Carlo Zottmann

1. Stop pretending: You didn’t “lose your cat” — the wee fucker likely ran off because your relationship was asymmetrical to begin with.

2. Don’t waste time making a “Has anyone seen my lost cat” poster for plastering your neighborhood with, because (a) there are already hundreds like them and (b) see 1.

3. Instead, if you come across any cat roaming the streets, just grab it. It’s yours now, congratulations. And that’s okay because chances are that little shit is currently looking for another “home”, anyways.

🐈

PS: Not a cat person, me.

Is the Android M.b client app @dialog dead/abandoned?

Godspeed, you magnificent G4 bastard 💻🍎

As much as I like the idea of Fairphone, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The Fairphone 3 unit I bought for the office half a year ago has issues. It keeps its owner from making calls (more precise: there’s a 50:50 chance microphone and speaker will shut off after making a speaker call, it’s a known issue and we’re still waiting for a fix); she’s got an electrical shock hitting her ear while using in-ears; the charge drops like a brick from 100% to 20% within 2h and I don’t think that’s a 3rd-party app issue.

Not a good purchase.

Following an account on a far-away Mastodon instance from my M.b account: ✅

You gotta love the fediverse.

The Foundation teaser/trailer for the upcoming TV series (2021) looks good. Maybe now is a good time to pick up the books? 📚

They are not special, but they’re mine. I’ve distilled them down over the last few years; they are a result of me getting a sense of who I am, together with what a person I want to be.

(Wow, that sounded way less pretentious in my mind.)

1. Don’t be a dick.
2. Don’t fuck it all up.
3. Don’t forget to be kind.
4. Don’t delay having fun.
5. Don’t stop moving, ever.

Turns out that for me, they kind of cover every imaginable situation. And yes, I broke all of them in the past, too. I just try really hard to not let it happen again.

Allow me to quickly go through them.

1. Don’t be a dick.

That’s pretty self-explanatory, I think. I try to be respectful, or neutral at least, even if the other person is wrong in my eyes. Even if they are, there’s usually something I don’t know about them or their lives that made them that way. If I have to, I can disagree like an adult.

(The only exception are nazis and people who think themselves superior to others due to the circumstances of their birth. Fuck ‘em, I have no time for that shit.)

2. Don’t fuck it all up.

I try to keep the number of personal regrets I have as low as possible, so when making a somewhat important decision I usually make it deliberately. I do that both in my daily work and in my daily life.

Meaning, I know that even most of the bad decisions I’ve made in the past I’ve made after weighing my options carefully and going with I felt was right and good at the time. It might sound silly but… I can’t be mad at that. Past Carlo did his best to not let Present Carlo down, and Present Carlo does his best to not let Future Carlo down, you know?

3. Don’t forget to be kind.

I got that from the 12th Doctor, basically, and it’s a beautiful notion. A little kindness goes a long way, even if it’s just a smile at the right time. “Leave the place a little better than you’ve found it”, etc. Even if I have to tell someone that I don’t have time for them right now, I will do it in a friendly way.

4. Don’t delay having fun.

It’s very, very easy for me to get swept up in work, i know that by now. Unfortunately, I needed a rule to remind me to not postpone the good life and shenanigans if possible. I’m getting better at this, little by little. 😋

5. Don’t stop moving, ever.

I know people who at some point in their life decided they’re “done” as a person, and they’re usually a boring bunch. Stagnation is the silent killer. So I try to pick up new things and learn new stuff and open up to new people etc. All the time! And every time I do I gain something new! For example, I got me a longboard two years ago, it’s ace. And I started rapping last year, recording songs, performing in front of people. (Side note: I’m 46.) It’s not very good, I don’t aim for business, I don’t do it as much as I’d like, I am nervous AF every single time the beat starts, but… man, I am alive! That must never stop.

It’s like finding new pieces for a big-ass puzzle you thought looked kinda finished but really, really isn’t, not even close.

Let’s be excellent to eachother, people ❤️

My best friend started a weekly newsletter for indie game development with Godot 🎮💻 so if you’re into that, The Weekly Wait might be for you!

Sweet, my HEY.com invite arrived! ✉️ I am still unsure whether their approach to email would actually work for me, but their ideas about it I do find appealing. Only one way to find out, I guess…

TL;DR

I built a little helper tool named Bearing which allows for scripting Bear. It adds to Bear’s own capabilites by slightly abstracting and enhancing the experience:

1. There’s a dedicated bearing CLI tool that accepts plain arguments. No more bear://… calls, no more URL-encoding anything.
2. The CLI tool returns callback responses as JSON.

https://github.com/carlo/bearing

Why?

