While preparing this new AppDefaults post for the passing year 2025, I took a look back at the two previous posts from 2023 and 2024 and find it exciting to see how my behavior has gradually changed over time.

A slight shift away from the tools offered by large American companies towards small European alternatives or OSS, which is likely to intensify in the future. I also have less and less patience with software that is going down the path of enshittification. I don’t care how long I’ve been using it or how much work is needed to make the switch; it just has to go, even if it hurts, like Plex. I’m not going to be taken for a ride … just die.

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Since I decided in 2019 to use the static site generator (SSG) Hexo as the foundation for my blog, I have been struggling with the fact that it works with the CSS preprocessor Stylus via a pre-installed plugin. I thought I just needed some time to get used to the simplified but unfamiliar notation and take advantage of features such as functions, mixins, variables, and the like. Over time, however, the functionality of native CSS grew to such an extent that I started to implement workarounds for new and unsupported features in my Stylus code, which made it significantly more complex and confusing. I didn’t get used to it, but instead just got annoyed by Stylus for quite some time.

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I have been working with OpenStreetMap for a while now from the developers’ perspective, who can use it to conjure up attractive maps, such as my Photo Map, on the web free of charge. However, I am not part of the community, nor have I given much thought to where all the data comes from and how it finds its way into the maps. Until recently… when I stumbled across an app review of StreetComplete by chance and installed the Android app (iOS is planned) out of curiosity.

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Recently, I was greatly inspired by Roma Komarov to add another, audible layer to my blog posts…

At the beginning of the month, I complained to myself in my post Stoned Jesus, Bandcamp and the Necessity of Music that I hardly listen to music anymore, even though it seems to help me in stressful times. Just as I (re)discovered Bandcamp and my credit card was hit hard for various great albums, Roma came up with the following post:

Embedding Bandcamp Tracks

A long time ago, back in LiveJournal, sometimes people embedded various music players in their posts. It was fun! I already had a 'Current music' field added to most of my posts, but now I also added a way to enrich this field by adding an optional Bandcamp track reference, and spent my evening updating existing posts in the blog to have it.

blog.kizu.dev

Well, if that isn’t fate…

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Earlier this year, my sweetie and I made a little trip to nearby Strasbourg. Not only because I really like the city and its French flair (she has never been there before), but also because I had never set foot in the European Parliament (EP) before. The people there have a big influence on our lives with their institutions and regulations, which eventually find their way into German law. As a committed European, you simply have to see it for yourself. And we live just 2.5 hours or 230 kilometers away.

The institution is very open. Guests are always welcome, even though tickets must be booked online in advance due to the large number of visitors. We were fortunate that on that day, the EP had invited young people from all over Europe to discuss issues important to them in the plenary chamber.

The building, which dates back to 1999, is impressive and beautifully located directly on a tributary of the Îll River, which winds its way through Strasbourg. It’s wonderful to take a leisurely walk around the complex and feed the ducks on the river, as long as you have some stale bread with you.

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A few months ago, in my post Using GitHub as Commenting Platform, 2025 Edition, I explained how GitHub Issues can be used quite easily as a commenting platform:

1. Create a GitHub issue for each post that contains at least the post URL
2. Add a syndication link to the issue on the post page
3. Let Brid.gy and Webmention.io do their job
4. Integrate Mentions United into the page to display comments via the Provider Plugin Webmentions

So I’ve made it a habit to syndicate every new post in a GitHub issue. This saves me from having to set up my own spam-proof comment system, which is difficult or even impossible to implement on SSG sites anyway.

One might argue that the data chain Site → GitHub → brid.gy → webmention.io → Site is quite long and offers a lot of room for errors, but all I can say to that is: Yes, you’re right, because that’s exactly the case at the moment!

A blog like this, with two or three posts a month (if there’s time), isn’t exactly flooded with comments, so some time passed before I noticed that brid.gy is still polling my GitHub account, but unfortunately isn’t getting any results and therefore isn’t passing along any web mentions for GitHub issue comments. The chain has been broken!
I will certainly inform the creator Ryan Barrett about this, but that doesn’t help me at the moment, so I decided to build a native GitHub provider plugin for Mentions United.

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Since yesterday, I know why I’ve been feeling like something’s been missing. For months, I’ve been trying to deal with work stress by finding little or larger distractions that calm my brain down a bit, take my mind off things, and release some of the happiness hormones. Unfortunately, I was on the path of short video dopamine kicks for a while, but two weeks ago I gave up YouTube, my last platform of this kind. The end, over, done. Deactivated.

Yesterday, I was browsing through my favorite section, ROCK, on NRN (newreleasesnow.com) and stumbled across a band called STONED JESUS, whose (Spotify) teaser of the first song, NEW DAWN, from their new album SONGS TO SUN immediately electrified me. Man, what a blast! The hookline is very reminiscent of TOOL, who, in my opinion, performed the best song of all time with RIGHT IN TWO. Of course, I immediately bought the album on Amazon and downloaded it…

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As I looked through the more than 1,600 photos from our Sweden vacation and edited the best ones in Lightroom, I noticed how fitting the colors of the Swedish flag are. Blue and Yellow. The colors of the sky on a beautiful sunny day, and they are reflected in many of the pictures in the series.

But as with my Portugal photos earlier this year, I once again sought out and found the small scenes whose power is much more evident in black and white. They may be colorless, but they are anything but that.

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