SPARCed.org

Utrecht 2024

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 16:08:27 +0200

Another year, another visit to the old colleagues in Utrecht and a nice opportunity to lock myself up in a hotel room to make some noise. Unfortunately, my default hotel in Utrecht seems to have two parts.. a more modern front side which has all the amenities like air conditioning, but it’s a bit noisy, because of people gathering in front of the KFC downstairs. The back part is a lot quieter, because it opens up to a back yard shared with a couple of apartments, but those rooms don’t have air conditioning and with the humid heat this summer, the stay was slightly strenuous.

But, I got away from everyday chores at home, had a nice dinner with the folks and even got some music done 🙂

In addition to that, I finally got to see the Domtoren without the scaffolding, it’s been in for the whole time I lived in Utrecht and I made a nice day trip to Rotterdam to visit the Dutch Pinball Museum, which was great. You don’t get to see many pinball machines these days in the first place, but the thing I hate about them is that you hardly get to see much of the game, because your quarter is long gone before you got anywhere. 🙂

At pinball museums, the machines are usually in free play mode, so you get to play as long as you want(or the queue behind you lets you) and you can actually make some progress and experience the great story-telling in many of these games. And the multiple storeys at the museum in Rotterdam were even greater than the smaller venue we visited in Amersfoort last year.. The number of machines seemed similar to the museum in Schwerin, Germany, but the selection was slightly better.. I basically got to play the real-world version of every machine I own in the Pinball FX3 game.

And of course, I did a little walking around in Rotterdam, which I never got around to while living in Utrecht.. I did visit Rotterdam by velomobile, but I never really explored much beyond the cube houses and the “Buttplug gnome”. Something I always found a bit unfortunate, because my initial plan was to move to Rotterdam and I “ended up” in Utrecht, which proved to be unexpectedly great.

Due to the heat, I spent most of the time in my hotel room, enjoying the quiet and learning the ins and outs of some of my music equipment, though.

Utrecht

Domtoren

Hotel room music studio

Dutch Pinball Museum

Domtoren

Meeting up with the old colleagues in Utrecht

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 16:08:27 +0200

I’m not usually someone to celebrate birthdays, stemming from my rather sub-par coming of age.. But I started missing my cool colleagues from my job in the Netherlands, so I decided to invite them to a night out and boy was it a good decision. 🙂

I’m not going into too much detail here.. I just enjoyed being in Utrecht for a couple of days again and met up with the colleagues at Daebak BBQ for a nice, flat-rate dinner and since we haven’t seen each other for a while, most of the Utrechters agreed to join me on visiting the Pinball Lounge in Amersfoort the following day.

The 3000 dollar typo

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sat, 20 Aug 2022 00:13:28 +0200

Aah, the wondrous world of AWS and it’s time-based billing…

A couple of jobs back, we were working on transforming a big legacy application to run as a cloud-based service, AWS being the cloud provider of choice.

So far, so good.. One day, I was trying to make sure some of the legacy SPOFs were able to migrate freely between availability zones(multi-AZ EBS volumes weren’t a thing back then). The idea was quite nifty, I thought.. Using the Data Lifecycle Manager to create snapshots of each data volume, so the last snapshot won’t be more than 2hrs old (the minimum snapshot interval at the time) and then do a final snapshot and recreate the volume in the correct AZ in case an EC2 instance switched AZs.

So there I went and wrote up a Lambda function that could be triggered by the EC2 startup and shutdown hooks and it would halt the machine, make sure the volume is available in the right AZ and continue the boot. After a couple of tries it all worked reasonably well and I decided to give it a try on one of our development environments that were shut down every night and I was expecting to see some AZ movements there..

And after applying the terraform code, I found a log message that could be more helpful and adjusted it manually, as you sometimes do. I called it a day and went on to do something different the next day.. At the end of the next day, I finally came around to fixing the log message in the code and apply it to the environment.

