After babbling about Products People Want to Use I started to work on a shopping list app. Not because I had a strong vision of what I wanted to build, no, only to have something to work on and not lose my momentum.

The app, called Zettel, reached an interesting stage I felt was worth sharing. It looks great, it is more or less feature complete and it works, I've used it for all of my recent grocery shopping trips.

There's only one catch: It doesn't feel right. Stanley Kubrick said "The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not in the think of it." and this is one of those moments. Something about the gestures, the giant tap targets and how adding items works is not right. The vibe is off.

I still have a couple of ideas that will most likely result in a complete redesign of the whole app. Before that happens, I wanted to share the current state for archival purposes.

Remember how I proudly proclaimed that I'm done with Wordpress and moved this blog to Astro? Well, that didn't last very long. I still think that Astro is great but it feels like it's better suited for marketing websites and maybe web apps than blogs. The one thing that got me in the end was the fact that I did not manage to create a proper RSS feed with images and other bells and whistles.

The first and last time I felt envious was when my friend Kjell got a Mac before me. It’s not that I grew up in a particularly wealthy household—quite the opposite, in fact—but I had never wanted something as badly as my first Mac, feeling as though my future as a designer depended on it.

It took me a while to recognize the feeling, and I experienced quite the epiphany when I was finally able to label what was ruining my mood. I believe this was my first instance of practicing introspection.

It was also the first time I decided I didn’t want to feel a certain way and began to work on changing my perception of the situation. I wanted to be happy for my friend.

This experience was significant and continues to resonate throughout my life. I consider self-efficacy one of the most important skills a person can have. Writing about my first Mac brought these memories back, and I hope Kjell never noticed my feelings at the time. Though I doubt it, as I also wasn’t very good at being nice back then. That, however, is a topic for another time.

It’s the Mac’s 40th birthday, and people on Mastodon are sharing their very first Macs.

Mine was a Mac Mini G4. I didn’t even realize that I actually had started using Macs before the Intel transition happened until I read the Wikipedia article about it just now. The hardware specifics didn’t interest me back then. Fifteen-year-old me wanted to become a designer and knew that all the designers he looked up to used Macs, so there was really no choice.

My previous computer was a very old and very slow PC that didn’t even run the games all my friends were playing together online. Let’s not even talk about the performance of my pirated copy of Photoshop CS2.

Unboxing and placing the Mac Mini on top of my weird glass corner desk felt like receiving a ticket into a whole new world. I finally could do the things I saw designers do online. OS X felt like it was a gift from the gods. Everything was pretty, worked well, and instilled in me an appreciation for excellence that I hadn’t felt before and that is still going strong.

Looking back, that Mac Mini G4 wasn’t just a piece of tech; it was the starting point of my design journey. It turned my aspirations into real projects and set the standard for what I expect from technology. As the Mac celebrates its 40th, I realize it’s not just about the machine but about the doors it opened for me. It’s funny how a small box can play such a big part in your story.

The other day, I realized why I’m not motivated to finish my current app project. It’s a gratitude journal that isn’t crammed full of esoteric features and inspirational mantras. It would fit perfectly into my existing product portfolio and is genuinely fun to use.

After forcing myself to work on it for a couple more weeks, while only making incremental improvements, I couldn’t pretend anymore and took a few days off. Then it finally hit me:

It’s yet another app people don’t want to use.

They think they want to use it. They know they should use it. But in the end, it’s one of those “I guess I should try to incorporate this habit into my life” apps. Just like my others:

• Henlo: “I guess I should start reaching out to friends more.”
• Stoins: “I guess I should walk more.”
• Peat: “I guess I should work on my habits more.”

I might be a bit biased, but all of those are great apps. They actually help people achieve their goals.

It’s just that I don’t have it in me to create another app like that right now.

Improving your social life, health, and habits takes weeks of work before you notice a difference. I’d like to work on something that provides value as soon as you download the app.

I decided that my next app will provide value in seconds. I put the gratitude journal app on ice and started working on a little app that solves one of the annoyances in my life.

Yay for not succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy.

Disclaimer: This is going to sound extremely petty. Poor baby is frustrated because he logistically can’t spend €4000, oh no!

Attentive readers know that I’ve been talking about how VR and AR are going to be the future of interfaces for years. One of the main reasons for me finally getting into coding was knowing that I had to be able to manipulate real interfaces directly, especially when interface design is entering the third dimension.

Apple’s Vision Pro announcement came quite a few years after I first pronounced XR to be the future of computing. I immediately put the required money into a budget meant for Vision Pro as soon as it would become available. It was my goal to be there, on day one, playing around with the hardware, writing software, and experiencing the new frontier of interface design firsthand.

Well, that didn’t quite work out. I somehow didn’t expect Apple to only sell it in the US at first. That, combined with the fact that you need to go to an Apple Store to have your face and eyes measured for the device to be properly set up, creates a logistical hurdle that I’m not willing to jump over. I won’t fly to the US just to buy a device.

So, this is me, frustrated that I have to sit on the sidelines, watching other people discover a device I’ve been waiting for for years. This is obviously irrational because I’m not actually losing anything, except perhaps for a head start in spatial computing experience but still… it hurts a little.

At least it’s a good exercise in patience.

It just so happened that I now live in a city where I don’t really know anyone. That could be a problem, but only if I let it become one. Instead, I want to embrace it as a project.

