✍️ Postshttps://jlelse.blog/posts2024-03-27T17:28:53+01:00Thoughts of an IT expertJan-Lukas Elsecontact@jlelse.blogMy first week with a safety razor 🪒2024-03-11T17:09:35+01:00/posts/safety-razorSafety razorShaving<audio controls="preload"><source src="https://media.jlelse.blog/4337981013ebceb1a00ed8e120996cabb36790f02133472ed0e4ba3e829eb29b.mp3"></source></audio><div class="e-content"><p>I’ve tried a few shaving methods since I started growing a beard in puberty. I started with a Gillette Mach 3, various no-name shavers because the cartridges are cheaper, and two electric shavers.</p>
<p>None of them satisfied me, so I usually shaved once a week or less. But then my beard started to look unkempt, and it started to itch.</p>
<p>After reading about safety razors a few times, I became curious. They were praised as being much cheaper, gentler on the skin, and they were said to shave more thoroughly.</p>
<p>At first, I was a little afraid to use such a sharp tool and that I might cut myself. But after watching some videos on how to use them, my worries were calmed.</p>
<p>I got myself a Mühle R89 razor and Astra Platinum blades.</p>
<p>After a week of almost daily shaving, I can say that safety razors are indeed a cool thing. Because there’s only one blade cutting the hair, it seems to be much gentler on my skin. I have a lot less irritation and because I’ve been shaving almost every day and the hairs are very short, it doesn’t itch anymore.</p>
<p>I haven’t cut myself either. Just little scratches, but after the third time none.</p>
<p>But I don’t really see the more thorough shave yet. Maybe it’s my technique, but I’m still not able to shave in a way that makes my skin feel like a baby’s skin. When I tried to shave against the line, I got little itchy spots the next day. Maybe I need a sharper blade? Maybe a more aggressive razor?</p>
<p>A few days ago, I also bought some Proraso shaving soap and a Mühle travel shaving brush (with synthetic hair) because I wanted to try the difference to gel. It’s much easier to get a thin layer of foam on my face. And it’s a nice feeling, too. 😄</p>
<p>All in all, I like my new safety razor, but I’m still not completely convinced by the hype surrounding it on the internet. Yes, it’s nice, but it’s not rocket science. I’m also not sure if I’m going to stick to my strict shaving schedule or if I’m going to go back to shaving once a week or even every other week. As for the rest of my body, I will continue to use my Braun electric body groomer.</p>
</div><p><a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/safety-razor#interactions">Interactions & Comments</a></p>I’ve tried a few shaving methods since I started growing a beard in puberty. I started with a Gillette Mach 3, various no-name shavers because the cartridges are cheaper, and two electric shavers.My February ‘24 in Review2024-03-01T21:47:41+01:00/posts/february-2024Monthly Review<audio controls="preload"><source src="https://media.jlelse.blog/19cb4e23588863091f71976336acadef35be076004217c9c0d09333e674ddf0e.mp3"></source></audio><div class="e-content"><p>February has come to an end. It’s time to take a brief look back.</p>
<p>Overall, it was a rather uneventful month. I hardly noticed the leap day; it was just another day.</p>
<p>On a personal note, I attended a few birthday parties this month. I also visited some doctors. I spent a few days in bed with a cold, but I went to the doctors to have veins in my nose cauterized (no more nosebleeds, finally!) and to check my blood levels for vitamins. I had been meaning to do this for a while, but now that I’m hardly eating dairy products, it’s time to see if I need to supplement anything. A quick way to get medical appointments is through my health insurance’s appointment service. I just fill out an online form, and the service finds practices and arranges an appointment, usually quite promptly.</p>
<p>Work-wise, I’m having a pretty good phase. I’m very productive, implementing one complex story after another. It’s fun, and I feel like I can unleash my potential. Especially SQL is enjoyable when I can move a lot of logic from the application into the database with a view, which handles large amounts of data much more efficiently, leading to fewer timeouts.</p>
