Notes

This book go t recommended to me by a nice person at the sci-fi and fantasy book store Otherland here in Berlin after asking for something to read as a Becky Chambers fan. They wore a t-shirt with a “The end is near” print and said that they did not like that optimistic stuff, but that they’ve heard that this book, Sea of Tranquility, was similar and much recommended.

I bought it on the spot.

It’s not a long book, and it starts with three, what feels like, short stories with almost no connection. I have trouble getting into a story, let alone three, but the writing was great, and I managed. After 40% of the book, the stories start to merge in a satisfying way.

There was some unexplained stuff in there. Why did Mirella see what she saw as a kid; was this just some massive coincidence? Why did the main character act the way he did at the end; what made him do this after so many years of training? I didn’t understand his motivation enough.

Still, good plot, good writing, good ending. 4/5.

(And funnily enough, the book talks a lot about why we like „the end is near“ stories…maybe the book store person would like it after all.)

There’s now EVERYTHING on my website! It’s a page I worked on over the past weeks; a page that combines all content on my website plus the tweets, old blogposts etc. that I have imported in December.

Originally, I wanted to combine it with the Notes page. But thanks to Jonathan’s feedback, the whole structure is clearer now: Notes show a stream of notes; the latest at the top. Everything shows the overview. And yes, if you look at it today, you’ll see mostly notes (especially before you start scrolling). But there are filters for you to enjoy, and to dig deeper into my digital past.

I don’t assume many people will do that digging. But I like it. And that’s reason enough for it to be there.

Two weeks left before I return to work after 8.5 months of first maternity leave (Mutterschutz) and then parental leave (Elternzeit). Today I visited the “new” Datawrapper office in Friedrichshain: New for me because the company moved there last summer, a few weeks after I started my leave, and I’ve only been there twice so far. Old for all my coworkers, though.

It’s beautiful. I’m much looking forward to actually sit down there with my laptop and work.

I also visited the “Pablo Neruda” library, a great library here in Berlin. I’ve been there once before, for a manga event on a weekend (not a big fan of manga but I got invited by friends and came along), and got pleasantly surprised today that’s it’s basically around the corner from the Datawrapper office. Because I’ll be nearby often anyway, I spontaneously decided to make it my second go-to library and took some English non fiction books and BrandEins business magazines with me.

I know I’ll only skim the books, but I’ll read the magazines. Every time I’m trying to read non fiction book these days (well, weeks), I give up after a while. I don’t get into them as much as I get into fictional books. But I love to read shorter magazine articles, even these weeks. And BrandEins just has the best. I’ll tell you another time, why.

We entered the “no snow, just tons of tiny pieces of gravel that you feel and hear at every step” phase here in Berlin. Today we went to Kreuzberg, an area of the city I visited a lot back in the days (even lived in for a while), but, these days, haven’t been to in ages. (Ages are years, I guess. Or at least months.)

I started drinking green tea. I have five different kinds at home, three of them open, and haven’t touched them at least as long as I haven’t been to Kreuzberg. (So, you know, ages.) They’re delightful. My favorite is the Oolong. Second place scores a Kukicha Karigane, which I was absolutely mind blown from when I tried it at a tea saloon at the Chaos Communication Congress in December 2014 or 2015. It tasted so nice, so sweet, so light, I loved it. I ordered the exact same tea from France…and that’s the one I still have, and enjoyed so many times. The use-by date is long (long!) past, but the taste is still there. Third place is a cheap Genmaicha, which always tastes nicely like popcorn, and what else do you want.

I’m very close to opening the two still sealed packages of green tea. They’re waiting for me. But I’m afraid that my green tea phase will end so soon that opening them will be a mistake. It also feels greedy: Can’t I enjoy my three nice kids of tea that I have? Why do I need more? Then again, yolo, and maybe opening those green teas will be the reason this tea phase won’t just be a phase.

There are two great things about drinking green tea that I haven’t considered before (besides the amazing taste, that is, and the health benefits).