Now.. A couple of days later, my manager came up to the team to ask about the 3000 dollars in logging cost that ran up within just a day and upon investigation, we found out that is was my Lambda :D

Usually, ordering a new EC2 instance and waiting for it to boot feels like it takes forever, but somehow, halting an instance, having a Lambda function throw a Python stacktrace and discarding the instance to try again is fast enough to rack up a couple of thousand of dollars in Cloudwatch logging :D

Stag-do in the Harz mountains

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sat, 07 Sep 2019 16:08:27 +0200

While I was just writing about my tent-friendly colleague, I got an invitation to his surrogate stag party. Since he’s a little more outdoor-sy like me and less of the party-going type, we did a little less drinking and a little more hiking up one of the highest mountains of Northern Germany, the Brocken in the Harz mountains(although it only is 1141 metres above sea level).

I have fond memories of the area, because it was customary for schools in my home town to do one or two week-long excursions to the area, but today’s sight is a little different. Less of the lush greenery of my youth and more of the effects of decades of monoculture and beetle infestations, but at least the old steam train is as idyllic as it was back then.

Autumn camping in Grömitz

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sat, 20 Oct 2018 16:08:27 +0200

I’m not the only nutjob going out camping in the winter, it seems. I found a colleague, who’s enjoying it just as much, but for completely different reasons. 🙂

Personally, I just like the vibe of off-season vacation spots on the Baltic Sea a lot.. It has a weirdly eery feeling, seeing those empty hotels with the tinted windows toward the beach, maximising balcony exposure as much as possible.. But more often than not, there are also a couple of camping grounds around and we decided to spend the weekend there. My colleague testing out new gear, me enjoying the scenery without all the hubbub during the vacation season.

Two people, two tents

Sunrise over the sea

Cycling trip to Glückstadt

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 16:08:27 +0200

Well, what do you know? It took a couple of years after being run over by a car(while walking home from the bus stop) to feel well enough to cycle again and on this very day, I went to Glückstadt, a pretty little town a little up the Elbe river from Hamburg. But not only is Glückstadt worth having a look, the route out there can be quite nice, too(contrary to the image shown 😃).

Glückstadt harbour

A whole day of looking at my feet

Trip map

Mont St. Michel

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 16:08:27 +0200

Since last year’s vacations worked out so well, I decided to make use of my car and do another road trip. I’ve been to France a couple of times, but those have been overshadowed by a particularly bad New Year’s in Paris about a decade ago.

I wasn’t feeling to great back then and the stereotypical Paris experience didn’t help either(although it got better after I got back into speaking a little French for the last two days).. But since then, I’ve had a couple of invitations to IBM in Montpellier and down in the south, people are a little more relaxed and I really liked my stays there, so I decided to give it another go and I had a great couple of days driving around the Grand Est and the Hauts-de-France. I mostly stayed in the cheapest of cheap F1 motels, because they are reasonably priced, reasonably clean(most of the time) and provide ample parking right behind the motel.

Long story short: I really enjoyed getting out of my daily routine for a bit, watching the landscape zoom by and stretching my legs walking a few smaller cities and catching regional sights.

Mont St. Michel

Haffkrug

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 16:08:27 +0200

Somehow, I imagined car ownership a little different. Instead of hauling one of my folding kayaks out to the water, I catch myself going to places, just to get out of the apartment for a bit, get some driving practice and maybe get a couple of snapshots.

Stadthausbrücke at night

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 16:08:27 +0200

Today, it’s just a quick one. On my way home from work, I stopped at Hamburg’s Stadthausbrücke to make one of those long(-ish) exposure shots, I’m currently doing a lot of. 🙂

Stadthausbrücke

Trip to Tokyo

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sun, 13 Nov 2016 16:08:27 +0200

Like I said at the beginning of my US road trip, work was a bit tiresome, so I decided to have two vacations this year(and flights were available for cheap).

I spent the summer driving around the US east and in November, I went to Tokyo for a week(that’s probably the reason for the cheap flight tickets).

After riding a car for two weeks, piecing together the journey as I went, I decided to just stay in Tokyo, since I was only there for a week, had to get accustomed to the language again and most important: See what food options are available, since I’m allergic to fish and seafood. 🤪

So this was more of an exploration into what’s possible for me in Japan, because a lot of meals include Dashi, stock made from fish flakes.. For many Japanese people, it’s not even considered to be “fish”, but more of a flavouring agent and it’s not always included in the list of ingredients.