<p>Besides, I’ve gotten a bit more accustomed to Microsoft’s Copilot this month. Especially since the top search results nowadays are just generic SEO trash, it’s a good help to sometimes efficiently get the information you’re actually looking for. At least, when Copilot doesn’t repeat the ad trash. At work, I also have access to Azure OpenAI Service, and the AI sometimes helps me with brainstorming solutions or even implements some things directly. However, I hope it will be a long time before AI replaces my entire job, or maybe it never will because I will have evolved by then too.</p>
<p>Let’s see what March brings …</p>
</div><p><a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/february-2024#interactions">Interactions & Comments</a></p>February has come to an end. It’s time to take a brief look back.My January ‘24 in Review2024-02-02T15:00:25+01:00/posts/january-2024Monthly Review<audio controls="preload"><source src="https://media.jlelse.blog/cd6d6d84494daffdb6c2f576dbd534f82886bf03ac3fd44194f33ae1882a3f3a.mp3"></source></audio><div class="e-content"><p>And now January of 2024 is over. Time to take a quick look back.</p>
<p>During the first week, I was still on vacation, and my girlfriend and I spent some time in our hometown. For Christmas, we got tickets to a Harry Potter concert (with music from the movies), which we enjoyed.</p>
<p>Then there were one or two train strikes. With all the strikes happening, it’s hard to keep count. But luckily, despite the strikes, a few trains were still running, so we could travel to one of my girlfriend’s family birthdays. I can understand the train drivers, though. I wouldn’t want to work shifts either. At least the pay and working conditions should be right.</p>
<p>I’m not sure about the farmers’ protests, though. Sure, farming needs to be profitable, but is a diesel subsidy the right solution? And hanging traffic lights on gallows and threatening politicians? That’s not a nice way to protest. And blocking roads with tractors is okay, but not sticking to the streets for more climate protection?</p>
<p>Politically, there was a bit of a shake-up in January. Correctiv uncovered a secret meeting of neo-Nazis (sort of like a Wannsee Conference 2.0), which received a lot of coverage. As a result, there were demonstrations across Germany against the far-right. The demonstrations are a good sign that many people don’t agree with the shift to the right! But in my opinion, the CDU lacks self-reflection; they don’t realize that populism isn’t the solution and they probably have a big part in the shift to the right.</p>
<p>At the end of the month, I took care of <a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/preserving-digital8">archiving camcorder tapes to preserve recordings</a>, most likely from the 2000-2005 period.</p>
<p>Well, let’s see what February brings. Hopefully, more daylight finally. 😄</p>
</div><p><a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/january-2024#interactions">Interactions & Comments</a></p>And now January of 2024 is over. Time to take a quick look back.Preserving Memories: My Adventure with Digital8 Tapes and FireWire2024-01-30T19:38:25+01:00/posts/preserving-digital8Digital8ExperiencesFireWire<audio controls="preload"><source src="https://media.jlelse.blog/d5962a1dd904285144545af956790416bf86086cdd0fa333b521de181aa023e5.mp3"></source></audio><div class="e-content"><p>The last few days, I dived into a new topic in my spare time: Archiving videos from old Hi8 and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Digital8</a> videotapes onto my hard drive.</p>
<p>My dad used to shoot plenty of videos, mostly of me or of steam trains (which might explain my love for train rides) with his Sony DCR-TRV320E when I was a small kid.</p>
<p>Now there are a lot of those tapes, but given that it’s now already hard to preserve them for the future, I had to find a solution to get the videos from the tapes to my PC.</p>
<p>After some research (Sony actually still <a href="https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/res/manuals/3058/30588724M.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hosts the manual on their website</a>) and getting familiar with the camcorder, I found out that it has a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FireWire</a> (or i.LINK) port. But because FireWire is an old and obsolete protocol, no modern PC has FireWire support out of the box anymore.</p>
