2025-11-07 08:00:00
Thank god October is over. Usually I really like it - the trees are turning all kinds of beautiful colours, the leaves are falling, the wind is blowing the leaves around etc. But this October was terrible, because I was sick for most of it. A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was excited to go to the Retro Computer Festival. Well, I couldn't make it. There are some chronic issues that have been bothering me for a long time and they flared up again last month, and on top of it I seem to have caught some weird virus last week which knocked me out pretty good. I still haven't recovered from it and I'm spending most of my time on the sofa as a result.
I had some ideas for things I wanted to write on here, but they have to wait until I'm feeling better. Still, I wouldn't want to miss putting together a new Friday linkdump, so here we go! And fingers crossed November will be better.
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2025-10-31 08:00:00
Hey everyone, it's Halloween! Except it's not, because I live in Germany and we don't have Halloween, even though the media has relentlessly and with some success tried to introduce it over here as well in recent years. When I was a kid, Halloween wasn't a thing at all. We had a different tradition though in the area where I grew up which is Swabia, basically the South West of Germany. It went like this:
In the fall we would collect (in other words, steal) sugar beets from the fields, hollow them out, carve a scary face in them, put a candle inside and then walk with them from house to house, set them down in front of the door, ring the doorbell and hide and then say a small rhyme when the people opened the door. Then we'd usually get sweets. These hollowed out beets are called "Rübengeister" (Root Ghosts). This article has a picture of what the ghosts look like. Sounds familiar?
I always wondered if Halloween had some of our tradition mixed in that was brought over to America by German emigrants. Except they chose pumpkins instead of beets, because that's what grows over there. Pumpkins are also much easier to hollow out; roots are hard as hell and it was always a pain to carve into them, we hacked away at them with spoons and knifes and screwdrivers for hours. Still a ton of fun though. So, happy Rübengeister, everyone!
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2025-10-25 08:00:00
You might think that that's a really weird headline, and you would not be wrong. Let me explain.
In the 1960s the Atomic Age arrived in rural South Germany with the construction of the Gundremmingen Nuclear Power Plant at the Danube River, near the village of Gundremmingen, Bavaria. The power plant started producing electricity in 1967 and was expanded over the following years with two more reactor blocks and two massive, 160m tall cooling towers.
Wikipedia has a great article about the power plant. This is my favourite part:
"A protest group [...] was silenced using monies specifically set aside for the purpose."
Well great.
Anyway, fast forwarding a bit, in the early 1980s a young couple got married and decided to build a house in another Bavarian village, about 20km from Gundremmingen. In 1982 the young family's first child was born, and I think you can guess who that child was. The room I got was the one under the roof with the window facing east, towards Gundremmingen. And because of their massive size, the cooling towers were clearly visible from that window of our house.
Now I eventually moved into a different room at 14 and then moved out altogether at 21, but throughout my entire life whenever I looked out the window of this room of my parents' house, I saw the cooling towers of Gundremmingen steaming away in the distance. I remember that I was always fascinated by the sight of these towers, even though they appeared to be only about the size of my thumb when seen from our house. I think for a while I thought that that was how clouds were made - the steam coming out of the towers rises up and forms clouds in the sky. And I remember that I couldn't believe how incredibly huge they were when my parents took me there to see them up close for the first time as a little kid.
A few weeks ago I visited my parents, and as always the towers were there, visible in the distance. But that was the last time I saw them. Following the final shutdown of the power plant nearly four years ago, the cooling towers were demolished today at noon in a controlled detonation.
Unfortunately I wasn't there; it would have been interesting to watch, but it's a 2.5hr drive and the weather was pretty bad today so the towers were probably not visible from my parents house anyway. A lot of people went there to watch of course. Here's a nice video of the demolition on YouTube and my mum also sent me a few videos from people who witnessed the event firsthand.
So the next time I'm visiting my parents, probably on Christmas, the two cooling towers of Gundremmingen which are part of my earliest memories and which I've seen for my entire life won't be there anymore when I look out the window of my old room. Like a childhood friend of mine said (hi Markus!), the horizon will now look very different without these two massive towers in the distance. Indeed.
2025-10-24 08:00:00
This week I tried an experiment. I booked a small apartment somewhere in the countryside and went there for three days without bringing any devices with me that could go online. The only things I brought were a dumb phone, formerly known as, you know, a phone (so I could be reached in case of an emergency), an iPod for listening to music and an old laptop without wifi for writing. I went completely off the grid for several days for the first time in at least 15 years. And you won't believe what happened next! Actually, you probably will. It was nice and relaxing and calming. I think I'll write a bit more in a separate post, but tl;dr: it's great, I recommend it.
Because of this I don't have too many links today because well, I wasn't online too much, but I have a few. Enjoy, and treat yourself to some time offline after reading. It's nice.
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2025-10-17 08:00:00
I hope this week you all did The Right Thing™ and threw away your old Windows 10 computers. If you haven't yet, what are you waiting for? These things are now a hazard to your and everybody's health and safety! If your computer is not on The List then I'm sorry, but it has to go. Bring it in for recycling, send it to landfill, set it on fire in your backyard if you have to. But it can't be used anymore. It's impossible. Nobody is more heartbroken about this than Satya Nadella, but what can he do? Microsoft spent at least tens of dollars on research and they concluded that there is absolutely no way to keep using these old computers. It can't be done. They have to be discarded, and new ones have to be bought. And who are we to argue with Microsoft. They would never lie to us out of sheer corporate greed, right? ...right?
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2025-10-10 08:00:00
It's Friday again! Which means tomorrow is Saturday, and tomorrow is Retro Computer Festival at HNF in Paderborn, Germany. HNF is an amazing computer museum which alone is worth a visit, but RCF makes it all the more interesting because it's an exhibition of all kinds of retro computers by hobbyists who present their machines, and you can usually just walk up to a computer and sit down to explore it. I've been there twice and always really enjoyed it, so I'm looking forward to going back. Also slightly anxious because my health isn't great right now, but I'll manage. Here are a few pictures from last year, and Nostalgia Nerd made a great video about the museum a while ago which I already shared, but in case you missed it then, here's another chance to check it out ;)
Alright, enough about me. On with the links.
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