2026-01-09 08:00:00
I started writing an intro about current world events, but you know what? I don't want to talk about it. It only puts me (and probably you too) in a bad mood, and I'd rather be in a good mood. So instead, here's a picture from a few days ago when it had just snowed for the first time, and snow always makes everything so much more beautiful! I'm currently reading The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, and I totally get why Calvin loves snow and winter.
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2026-01-08 08:00:00
So here's a story I just thought about because I saw a link to the Italian post on Mastodon which triggered a memory in me.
During my last year of University, in the winter of 2008/2009, I spent a few months in Italy, where I did an internship in an Italian tech company in a small town in the region of Veneto, not too far from Venice. I rented a small apartment in that town through an estate agent and paid the rent straight to my landlord, but because I received electricity and gas from the Italian energy company Enel, I had to pay these bills directly to them.
We had a bit of a rough start, Enel and I, because when I moved into the apartment, the electricity was turned off and it took them an entire week after I registered to turn it back on. I asked why it took so long and the response was "it will be turned on within five working days". And true to their word, they turned it on after exactly five working days. With two days of weekend in between. Thankfully this was in early September when it was still warm, so that was not a big problem, but a week of cold showers, not being able to cook and only having light from a few candles in the evenings was still not exactly fun.
Anyway, once they finally got round to turning the power back on (which must have taken AT LEAST two mouse clicks in their grid administration software!!), everything went smoothly. Paying the bills worked like this: Every month I would receive the electricity and gas bills in the mail, then I had to take these bills to the post office where they would scan them and then I had to pay the bill directly at the post office. I'd never seen a process like this before; in Germany you pay via bank transfer and that's it. But, when in Rome, do as the Romans do I suppose, and despite it being a bit inconvenient the process worked fine, so no issue there.
The problem came when my internship came to an end and it was time for me to return to Germany. How am I supposed to pay the last bill if I'm not in the country anymore?
I went to the estate agent and asked them what to do in this case, and they called Enel on my behalf, explained the situation to them and agreed that Enel would send the bill to them so they could forward it to me. Enel then gave them a long international bank account number, and once the bill arrived I was supposed to transfer the money to that bank account. So far, so good.
So I moved out of the apartment, paid the final rent to my landlord and returned home. A few weeks later the estate agent contacted me via email and sent me the final gas and electricity bills. I then tried transferring the money to the bank account number they had provided, only to find out that it wasn't possible because my bank told me that that bank account didn't exist. Probably some digits got messed up because the number was long and complex and was read out over a bad phone connection.
So I wrote back to the estate agent and asked them if they could get back in touch with Enel and confirm the bank account number. They did and sent me back an entirely new (but equally long) bank account number. So I tried the bank transfer again, and again it didn't work, number not recognised.
So once again I asked the estate agent what to do, and their response was "well, when you're gone you're gone". So I figured I tried, I demonstrated my good intentions and if Enel wasn't able to provide a correct bank account number it was hardly my fault.
And I never paid the bills.
I've been to Italy numerous times since then and nothing ever happened, but every time I'm there I'm ever so slightly worried that at some point a black car will pull up next to me with a bunch of Carabinieri jumping out, guns drawn, screaming at me to get on the ground, and then load me into the car and drive me to an undisclosed location where I'll be held until I paid my debts....
Well, that's probably not going to happen, right?
Right?
...maybe I'll go back for the 20th anniversary and finally pay my bills.
2026-01-05 08:00:00
The other day I took apart an old smoke detector. I looked at it for a bit until I thought I'd figured out how it works, and then I thought, hey, why not write a quick blog post about it, maybe someone else will find it interesting, too. And so I did and I put the post online.
Small problem though: I completely misunderstood how the thing actually works. Whoops.
Thankfully some folks on Mastodon pointed it out to me, so I did some research, realised what I'd gotten wrong, and corrected my post. Fixed and done, problem solved. But a bit of an uncomfortable feeling remained with me.
At the end of the day this is really no big deal, and arguably I learned more by posting the wrong thing than if I hadn't written about it at all, because now people corrected me and so I was, let's say, encouraged to look into it a bit more, which I probably wouldn't have done if I hadn't written the post because I would have just assumed that I was right. So ultimately this worked out well for me, even though I have to admit I was a pretty embarrassed when I realised my mistake.
This got me thinking though how easy it is to spread misinformation online, unintentionally or otherwise. We live in a world where everything from AI chat bots to Facebook tinfoil-hatters all the way to the richest and most powerful people in the world are spitting out a constant stream of misinformation and straight up lies all day long, and by now the web is absolutely drowning in it. And I hate it with a passion.