<p>That’s the reason I grabbed my old desktop PC (with its sluggish dual-core Intel Pentium), which I’ve already attempted to sell before (unsuccessfully), which is the only device in my household that supports adding PCIe cards. I bought a cheap FireWire PCIe card, plugged it into the computer, installed an SSD and Ubuntu 23.04 (I already had that ISO downloaded). With that, I was able to connect to the camcorder and use <a href="https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jammy/de/man1/dvgrab.1.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dvgrab</a> to transfer the videos.</p>
<pre class="c-chroma"><code><span class="c-line"><span class="c-cl">dvgrab -showstatus -rewind -autosplit -size <span class="c-m">0</span> -format raw
</span></span></code></pre><p>One of the problems I encountered during this process was that while dvgrab detected the camera, the capturing somehow didn’t transfer any frames and also on the camcorder display I saw two big gray bars. I managed to solve this by going to an unwritten space on one of the tapes and recording for a few seconds. After that, the transfer worked mostly flawlessly also with the other tapes.</p>
<p>Now, after copying just six tapes, I already have many gigabytes of videos. One tape seems to sometimes be 17 gigs, but it’s only one and a half hours of video.</p>
<p>I have to think about a solution where to store all these videos. Normally, I would upload them to OneDrive and save a copy on Scaleway cold storage. But given that there are also some videos showing me as a small kid naked on the beach, I fear that the account might get blocked by some algorithms. Should I just buy two or three external storage drives and keep the files physical? Or should I use Rclone and upload encrypted files?</p>
<p>And what about the format? Should I keep the DV files or transcode them into something else? I tried Handbrake and FFmpeg, but lossless transcoding is even slower than the transfer at 1x speed from the camera to my PC. And the file size is also not smaller. Does anyone have any tips to share?</p>
<p>In general, it feels like time traveling, seeing small Jan-Lukas exploring the world. Things far before my memory. But also the hardware and the whole process of transferring the videos are like traveling to the past. Many forum entries or posts I found about this topic are already more than twenty years old, and the latest dvgrab version is from 2009.</p>
</div><p><a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/preserving-digital8#interactions">Interactions & Comments</a></p>The last few days, I dived into a new topic in my spare time: Archiving videos from old Hi8 and Digital8 videotapes onto my hard drive.My December ‘23 and my 2023 in Review2023-12-31T16:52:11+01:00/posts/december-2023Monthly ReviewYear in Review<audio controls="preload"><source src="https://media.jlelse.blog/0eb7366f52102fdb74a6ccc6081f79a2ae42959fde16aab4be9f8cc4e54eba1a.mp3"></source></audio><div class="e-content"><h2 id="about-last-month">About Last Month</h2>
<p>It’s the end of a month, but also the end of a year, so it’s time to look back on the month and the whole year.</p>
<p>The month itself was not very exciting. Shortly after <a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/taskforce-learnings">finishing the task force</a>, I took a vacation and haven’t thought about work for two weeks now. Another week of vacation lies ahead.</p>
<p>I spent Christmas with my family and got some relaxation. Finally, I found some time and interest to work on my blog software and explore the topic of self-hosting again.</p>
<h2 id="about-last-year">About Last Year</h2>
<p>Globally and environmentally, the year wasn’t good. One disaster after another. A negative headline after another. Yesterday, my girlfriend and I watched ZDF’s <a href="https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten-sendungen/heute-sendungen/album-jahresrueckblick-2023-ukraine-israel-gaza-100.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“Album 2023”</a> and compared it with the “Album 2013”. The number of disasters attributed to the climate crisis has clearly increased. Unfortunately, there were also more reports of war this year. It’s hard to imagine what it will be like in another 10 years. One can only hope for a miracle.</p>
<p>Personally, this year was very stable for me. No moving, no changing jobs, no other major life changes.</p>
<p>Instead, I traveled a lot by train this year. Since May, I’ve been tracking my journeys by public transportation, totaling more than 17700 km with a total duration of over 8 days and 8 hours. This was mainly due to my vacations, all of which were taken by train this year. In July, I traveled <a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/july-23">from Germany to Romania by train</a>, through Romania, and back to Germany. In September, I went <a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/september-23">to Scotland</a>. And in November, to Strasbourg, France. I’ve managed to convince my girlfriend to embrace this eco-friendly way of traveling a bit.</p>
