll-Driven Animations - Scroll And View Progress Timelines

www.smashingmagazine.com

CSS

10 years after scroll-driven animations were first proposed, they’re finally here — no JavaScript, no dependencies, no libraries, just pure CSS.

2026-08-02

The CSS lh unit

ishadeed.com

CSS

A look at the CSS line height unit and how it works.

2026-08-04

Gap Decorations Are Now Available, Here’s What’s New

css-tricks.com

css

Today, with CSS gap decorations fully supported in Chrome and Edge, starting with version 149, you can now very easily style gaps, and with a lot of control.

2026-08-04

Writemark - Dependency-free live inline Markdown editor web component

github.com

WebComponents Markdown

Contribute to Brostoffed/writemark development by creating an account on GitHub.

2026-08-06

The Quest for the Perfect Dark Mode Toggle, using Vanilla JavaScript

www.bram.us

CSS JavaScript

In The Quest for the Perfect Dark Mode, Joshua W Comeau extensively explains how he has implemented the Dark Mode Toggle on his Gatsby-powered website. It follows the system’s light/dark mode preference, but also allows for an override which he persists in localStorage. The flow to decide if Dark Mode should be used or not … Continue reading "The Quest for the Perfect Dark Mode Toggle, using Vanilla JavaScript"

2026-08-07

Using geohashes to share your location on social media

robida.net

Map Tool

A lot of personal sites like posting small tidbits of information that capture the moment a post was written: the current weather (☀️ +75°F), what song is now playing, or the author's mood. A few yea…

Encode coordinate to Geohash

Convert a coordinate to its geohash representation

www.geohash.es

Decode a Geohash - Statue of Liberty

Convert a geohash into a coordinate, a GeoJSON polygon, a BBox and many more formats

www.geohash.es

2026-08-07

Working with highlight() using progressive enhancement

piccalil.li

CSS JavaScript

Using a baseline of <mark> elements, Sunkanmi Fafowora helps you to understand how the new highlight API works with some progressive enhancement for good measure.

2026-08-10

Using animation-composition in CSS to Avoid Redeclaring Other Values

master.dev

CSS

Here's an example. You can list multiple comma-separated box-shadows, but if you apply a *new* box-shadow, it overrides anything set before. Not true here.

2026-08-19

Re: The Loss of Links Continues

michaelharley.net

JavaScript Blogging

Just adding my two cents to this discussion about link rot and what we can do about it.

2026-08-22

feedecho - Self-hosted RSS feed cross-poster

github.com

Feeds Syndication

Self-hosted RSS feed cross-poster. Route items from RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds to Mastodon, Bluesky, and email using configurable templates. Built as a replacement for Echofeed, which shut down in August 2026.

2026-08-22

I shipped my comment plugin to a service that could never accept it

rmendes.net

IndieWeb Authentication

I shipped my comment plugin to a service that could never accept it 21 August 2026 indieweb IndieAuth indiekit ai Claude comments A migration to IndieLogin.com that could never have worked, why the fa...

2026-08-26

Your Modules Are Lying to You

blog.gaborkoos.com

JavaScript

ESM and CommonJS expose values through different contracts. Learn how bindings, object references, evaluation order, caching, cycles, and interop shape module behavior in Node.js.

SVWW vs. Rot-Weiss Essen @ 2026-08-29

2026-08-30T10:44:25.000Z

0:0

Before yesterday’s home match, I was already a bit worried, as Essen had knocked out second-division team St. Pauli in the DFB-Pokal at the weekend, whereas we, as everyone knows, lost 0:4 to Leverkusen. Either a win like that gives a team a boost, or they’ll be too tired for their next league match.

The last one seemed to be the case, and you could tell our boys were really wanting to win today. That was also down to Marcus Müller, our new signing this week, whom the manager, together with Flotho, fielded straight away as a striking duo from the start. A 4-4-2 … that’s rare for us too. And how that guy was running! He was clearly intent on making a good impression on the fans straight away, and he accomplished that. I almost felt sorry for one or two of the Essen players when he burst past them.

The rest of the team certainly tried just as hard, but there were simply too many mistakes to benefit from their undoubted determination. Essen were clearly the better team, but still rarely got near goal, and when they did, their shots were harmless. They were tired.

But it wasn’t just us who made mistakes, the referee did too, mostly against us, and in such a way that shouts of “cheater” echoed from the stands. The man was either biased or simply not good enough for the 3rd Division.

