Setup My Life: Recent Episodes

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Flow refers to the feeling of complete immersion and complete absorption in an activity, which proceeds as if of its own accord - in other words, the rush of creativity or activity or functional pleasure, also known as being in the zone. The happiness researcher Mihály Csíkszentmihályi is considered the creator of the flow theory, which he developed from the observation of various areas of life, including surgeons and extreme athletes. Flow can occur when controlling a complex, fast-paced event in the range between overload (anxiety) and underload (boredom). Access and flow experience vary from individual to individual. This is where music can help to better get in the flow with greater consistency. Music helps us to concentrate by blocking out distracting noise. It acts as a stimulus that engages the brain, which modify our mood and provides a rhythm that keeps us alert. This serves to make the task at hand more engaging, less dull, and easier to concentrate on. I've already tried using different apps, streams and playlists to create my work and leisure atmosphere so that I can concentrate or relax better. Currently, I'm sticking with ambient playlists from Apple Music and the white-noise app Endel . Endel Founded in 2018, Endel is an AI-powered soundscape app. The company’s technology Endel Pacific creates personalized, adaptive soundscapes backed by neuroscience. Their apps are available on iOS, Apple Watch, macOS, Amazon Alexa, and Android. The company just announced it has raised a $15 million in a Series B round. This sounds like they are going to stick around a little longer. Apple Music The subscription music service from Apple has plenty of atmospheric albums. But rather than choosing a particular composer, I usually select one of the pre-made playlists. While everyone's taste for atmospheric music is unique to them, with over 50,000,000 songs on the platform, there's gotta be something, somewhere on Apple Music for everyone. Here is a list of a few of my items in my collection: Ambient Essentials by Apple Music Ambient 1: Music for Airports by Brian Eno Pure Meditation by Apple Music Wellness Peaceful Music by Peaceful Music Pure Focus by Apple Electronic

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I was looking into ways to repurposing my content or better finding different ways or channels to reach people. This is kind of a hot topic in the world of digital content. Publishers of all kinds are looking for ways to maximize their investment in written content creation and engage audiences with increasingly diverse habits and needs. At the same time, audio content experienced a big jump in the last two years. That said, I stumbled across BeyondWords, an all-in-one audio CMS. BeyondWords Wouldn't it be great to have an audio transcript of my blog post, so my audience can decide whether they want to read or listen to it, maybe they are driving or working out, or they just have no access to their reading glasses at the moment, or maybe they are permanently unable to read my content and by listening to it, I'm still able to reach them. Following my theme of boldly advancing into fields I do not have a clue of, I decided to integrate BeyondWords into my blog. Formerly known as SpeechKit, it has rebranded itself to BeyondWords in late 2021. With it came a new pricing plan, adding a free plan, which allows creating up to 30,000 characters of audio every month. That’s approximately four articles, which should be sufficient for me. I can create audio automatically or manually, embed audio automatically or manually, and even create a podcast feed, if I would like. How to integrate BeyondWords into the Ghost platform First, we need to add a custom integration in Ghost by logging into our Ghost admin dashboard, from the left bottom menu, selecting the gear symbol and then 'Integrations', here we 'Add custom integration'. We enter a name, how about 'BeyondWords' then selecting 'Create'. We keep the page open for the admin API key and API URL, we will need it in the next step. Second at BeyondWords we get started by creating a free account , creating a project, then go to the 'Content' section of our project dashboard and selecting 'Ghost' under 'Connect your CMS'. We can then select the AI voices we would like to use for titles and body content. We the copy and paste the admin API key and API URL from the Ghost Integration we created in the previous step into the corresponding fields, then selecting 'Test' — we should get a 'Success' message. We copy the audio player script for use in the next stage and select 'Save changes'. In the last step, we insert the audio player script into the ghost platform. We need to navigate to the 'Settings' from the Ghost admin dashboard again, but this time we select 'Code injection'. We paste the audio player script into a new line in 'Site Footer' then select 'Save'. The BeyondWords + Ghost integration should now be installed, activated, and enabled. BeyondWords will automatically create audio versions of every new posts, with each conversion using the characters limit for the month. Once processed (this takes a few minutes), the audio version will be automatically embedded into the source page via the small player. Older post will not automatically be converted into audio. However, we can trigger audio processing by updating an old post.

