Victor Kropp Modify

2025-12-23 15:49:08

Following last year’s tradition, here is a list of things I learned this year, one for each week.

1. Temperature inversion is a phenomenon in which a layer of warmer air overlies cooler air.
2. In the 1980s, a man with severe OCD shot himself in the head in an attempt to commit suicide. Instead of killing him, the bullet destroyed the part of his brain responsible for his OCD.
3. In 2003, there were between 50 and 100 people in the US who still had nuclear-powered pacemakers.
4. SQLite is in public domain, and open source, but is not open for contributions.
5. A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they’re in.
6. Trains in Switzerland must not have exactly 256 axles, or the signaling system gets confused.
7. Blue Monday is the name given to a day in January (typically the third Monday of the month) to be the most depressing day of the year.
8. git was able to track itself from day one.
9. In 2023, bands occupied just 4% of the music charts–compare to 41% in 1995.
10. A score bug is a digital on-screen graphic which is displayed at either the top or lower third bottom of the television screen during a broadcast of a sporting event in order to display the current score and other statistics.
11. The uninhabited Pheasant island in the river Bidassoa that separates France and Spain switches countries every six months.
12. In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Moirai—often known in English as the Fates—were the personifications of destiny.
13. There is a hidden feature to mark file as template in macOS.
14. European Council maintains a catalogue of ID, passport, driving license, and other legal specimens of many countries.
15. The Chinese room argument holds that a computer executing a program cannot have a mind, understanding, or consciousness, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave.
16. Sirtaki is not a traditional Greek dance, it was created for the movie Zorba the Greek (1964).
17. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
18. Bath foam prevents water from cooling, it keeps the water warm longer.
19. How an aluminum can is produced.
20. How a plastic bottle is produced.
21. You can get disenshittified Google search by adding &udm=14 to the search url.
22. The backside of the Bahraini Half dinar features the Bahrain International Circuit.
23. May 2nd is the International Harry Potter Day.
24. Bosnian-gauge railways are widespread in Austria. This is a legacy of the Austria-Hungarian Empire.
25. If you divide 1 by 998,001 you get all three-digit numbers from 000 to 999 in order, except for 998.
26. King of the Netherlands has a commercial pilot license and (co-)pilots KLM flights regularly.
27. A small Austrian village Serfaus has a 1.3 km long underground.
28. All maps in China must use GCJ-02 datum which obfuscates coordinates by applying random shifts.
29. Apple produced video game console and digital cameras in 1990s.
30. Palau’s capital Ngerulmud has no residents.
31. The Cinta Coster (Coastal Beltway) is a bypass of historical part of the Panama City built right in the ocean.
32. French word vasistas originates from German was ist das? Which is literally What is that? and means fortochka – a small ventilation window, which in turn is borrowed from Russian, which in yet another plot twist originates from German word Pförtchen (small door).
33. The Romanian word for chainsaw (“drujbă”) comes from “Дру́жба” (Drúžba, meaning “friendship”), which is the name of a Russian trademark that heavily exported chainsaws to Romania during the Communist era.
34. Estimated 3 millions mines were laid before the battle near El Alamein in the Second World War, most which remain there. The place is now called Devil’s Garden.
35. GMC made a motorhome that pumped sewage through its exhaust on purpose.
36. 15% of 5586 companies in the world older than 200 years are in Germany. Many of them are, unsurprisingly, breweries.
37. Popular German children detective series Die Drei ??? is based on the American The Three Investigators series, which I read when I was a teenager.
38. Mudflat hiking is hiking during low tides popular in northwest Germany and nearby countries.
39. A triple gauntlet track in Kaufungen, Germany.
40. Crayon color picker was added to Mac just for fun.
41. The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created.
42. IKEA meatballs were introduced 40 years ago.
43. Airport runaways are numbered with regard to magnetic north, except in northern Canada, where they use true north due to their proximity to magnetic pole.
44. Apple TV intro is made with practical effects.
45. It is possible to run Linux in a pixel shader. (Remember LLM in a font file from 2024?)
46. The Darién Gap is a remote, roadless, and dangerous area of rainforest on the international border between Colombia and Panama.
47. US Mint ended production of pennies on Nov, 12. The previous discontinued US coin was half-cent in 1865.
48. There is a single track metro station on a double track line in Bangkok BTS. Apparently, it was a temporary solution 🤷🏻‍♂️
49. Bulgaria joins Eurozone from 1 January 2026.
50. ßh invokes ssh on macOS.
51. How punycode works.
52. Typefaces designed to help dyslexics have no effect.