My personal highlight was the introduction of our second new signing this week in the 58th minute, Roberto Massimo, who, less than 30 seconds after stepping onto the pitch, sprinted down the right flank and curled the ball beautifully into the far corner. Unfortunately, the Essen goalkeeper was there to tip the ball over the bar.

Although the final 15 minutes belonged entirely to us, we failed to capitalise on it, which was only partly down to the opponent’s good goalkeeper. Yes, there were no goals in this match and we’ve now got our first point, but it’s not exactly satisfying. Things can and must get better, because I certainly won’t be buying a season ticket for the Regionalliga.

⇾ Match report on kicker.de

Arid Rhine

2026-08-28T17:44:40.000Z

People who live by a river are used to seeing more or less water flowing past them at different times. We live in a city by the Rhine, but not right next to the water, so at the weekend we popped over to the nearby Rheingau to take a closer look at the current drama of the lowest water levels in decades, although the situation has already eased somewhat over the last two weeks thanks to a bit of rain.

It was still quite shocking. Sandbanks have emerged away from the shipping channel that I’ve never seen before, and you could reach the Bingen Mouse Tower very easily and without getting your feet wet from the other side of the Rhine, even though it’s usually on an island in the middle of the river. Certainly a lovely walk for tourists, but a dramatic situation for those who live in the river, the local residents and inland shipping. This year, a new low-water record of 32 centimetres (!) was recorded at the Bingen river gauge. A few weeks ago, the level was even 0 upstream near Cologne.

Try telling me again that we don’t have a problem with the climate. I’ll take a few photos of the high water this winter…

AuguStory - The story of my blog

2026-08-26T16:05:43.000Z

When Robert Birming, following Junited and JulyReply, called for contributions to AuguStory under the heading ‘The Story of your Blog‘, I thought to myself: If there’s one thing I can do, it’s write about my blog … but I found it much harder than I’d expected, simply because I’ve written about it so many times before.

When I made a fresh start with blogging on kiko.io in September 2019 – initially just to publicly document technical matters for my own benefit – my very second post was about the creation of the blog itself. This turned into a whole series of posts called A New Blog, under which I have published 37 posts to date. Whenever I learnt something new about my current static site generator of choice, Hexo, adapted it to my needs or implemented something entirely new, I wrote a post about it. In addition, last year I began compiling the history, methodology and technology behind this blog in a Colophon. It currently consists of the sections Impetus & Technology, Hosting & Deployment, Writing and Special Pages. There are three more I’d want to write: Imaging, Styling and Integrations & Privacy.

For me, the focus of my blog has shifted somewhat in the meantime. Whereas the claim/slogan at the start was ‘Memorable Tech Stuff’, the ‘Tech’ has been in brackets for some time now, as there isn’t much left from my actual job as a software developer that I could write about, because I’ve moved completely into management and only code for my own enjoyment these days… as I’m doing for this website, for example. Without code, it simply doesn’t work – even though I’m giving more and more space to my second great passion: photography. In my spare time, I’ll soon be spending more time in Lightroom than in Visual Studio Code, or out and about with my camera to get more material. You can see this reflected in my posts too; the article series Thomas Garden and New Photos now contain 46 posts, and I’m currently working on more photos and, in turn, more posts.

As a big fan of the IndieWeb, means not relying on large, commercial providers to publish own thoughts, but rather building own things like a skilled craftsman, the aspect of syndicating my own content according to the POSSE principle is something I’m particularly dedicated to. Every article, every note and every photo has its own page on kiko.io, which includes a list of syndications on other platforms, primarily in the Fediverse. All interactions with these syndications, together with the webmentions posted by other blogs, are displayed on the respective page via the JavaScript solution Mentions United. Actually I post new syndications several times a week. At the moment, for example, I post one daily on Mastodon, where I’m contributing my photos to the hashtag campaign #Fotovorschlag (PhotoSuggestion).

Right now, I’m finding it a bit difficult to write posts, because to produce a good text, you need not only time for basic research, but also a reasonably clear head. When I sit down to write a new piece, for almost a year now, I’ve been writing it in my mother tongue German first, then running it through the DeepL translator and adapting the result to my sense of the English language, as I’ve noticed that posts I write directly in English tend to come across as rather stilted. I certainly don’t ditch the original German text afterwards, but attach it to the article as the German version. It’s a win-win situation for readers.