<p>Certainly, the double household management also contributed to the kilometers. I regularly commuted between my two homes. However, moving in with my girlfriend at the end of last year has proven to be a perfect decision.</p>
<p>Regarding fitness, I believe I made progress this year. After doing body weight training in 2018 and inexplicably stopping, I restarted in January. I’ve been regularly training with Freeletics two, three, or sometimes even four times a week, interrupted only by vacations, illnesses, or high temperatures. I now have a lifetime subscription for Freeletics and, with new equipment received at Christmas, I’ll be able to do more exercises.</p>
<p>I blogged very little this year, which is not a problem. I blog when I feel like it. Maybe I simply have less of a desire to express my opinion on every little thing and constantly share? Perhaps I have less of a need for attention? The blog may just reflect my personal development. Last year, due to all the negative news, I also paid significantly less attention to politics and consumed fewer news (and tech news) in general.</p>
<h2 id="about-the-coming-year">About the Coming Year</h2>
<p>In the coming year, I’ll probably travel less because more vacation days will be spent finally clearing out my family’s home, from which I moved almost two years ago. Additionally, my girlfriend will finish her studies, requiring exams and papers. This will likely lead to another move and the end of the double household management by the end of the year.</p>
<p>Regarding work, I hope to finally move beyond the junior level. Though these words have little meaning; my previous job didn’t have such distinctions. However, I believe I’ve gathered enough experience to no longer be a junior. Over the years, I’ve developed both technically and professionally, as well as in terms of soft skills and teamwork.</p>
<p>Because I’m somewhat idealistic, in the coming year, I’ll try even more to replace more animal products in my diet with plant-based alternatives. I already eat very little meat and fish, usually only to be polite or due to a lack of alternatives in certain situations. I want to be more consistent. I also want to significantly reduce my consumption of dairy products. Switching from cow’s milk to oat milk for cereal and cooking has shown me that animal milk is not essential. However, I still consume a lot of cheese and cream cheese. But for both the environment and less animal suffering, it would be better to opt for plant-based products, which have also become more affordable in discount stores this year.</p>
</div><p><a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/december-2023#interactions">Interactions & Comments</a></p>About Last MonthBeyond the deadline: What I learned from a recent taskforce experience2023-12-06T19:23:56+01:00/posts/taskforce-learningsExperiencesPersonal GrowthWork<audio controls="preload"><source src="https://media.jlelse.blog/5c84a364834b3f3522a3ee242ffe02234be8e7f771846bd19ee91892ccd299de.mp3"></source></audio><div class="e-content"><p>The taskforce I was part of the last weeks is finally done! The deadline for the production deployment was met and today also a knowledge transfer took place. I’m happy to not have to fear weekend work or do overtime in the evening anymore, and hopefully return to a more regular workload again.</p>
<p>This was a new experience to me, although I was already helping in taskforces before. This time, the scope of the taskforce was bigger. It involved more things to implement, and the deadline was quite short. And there were constantly changing requirements until the last day.</p>
<p>Even when I wasn’t thrilled with being part of the taskforce in the first place and am quite exhausted now after finishing it, I think I learned a lot from it. The taskforce required me to get out of my comfort zone in many ways, I needed to try to understand complex requirements in a short amount of time and take a more active part in a team.</p>
<p>Here are some key takeaways I learned:</p>
<ol>
