Richi's blog

A blog about personal projects and experiences

  • Decentralized websites and more

    “Cool idea, but to be of any use, it would need more functionality and more content” was my impression when I first looked into zeronet. Back then static web pages were all there was, and no UI support for any managing tasks. The next time I checked, probably more than half a year later, it […]

  • Hike and Fly the “Kleiner Mythen”

    I used to hike the smaller Mythen at least once a year with a paraglider on the back to fly down. Usually i took the Chaemi route which involves some light climbing. Many times I saw mountain goats, and once I slept near the top. Last year I didn’t make it, so I wanted to […]

  • Worst customer experience ever

    The best notebook ever I blogged about my attempts to buy a decent notebook here before. But let’s recap quickly. In the fall of 2013 I bought a Dell XPS13 Developer edition. When Dell shortly thereafter announced that they now accept BitCoin, I had the feeling I missed out on that opportunity. Nevertheless, it was […]

  • Game modding with pen and paper

    I have lots of good memories from youth camps. Some involve playing Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers while sitting on trees. Another classic video game was Asteroids. When I recently read an article in a German magazine about building an Asteroids clone with an Arduino and an OLED, lots of old memories resurfaced. The source […]

  • drive in cinema

    The last time I was in a drive in cinema was about ten years ago. At the place I was in Volketswil, they no longer organize these events. So I was looking from time to time for another place. The ones I found were too far away. Then I saw an advertisement for Hinwil. It […]

  • 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 […]

  • A holiday that didn’t start so well

    Büssli Our camper van suffered three ripped cooling water hoses in the last two months. Together with my brother who is the engineer in charge of maintaining our vehicles, we looked for the source of the troubles. Although not entirely sure, after a test ride I was confident that we found and fixed it. We […]

  • The legacy banks in Switzerland

    Transaction costs I have a separate bank account for my tandem flying hobby at the local bank where I live. I didn’t want a plastic card for it, and setting up online banking turned out to be too complicated. So I pay a CHF 3.00 fee for every withdrawal at the counter. That is, if […]

  • Why I still have no new notebook

    It has been more than 14 months since my XPS 13DE notebook was stolen. Ever since, I was on the hunt for a replacement. I have just some simple requirements that seem so difficult to meet: Linux pre-installed Payment in BitCoin Swiss German Keyboard with back light Ultrabook (slim and powerful) The natural choice would […]

  • A new era for eCommerce

    OpenBazaar went live a short time ago. Even if it still has some rough edges, it offers the best user experience ever for buying or selling something on the internet. I installed the earlier beta versions last year with great interest. But the developers decided that the core of it was not good enough, and […]