Closing Thoughts

It’s great fun to have a little corner of the internet of your own where you can do whatever you like. It doesn’t really matter whether or who reads it, even though I’m happy about every LIKE and every REPOST or even a REPLY, because when you do something, whatever it is, positive feedback is a welcome form of acknowledgement. However, the line between LIKE-hunting is seductively thin, and you have to be careful that the dopamine rushes don’t make you dizzy. But nobody can tell me they run a blog just to keep it from being seen. It’s a conscious engagement with the public and helps to build networks that go far beyond what was possible in the past. I think a relaxed attitude towards this is essential. However, I’m technically capable of implementing my ideas and visions almost exactly as I envision them, and I understand those who prefer to rely on a ready-made platform so as not to get frustrated with the code right from the start. From this perspective, I don’t think AI-based approaches are entirely unreasonable, even though I tend to belong to the sceptical faction.

Happy Blogging :)

IndieWeb Is Punk - Sticker

2026-08-24T17:54:00.000Z

I really like the IndieWeb Is Punk initiative by Jim Mitchell, because the eight points in his manifesto express exactly what I think about the IndieWeb too. “Own your domain. Own your data. Own your identity.“ … “Have fun, or what’s the point?“ … “We don’t need major platforms.“

Along with the website indiewebispunk.net, Jim has also released a punk-style logo that seemed predestined to be turned into stickers. As his sticker shop unfortunately only delivers to the US, he provided me with the logo as a hi-res PNG file over Mastodon and I placed an order to my trusted European sticker supplier (PrettyGoodStickers by Ride All Day AB, Gothenburg, Sweden).

I’d like to share the link here so that you can reorder them if you’re from Europe and would like to have some … https://www.prettygoodstickers.com/sticker?id=e80f227a-6e71-479d-8d9d-a691404d1c89

INDIEWEB IS PUNK. OI !

IndieWeb is Punk — Jim Mitchell

We don't need major platforms. We have the Web, keyboards, tools, and community. IndieWeb is Punk! Is it time to bring the Mohawks back? - @jthingelstad

jimmitchell.org

DFB Cup: SVWW vs. Bayer 04 Leverkusen @ 2026-08-22

2026-08-22T17:33:05.000Z

0:4

It’s been a while since I wrote my last post about a match involving my favourite club, SV Wehen Wiesbaden. I’m not quite sure why, but I promise to do better, as I still have a season ticket and try to watch every home match. I’ve even convinced my wife. She has one now too ;)

The start in the new 3. Bundesliga season wasn’t exactly thrilling. We lost our first home match against Preußen Münster 1–3 right off the bat. I was looking forward to the match because my favourite player from last season, Ryan Johanson, had transferred to Münster and immediately had to return to Wiesbaden for the very first match.
The second match, away against Würzburg, was unfortunately also a disaster. The final score was even 4–0.

Today, however, there was a break in league play, and the first round of the DFB Cup was played. In the pairing draw, we immediately drew a tough opponent: the 2023 German football champions, Bayer 04 Leverkusen! Since the Cup is known to have its own rules, and we put up a really good and “close” Cup match against Bayern Munich last year, some of us were feeling a little hopeful.

In the first half, it certainly looked as though we could give Bayer a hard time. The boys ran and fought just as all the fans would actually like to see them do in the league, and managed to get into the opposition’s penalty area on a few times, but the Leverkusen defence was always on hand and the two or three standards we won were wasted. We weren’t playing great, but we were in good heart until the 43rd minute, when Leverkusen scored 0:1 through Patrik Schick.

Probably boosted by the goal just before half-time and the manager’s occasional reminders to his players, the second half started as the first had ended… 0:2. Leverkusen hit their operating temperature and the difference in class was now clearly evident. We kept up with them, but lacked precision in our passing, pace and finesse. After the 0:3 and the 0:4, it was clear to everyone that, unfortunately, there would be no surprise today.

I’m curious to see how the team reacts to these three clear defeats. Next week we’re at home in the league against Rot-Weiß Essen, and a bit of fire in the belly would be just the thing.

Dry August

2026-08-16T15:23:44.000Z

The heatwave in Germany is continuing and everyone is suffering. We’re simply not (yet!) prepared for so many days with temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius. Thomas’s plants are also suffering from heat stress, even though he’s been watering them as best he can via a drip irrigation system since last year. Anyone who’s seen recent pictures of the River Rhine (current water level at Düsseldorf: 0 cm) will understand that even this has its limits. Every drop of water is precious right now.