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I always ask myself where technology can really improve my everyday life. Calendar and navigation are my absolute top favorites. Right after that comes our shopping list app Bring! Let's be honest, groceries shopping can be both joyful and a real pain, but it needs to be done. Technology in everyday life often has the character of a gimmick. Many things, such as controlling lamps with your voice or smartly regulating shutters, are fun, but do little to change life. Not everything that is feasible really gets us anywhere. As much as I like to try new things and follow my inner play instinct, I always try to ask myself if it's really useful and if it helps me. Unfortunately, I have to realize far too frequently that this is not the case. But from time to time I discover something that is not only fun, but a real added value. The best way to see this is how quickly and naturally the technology is integrated into our life. If the family then jumps on board without any obstacles, it's clear that something has arrived to stay. Shopping list adventure Handwritten shopping lists have always been a horror to me, way before smartphones existed. You either write them just before you go groceries shopping or let them grow over the week, but then you also have to keep them where anyone can find them and carry on. Most of the time it didn't work out the way you wanted it to, then you went out with half or no groceries list and forgot a third of the purchases and brought back things you didn't even need. With the first iPhone at the end of 2007, of course, came the idea and the desire that I could also keep this list electronically. However, apps were not available until mid-2008, until then the build in Notes app had to do the job. The first standalone app I downloaded right after the opening of the App Store was ShoppingList . Missing data synchronization with the iPhone of my wife and a somewhat cumbersome operation did not lead to a permanent adaptation. Even with a change to Remember The Milk my significant other was not convinced by the electronic concept. Actually, I had already given up until I stumbled across the app Bring in 2013. In my view, the best app for grocery list. The solution to my problems When I discovered Bring, I quickly realized that the solution was right in front of me. Even though the grocery list app has grown over the years, it is still the same at its core. The shopping list can be created quickly by starting to type in the search box, which immediately brings up possible items with a visual representation, this aids to my recognition immensely. A simple tap then leads to the transfer to my list. Of course, you can add quantities or numbers. Just as easily, by tapping once, the food is removed from the list when shopping. The highlight, however, is that the shopping list can be shared across multiple devices. So my wife and I always have the most current with us, whoever goes shopping. In the meantime, the kids are also on board, as everyone can simply use voice commands to call out an item to our kitchen Alexa if one just discovered that the last milk is taken from the fridge. You can use Bring for free if you accept that manufacturer and retailer use it as an advertising platform for direct marketing. I'm glad to pay a reasonable subscription price for premium.

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Data Protection Day is an international day of action launched by the Council of Europe in 2008 and held annually on January 28 since then. The year it is accompanied by the Data Privacy Week from 24 to 28 of January, culminating in Data Privacy Day. The aim is to raise public awareness of privacy protection in the digital space and to encourage Internet users to exercise their right to privacy. Advertisement This date was chosen because on January 28, 1981, the Council of Europe opened for signature "Convention 108," which was the first internationally binding agreement on the protection of personal data and can be considered the precursor to the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Since 2008, a wide variety of organizations, educational institutions, and businesses have used this occasion to advocate for consistent data protection and to highlight the inherent dangers of systematic data collection by tech corporations and government agencies. On the one hand, privacy is a fundamental human right that has intrinsic value. For another, it is an indispensable cornerstone of democratic societies. And last but not least, it is completely unforeseeable what conclusions about individuals will be possible in the future with the help of the immense amounts of data and new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Here on my blog, I try to be transparent, which means I am open and honest about my non use of personal data. I do not use cookies, I use advertiser without tracking and my Analytics Platform Ghostboard uses an embed API that does not use or read cookies. I support the action and try to set a sign for data protection! Likewise, I put a #RegainPrivacy banner on my profile pictures. How about you showing your environment that you reject mass surveillance by authorities and marketing of user data by tech giants.

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Even though this blog is purely a hobby for me, there are costs associated with hosting it or for some features that I have or would like to include, like a ghost theme or a commenting platform. These are all manageable cost, but I thought I would like to investigate whether it is possible to cover these expenses. To be clear, this is not about making money, but rather to reduce costs and of course to explore new things and broaden my horizon. As always, I will try to let you participate in this process as much as possible. I will start by changing the advertiser on a monthly basis, maybe there will be a short accompanying post, I have not decided yet. The first "sponsor of the month" will be NordVPN. Also, I have set up a page to list all my hardware, software and accessories added with sponsored Amazon links, which are important for me to keep this website and my other project running. This list will most certainly grow over time. If you want to support this project, feel free to have a look at the sponsors or explore my equipment page, and if you like what they are doing, feel free to buy their service or products. There will be no additional costs for you, but I can earn a small commission that will help me to cover the expenses for this blog. I plan to keep you updated on how this project is advancing, stay tuned.