The first is the water temperature. I’m one of those people who pour cold water into their fresh tea because it’s too dann hot and I’m too impatient. I made myself a beverage? I want to drink it NOW, and I don’t want to burn my tongue while doing so. Green tea understands: It’s often happy with 70 degree warm water anyway, which, I learned in the past days, is a tea temperature that’s immediately possible to enjoy.

The second, more obvious advantage is that green tea just keeps on giving. You pour hot water on it once, drink it, pour hot water again, then again…you can make yourself not just one tea, but three or four. And it’s always a mini ritual. It’s very, very nice.

Even if this green tea phase will be over in a few weeks, I’ll make sure that I won’t let so many more ages pass again before I start another one.

My first Martin Suter book. It came highly recommend.

But hm. 3.5 stars, maybe? Which is little considering that I really wanted to know how it the book ends; it became a page turner (unfortunately only) half way in. The story was solid.

The writing was curious, though. I couldn’t care less aber the main character, Tom; I don’t feel like I properly got to know him on any of the many pages where his actions are described. It’s almost an achievement to write so much about a person without making them interesting or likeable.

Two things I really liked about the book, though. First, the insights into (old) rich men’s lifestyle. It felt authentic, and was new information to me.

Second, that the story came as a Diogenes hardcover book. I like that publisher so much. The quality of the object was great. It even came with a ribbon page marker. It makes me want to read more Diogenes books.

We visited a museum for architectural drawing here in Prenzlauer Berg today — apparently, that’s a thing. It makes me so happy that museums like this exist, for things that are niche enough to make people like me wonder „Huh, I didn’t know that’s a thing.“

The exhibition about the Austrian architect Otto Wagner was small and nice. I found it absolutely wild how much care he and his team poured into these drawings. There were often perfect. Like digital-perfect. But instead of filling the full sky with one click, they had to cover up everything else and apply some color evenly. This alone took properly a day. And somebody — well, the whole company — to say: It’s worth it. Let’s do it. It’ll look better.

I’m glad that such people and institutions exist. That go the extra mile. That don’t do the thing that makes the most sense economically, but makes the most sense aesthetically, or ideologically, or emotionally. Thanks to every one out there who acts this way.

As of today, my site doesn’t have a cookie warning anymore. I still had that annoying banner (cookie banners are always annoying – charming, sometimes, but still annoying) on my site for two reasons: Google Analytics and Disqus comments.

Now I turned off Google Analytics tracking – and for the, what, 20 posts where people left their comments, I offer people to see them in exchange for a cookie.

Yay, no cookies! I want to cut sugar this year anyway.

First we had snow, now we have ice.

This winter delivers.

Visited family in Leipzig over the weekend with my youngest son. We went to the museum of fine arts there, one of my favorite galleries in the world. Not so much because of the art works — although the do feel like lovely old acquaintances by now, that’s how often I’ve seen them — but because of the amazing architecture of the building.

Each floor but the top and bottom one lets see onto the other floors. There’s just a lot of white space everywhere. I love it. And it aged very, very well.

A few years ago, the city decided to make the permanent exhibition of the museum free. So now you can just quickly stop by, and just visit your favourite floor or say hi to individual art works. Visiting a free museum is like visiting a free park: Nourishing for the mind and soul, but without expectations that you need to make „the most out of it.“ It’s beautiful.

Finally! Finally my Tumblr-RSS parser works flawlessly. Until today, this Python script downloaded the images only with a 640px width, and I had to replace them with a higher resolution.

But, my friends, not anymore! Now these notes (and the accompanying RSS feed) will show you the images I upload to Tumblr in all 2048px glory. Thanks, Gemini, for helping me find the issue (the feedparser library) in a structured way.

The project „Tumblr RSS ❤️ Jekyll blog“ is now officially good enough to not be worked on anymore.

Also, still pretty chill in Berlin. Very sunny, though. Excellent winter so far.