I’d like to use these 21 photos to show just how well the Thomas flowers are holding up … and quickly heading back inside to cool off.

Geohash Support in Vernissage

2026-08-12T16:55:00.000Z

Three days ago, I wrote the post Geohashes for my photos about my recent use of Geohashes as a short alternative to long GPS coordinates and expressed my hope that my favorite platform, Vernissage, would support them… and I created a GitHub issue for Marcin, the developer. Three days ago…

Marcin released a new version today that now supports Geohashes! \o/

My sincere thanks and deepest respect for such a quick implemention.

#Vernissage #Geohash

Geohash Support (alongside GPS coordinates) · Issue #569 · VernissageApp/VernissageWeb

As Google/Android makes it harder to provide GPS coordinates on uploading photos to Vernissage, it could be a relief if it would support Geohash short codes that are based on math. See https://kiko...

github.com

Geohashes for my photos

2026-08-09T10:23:22.000Z

Almost all my photos contain the coordinates of where the shot was taken in the EXIF metadata of the respective file. For this purpose, my Android smartphone has a built-in GPS receiver, and I equipped my Nikon D500 with a Dawntech di-GPS Eco ProFessional 2 a couple of years ago, although I sometimes forget to switch the thing on and then have to add the location later manually in Lightroom.

Whenever I publish a photo, I always do it first on this website and deliberately include the coordinates (latitude, longitude) of the shot, which are even displayed on a world map on the dedicated photo page:

Sharing photos – which I usually do from my smartphone – has recently become more difficult for me thanks to Google, because not only is the photo picker introduced into Android a few months ago absolute rubbish, but Android also actively removes the GPS coordinates when a photo is uploaded, ‘for privacy reasons’! I can understand that, as there are plenty of morons who thoughtlessly reveal their location, but the fact that there are no settings whatsoever to deliberately switch this back on or to choose whether to do so on a per-upload basis is an arrogant way of patronising customers.

I became aware of this issue when, on my favourite photography site Vernissage, the coordinates were suddenly no longer pre-filled after uploading from existing EXIF data, as they had been before. At first I thought it was a bug, but after a bit of back and forth with Marcin (the developer of the platform) I realized that he couldn’t help me and that from now on I have to enter the coordinates manually. It’s doable, but manually copying 37.07362333333333 / -8.762103333333334 into two seperate fields is nevertheless a tedious task.

Geohashes

Last week, pinned by Beto’s post, I read an article by Frank Edomaruse about so-called Geohashes, which might help ease my ‘problem’ somewhat.

Geohashing for Developers: Efficiently Encoding and Querying Locations

Okay, so here's the thing — when you have a location, you usually think of it in terms of latitude and longitude. You know, those two long…

medium.com

Some time ago, I did play around a bit with Google’s quirky Plus Codes, which also summarise coordinates in a short code, but I hadn’t yet heard of Gustavo Niemeyer’s solution, which he already published back in 2008.

His solution is actually quite simple: the Earth is mathematically transformed into a flat rectangle and divided into squares, each of which is assigned a number or a letter. This process is repeated over and over again in each square, up to the highest level, 9. Frank explains the maths behind it very well in his article.

The coordinates 37.07362333333333 / -8.762103333333334 are mathematically transformed into the code ey9fbt59s.

The original website ‘geohashes.org‘ is no longer available, but there’s geohash.es by Alberto Rico, where you can play around with coordinates and Geohashes.

node-geohash

Of course, there are libraries available that convert GPS coordinates to geohashes. It’s just maths, after all. As my website is based on Hexo and therefore Node.JS, I’ve extended my photo generator – which reads the EXIF data from new photos while importing and saves it to JSON files – using Ning Sun‘s script node-geohash:

const geohash = require('ngeohash');

...

if (meta.latitude && meta.longitude) {
  meta.custom.geohash = geohash.encode(meta.latitude, meta.longitude);
}

That’s all … and I now display this custom metadata on all photo pages with a link to Alberto’s geohash.es.

Photo Blue Pathway Sign - kiko.io

Photo Blue Pathway Sign by Kristof Zerbe

kiko.io

The only thing left to do now is to convince Marcin to introduce Geohash support to Vernissage ;)