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Do you have a backup? Do I have a backup of my important files? My answer is yes, does yours? But is my strategy sufficient: What data do I need to back up, how up-to-date is it, how many copies do I have, do I have those copies all in one place, have I tested whether I can restore the backup as well, or are there perhaps even legal obligations I need to comply with? These are all essential questions that everyone can and must answer for themselves. No one wants to see a message about a hard drive failure when they turn on their computer. It's also devastating when a natural disaster renders equipment inoperable, to top it off, user errors and ransomware also pose major threats to your data. Fortunately, the 3-2-1 backup rule combined with a recovery strategy helps get your data back up and running. What data do I need to back up First of all, let's think about which devices have personal data stored, try to classify them. On the computer, we need to identify the important files and folders. These are first of all the directories with personal data, starting from private photos and videos, mementos of which there are almost never physical copies nowadays, to the precious music collection, documents and also emails. It's best to get an overview and note the locations and types of relevant data. The 3-2-1 backup rule involves storing multiple copies of data on different storage devices and in different locations. It's a best practice for backing up data, storing copies of important information from your phone, computer or tablet. Peter Krogh, a photographer, author and consultant, introduced the 3-2-1 backup rule in his book: The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers. The 3-2-1 backup rule is as follows: Create a main backup and two copies of your data, in total three copies. Store your backups on two different media. Keep at least one backup file in a different location. A 3-2-1 strategy reduces the impact of a single point of failure, such as a hard drive failure or a stolen device. For example, you can keep a backup on an external hard drive, a USB drive, and cloud storage. If a disaster wipes out your on-site backups, your external cloud-based backup can save the day. How to implement 3-2-1 into my own strategy My choice is the macOS onboard solution Time Machine , complemented by Arq . Time Machine runs hourly backups of all my data to my local NAS. While Arq specifically writes my private photos and videos to my NAS daily and to my cloud storage weekly. The cloud I currently use is OneDrive, as there was 1 TB of unused space left over from our Microsoft 365 Family plan . I made a diagram of my backup strategy to visualize it, find possible errors and to have a reference for recovery in case of the "big accident". After all, I hope this case will never occur. Time Machine Time Machine backs up everything except the macOS system since Big Sur. After the first backup, Time Machine transfers only the changed or newly added data every hour. Older versions of documents are not overwritten, and files deleted on the Mac are not removed from the backup, so it is possible to retrieve both earlier versions of a document and deleted items from the backup copy. Time Machine combines the hourly backup copies into a daily copy after 24 hours, and the daily copies into a weekly copy after a month. The weekly copies are kept until the backup disk is full. Then Time Machine deletes the oldest backup copies. Arq Backup Arq is a small but powerful app that just works. What it can't do: create bootable images. So it only serves to backup your freely configurable folders to any location. It costs $50 for one user and computer and $80 for a 5-computer family pack. There is also a premium option for $60 / year (or $6 / month) for 5 computers, with the added bonus of 1 TB included online storage. Unlike Time Machine or other backup programs, Arq specializes in online backups. Of course, local folders also work (even on a NAS), bu...

