In continuation of week 02, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in the third week of 2024:

  • 🖨️ Almost 2 years after Anker introduced its V6 Color Engine for the M5 3D printer, it cancelled it. You can either get a $600 discount for an as yet unannounced product, or they will refund the paid money. I’ve opted for a $330 refund. Although it’s a pity, I think it was the right decision for Anker to pull the plug on this product. My M5 already has problems with just one filament; getting the printer to work reliably with 6 print heads was probably indeed an unsolvable task.

  • 📚 I had resolved to read more books this year. I have finished one so far, although I probably started it over ten months ago and have only now finally completed it. Instead of reading one of the countless hardcover books owned by my wife, I wanted to start with Holly as an eBook. But on the iPhone, despite Focus Modes etc., I get distracted far too easily, so I bought a PocketBook Era (with a 20% discount). With it, I will definitely manage to outwit myself 🤦‍♂️.

  • ⏰ Robb linked to this inspiring Clock: A Novel Way To Tell Time.

  • 💻 As teased last week, ScreenFloat 2.0 was released. A ton of new features and even a free upgrade.

  • 🖥️ In addition to all those great windows managers like Moom, Rectangle, Lasso, you name it, there is another (free) little utility: SwiftShift - Sweet window management for macOS.

  • 📆 ReminderCal - Reminders to Cal looks interesting: View Apple Reminders natively in Apple Calendar.

  • 🎮 And this might be a (better?) alternative to Playstation Remote: MirrorPlay - Remote Streaming.

  • 🧠 Marcus mentioned llamafile - bringing LLMs to the people, and to your own computer. A nice way to produce alt text for images locally.

  • 🔍 This was mentioned on HeyDingus: Topviews Analysis: there you can see the most popular pages on Wikipedia per specified timeframe.

  • 📺 Continued watching For All Mankind together with my wife and Slow Horses.

  • 🐌 This week was a rather slow one regarding new software I was looking into but in RL it was much more intense.

    • ❄️ Besides cancelled and new hardware and a couple of new apps, we had a few real winter days this week with temperatures down to -10 °C. Since this is quite unusual here, everyone was totally overwhelmed. There were storm warnings up to warnings of life-threatening conditions, people were advised to avoid driving, schools were closed, and public transportation was severely limited for two days. But the landscape was really beautiful, and the rounds with the dog were slippery but dreamy.

    • ✊ Moreover, in the last few weeks, there has finally been an outcry in Germany against the increasing number of Nazis in society and political parties. There were nationwide demonstrations with millions of people on the streets. Even in our small town, between 13,000 and 15,000 were demonstrating on the weekend. The march had already returned to the starting point, and yet not everyone had even started walking. It was absolutely impressive to see so many people absolutely peacefully demonstrating in freezing cold for human rights in the city center. Our two sons were also there, which made me somehow proud.