Either by selecting the right food or just by accident, I didn’t have any problems, even if I did have a bit of stock made with a bit of fish in a lot of water, so 👍.

Some people might disagree with me here, but I thought, a week or a little more was enough for a first trip to Tokyo, if you’re not super-social and don’t want to explore the night life. Or to put it in another way: After exploring a lot of the most common sights, mostly on foot instead of taking the train everywhere, I was a bit templed out and I was happy to return home. But ever since, I’ve been planning my return to explore some of the beautiful Japanese scenery. And with the two trips of 2016 and a little clever shopping, I’ve got enough bonus miles racked up to do so soon. 🙂

Side alley

Sensoji gate

Iron lanterns

Gundam statue

Budokan compound gate

Torii

Uguisudani station

Side alley

Marshall space flight center

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sat, 27 Aug 2016 16:08:27 +0200

The “Visiting places mentioned in MASH” plan didn’t quite work out(because I’d need to cross the (slightly) less eventful central states of the US), so I decided to go further south to visit the Marshall space flight center in Huntsville, AL for a fix of space race-era hardware.

And THAT was one of those few experiences you can only have in the US.. Sure, we’ve got the European space agency over here, but it doesn’t have the rich history of NASA and the space race, some of which could be seen here in person.

Destin over at Smarter Every Day has a few videos from there, if you’re interested.

Space shuttle dummy

Saturn V computer

Saturn V rocket

Louisville slugger factory

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 16:08:27 +0200

I landed in Boston with no real plan on what to do or where to go..

At some point during my “Visiting places mentioned in MASH” trip, it swung around to becoming a baseball trip.. Having visited the home of the Toledo Mudhens, visiting the Louisville Slugger factory seemed like a natural follow-up.

I got to see a very large baseball bat leaning against the factory building, I got to see Babe Ruth’s bat, got to see how the factory workers basically select a model or player’s name from a database and have the milling machine produce the selected bat in a matter of seconds!

And at the end of the tour, you even get a mini bat as a souvenir :-)

Huge baseball bat

Babe Ruth's bat

Souvenir mini bat

Rock'n'roll hall of fame

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 16:08:27 +0200

This day was the turning point of my trip, because to continue my MASH tour, I would have had to go for 500 miles to get to Ottumwa, IA to visit Radar’s hometown and then continue through the Great Plains and I didn’t have any set plan for such a distance(and back, to return the car, of course)..

So I basically turned around to use the opportunity to visit the Rock & Roll hall of fame, before heading south and it was the right decision. So many memorabilia of so many great bands in one place!

The ZZ top hotrod

A De La Soul necklace

Run DMC's stage gear

The museum's outside

Tony Packo's in Toledo, OH

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 16:08:27 +0200

Yet another milestone on the MASH part of my trip to the US of A: Tony Packo’s restaurant and their famous hot dogs 🙂

It was also my first collision with American restaurant culture and a bit of a culture shock. I had to take a seat at the bar to not block a whole table.. People were kind of eager to get me to order some more and in the end, there was the tipping.

Don’t get me wrong, most of it makes perfect sense, it’s just a little different in the old world, where tables are the norm, you notify the waiter if you want something(and he’ll only come around occasionally asking if you need something) and tipping is used to value good service, not a default to top up someone’s salary.

Anyway.. Had a great hot dog and the paprikas dumplings and before that, I had a visit to the 5/3 field and the Mudhens swamp shop for a couple of souvenirs. Who would have known that baseball jerseys are made of such a thick fabric? Probably everybody who’s slid to base in one 🙂

Tony Packo's hot dog restaurant

Niagara

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 16:08:27 +0200

So today I fetched the car from the rental agency, still a little confused about forfeiting insurance at the agency and relying on the rental car insurance included with my credit card, but at least I rested enough to be able to drive and boy, what a country to drive in.. Once I left Massachusetts and entered upstate New York, the landscape was a lush green with loads of forests, idyllic little villages and homes off the beaten path and while being in the area, I used the opportunity to stop at the Niagara falls which were cool, but just a set of waterfalls, loads of people being there for the same reason I was and a relatively run-down city.