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One of my bigger projects is to get rid of the overflowing paper in my private life. This means not having to fill up tons of folders and still being able to find all the necessary documents quickly. My solution for this involves digitizing mail with SwiftScan , uploading to Evernote , and tagging it. Let's explore together how to do this the fastest and easiest way. Sorting the mail First, let's sort mail in a completely non-digital way. I use a expanding file folder with tabs for this, you can certainly use filing trays here as well. Everything that does not go directly into the trash goes into the inbox, divided into invoice that still need to be paid, letters that otherwise need a response and those that want to be digitized directly. After the remittance or other response, we continue to put the papers in the tray for scanning. However, I make a note on the document beforehand of what I did and when, e.g. Paid on 5/27/2021. For this I got myself a stamp that can be set accordingly. Scanning with SwiftScan Next up scanning. I often wait over a couple of weeks until some more papers have accumulated before I get to it. There are some good apps that we can use to accomplish the task, I've been using SwiftScan for quite some time now. Originally the app was called ScanBot and was the leftover from doo. A StartUp that wanted to make paperless home office possible. Unfortunately, their approach failed, but now we have what I think is a excellent scanner app. Before we scan, we should make a few one-time settings in the app. We connect SwiftScan to Evernote using the Cloud Services setting with automatic upload, delete after transfer, and an inbox notebook in Evernote. I very creatively named mine "Inbox." We need to create this in Evernote beforehand, of course. I also enabled OCR, set the quality to Medium and in the advanced setting of the file name template I thought of a unique naming template. Scan_YearMonthDayHourSecond This causes the files to be automatically sorted from new to old if necessary, and there are always individual names. Now we can scan our first documents. SwiftScan does a lot of this automatically. If you have a document with multiple pages, you can scan them one by one and also one after the other. For filters I like to use Black & White or Magic Text, sometimes you have to adjust the crop. Overall, a uniform dark background and lighting is helpful. When we are satisfied, we save and after OCR processing, the document is automatically uploaded to Evernote as a new note in the inbox. Sorting in Evernote Now let's move on to Evernote . There should now be one or more documents in our Inbox notebook. There are basically two systems in Evernote to sort notes. We can work with nested notebooks or by means of tagging . Due to the large number of posts about this topic, one could think that the two systems compete with each other. But for us this is not the case. I have tried to integrate the best of both worlds into my system. I handle all notes according to the following scheme: Change the note date to the date on the document. Add keywords move the note to the notebook office at the end of the year all documents from the office notebook go to the year notebook, e.g. 2021 nested in the archive folder. Keywords Which keywords you use is of course very individual. I have put together a fairly universal system that I'm sure others can use as well. My groups are: Dokument Type, Person, Content, Year, Company and Location and because we can nest keywords into groups. I prefix the group title and each keyword with a special character. Type becomes §Type, Person becomes @Person, Content becomes #Content the others become °Year, $Company and ?Location. All related keywords of the group are prefixed with the same character. So you only have to press the corresponding character when entering keywords and you will get the matching entries right away. For me mandatory Keywords are §Type, °Year and #Content. I treat th...

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You have a great idea for a blog or just want to share your thoughts with the rest of the world, to run a blog is something a lot of people are thinking of. Same for me. But is it complicated? What kind of platform do you turn to? Where do you want to host the blog? Right now, for me, the answers is Ghost hosted on DigitalOcean ! I want you to join me in the journey to set up my blog you are reading right now. Let's start by signing up with DigitalOcean. I always recommend using two-factor authentication with the help of a password manager, my password safe of choice is 1Password. Once signed in, our next step is to create a droplet. On the next page, we change to Marketplace, type "Ghost" in the search bar and select Ghost on Ubuntu. For me and probably every other starter, we choose Shared CPU - Basic, switch to Regular Intel with SSD and select the smallest possible option for $5 per month. Scrolling down, we select the datacenter region that fits our geographic region of interest best, setting our root password (remember to safe it in 1Password) and select a hostname. Finally, we can hit Create Droplet. Now the droplet is created for us. While waiting, I might grab a coffee. Hold on, that was pretty fast. To check if everything worked so far, we can grab the IP address and open it in another browser window. We should see something like this. So far, everything was pretty straight forward. Now we need a registered domain name to finish completing the Ghost setup. First, we need to add a domain to the droplet. To do so, we select "Add a domain" from the droplet drop down menu and enter our domain name. After that, we need to update our nameserver with our domain registrar for the records to take effect. This may vary, depending on the registrar you use. My registrar of choice is Cloudflare. Log in to your registrar, look for the DNS-Setting and add an A record to the droplet’s IP address. After the domain and DNS records are all set up, we need to log into the Ghost Droplet to complete the setup process. From a terminal on our local computer, connect to the droplet via ssh as root. Make sure to change the IP address to match your droplet. As soon as we log in using our previously created root password, the droplet will automatically make sure it’s running the most recent version of Ghost, and will prompt us to press ENTER to finalize the setup. We need to follow the installation prompts to configure Ghost. After the setup process is done, we immediately need to configure the admin user using the administrative interface at http://use_your_droplet_ip/ghost/. Until we configure the admin user, anyone who discovers the site can configure the administrative user and take control of the site. Done. We have now successfully set up a blog using Ghost on DigitalOcean. In the upcoming posts we will be looking into configuring Ghost, changing the theme, posting our first article and probably much more, so stay tuned and if you liked this setup guide give me a shout-out.