<li>Requirements should be clear from the start. Changing requirements during the implementation of a user story are annoying and will result in a lot more unnecessary work. If requirements change, they should be part of a new user story. If the requirements aren’t clear, ask.</li>
<li>Having a big picture of the system you are working on helps to better evaluate technical options, design, and implementation decisions. The lack of a big picture or overview might cause problems.</li>
<li>Business analysts should clarify all requirements with the customer but give the developer team (and architects) the decision on how to implement things. Developers shouldn’t be just stupid programmers.</li>
<li>Stay calm, even when under pressure. You are trying your best, but you don’t have to be a magician. Also know your rights and limits. After all, It’s only a job and not your life. If you are trying your best, it’s probably not your fault when it fails.</li>
<li>You have a voice in your team, and your voice matters. Share your opinion and thoughts in a professional and friendly tone.</li>
<li>Share your knowledge and learn from the knowledge of your colleagues. Team work makes the dream work.</li>
</ol>
<p>After all, I think I made the best out of it, and it let me grew professionally as well as personally. And I hope it will also help me to leave the junior developer level soon. 😄</p>
</div><p><a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/taskforce-learnings#interactions">Interactions & Comments</a></p>The taskforce I was part of the last weeks is finally done! The deadline for the production deployment was met and today also a knowledge transfer took place. I’m happy to not have to fear weekend work or do overtime in the evening anymore, and hopefully return to a more regular workload again.My November ‘23 in Review2023-11-30T20:47:21+01:00/posts/november-23Monthly Review<audio controls="preload"><source src="https://media.jlelse.blog/0f316d8cda4aa8ccebd612d15531d1976c448ab9092db0a7d53730b714adb863.mp3"></source></audio><div class="e-content"><p>It’s that time of the month again for a new recap. November has passed, so let’s see what happened in the last 30 days…</p>
<p>The month started unusually and uneventfully. There was a weekend in Braunschweig, where I finally switched my internet connection to the new 5G solution. Successful. The old solution would actually still work until March, but it’s better to check in advance if everything is working.</p>
<p>Mid-month, things got more unusual. I was called into a task force at work. Since our team is functioning smoothly, and we are productive, we are now helping out another team. It goes to the extent that even weekend work is on the table. However, I’ve managed to fend that off successfully in the past two weeks and hope it won’t be necessary in the future. After 5 days of exceeding the scheduled work hours, I’m not keen on sacrificing one of my two days off a week for extra work without additional compensation. I’m aware that I’m in a privileged position, but a good work-life balance is crucial to me.</p>
<p>The demanding days also have the effect that I’m not very motivated for hobby programming after work. I had actually started integrating <a href="https://github.com/hacdias/indielib" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Henrique’s library</a> for MicroPub into GoBlog to replace my own, not very clean solution. But that will have to wait until the task force is over, and hobby programming brings me more joy than it currently does.</p>
<p>On one of the weekends where I could avoid Saturday work, I went to Strasbourg with my girlfriend. A short vacation to make up for the uncompleted summer vacation. It was very nice; we explored the old town, ate crêpes and tarte flambée, and also visited the European Parliament.</p>
<p><a href="https://media.jlelse.blog/e6fe72827af2745187efc083abb9d4ecc08405718f7e479c713b3b70aee91862.jpg"><img src="https://media.jlelse.blog/e6fe72827af2745187efc083abb9d4ecc08405718f7e479c713b3b70aee91862.jpg" alt="View of Strasbourg, old half-timbered houses by the water" loading="lazy" title="View of Strasbourg, old half-timbered houses by the water"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://media.jlelse.blog/1490b9e04462569e8df16eaac877a97e2730eefaac5bed120f04127de132d525.jpg"><img src="https://media.jlelse.blog/1490b9e04462569e8df16eaac877a97e2730eefaac5bed120f04127de132d525.jpg" alt="A glimpse into the plenary chamber of the European Parliament" loading="lazy" title="A glimpse into the plenary chamber of the European Parliament"></a></p>