The motel I was staying at fit the description as well.. a noisy AC unit, protective plastic peeling off most surfaces and a broken shower, so a quick wash in the bathroom sink had to do. In addition to that, I got to listen to the maintainers of the motel arguing most of the time through a door between the reception and my room.

Friendship bridge

Niagara falls long exposure

Boston

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 16:08:27 +0200

The year is 2016 and work proved to be a bit stressful, so it was time to plan a proper vacation. Having just gotten my driving license(I didn’t need one before), I could surely use the practice and decided to have it in a place built for cars: The US of A.

So I booked a flight to Boston, because I thought New York might have been a bit hectic for driving(more on that later) and once I landed, I headed straight to the HI Hostel to sleep off my jetlag before going into traffic.

With me being 6'4, flying usually isn’t very comfortable, so I spent the first day in Boston with just a small walk and grabbing a bite to eat, a lock for the dormitory locker and start what was planned to be a road trip following MASH characters, starting in Boston with Trapper John McIntryre and Charles Emerson Winchester III.

I’m not going to write a post for every day of the trip, just a few of the more memorable ones.. So let’s circle back to the “driving in New York” thing: I was right not to start my trip driving out of New York City, because on my way back to return the car in Boston, I got to drive through a remote bit of NYC during the evening rush hour and got to experience the length of the New York second a couple of times. Even with the A/C in the car on arctic blast, you could wring out my shirt after I got out of it. On the plus side: The rental company didn’t charge me for the bridge toll I missed, because I wasn’t aware of it and had no cash on hand, so they probably just scanned my number plates and billed the company. 🙂

Entrance to Chinatown

The famous Cheers bar from TV

Deutsches Technikmuseum

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sat, 04 Jun 2016 16:08:27 +0200

It took me several years to set foot into Berlin again(my professional stint here left a somewhat lasting impression 🙂), but after working in the vicinity, I’ve always wanted to visit the Technikmuseum and now that I did, it really delivered. I love museums that cater to my broad spectrum of interests and there’s pretty much something for everybody here.

There’s old radio equipment, old factory equipment, airplanes, trains, you name it.. If it’s somehow tech-related, there’s an area for it and it’s a lot bigger than the outside lets on 🙂

Overall, the trip to Berlin wasn’t bad at all and there’s been a lot to discover.

Saba Radio Werbeschild

Schild 'Das Abschlammen im Lokschuppen ist verboten'

Mercedes 460 Nürburg

Capn Crunch Phreaking whistles

St. Peter-Ording

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Sat, 19 Sep 2015 16:08:27 +0200

One of the benefits of living in Hamburg is that we get to choose whether we’d like to go to the North Sea or the Baltic Sea, two distinctively different bodies of water. Either you get to see the riviera-like resorts on the Baltic Sea, with it shallow and warm(-ish) water or you get to visit the slightly rougher North Sea with “proper” tides. This weekend, I went for the latter, watching the waves, nice cloud patterns and having all weird thoughts blown out of my head by the constant breeze.

Df Xl 262

website@sparced.org (André Naumann) — Thu, 07 Sep 2000 22:44:46 +0200

Photo used with kind permission from https://www.luehmannshot.me/

🇩🇪 (English translation below)

Du hast ein Video oder Foto von meinem Rad gemacht?

Schick! Ich find mein Rad auch hübsch.. Wenn du magst, schick mir doch bitte das Foto/Video oder einen Link dazu an dfxl@sparced.org , Danke!

Was ist das?

Das ist ein Fahrrad. Es hat drei Speichenräder, es hat Pedale und einen bequemen Sitz. Durch die Verkleidung sieht es ein bisschen aus wie ein kleines Auto, aber es hat keinen Motor, also ist es rechtlich ein Fahrrad.

Hast du das selbst gebaut? Ist sowas teuer?

Nein, ich habe es nicht selbst gebaut, sondern bei InterCityBike in Dronten in den Niederlanden gekauft. Gebaut wurde das Rad in Rumänien, weil die über 100 Stunden Handarbeit dort einfach billiger sind. Insgesamt ist so ein Rad nicht gerade billig, aber durchaus noch im Rahmen von z.B. schickeren Rennrädern.

