Richi's blog

Category: Work

  • a decade of accepting Bitcoin for paragliding

    Today marks the 10th anniversary of an important blog post. It was the announcement that I started accepting Bitcoin for paragliding tandem flights. I had interest in the nascent internet currency for a couple of months prior to that. And I felt that what was missing were places where people could spend their coins. Only […]

  • Why was second factor authentication watered down?

    As far as I can remember, two factor authentication was used since the first time I used online banking with BBS like text interface over a 14.4bps modem. Back in the day the second factor was a printed list with numbered codes. The idea of using different factors is to prevent hackers form accessing your […]

  • Working from home during the Corona shutdown

    Like many people these days I currently work from home. Due to the corona pandemic, everything that is not essential is closed in Switzerland. Since I work in software development, it is possible to work at home. Most if not all people in my team do so. What is great about the new situation is […]

  • Resetting the Logitech K810 bluetooth keyboard

    The Logitech K810 has been my favorite keyboard for many years. I have one at home and one in the office. It allows to easily switch between 3 different devices. It has the same size and layout as most notebooks, is stylish, and a blast to type. But one day about a year ago something […]

  • Running hostile software in a container

    Remember Skype, the once popular phone software? I used it a lot when we were traveling in South America, and international calls were insanely expensive. But I stopped using it when it was acquired by Microsoft, and they switched from a P2P model to centralized servers. From what I could observe, it gradually worsened from […]

  • What could go wrong when ordering pizza?

    For some months now it was possible to order pizza for BitCoin in our area. I wanted to give it a try since it was announced. But only last Thursday, I proposed to my coworkers to order pizza. And that I would pay with BitCoin. It was meant as a demonstration how cool the virtual […]

  • Presentations with code that actually works

    I don’t do presentations that often these days. And if I do, more often than not, they contain some form of source code. With most things you write, you refine it over and over. This is especially true with stuff that you present. Applied to code snippets, that can mean you test it initially, but […]

  • vim meets VisualStudio

    There are two camps of neckbeards: Those who use emacs, and those who use vi or vim. I can’t tell which is better, and most of the arguments seem to be rhetoric. Until about three years ago, I perceived both as insufferable. I was however curious to learn either of them. The question was which […]

  • The crapware platform

    I complained many times that there is no standard package manager on Windows, and that installations and especially upgrading software on that platform is an unholy mess. On my office computer there are probably close to ten different mechanisms present to keep different software packages up to date. Some lurk in the system tray, and […]

  • Adding a display to rfid time tracking

    More than a year ago, I blogged here about using RFID to track presence times in the BORM ERP system. I used the system a lot since then. But the BlinkM was really limited as the only immediate feedback channel. To use it with multiple users, a display was needed. The default Arduino compatible displays […]