Life

Recently I’ve found an old post-it with guidelines I wrote myself a couple of years back, two of those stood out: make mistakes don’t buy stupid stuff Seems like I haven’t been the most consistent person back then. The post-it got discovered during a clean-up session of my flat, the same session brought up the following stupidly-bought-and-never-used gadgets: one BBC micro:bit that should be able to capture Bluetooth Low Energy transmissions one Proxmark 3 RV4 that should be able to do some nifty RFID stuff (and that I was recently able to fix) one Realtek Software-Defined Radio USB Stick (rtl-sdr).. My new year’s resolution (or rather near-future resolution) is to do /something/ hackery with that stuff. Suggestions more than welcome. ...

I have just received my OSCP exam success notification. This is a penetration-testing certification by Offensive Security with focus on hands-on-training. You get an eBook and a week’s worth of video lectures with guided exercises; access to a virtual lab with approximately 55 machines that you should gain full control over and will finish with an 24 hour exam in which you are supposed to root five target machines. All this should be documented and submitted at last 24 hours after your exam is over – my documentation had 264 pages. ...

Yesterday was this year’s “Akademikerball” in Vienna. This is a continuation of the former WKR ball – which is used for right-wing networking across Europe and organized by the Austrian Freedom Party. This party in turn is a right-wing party: populist, xenophobic, haven of people with a far-right history. Opposed to this party were protests mostly organized by the left-ish social party and the green-alternative party. Police forces were using this event as a show-of-strength. Traditionally the executive is seen as the long arm of the people’s party (OeVP) – a party with historic roots in the christ-fascist party of the ’30s, the last decades it is more of a liberal-economic party. True to it roots freedom-of-press and the right-to-assemble were severely limited during the event. ...

It’s weakness. Well at least un-enjoyed luxury that has become an everyday event is. This has nothing to do with morals. Luxury costs money. Making money makes you dependant and consumes your free time, it reduces your financial freedom. So if you’re spending your life on luxury make sure that it counts and you’re enjoying it every moment.

Yeah, let’s make some new year’s resolutions so that I can feel bad breaking them. The big ones are: Stop smoking. And nail-biting. Both might be the same outlet of my nervousness, let’s see if I can get them under control. Start doing Yoga and/or Meditation again. To be honest, this will be needed to get resolution #1 to work. Continue climbing. Alas my left wrist joint seems to have suffered sometime last year – I’ll gonna go to the doctor, but might have to reduce my bouldering for a bit. I might try to soak up my free time with Yoga. Sarcastic, as doing yoga was replaced by bouldering in 2013. cooking vs. delivery-service: this will be a tough one. Currently I’m ordering way to much through the delivery service. In addition lots of the food eaten at home is just convinience food. I do not like the fact that delivery food is either way to expensive or unhealthy (or both). Then there are some “more of the same” resolutions: ...

With the year’s end comes the time for reviews and cleanups. Reducing cruft allows your mind to be free, with it comes a sense of closure and empowerement. Otherwise all my possessions would drag me down. Stuff I really like to do at this time is: review existing bank accounts and service contracts (like phone/internet/power plans). Reduce them to maintain some sense of control. Books: I hoard them even if most of them are not exactly Pulitzer-price materiel. I’ve read each of them but won’t read most of them again – so they’re mostly dead weight. There are places like public libraries or book sharing (i.e. Wortschatz in Vienna, Austria) places that love (and need) new books – sharing is caring. Add your books to the BookCrossing Index before sharing them and see where they have traveled and what people reading them think. Clothing drives. I try to make my garderobe work: so far I’m having far too many tshirts and am lacking other stuff (there’s not too much sense in having tshirts for four weeks when I’ll have to do my laundry every two weeks due to my trousers count). So I’ve imposed a new rule: when buying new clothes I have to donate at least on old cloth. old paper work: depending upon the jurisdiction you’re living under you might have to keep old (business) paper work. Here in Austria you’re allowed to discard paperwork after seven years – so each time at the end of the year I’m going through the archives and find stuff that is not needed anymore but still wastes space. There’s another problem: I hoard stuff. For example I own some rare bottles of whisky that are (by now) too expensive to drink. This is stuff that won’t go away easily. My solution is to give them as presents upon special occations. To prevent this situation from happening again I’m imposing some new rules: I won’t buy new Whisky when my existing collection is worth more than 600 Euro.

We’re living in a world of indulgence and seem not to cherish the small (or larger) daily treats anymore. As a cousin of mine once noted: we are able to go out for coffee and food daily without thinking to much of it’s costs. We’re the lucky few but somehow forgot about that. We’re privileged but we’ve got accustomed to it. Living in Austria our grand-parents and parents started with almost nothing after the second world war. Then came a long line of firsts: cars, television sets, an united Europe, mobile phones, the possibility of traveling abroads, higher-education. Things that my generation takes for granted. ...

Recently I’ve switched my working day to a more enjoyable pace – and noticed that my productivity rose too. Too many friends claimed that I’m just plain lazily so this post tries to clarify my mode of operation. The basic idea is to reduce procrastination and improve my attention span through voluntary self-censorship. Some caveat beforehands: I am working as self-employed independent software contractor, thus my work has some unique properties: ...