<p>On the other weekend, we visited my family and celebrated my mother’s birthday. Because the German railway decided to have a major construction site on the day of our return journey, we used a rental car (the first time I booked a rental car – apart from car-sharing, of course). And I can’t say it any other way, even if the train is delayed, traveling by train is more relaxed. You can use the time during the journey, even if it’s just watching videos. In the car, you have to stay continuously focused on the road and the other road users.</p>
<p>Yesterday was the company location’s Christmas party. Even though I’m not the biggest fan of such events, sometimes it’s nice to see colleagues from the company, especially those from other projects, and exchange ideas. Yesterday, I learned that there might be a possibility to use an Enterprise ChatGPT version for work. Let’s see if I can soon delegate some annoying parts of programming to AI.</p>
<p>Tomorrow would be my father’s birthday, the seventh one we can’t celebrate with him. But at least tomorrow, I will visit the cemetery.</p>
</div><p><a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/november-23#interactions">Interactions & Comments</a></p>It’s that time of the month again for a new recap. November has passed, so let’s see what happened in the last 30 days…My default apps and services in late 20232023-11-08T08:32:44+01:00/posts/default-apps-late-2023Apps<audio controls="preload"><source src="https://media.jlelse.blog/8fc0b30754793f978712bd64189c1ed929b6574acb9542f97ed131ddb9ecfdd4.mp3"></source></audio><div class="e-content"><p>To join <a href="https://defaults.rknight.me/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">another trend</a>, here’s my list of default apps and services in late 2023.</p>
<p>Here’s the standard list:</p>
<ul>
<li>📨 Mail Client: 💻 Thunderbird / 📱 K9-Mail</li>
<li>📮 Mail Server: Purelymail</li>
<li>📝 Notes: Simplenote</li>
<li>🟦 Photo Management: OneDrive</li>
<li>📆 Calendar: Baïkal with DAVx⁵</li>
<li>📁 Cloud File Storage: OneDrive</li>
<li>📖 RSS: Miniflux</li>
<li>🙍🏻♂️ Contacts: Baïkal with DAVx⁵</li>
<li>🌐 Browser: Firefox</li>
<li>💬 Chat: Telegram, Element, WhatsApp</li>
<li>🔖 Bookmarks: Firefox</li>
<li>📑 Read It Later: Private Telegram channel</li>
<li>📜 Word Processing: Word</li>
<li>📈 Spreadsheets: Excel</li>
<li>📊 Presentations: PowerPoint</li>
<li>🛒 Shopping Lists: Bring!</li>
<li>💰 Personal Finance: Excel</li>
<li>📰 News: Mostly SPIEGEL and different tech news blogs</li>
<li>🎵 Music: YouTube Music</li>
<li>🎤 Podcasts: Pocket Casts</li>
<li>🔐 Password Management: Bitwarden with Vaultwarden</li>
</ul>
<p>And here are some additions:</p>
<ul>
<li>🧑💻 IDE and Code Editor: IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio Code</li>
<li>🔑 VPN: Tailscale, WireGuard, AdGuard VPN</li>
<li>👥 Social Media: Mastodon</li>
<li>🌦️ Weather: Samsung Weather</li>
<li>💪 Fitness: Freeletics</li>
</ul>
</div><p><a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/default-apps-late-2023#interactions">Interactions & Comments</a></p>To join another trend, here’s my list of default apps and services in late 2023.On subscriptions 💸2023-11-04T21:30:01+01:00/posts/on-subscriptionsFinancesMoneySubscriptionsThoughts<audio controls="preload"><source src="https://media.jlelse.blog/4b47ab33d87961b70c5d42926aff0d0bd7520e2ee466eb2299fb8eedffec034b.mp3"></source></audio><div class="e-content"><p><a href="https://manuelmoreale.com/on-subscriptions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Manuel Moreale</a>, <a href="https://kevquirk.com/on-subscriptions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kev Quirk</a> and some others (in response to them) listed their subscriptions and what and why they are paying for them.</p>
<p>Given that finances and cost optimizations is one of my favorite hobbies (as a nerd or geek), I should also write a bit about my subscriptions. I already did so <a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/subscription-fatigue">three years ago</a>, but that was a different time. I was still studying and earning way less than I am doing today.</p>
<p>But in the last few months (after playing with apps and self-hosted services for personal bookkeeping), I took that Excel sheet from back then and improved it a bit, listed more recurring costs. I also added a sheet to get an overview of my wealth.</p>
<p>But today, let’s focus on subscriptions.</p>
