"I'm so happy"
Today I learned my first random bit of Korean thanks to a reader of this blog and I couldn't be happier.
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All Blog Posts
This Little Piggie Went to the Pub
I commissioned a new avatar to use for my website and some social media channels. It's a little piggie having a beer, and I'm going to tell you how much I love it.
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Let's Create a Terminal Color Scheme
Trying to create my own terminal color scheme, I went down an intense rabbit hole. Find out what I learned and check out the cool tool I built to generate your own, personal terminal color schemes.
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A Short Trip to Athens 🇬🇷
I went on a short trip to Athens, Greece with the family. Here I'm sharing some pictures and impressions.
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You Might Be Better Off Without Pull Requests
Feature branches and mandatory pull requests have become a standard for a lot of modern software development teams. How did we get here? And does this really make sense?
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How I Made My Own Ham
I cured and cold-smoked ham this winter and I'm pretty pumped about the results. Let me show you some pictures and explain what I did.
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A Year in Review: 2023
Just before the year ends I'm taking a look back at 2023 and reflect on my personal highlights, the big things that happened and the things that had a lasting impact on myself.
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It's Time to Get Personal!
I used to think too much about what should and should not live on my personal website. Where's the fun in that? It's time to make my personal website more personal!
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The Hyperion Cantos
Dan Simmons' "Hyperion Cantos" is a series of science fiction novels and one of my all-time favorites. It's an epic tale of adventure, time travel, war, love, loss, and a giant-ass heavy metal creature wreaking havoc.
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Book Review: “Tidy First?”
My review of Kent Beck's “Tidy First?”, a short book on the "what", "when", and "why" of tidying code.
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Path to Production Mapping
Here's one from the consulting toolbox. Path to Production Mapping is a simple and effective tool that can help you understand, discuss, analyze, and improve how your team ships software to production. In this post I explain what it's all about and how you can use it.
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Browser Bookmarks on the Command Line
I wrote lnks, a small tool that helps you find and open browser bookmarks from the command line. It works well as a personal bookmark manager, for shared team bookmarks, and is just the right thing for people who love working on the command line.
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Book Review: “Learning Test-Driven Development”
A book review for Saleem Siddiqui's “Learning Test-Driven Development”. I think it's a great book and a modern take of Kent Beck's "TDD By Example".
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How Remote Work Changed my Life
About 1.5 years ago I quit my job, started working remotely and moved to a small town. I'm reflecting on how these changes have affected my life.
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Doppelkopf — 3 Years Later
3 years ago I started building a browser-based Doppelkopf card game as a pet project. Things have been quiet. Did I give up? Hit a roadblock? Nuke the git repo?
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Distraction-free writing with vim
Want to write without distractions and don't feel like buying an extra app for that? Here's how.
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Ham
An hommage to my nickname.
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Moving On
I'm starting a new job remotely after leaving the adventures of a consultancy behind. Some thoughts on this change.
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Testing Ansible Provisioning Locally
Learn how to test Ansible provisioning scripts locally
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A "Doppelkopf" Browser Game
I started implementing a browser game version of the German "Doppelkopf" card game and it's great fun. Read why I started doing this and what I've discovered so far.
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E-book Release of Testing Microservices
Yeah, the "testing microservices" post series got a little out of hand. If you prefer ebooks over blog posts I've got your back. I released the "testing microservices" series as an ebook.
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Testing Microservices - Java & Spring Boot
Learn how to test your Java & Spring Boot microservice, based on the "Testing Microservices" article
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Testing Microservices
Learn the concepts you need to build a reliable, fast and effective test suite for your microservices
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Remote Pair Programming With SSH & tmux
For many developers pair programming is the way to go. But pairing often becomes challenging as soon as people are working remotely. With a simple SSH and tmux setup you can have a very simple but effective setup for collaborating remotely using nothing but your command line.
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Fun and Useless Tools for Your Command Line
There are a couple of really great tools out there that can help you getting more fun out of your day-to-day command line use. These are some of my favorites.
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Make tmux Pretty and Usable - A Guide to Customizing your tmux.conf
tmux has its flaws when you use its vanilla configuration. I'll show you how you can customize tmux so that it fits your needs, is a little more comfortable to use and pretty to look at.
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A Quick and Easy Guide to tmux
tmux is a tool that can boost your productivity while using the terminal. Think of it as a window manager in your terminal with some extra fanciness on top. This post gives you an easy-to-follow introduction to tmux and explains its basic features and how to use them.
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How the metaphor of 'moving apartments' helps with your next Retrospective
Probably everyone has moved at least once in their life. It's a lot of work but also offers unique opportunities. This post will tell you how the metaphor of moving can help you get great results out of your next Retrospective.
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The Tweetrospective - spice up your next Agile Retrospective
I've recently tried a new approach for facilitating an agile retrospecitve based on Twitter. It was a fun and creative session and I got great feedback. Read what I've done, what I've learned and grab some resources to do it yourself!
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Import your DKB account into Homebank
Homebank is a great and free personal finance tool. I have written a small converter that allows you to import account data from DKB accounts.
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Working at ThoughtWorks, a three month retrospective
More than three months into my new job at ThoughtWorks I tell the story of my first day at my new job and take a first look in the rearview mirror to reflect about work, company culture and other remarkable stuff
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Goodbye Gütersloh, Hello Hamburg!
Today is my last day in Gütersloh. I'm leaving Bertelsmann after six exciting years. This post is about the my previous journey as a software developer and about my future in Hamburg.
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