Wie schnell fährt sowas?

Kommt immer drauf an, wer drin sitzt 😀 Bei mir selbst hängt es stark vom Trainingszustand ab und kann von superlangsam bis ca. 35km/h über längere Strecken gehen.. Wenns gut läuft, hab ich mit dem Rad ein Durchschnittstempo von 20-25km/h über 100km, unabhängig vom Wetter. Es kommt aber auch immer darauf ab, wieviel Steigung die Strecke beinhaltet und wie oft ich anhalten und anfahren muss, das kostet mit einem 25kg-Rad schon einige Körner. Die Übersetzung gibt jedenfalls so ziemlich alles zwischen 6 und 60km/h her.

Ist das nicht gefährlich? Übersieht man dich nicht leicht?

Mit seinen drei Rädern ist das Rad sehr stabil und auch bei höheren Geschwindigkeiten neigt es kaum zum Schlingern und durch die große Kontaktfläche zum Sitz weiss ich auch jederzeit, wohin das Rad fahren will.

Sollte es dennoch zu einem Unfall kommen, nimmt die Carbonhülle schon einmal viel Energie auf und ich rutsche wahrscheinlich ein ganzes Stück auf der Karosserie herum. Zudem fahre ich ja mit den Füßen voraus und nicht mit dem Kopf wie auf dem Rennrad.

Auch anders als beim Rennrad: Autofahrer halten mich oft für ein kleines, langsames Auto und überholen mich klaglos statt mir den Weg abzuschneiden oder mir keinen Platz zu lassen.

Und übersehen werde ich in der Regel nicht.. Das Rad hat das Format eines großen Kühlschranks. Wer den auf der Straße übersieht, sollte eventuell einen Augenarzt aufsuchen. Zudem ist die Farbgebung nicht willkürlich: Die rote Frontpartie fällt tagsüber besonders gut auf und das weiße Heck ist in der Dämmerung gut zu sehen. Für die Nacht sind diverse Reflektoren am Rad und es gibt gute Beleuchtung, Blinker und Bremslicht.

🇬🇧

Did you take a photo or video of my bike?

Great! I like my bike, too.. If you don’t mind, I’d like a copy of your photo/video, please send the file(s) or a link to dfxl@sparced.org , thank you!

What is it?

It’s a bicycle.. Well, technically, it has three wheels, but it has spoked wheels, pedals and a comfy recumbent seat. The fairing makes it look a bit like a car, but it has no motor and is legally a bike.

Did you build it yourself? Is it expensive?

No, I did not build it myself, but I bought it at InterCityBike in Dronten in the Netherlands. It was built in Romania, because more than a hundred hours of manual labour went into this bike and to keep the price down, it was built there. It isn’t cheap, but still on par with better road racing bikes.

How fast does it get?

It depends on who is driving it 😀 With my current state of training, I can go somewhere around 35km/h for a couple of hours if the conditions let me. My average speed is usually somewhere between 20 and 25km/h for 100km, because I have to speed the heavy bike(~25kg) up at every traffic light and climbing is not much fun either. But the descent after the climb is great and the bike easily reaches 50-60km/h. My gearing allows me to comfortably pedal anywhere between 6 and 60km/h.

Isn’t it dangerous? Don’t you get overlooked a lot?

With its three wheels, the bike is very stable, even at higher speeds and due to the large contact area with the seat, I pretty much know what’s happening with the bike.

Should I be involved in an accident, the carbon fibre shell will take some of the impact and I will be skidding on the shell, not on my skin. Also: My feet are in front, not my head like on a regular road racing bike.

Unlike on other bikes, car drivers respect me, because they think I’m one of them, only very slow like a tractor. Instead of trying to squeeze past me with only a couple of centimetres to spare, they often change lanes to overtake me like any other car.

As for not seeing me: I chose the colours for my bike very carefully. The bright red is well visible in broad daylight and the bike is about the same size as a fridge/freezer combination. Whoever doesn’t see that should think about selling his car.

At night time, the white half of the bike will reflect incoming headlights very well(and there are also reflectors attached) and there are head-, rear- and braking lights installed.