<p>In my sheet there are also things like my contribution to the joint account with my partner, a savings plan, rent, taxes, and power for my second (work) flat. Which I consider subscriptions as well, but won’t list in detail here.</p>
<p>Thereafter, the next biggest regular expenses are my internet and mobile contracts. I already wrote <a href="https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2023/10/5g-chaos">some posts</a> about my plans to reduce the expenses for that by replacing the wired internet in the work home with a second SIM card from my unlimited mobile plan. I also care a lot about having unlimited mobile internet to have some backup in case the wired internet has problems, and I’m doing almost 100% remote work.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I also have insurances that are either mandatory or important enough for me to justify their price, like a legal protection insurance, household contents insurance or an insurance for car sharing. As I have no own car, but rent one whenever I need to. In total, that’s about €37 per month for insurances only on my name. Not a lot, as I regularly check and optimize contracts. Not included is a travel insurance that was recently saving us a lot of money after <a href="https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2023/09/catching-covid">getting ill during our summer vacations</a>. But that one is paid from the joint account.</p>
<p>I pay about €15 per month (actually paid per year, but I divided by 12) for access to paywalled articles from SPIEGEL and manager magazine. It’s the main source of daily news I read. A nice thing is the option to listen to the articles, as they have automatic text-to-speech for all articles that are not manually recorded.</p>
<p>I still have Amazon Prime, but I canceled my yearly subscription, and it’s running out in April. In the past, I ordered a lot at Amazon, but recently, I did way less, as I try to buy more consciously. And Next-Day-Delivery is also not always guaranteed. And I can’t remember the last time I watched something on Prime Video. If I miss Prime too much, maybe I can use my girlfriend’s student status, as long as she’s still studying.</p>
<p>I spend €6.62 per month on the server hosting this blog. Domains are in total €14.41 per month right now. Most of them are paid in dollars, but I let Excel convert that to Euros for me. In the last month, I deleted some of the domains I don’t need or want to have anymore.</p>
<p>Another yearly subscription is a discount card from the Deutsche Bahn (German Railways). With that, I get 50% off on all regular tickets and 25% percent on discount tickets. It just renewed for about €70, but next time, it will be €10 more. But it’s worth it for me even then because I always use the train for long-distance travel, whether when visiting my family 700 kilometers away, when I’m going to my hometown (about 150 kilometers) or for vacations.</p>
<p>As I’m investing in ETFs, I have a subscription at the broker Scalable Capital (€36 per year). That one enables me to trade for free under certain conditions. I’m not sure if it’s worth it, and I have to check if maybe another broker offers better conditions. Let’s see at the latest when Payment-For-Order-Flow is forbidden.</p>
<p>Another yearly expense is my membership at Codeberg. I’m a more passive member as I also don’t use Codeberg a lot, but I want to support them, why I’m happy to give them €25 per year.</p>
<p>You maybe wondered why I haven’t listed any other streaming services yet. I am currently subscribed to YouTube Premium but used some VPN tricks to get it for a cheap price. My current yearly plan is still running until October next year. Google currently tries to increase the burdens for these tricks, but I already enabled an automatic monthly subscription after October 2024 via another country, where this trick is still working. Let’s see if that will still be the case then, or if I then must pay the 13 Euros per month. I think when big corporations use all legal tricks to save on taxes and make use of globalization, why shouldn’t I also make use to pay less on those corporation’s services.</p>
<p>I use YouTube Premium for music streaming, but I also really enjoy the ad-free YouTube experience and the option to download videos. Yes, that’s also possible with the free NewPipe, but that app is regularly broken because of new technical challenges YouTube implements to block scraping or ad-blocking.</p>
<p>Other services and apps I am a paying user of:</p>
<ul>
<li>NextDNS for ad-blocking DNS (about €20 per year)</li>
