The Week in Review – 2026-45
🎨 Towards the end of the year, I gave the blog another visual update. I had been considering Atkinson Hyperlegible as the default font for body text for a while now (almost exactly a year, in fact).
IMHO, the font is incredibly easy to read (the name is no coincidence) and I also find it visually appealing. And while I was experimenting with the font, one thing led to another, and now the blog looks completely different.
Google now has a nice German preview text for fonts, which I wouldn’t have expected:
🇫🇷 Exactly 20 years ago, I was in Paris on business. I had some time for sightseeing one afternoon and, among other things, climbed the stairs to the Eiffel Tower’s middle platform to take a few photos.
There were a few souvenir shops on the first platform, and I bought two small ceramic egg cups there to bring home.
They have survived to this day and are still used regularly.
♨️ In the last edition, I wrote about my efforts to optimize the heat pump here at the house.
A little over a week after the changes, the results are as hoped: Cycling during normal operation has disappeared completely. When the weather permits, there is just one cycle per day – when the system switches back to heating mode after the cool-down phase following hot water preparation.
For a few days now, the weather has been very unfavorable: fog with temperatures around 0 °C. Under these conditions, the fins ice up very quickly, resulting in a few restarts throughout the day. These are due to physical conditions, though, and are no longer caused by the controls.
I think I can consider the project a complete success.
🚰 I’ve now equipped the conventional bottle cages on two of my bikes with Fidlock-Base-Plates and, of course, I have the matching water bottles too.
At first, it took a lot of getting used to; I really struggled to hook the bottles back in. By now, it works quite well thanks to muscle memory.
Fidlock has developed a very clever system here, and so far I’ve only found one point of criticism: To remove the bottle, you have to turn it slightly to the right – as a left-hander, that’s exactly the wrong direction. Apparently there are versions for left-handers too, but those weren’t an option, because “you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” …
🔌 The project “Installing three-phase power and Ethernet in the workshop” is almost finished – at least as far as the three-phase power is concerned. It is now connected both in the house and in the workshop and has been successfully put into operation.
The next step is to rework the old single-phase wiring in the workshop and distribute it across the three available phases. This is particularly important for the outlets so that I can run several more powerful devices (for example, a jointer and a powerful dust extractor) at the same time without worrying about running close to the 16-amp limit.
💰 A transfer over the limit I had set was rejected by the bank. Very good.
At the time, I was using the smartphone app – where I can also change the transfer limit directly in the same session. Not so good.
But the bank thought of that and built in a four-hour cooldown period: After changing the limit, it only becomes active four hours later, and the bank also sends a notification about the change. That’s good again.
Before making the change, you’re also asked why you want to change the limit. One possible answer is: “Because someone asked me to.” Perhaps this prompts many people to stop and think before scammers rip them off.
The limit can also be automatically reset to its previous value on a selectable day if desired.
I think the implementation is quite good.
🔊 Listened to this week:
Questions or comments?
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