December 10, 2025

This is for everyone

Tim Berners-Lee: “This is for everyone”

I recently read “This is for everyone” by Tim Berners-Lee. This book is a very good reminder about how we got to ’the internet’. Why did Tim Berners-Lee develop the World Wide Web. And which decision did lead to this beatiful thing that we take for granted today? I especially enjoyed it to read about this topic in the light of all the recent AI developments. Will the web as we know it die? Is it still worth having a blog? What would fundamental models be trained on if there wasn’t a human created internet anymore? Great questions in an interesting time.

March 8, 2025

Hugo Relaunch

Setting up Hugo with Ananke Theme as Module

The intention of this post is to walk through the steps I performed set up a static website with Hugo, add the Ananke theme as module, and deploy the website via AWS Amplify.

The reason for me to write this blog post is that I was hoping to find exactly this documentation somewhere online. But as I could not find it and worked my way through different blogs and videos, I thought, maybe other people might benefit from such a summary.

April 2, 2024

Holznudel - DIY Letter Press

In this post I want to describe and highlight a funny DIY project named “Holznudel”. It is an open source letterpress which allows you to make prints with lego tiles. It was a lot of fun to build and it is a great activity for the kids - but also for grown-ups. This post is divided into five sections: 1/ discovery 2/ construction 3/ pieces 4/ cleaning 5/ next steps.

February 28, 2024

Mastodon Verification

Verify Mastodon Profile

With this post, I am trying to verify my Mastodon profile.

Here is the link to my Mastodon presence: @davidbeck auf hachyderm.io

You can find the official documentation on this topic here: Verification on Joinmastodon.

February 19, 2024

pegel-konstanz.de

New Website: pegel-konstanz.de

As a tangible outcome of my data analytics mentorship, I created website pegel-konstanz.de. The focus on this website will be on individual analyses of the water level of Lake Constance (Bodensee). But first, I had to get the table stakes functionality right. You cannot discuss the level of the lake without also providing the current level. And that was a lot more work than I expected it to be. But it was and is a great learning experience to support a data pipeline with date and time zone sensitive information.

April 21, 2023

3D print to epoxy tool mat

How to turn Epoxy remains into tools

This post describes my journey from 3D printing to a silicone mat for epoxy upcycling.

For a short description of the project together with the 3D printing files, I recommend to check my GitHub repository on this subject: https://github.com/davidbeckonline/epoxy_tool_mat

What to do with epoxy remains

Over the last couple of month, I tinkered quite a lot with epoxy. It started with some Kintsugi experiments. Later on, I worked on Magic Tonies, which are covered in a separate blog post. The issue with epoxy is that you always have to mix too much of it. You certainly do not want to run out of epoxy while working. And for very small amount, it is difficult to get the right ratio of resin and hardener. This annoyed me, as over time, I threw more epoxy into the trash can, as I actually used. Overall, I used about 500 ml of epoxy over the last two years, to add a number to this.

March 27, 2023

Pro-Ject Debut III - Fix Stylus Cables

How to get the stylus cables back into the tonearm of a Pro-Ject Debut III record player

In this post, I decribe the small issue I was facing with the stylus cables on my Pro-Ject Debut III record player.

Situation

After replacing the stylus on my Pro-Ject Debut III, the cables were too long. This wasn’t a technical issue. It was more about aesthetics.

First, I tried to push the cables back manually, but this seemed to worsen the problem. Next step was to ask for help on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/vinyl/comments/121opwg/how_to_get_project_debut_cables_back_into_tonearm/

February 26, 2023

Daruma Magic Tonie

How we created a Daruma Magic Tonie

In this post we describe how we turned a Japanese Daruma doll into a Tonie. First, we talk about the term ‘Magic Tonie’. After that, we walk through the process step by step.

Magic Tonie

First of all, I want to explain the term ‘Magic Tonie’, as I am not sure whether it exists. It is a literal translation of the German word ‘Zaubertonie’. The term describes the conversion of figures or other toys into a Tonie for a Tonie Box. Technically, such a Tonie is just a holder for an RFID chip. So what people do to create a Magic Tonie is to extract the RFID chip from a Tonie figure and put it into another object. You could describe it as little ‘hardware hack’. You might want to do this together with your kids - this is what I did.

January 23, 2023

Ordensanregung Flüpke

Update März 2024 - Absage: In einem Schreiben der Senatskanzlei vom 13.03.2024 wurden mir erklärt, dass kein Order vergeben wird. Schade, aber einen Versuch war es auf jeden Fall wert. Hier der Wortlaut des Schreibens:

„[…] Ich stimme Ihnen zu, dass die von Ihnen dargestellten Verdienste von […] hohe Anerkennung verdienen. Zu meinem Bedauern muss ich Ihnen mitteilen, dass die umfangreiche Ordensprüfung ergeben hat, dass die in den Ausführungsbestimmungen zum Statut des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland geforderten Voraussetzungen für die Verleihung nicht gegeben sind. […]“

August 20, 2022

Bodensee Level Analysis with Python

Analyzing the level of Lake Bodensee with Python

In this post I want to discuss a data analysis experiment I recently worked on. My aim was to use AWS SageMaker and Python to visualize public data. This post is structured as follows: First, I am going to explain the goal. Then, I will briefly describe the setup. After that, I will walk through the individual steps of my analysis.

A short summary of the output can also be found in this Twitter thread: