Now

Last update: Oct 29, 2026

Now playing: Danzig - Long Way Back From Hell

Daylight savings hit us last weekend and I’m still adjusting. Seeing how my evening walks with the dog turned into adventures in pitch black darkness from one day to the next made me realize how fast summer has passed – and how much I enjoyed every minute of it.

I didn’t write much recently. I tried to stay away from screens more deliberately. When spending time in front of screens I tried to make it less about doom-scrolling and reading nonsense, and more about learning, tinkering on my side projects, or reading something that doesn’t make me miserable (which, unfortunately, doesn’t include tech content, the news, or anything that resembles social media). Somehow “writing” didn’t make the cut and I feel it’s time to get back on track.

Side Projects

Doppelkopf Club remains the center of my attention when it comes to side projects. Most of the work I’m doing these days happens behind the scenes as I’m setting up a backend that could hopefully become the home for some community engagement in due time.

I’m deliberately taking my time with this project. Time is scarce and this project is competing with more important things in life. I found that I’m mostly using this project as a creative outlet that allows me to learn and create with my own hands. I’m deliberately using AI very sparingly (if at all) for this project because I’m enjoying the process of building and learning and coming up with my own thoughts and designs way too much. While the whole software industry seems to move away from doing things this way, this is my project and I get to do things however I want to.

Reading

• Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. You keep reading raving reviews about this one, about how it’s one of the better works of science fiction. I’ve got mixed feelings. There are some engaging themes in here around evolution, religion, language shaping and societies evolving. Ultimately it dragged on for too long and I didn’t really care for any of the characters involved. There’s a whole series of sequels to this one and I don’t think I’ll pick them up.
• Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. This one’s been on my reading list for years. I finally picked it up and enjoyed it a lot. I loved the dark setting, the flawed characters, the pacing, the dose of supernatural horror.
• Odyssey by Stephen Fry. Continuing my itch to dive into tales of Greek myths and heroes that started earlier this year with The Song of Achilles, I picked up Stephen Fry’s take on the Odyssey. I started it while spending a week of vacation on Crete and learning more about Minoan culture and finished it shortly after. Fry managed to capture one of the most famous stories of humanity, connect it to adjacent tales and sprinkle in just enough explanations of its origins and authors to keep me wanting to explore more.