Recent posts #
Self-hosting on localhost
Jul 4, 2022
As a software engineer with a bit of job-induced paranoia, I love the idea of escaping the claws of big tech via self-hosting. In recent years, a plethora of amazing free and open source projects have emerged, providing alternatives to everything from Dropbox and iTunes to Android Home. However, I don’t want to manage yet another server in the cloud, I already do that for work. Managed container services like Google Cloud Run or AWS Fargate are nice, but they cost money, and persistence and configuration is not always trivial, and you end up handing off a lot of control again. ...
A closer look at the Got-It Bluetooth tags
Jan 8, 2020
When I first heard of the Got-it Bluetooth tags, I just had to order a preview set. Those are active Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, embedded into a thin and flexible sticker, including battery. The proposed use case is asset tracking in commercial settings. They are 28mm x 76mm x 0.75mm Battery life is supposed to be one year Waterproof, flexible A preview set containing 10 stickers costs 99$, they plan to get the price down to $1/sticker Some pictures provided by Got-It here How I received my labels: ...
How to buy a car in the US as a foreigner
May 3, 2019
When I went to the US last year on a J-1 visa, I had to figure out how to buy a car. I had never owned a car before, and I obviously did not have a US driver license. If you are thinking about buying a cheap car for a road trip in the US to save on rental costs, it is probably not worth it: buying a cheap beater car exposes you to the risk of it breaking down, which will then cost you a lot of money to fix it. ...