I’ve been free of symptoms of depression since September, at least until last week. I started to feel agitated, nervous, easily annoyed, sad, alone and unwanted. Over the weekend it became a bit worse. I don’t know the cause. It just came back. It also sneaks its way back into my head. At first it’s just a couple of random negative thoughts throughout the day and after a couple of days its self loathing and feeling worthless. All my strategies didn’t really do much for me. I’m keeping track of great experiences and things that are important to me. I know people care about me. I know that I’m still very much in love with a very special person. But it’s being overshadowed by complete numbness. I experience life as if I was moving around blindfolded. …

The day before Google introduced a bunch of new Pixel devices, I sold off the beloved Pixelbook I wrote about at the end of last year. I never regretted the purchase but I noticed that I wasn’t using it that much because I was working on my company issued Macbook most of the time while in the office and I only touched my Pixelbook for some client-work while I used my Pixel phone for everything else. I prefer to have a phone and just one device next to it and since I hate using laptops on the couch and a tablet without a keyboard isn’t good for work, I decided to give the Pixel Slate a try, together with the folio keyboard. I purchased the i5 version with 8GB and so should anyone else, unless you really need 16GB of memory. …

The Pixelbook and the Slate share one big caveat: Most of their advertised features aren’t available if you’re using a G-Suite account as your primary Google account. And that’s terrible.

Since the Pixelbook was introduced, Chrome OS comes with a feature called Instant Tethering that allows the device to talk to your Pixel phone to establish a hotspot as soon as Chrome OS is offline but wants to connect to the Internet.

The Slate also comes with a power button that works as a fingerprint reader, which Google branded as Pixel Imprint. If you use a G-Suite account to sign into your new Pixel-branded device, both of these features aren’t available because Chrome OS requires them to be enabled via a device policy, even you never opted for device management. …

I’ve been a fan of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy ever since and I’m currently re-reading it, since I had forgotten about several aspects of the intricate story. It’s immensely thrilling and it has aged pretty well. While looking for the trilogy for my Kindle on Amazon, I noticed that two new books had been released, that aren’t based on any existing manuscripts left by Stieg Larsson after his death in 2004.

Since his family gained control over his heritage, his partner, who didn’t get any of his estate because they never married, kept the unpublished, original manuscript for a 4th story about Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. The family then hired swedish author David Lagercrantz to write completely new stories based Larsson’s characters and sold the rights to the first new story that was published in 2015 to Sony Pictures. …

After having read his previous effort Bandwidth at the beginning of this year, I was excited for what Eliot Peper might have in the store with the sequel, tentatively named Borderless. Where Bandwidth introduced us to a piece of supra-social, ubiquitous technology known as “the feed”, part 2 of his Analog series continues right where Bandwidth left off. The feed is completely intertwined with almost every part of daily life in this world and despite describing some possible nightmare scenarios, Eliot Peper never tries to sell his readers on the idea that technology will inevitably cause some dystopian doomsday event. …

I’m not one for supernatural beliefs, but I’ve noticed a certain pattern that I can’t quite shake off: Whenever I get a new bike, I tend to be involved in a bicycle crash.

2014 I ordered a Canyon RoadLite 7.0. The day before the bike arrived at my doorstep, I had a serious accident involving a broken seat screw. I was riding my Koga Miyata touring bike at a rather high speed of around 35km/h at the Rhine when the seat suddenly gave way and I landed on my left foot and abruptly stopped while the bike continued to go on for about 30–50 meters straight without me. I was taken to the hospital and was released after the doctors diagnosed a severe concussion on my left ankle, since it took the full force of the sudden breaking maneuver. …

Ein Freund wies mich heute auf einen Artikel über die Unvernunft der düsseldorfer Radfahrer in der Rheinischen Post hin. Das Solobild zeigt ausgerechnet den neuen Radweg auf der Friedrichstraße — zugeparkt, versteht sich.

Arne Lieb beginnt seinen Artikel damit, wie ihm eine Frau auf einem Hollandrad aufgefallen ist, die ihren Blick nach links und rechts richtete und dann ohne zu bremsen über die rote Ampel der Kreuzung am Wehrhahn fuhr. Leider erwähnt er nicht ihre geschätzte Geschwindigkeit, über ihr ungefähres Alter, ihren möglichen Beruf und Preis des Rades hingegen mutmaßt er durchaus. Auch ob die Kreuzung denn tatsächlich frei war, hüllt er sich in Schweigen. …

In the past, I have been very vocal against automatic replies from ticket systems. I considered them to add no value while possibly causing the person requesting support some discontent. Let me explain why. Imagine you just sent a support request. Of course you’re hoping for a quick reply. But the first reply to hit your inbox is just an automated mail, which isn’t the support you were hoping for. The more services I’ve been using, the more I’ve come into contact with companies that offer mail support. …