This is post 39 of #100DaysToOffload

2025-12-19 19:40:09

I used to have a number of social media accounts several years ago. And they were fun in the beginning. They helped to reconnect with old friends and find new ones, but soon these apps started to take their toll.

Twitter has declined rapidly after a billionaire acquired it and made it his personal toy. I quit it immediately after it was renamed. Mastodon and Bluesky haven’t reached the same levels of real engagement still. And I’m not sure if it would change anything for me personally.

Or consider LinkedIn: if you open anyone’s account there, it’s 99.9% success stories. People rarely share the struggles, countless hours of hard work, and sleepless nights on their road to a great release or personal promotion.

It has been proved by studies, that social networks induce anxiety, and I felt it myself. Everyone’s life as presented on Instagram is a fairytale. Although, I know that everyone only post their best moments there, intentionally or unintentionally creating an image of a perfect life, it doesn’t help. What could have been a good motivator, quickly becomes a huge demotivator.

I stopped posting and deleted Instagram app from my phone long time ago, but recently found myself checking it from the web. It sounded like an addiction. That’s when I decided to export all photos (they are mine after all!) and close my account.

My archived profile is now hosted on this site.

And the next steps are clear: do the same with all other socials. I can host my CV here instead of LinkedIn, and keep short posts in a special section of the blog too.

This is post 38 of #100DaysToOffload

2025-12-01 05:57:02

Nobody is perfect.

See the July’s one.

This is post 37 of #100DaysToOffload

2025-11-06 20:44:27

I’ve heard so much about HHKB, so I’m overly excited to have finally tried it.

No, I didn’t buy another keyboard (yet). I’m happily using my first and second custom builds at work and at home respectively. It is just one of my colleagues has been so kind to share his HHKB Professional Hybrid Type-S.

I’ve been using it for several days in the office, and wanted to share my impression.

First of all, it looks great. Snow-white, with blank keycaps, it is clean and minimal. Type-S stands for silent, and it is quiet, but I find my RD75 even quieter.

The Topre switches are one of the reasons this keyboard is so hyped. And they are interesting. I certainly wouldn’t mind typing on them even longer. But they are not enough to make a switch.

The main issue is that such layout is not for me. The chords to press ⌃⇧Tab, for example, or simply arrow keys are awkward. Of course, there are many blog posts claiming that one can get used to it. Sometimes, they mean after a few days of weeks, while others are talking about a year. And I’m absolutely not convinced that it is worth it.

The biggest issue, however, was that HHKB would never be the only keyboard I use. I’m pretty happy with my existing set, and I quite often need to type on the go on the MacBook’s built-in keyboard. Re-learning arrows and Ctrl position many times per day is a no-go for me.

So, thanks and it was a great pleasure, but I’m back to my old good friends.

And, yes, I struggled all the way through and typed, edited, and published this entire post on the HHKB.

This is post 36 of #100DaysToOffload

2025-08-01 04:02:11

It ain’t much but it’s honest work.

This is post 35 of #100DaysToOffload

2025-07-18 17:14:25

My favorite Lufthansa flight.

It’s a shame that when I once flew to Toulouse, I didn’t take this flight.

And the second one.

This is post 34 of #100DaysToOffload