If I were someone who defined a Cortex style yearly theme, my theme for 2024 would be “The Year of Friendship”. Numerous studies, scientists, and - I guess - life coaches agree: Your relationships shape your life. Having a robust social life is key to happiness. The book The Good Life discusses this at length. It’s about the Grant Study that has been running for literally generations and conclusively shows that people consider their life to have been a good one when they had strong relationships.

My condolences to myself, as I don’t have a choice and somehow have to make new friends.

This shouldn’t be hard. Statistically, nearly half of the German people my age feel lonely. I just have to find those who are eager to change something about their situation.

Unfortunately, I’m not somebody who signs up for soccer practice or some kind of choir. I actually can’t come up with any group activity I’d like to do, except for joining a book club, but there doesn’t seem to be one in Schwerin. I’d start one, but… yes, I don’t know people yet. Apps like Bumble BFF are a no-go as well, I’m afraid. Nobody seems to use them here. Working remotely also removes the possibility of befriending colleagues.

Which leaves me with a couple of not very good ideas for now:

• Joining a gym. I’d do this anyway, and it’s not the most social thing ever, but it’s something where I might meet people? Maybe?
• Getting into running. That’s on my bucket list for this year as well, and - again - not a very social activity, but as soon as I become something of a runner, I can join some kind of running group…? That’s something people do, right?
• Bouldering? I guess? I did this once and it ended up with me having to ram thrombosis injections into my then-girlfriend’s leg every day for six weeks. The half hour of trying to get up a fake-mountain was kind of fun, though. But do people make friends while hanging off an indoor cliff?
• Start working in coworking spaces and cafes. This one has potential. The only problem is that I actually like to work when I’m working, and I tend to be focused and not very talkative when trying to get stuff done. I would need to not do that and instead try to talk to people. “Hello, fellow human, what are your thoughts about caffeinated beverages?” This will be great.

Why is this list so sports-heavy? Something like competitive knitting or hackathons would be much more in my wheelhouse. Unfortunately both aren’t available.

I’m optimistic that something will work, even though I haven’t found the perfect solution yet. This post isn’t supposed to sound self-pitying. It’s just the text I can link to when I tell you about all the friends I made in my review of 2024. There will be check-ins along the way. Looking at this like a project makes it easier for me to actually try new things and see what works.

If you have other ideas, or by some kind of freak accident, know somebody who lives in Schwerin and needs somebody to hang out with, let me know.

I’ve been using WordPress since I was 15, which is now over 15 years ago. Since I never bothered to learn PHP or read the documentation, I’d be lying if I said I knew how to actually build something with it. I’ve always relied on friends for help.

This is the first time in forever that I’m blogging on something other than WordPress. There’s no backend, no theming, no plugins, and for the first time, I actually understand how to add whatever I want.

It feels great.

There’s a slight chance that I’ll grow tired of using a static site generator as my blog framework, sure. But in the context of my ongoing effort to get better at coding, I feel like gifting myself this playground, with all its possibilities, might make the few downsides worth it.

Look at this cool library of all the books I’ve read in 2023! I wouldn’t even know where to start with something like that in Wordpress.

Just a day after leaving Berlin for good, I got sick for the first time in seven years. It wasn’t Corona, just the flu. There I was, feeling lousy, with all my stuff still in boxes, in a new apartment, in a new city, smack in the middle of winter.

Not exactly the greatest start.

I noticed my mental health starting to slip. Over the years, I had developed several daily rituals that amounted to what I’d call a healthy and happy life. But being too weak to walk for more than a minute for about one and a half weeks, I couldn’t keep up with any of them.

Now, two and a half weeks later, I’m mostly back to my old self. Feeling strong, hitting 10,000 steps daily, and pushing myself to do something productive for at least an hour each day. I’m not just over the flu—I feel like myself again.

Then Gigabyte got sick. She couldn’t open her eye fully. At first, I thought it might just be a passing thing, but it got worse the next day. So there I was, new city, no trusted vet, and no idea how to navigate around here.

Turns out, this was a hidden blessing. I had to tackle this issue head-on, learned that calling a taxi the traditional way still works—kind of a throwback experience. I found a great new vet I’m really happy with, and Giga’s eye is almost back to normal. It’s just conjunctivitis, nothing that a few eye drops (3 times a day, five days in a row. She’s not amused) can’t fix.

The upside of all this was it made me feel like I’d really settled in. My apartment’s turned into a cozy space, and I’ve been making use of what’s available in my new neighborhood. It’s working out well. This gave me a sense of progress, like I’m moving in the right direction.

Growing pains!

It’s not surprising to read something like what you’re about to at the beginning of a new year. People find time to relax and think over the holidays. They find motivation, feel like everything is possible, and decide to finally give it a go in January. Whatever “it” may be.

For me, it’s gardening. Digital gardening. Because I needed to code something and my current app project (more on that later) needed a bit of time to breathe, I started playing around with a couple of web frameworks. The previous iteration of this site used good old WordPress, but I never felt like I was able to sculpt it to my liking, even after more than 15 years of using it.

These lines are now powered by Astro. My current goal is to use this not only as a blog but as a playground for whatever comes to mind. A flexible canvas for all things I’m interested in. Something I’m able to craft into whatever I need it to be. I never got there using WordPress, so this can be considered a freedom strike.