So my takeaway is this: In a world that's increasingly fake, filled with slop and misinformation and lies and where you can't be sure anymore about what's real and what isn't, I want to make sure that the things I post to the internet are correct. Even if they're as inconsequential and ultimately meaningless as explaining how a smoke detector works. I feel like I owe this to myself, and I also owe it to you, the reader.
It might not make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but it does make a difference to me.
2026-01-04 08:00:00
Last month I've lived in my current apartment for exactly 10 years, which means it's now time to replace the smoke alarms, which you're supposed to do after 10 years. When I was a kid, I always took everything I could get my hands on apart to see what it looked like on the inside, much to the dismay of my parents at times. Now, several decades later, things haven't really changed all that much. So, before bringing the old smoke alarms in for recycling, I decided to take one apart to see what's inside. 1
Here's what the smoke alarm looks like intact, and after prying it open (and almost losing an eye in the process because a piece of plastic snapped off and shot right past my face - oops!) we can see that there isn't very much in there at all.
(1) is the battery (I already snipped the wires so the thing wouldn't accidentally go off in my face), (2) is the piezoelectric speaker (the thing that goes "beep"), and (3) is the smoke detector itself on a small circuit board. Here's a closer look at the internals:
There's also (3) a button to test the functionality and (4) an LED which blinks in regular intervals to indicate that the device is still working. And there are a few electronic components on the back of the board.
So what's inside the smoke detector?
Surprisingly, almost nothing! In fact, there are only two things in there: (1) an LED, which is a light source (infrared, I assume) and (2) a photo sensor, which is a light detector.
So how does it work?
The photo sensor sees a certain amount of light that the LED emits. Since the chamber is black and largely closed with just a few openings around the sides, almost no ambient light can get inside and the amount of light that the photo sensor registers is always the same, no matter if the smoke alarm is in a bright or dark room.
Except when the chamber fills with smoke. Then the photo sensor will see less light than when the chamber is filled with clear air, and that's when the alarm will go off.
I got that completely backwards! Here's how it actually works: The photo sensor and the LED are misaligned, and the path from the LED to the sensor is blocked, which means the sensor can't see much, if any, light from the LED during normal operation. However, when smoke enters the chamber the smoke particles scatter the light, so the sensor can now detect more light from the LED than before, and this causes the alarm to go off. Damn. I should have checked this before writing the post.
Thanks to Lapo Luchini and ClickyMcTicker on Mastodon for correcting me!
It's such a simple thing, and yet it does exactly what it's supposed to do. I love seeing well-engineered solutions like this!
I should mention, there are smoke detectors that are filled with a radioactive material. I double and triple checked to make sure that this wasn't one of those before taking it apart. If you take one apart, make sure you know what you're doing!
2026-01-02 08:00:00
Over the last few days I read a lot of end-of-year blog posts around the small web, and I noticed that by reading personal blogs you get the full range of human experiences. Some people are doing really well and are in a good place, and some are unfortunately struggling due to health issues, financial uncertainty or the loss of a loved one. Life is unpredictable, sometimes things are great and sometimes they really aren't. I haven't written a 2025 roundup this year, but there have been some challenges for me as well, mostly regarding my health which hasn't been great these last few months, and it still isn't where I'd like it to be. There are also some changes in my professional life. But these are topics that I might talk about at some other time; suffice it to say that 2026 is going to be a challenging and interesting year for me.
I hope you are doing well, I wish you a happy new year wherever you are and whatever 2026 has in store for us all, we'll deal with it to the best of our abilities.
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2025-12-26 08:00:00
Last Linkdump of 2025! And maybe last post of this year too, I don't know yet. I just checked, and this is the 108th blog post I'm writing this year. I'm too lazy to do it now, but if I stitched them all together I would get at least a small book out of it. Which means I've written a book this year! Granted, a very confusing and disjointed book, but still. I always wondered how people write books, because it takes so long to write anything and a book is a lot of text. Well, this is how. Write consistently over a long period of time. In fact, this is how you do anything worthwhile, isn't it? Do it consistently over a long period of time. Wait, did I just learn a life lesson here?
Anyway, I think this is a good opportunity to say a big thank you to you all for reading my ramblings week after week, and for getting in touch with me via e-mail or Mastodon. Writing this blog has become one of my favourite hobbies, and this is in no small part thanks to the community of fellow bloggers, readers and online friends that has developed around it. Thinking about it, this year I received messages from people in both North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia/New Zealand, which is absolutely mind-blowing!
I hope you're all having a great holiday season wherever you are in the world, and I'm looking forward to continuing this in 2026.
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