2024-11-22 08:00:00
Friday has arrived, which means it’s time for another linkdump to start the weekend right. At least the online part of the weekend. Please don’t spend your entire weekend on your computer :)
Articles
Software/Services
Videos
Around the Small Web
2024-11-19 08:00:00
I keep up with Youtube via my RSS feed reader, where I subscribed to the channels I like through the RSS option from Invidious (yewtu.be in this case). Basically I go to https://yewtu.be, find the channel I like, get the RSS feed from there and add it to my feed reader. Last week though this mechanism broke, and so I needed to figure out a new way. Here’s how this went.
This is basically a retelling of a conversation over on Mastodon, but it was so cool that I wanted to mention it here.
I described my problem here and asked if anyone knew of a good way to subscribe to Youtube channels via RSS feeds. Many years ago you could do that right on Youtube, I remember channels had an RSS button on their site. But that went away long ago because people are supposed to use the app goddammit!
Anyway, I still like RSS the best, so I wanted to keep it this way. A few people chimed in, Dom mentioned that it’s still possible to get RSS from Youtube if you know the channel ID which is somewhat hidden. Jon mentioned that FreeTube can do export RSS feeds, which I tried and was actually happy with.
But then PeskyPotato, who I’ve never interacted with before got in touch and mentioned that it should be possible to subscribe to RSS feeds from Youtube with the channel name in the URL as well. Turns out that this is not the case, it was a feature of their RSS reader instead.
But here comes the amazing part. Apparently this annoyed them enough so they figured out that you could get the channel ID from yt-dlp, and then they coded a webtool that does it for you!
Have a look, here’s the explanation how it works and here’s the webtool. Just enter the URL of the Youtube channel and you get the RSS feed URL back.
And I can’t get over how freaking cool this is! I posted a minor annoyance online and a complete stranger sat down and actually coded a solution for my problem that went way beyond what I would have done myself to solve this problem. Sometimes people do amazing things.
So PeskyPotato, thank you very much for this! You have my respect, this is just beyond amazing to me.
2024-11-15 08:00:00
I can’t believe another week has passed, time moves so fast… but this also means it’s time for another linkdump. I actually find myself referring back to my old linkdumps quite regularly, they have become a kind of bookmarking system for me and a way of keeping track of what I was interested in in the past, so I think it’ll be a lot of fun to look back on them a few years from now.
Articles
Software/Services
Hardware Projects
Around the Small Web
2024-11-10 08:00:00
Since I wrote about losing my job in June, I figure it’s also fitting to write about starting a new job last week. So here we go.
I found the job through a recommendation by a former colleague from my last company (the one that fired me), because he had the good sense to leave there before everything turned to complete crap. In his new company they were looking for embedded developers with a focus on embedded Linux, which is exactly what I’ve been doing in the last job as well and which I enjoy doing anyway, so that worked out perfectly. So now we’re colleagues once again, for the third time actually, because we also went to university together.
So how is it? It’s only one week in of course, so it’s too early to tell for sure, but I have a few initial thoughts and feelings about it.
The work is good. It’s exactly what I expected, putting Linux on embedded devices, and even though the devices are different than the ones in the last company, the process is pretty much exactly the same. So I felt comfortable right away.
The colleagues are great as well. Nerds of course and pretty much only men, which is standard in this profession unfortunately, but all very nice and welcoming and helpful.
The IT equipment is top notch, coffee and drinks are free, the coffee is terrible because that’s just how office coffee is, but it does the job of keeping you awake and focused.
There are a few downsides however.
The biggest one without a doubt is having to go back to using Windows and Teams and Outlook and all the other Microsoft crapware that comes with it. This is my first time using Windows 11, and I hated it right away. My computer is a laptop with the latest-gen i7 8 core CPU, 32GB RAM, NVMe SSD… it’s a fast machine. Yet Windows 11 makes it feel like a 15 year old Core2Duo with barely enough RAM to make it run at all. Everything is so sluggish! I could write a whole article about how terrible it is, and maybe I will at some point, but for now let’s move on.
The building is your standard Ugly Office Building from the 90s, which is better than Ugly Office Building from the 70s for sure, but still not a place that feels like it was made for humans to feel comfortable in. Long narrow windowless corridors, ugly and slightly worn down furniture, carpeted floors, dimly lit bathrooms and coffee kitchens… it’s a far cry from the open spaces with large windows and lots of natural light that modern buildings have. On the plus side, the offices are not too big but with huge windows, and there is no open-plan office, it’s just two or three people per office so the offices are reasonably quiet and you can actually focus on your work.
The company is a big corporation, but the division I’m working for is in the process of being sold to a different company, and it isn’t public yet who the new owners are going to be, so change is on the horizon. This can be both a positive or a negative, but for now I’m keeping an open mind and just wait for what’s to come.
There is one thing though that I absolutely love about working there and that I was very excited about: the office is just about a kilometre away from where I live, so after years of commuting for 30-60 minutes or more each day my commute is now a quick 5 minute bike ride or a less than 15 minute walk. And for this, I’m absolutely willing to put up with ugly office furniture and bad coffee. At least for a while.
2024-11-08 08:00:00
It’s Friday again, and what a week it has been. There’s political turmoil in the US, there’s political turmoil at home in Germany. I started a new job this week and am very exhausted as a result, but thankfully I work a four day week, so I can start to unwind.
I haven’t been online too much this week and I definitely tried to avoid the news, so I thought today I’d just post a few of my favourite posts from blogs I follow from the past week, and maybe there’s a few blogs or posts in there that you didn’t know yet.
Some of the people in this list I interact with online quite regularly, so this is actually starting to feel like a list of “this is what my (online) friends have been up to this week”, which is quite nice.
Around the Small Web