One of these long weekends in May we spent at the Limfjord in Denmark, together with some friends. The landscape is so nice, so coastal. We stayed in a fantasitc wooden house in Lundø, a peninsula.

Water was always close by, as well as a playground for the kids. I really enjoyed that we didn’t touch the cars for four days and just came along with everything we brought: kayak, SUP, skateboard, inline skates, scooter, treasure hunt along the beach, playing in the garden, chilling in the hammock, …

So much time outside, so much fun!

• build as much as possible with HTML & CSS
• add web components for interactivity
• add a wrapper for your framework of choice, if needed

This keeps everything flexible and future proof. The web platform is stable and barely changes after all. 🙌

We spent today in the Fischbeker Heide and it was amazing! Saw so many animals: frogs, deer, lizards, even a snake, woodpecker, lots of ants. All this and it was so quiet, really nice with all the sun. A lovely day!

Combined with a CSS-in-JS library, this can also be build to be dynamic, getting the data including the emojis, from some CMS.

I went to Verona, Italy by night train with some friends at the first weekend in April. The trip by train was really nice, we slept surprisingly good.

After a stop in Innsbruck due to a slight delay, we had two days with great spring weather to discover the city and eat lots of delicious ice cream. It’s a nice escape to some southern flair and I really enjoyed the vacation feeling of these few days.

The city was quite crowded as a vine fairy started on that weekend. I will return for sure another time!

Two weeks ago, on our way to Verona by night train, we had a short stop in Innsbruck — impressive how this city is located in between the mountains.

More then ten years ago I tried reading eBooks with an entry level Kindle. I wasn’t convinced and sticked to physical books over the years. Last autumn I made a second try at digital reading – and this time I’m sold.

Note: I’m just very happy with the products & services mentioned here, I am in no way affiliated with them.

Why did it not work out last time?

One of the main pain points was the unsatisfying feeling when finishing a book: I wanted to place it onto my book shelf. As the shelf got quite cramped over the years I started to mostly borrow books from the library again. I had totally forgotten about the library to be honest.

I still like to go to a well sorted bookstore and look for interesting new books. I don’t get these from the library as it would be like cheating the store. Back then with the Kindle I had no choice to get the book in a digital version except from Amazon. And that would be a crime to my moral feelings.

Another thing that bugged me was that Kindle is an Amazon product. Since 8 years or so I don’t have an account with them anymore and try to avoid them as much as possible.

Selecting a reader

The trigger to look for an eReader was the problem every night: my wife wants to sleep already, I prefer to read a bit more but the light annoys her. How often did I try to read under my blanket in bed — neither comfortable nor enjoyable.

When I looked for a device I thought Tolino is the eReader to get in Germany. When I read reviews, it turned out that the software on recent devices seems to be really buggy. I was suprised about this, like how can a reader fail at turning pages… Kindle is out due to Amazon and Kobo isn’t really an option in Germany. I learned that the Tolino devices are actually Kobo hardware running with Android instead of a Linux system.

Somehow I came across Pocketbook and decided to get a Pocketbook Era.

Why I’m in love now

The device’s form factor is very nice, easy to hold with this side panel. For the quality of the reader I think all the recent ones are good compared to ten years ago. It has a background light which was a necessity for me.

As mentioned, I use my library a lot these days. The Pocketbook comes with an Integration to Onleihe by default, which is the eBook service of libraries in Germany. It’s such a great feeling to just tap a few times and have a new book ready to read!

The best of two worlds

And for discovering new books: the Pocketbook allows to set different stores as the default and I chose my favorite local bookstore, Cohen & Dobernigg. I can even go to the physical store, look for books and then buy the eBook right in the store.

As the Pocketbook has a cloud sync feature that syncs the eBooks themselves as well as the reading position, the new eBook will just appear on my device after buying a book in the store. Perfect, that’s such a great integration! 🥰

To satisfy my feeling of placing the book on a shelf, I signed up to literal.club: a nice overview of the books I read and that I want to read in the future.

It sure is nice to go through a physical book, but with all the analogue / digital combination it truly is the best of both worlds to me. I’m off, I have to read.

We spent our winter vacation in St. Anton, just like last year. It was a blast again! The kids made great progress in ski school and my wife and I could enjoy some days on the slopes together. 🥰

We had a lot of sun and snow as you can see. During the days the snow melted a lot and some meadows where already green. Hopefully they get some more snow soon.

AI is coming for your browser, your social media, and your operating system, too.

I don’t want this. Especially when Microsoft themselves warns people to do their own research on the results. Sure. Where will people look up the sources (if at all)? The same search engine they used to get this uncertain information? What a mess. 😵‍💫