A few weeks back I switched from Evernote to Bear. I like Bear a lot (Markdown!) but its lack of Applescript support is irritating. Out of the box, Bear can be automated using its x-callback-url API, yes. But you don’t get any return values for those calls in a simple way.

I guess that’s why all existing Bear-related scripts go H.A.M. on its SQLite DB. The Bear FAQs say the following about that:

For most users in most situations, we highly recommend not [to work with Bear’s database]

Great. Also: understandable. That led to me setting out to build a simple wrapper app so I could work with Bear from command line and scripts in a easy and structured way without putting the notes database at risk.

What can it do?

Example: Creating a note

/usr/local/bin/bearing \
  create \
  --title="Bearing test note" \
  --text="Works for me!"

… returns …

{
  "title": "Bearing test note",
  "identifier": "4963F8B4-3FE0-4835-B96D-7DCCB6101A62-1917-00013DC4BC4EE819",
  "_success": true
}

Searching, tagging, editing etc are supported, as is everything else the x-callback-url API allows for. :)

Dope, let’s go

More information on usage, installation and whathaveyou can be found on Github:
https://github.com/carlo/bearing

It’s still early days, and it definitely still has a few rough edges, there are bugs. If you find any, just let me know, please!

Major shoutout to Platypus <sveinbjorn.org/platypus> 💻

It’s a dope little app to build simple script-powered macOS apps. Fun fact: it was released in 2003 and the project is still active!

A few days ago I started Assassin’s Creed: Origins on PS4 after buying the complete edition during a PSN sale, and hoo boy, what a game. Absolutely stunning, lovely atmosphere, so much to do (duh, it’s a Ubisoft game), and I’d say I’ve seen less than 20% of it so far. 👍🏼

I was about to write “I’ve played most AC games” but after taking a look at the release history I realize I was wrong. 😅 Anyways, I put AC on ice when I got series fatigue after finishing Unity, so that means I’ve never played Syndicate, Origins or Odyssey.

Origins, then. It’s nice and YOU CAN RIDE CAMELS 🐪🐫, and it keeps me from feeling guilty for putting Witcher III on hold halfway through.

Hello world! 👋 Well, “hello again”, I guess. :) I started blogging around 2000, built an actual multi-tenant blogging site with a few hundred users, experimented with different formats, lost interest, re-gained it, lost it again etc.

You know how it goes.

Today I decided to give Micro.blog a shot; these days, I want my hurdles for blogging & posting low, and even running my own Hugo-powered blog is a bit too much. I’ve a life to run, damn it!

Anyways, hej hej! I’m Carlo, I hail from Europe 🇪🇺, I’m CTO of #German #sustainability company RECUP (we’re building a deposit system for reusable coffee-to-go cups). 💚 I’m a software dev, I love me some good PS4 videogames 🎮, I try to be the best husband I can be, I’m a P.U.N.K. (professional uncle, no kids), futurist, transhumanist, comical element.

Glad to be here, let’s see whether Micro.blog will work for me. Glad midsommar! ☀️

Nature can be pretty pretty. #fire #flowers #fantasyfootball #feminism

Dear 6-year-old Me! It’s 2020 over here. I write vis-a-vis your fascination with playing cowboy or robber, and let me tell you, the novelty has worn off by now

According to my man @monoxyd@mastodon.social it is #glamourfriday — who knew?

So there, SOAK IT IN. Yes, I’m wearing pants, too, because I’m profesh like that

You’re next, go!

Nature is awesome 😍

Got me a new pair of pre-loved denim jeans… 👍🏼 #reuse

Garden Yoda disapproves of springtime. Cheer up, Yoda!

Die Dinger sind echt lecker, und die 57% Recyclat schmeckt man gar nicht raus! #vegetarisch

Die #CSU bleibt sich treu, egal ob die Welt brennt oder nicht. Jetzt mal ehrlich, Fahrradfahrer, denkt doch bitte mal an die armen Autofahrer!!! Mofos. #klimakrise

Hurra, endlich darf ich darüber sprechen! Wir bei RECUP konnten Shell Deutschland als Partner gewinnen - das bedeutet 1200 neue Ausgabenstellen für Coffee-to-go im Pfandbecher! War ein hartes Stück Arbeit, aber damit sind wir dann insgesamt knapp 5000 Ausgabestellen und dem Ziel, die “Pappbecher” abzuschaffen, ein Stück näher gekommen. w00p!

Seriously, both D and I very much enjoy our sweet, sweet downtime at the moment. Doing nothing is underrated AF

Testing the new mic setup… The new acoustic shielding and that shock mount definitely improved the situation! It’s still not perfect but much better than before. 🙂 I can work with that.

Having to re-record bars because of echo sucks, you guys

Beautiful morning sky was beautiful #münchen #munich #goodmorning