<li>LanguageTool to check my writings (I have a 2-year-subscription for about €30)</li>
<li>Miniflux for following RSS feeds ($15 per year)</li>
<li>Blinkist to get audio-summaries of books (but I am unsure, whether I will renew this, last time I paid €10 for a year)</li>
<li>Komoot (about €10 per year — thanks to a first-year discount)</li>
<li>Bring for grocery shopping lists (€5 per year)</li>
</ul>
<p>Last, but not least, I pay 10 dollars per year to PurelyMail for their excellent purely-email-service. I am pleased with that service as there are no limitations on the number of custom domains, catch-all-aliases or even mailboxes.</p>
<p>Just a few cents per month also go to Scaleway for my backup storage and Bunny.net for my blog’s media storage. But that’s pay-as-you-go, so basically no real subscription.</p>
<p>One service where I paid for a subscription, but recently extended that subscription using a one-time-payment for lifetime, is Freeletics. I am using that app to get fit at home and so far, it’s working good, and I’m sticking to my routine for almost a year. That one, I also got cheaper thanks to some simple reverse-engineering on their website, but honestly, who is paying €500 for that? It’s just a more individual training plan, after all.</p>
<p>Do you have a good overview of your subscriptions? How much do you spend each month?</p>
</div><p><a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/on-subscriptions#interactions">Interactions & Comments</a></p>Manuel Moreale, Kev Quirk and some others (in response to them) listed their subscriptions and what and why they are paying for them.My October ‘23 in Review2023-10-31T21:08:38+01:00/posts/october-23Monthly Review<audio controls="preload"><source src="https://media.jlelse.blog/d7a05c034580b323fa6bc1b8c694a07c68c0cdfc70c296ea6288ffdbff25775e.mp3"></source></audio><div class="e-content"><p>Another month has come and gone, time to take a look back.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the month, it was my girlfriend’s birthday, and we spent a week in our hometown. Another weekend, I visited my family in South Germany. But most of the days were filled with getting up, having breakfast, working, chores, sports, and spending time together (mostly in front of the TV).</p>
<p>On the world stage, it has been another distressing month. Hamas is terrorizing and killing innocent civilians, and Israel is defending itself, sometimes not in the most delicate manner. This new conflict is overshadowing the ongoing war in Ukraine.</p>
<p>In addition, there were elections in Hessen and Bayern, revealing that there are more right-wing extremist tendencies in the population than feared. And then, there’s the whole debate about migrants.</p>
<p>I’m somehow tired of all this bad news…</p>
<p>That’s why, probably somewhat unintentionally, I’ve delved into the topic of fitness with YouTube videos. Videos of 90-day transformations give me additional motivation to stick to my own fitness program. I’m now nearing the end of my second “Training Journey” in Freeletics, and the “Hell Week” has begun. That means I’m doing sports every day now, not just three days a week. To stay committed, I’ve treated myself to the Freeletics Lifetime version. By analyzing network requests and cookies a bit, I managed to get a good discount. There, my inner nerd and smart spender (<em>Sparfuchs</em> in German) took over. 😅</p>
<p>And here’s another tool where I was able to save with these tricks and a VPN: <a href="https://languagetool.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LanguageTool</a>. It seems a bit more advanced to me than <a href="https://www.deepl.com/write" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DeepL Write</a> and also offers add-ons for browsers and Word. I’m just missing an Android app.</p>
<p>I haven’t forgotten about the topic of <a href="https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2023/10/5g-chaos">routers and 5G</a>. Firstly, my mobile provider activated NR SA (“5G Plus”) this month, allowing the use of <em>pure</em> 5G without LTE. Secondly, I got myself a GL.iNet Beryl AX, which, combined with the existing ZTE MC801A, makes a great 5G router setup. GL.iNet routers are fantastic; I wish I had known about them earlier!</p>
<p>Let’s see what November brings. 😊</p>
</div><p><a href="https://jlelse.blog/posts/october-23#interactions">Interactions & Comments</a></p>Another month has come and gone, time to take a look back.