Weekly Post 4

Hamburg Werbefrei

Before diving into this week’s recap, I’d like to expand on my link last week, just in case this post reaches someone in Hamburg until the 14.05 who hasn’t signed up yet. Feel free to skip this if you aren’t in this very narrow target group.

Hamburg Werbefrei is a Volksbegehren. This is something which can happen in every state of Germany, but Hamburg makes it rather easy to do for its inhabitant, so we have one every so often. This is a way to do direct democracy as the people, without having to go through representatives like usual with laws. They need to collect the signature of 5% of people living in Hamburg, and then the senate is kinda forced to make it into a law in four months, or all inhabitants get to directly vote on that law.

This specific Volksbegehren is about having less ads in Hamburg, especially the flashy digital ones. They don’t want to fully ban ads, “just” drastically reduce the amount, and half of the area is for cultural events. I think that this is a great idea, so please sign it if you can.

Recap

The Monday was just a full university day. On Tuesday I went back to my hometown after uni to go to church to test a live stream setup for Sunday, because the pastor will go to the Kirchentag so we want to show the live stream of that day. I went back with my girlfriend.

On Wednesday I had a successful lab, some introduction to using the Linux OS. I spend that day and the next with my girlfriend, which was a public holiday in Germany. This holiday, day of work, is accompanied by protests, which ran close to our street, and I saw a Wasserwerfer, which look quite threatening in person. I read/played some video games.

I spend the Friday finishing a Minecraft time-lapse, which consists of 5 recordings each ~6 hours long. So I spend a lot of time deciding how to turn these recordings in time lapses so everything important is recorded, and then I had to combine them on Friday and think about an intro and what to showcase there. It is a lot of work but a lot of fun, and very satisfying to finish. On Saturday I did some work I put off, and Sunday I went to the church for the live stream. This was a bit annoying to do, since the person who was supposed to do the setup apart from the digital one didn’t show up. This meant I had to organize a church key somewhere and only had 9 minutes to set everything up after I finally got one. After that a friend of mine cut my hair, and I meet up with my family and fixed something on my grandmothers phone. I meet up with my girlfriend before going back to Hamburg.

Weekly thought appreciation

I’d like to spend this week’s “thought” about Brandon Sanderson, because I have read a lot of his books recently. I finished Oathbringer last week on Monday, then read through the Novella Dawnshard in the middle in three days and am now on Rhythm of War. There are a lot of aspects in his craft which I thoroughly enjoy. He is a master in handling different perspectives. With an eerie precision, he knows exactly when to cut off from one POV to switch to a next one — just far enough in the current build-up of tension (Which btw has a beautiful German translation to Spannungsbogen, literal tension bow…). One really wants to continue with the current person, but is not actually annoyed because the one he is cutting to left one with the exact feeling , thus one wants to continue read that immediately.

Then he is really clever with his magic system. It is fully thought through, it has clear limits, entities on both sides of the conflict know about this and have different skills in it. One learns with the protagonists more and more about using it (the same in Stormlight Archive as in Mistborn). And they grow adapt in using them with their limitations in creative ways. Also a big part of his writing is religion. He writes big parts in his book about religion and has some characters act out of their faith, or use that believe to influence groups of people, or just have struggle with their faith. I see this seldom done in fantasy books and thoroughly enjoy this take. Then he indulges in several types of illnesses and shows how the character work with them, especially permanent ones. And I really enjoy the small novellas he wrote in between the big entries, which focus on characters who otherwise couldn’t have been in the spotlight. It really makes you appreciate the whole story even more.

As a final note, in the meta texts he writes, e.g. the introduction, or some posts on his websites, he shows a deep thankfulness for all the people who help him in doing this job. He seems to appreciate every aspect of it, goes into great detail about the people behind the different art in the books, the cover, the people recording the audiobooks. For example, all the pictures are from his website which he freely shares.

All in all, I am very glad to have picked up a book of his, and hope for more to come. And I do hope you give it a shot as well, he has some short books as well, science-fiction as well as fantasy.

Currently watching/reading/listening

There is a channel I would like to shoot out, ChrisSpargo. He has a series he calls The small questions, and just answers some interesting observations. I thoroughly enjoy it, it is a bit of a Tom Scott replacement for me.

I would also like to shout out mobygratis, which has 500 free mostly instrumental tracks, which will fit greatly into any project as a background. It is a great offer which I just stumbled upon, and it is amazing for me that some artist just does it.

Games

We played some Sky Team in the flat. This is a coop game where you try to land a plane without crashing it. You roll dice, hidden from your teammate, and then take turns placing them on the board, without communicating (you need to before and after each round ofc). It is a lot of fun, big recommendation.

Projects

I bought a touchscreen for my Raspberry Pi, which we will use to have some digital recipes in the kitchen. More about that next week. Make the best out of your day!