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When I was a kid in the 1980s, it was quite common for “My friends” books to make their rounds on the schoolyard. These books consisted of two page questionnaires for your buddies to fill out so you could remember them all. One of the more common questions was “What are your hobbies” and I can’t remember when I started putting “learning” in there but I sure did. Rather early in my life I noticed that learning new things was a lot of fun for me! Reading up on things in my parents’ lexicon collection, trying my hand at various forms of crafting and getting better at them, and of course also learning everything I could about all the technology all around me felt amazing1. And that never stopped, rather the opposite: Nothing gives me more dopamine these days than going down a shiny new rabbit hole, absorbing new knowledge like a sponge does water, and then putting it to use right away to work towards acquiring a new skill or solving a problem. Lifelong learning, broadening my understanding of the world and acquiring new skills to then use to make or do something myself2 are a huge part of who I am. ...

It was annoying me for a while now that my chosen theme PaperMod didn’t also support some kind of all-in-one RSS feed with all main sections. And also that the feeds were called index.xml instead of feed.xml, confusing me every time I wanted to check something on them manually. Also, the feed link title just being rss didn’t exactly help in a feed reader either. So just now I’ve done some long overdue spring cleaning on this page: ...

For several months now I’ve been meaning to write about my notebook journey. Today the stars finally aligned and I just sat down to tell you about how I’ve been managing my TODOs for almost a year now. It all started when I created myself a little leather cover for my A5 sized solo RPG journal: Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social Currently learning how to play #Starforged and as I apparently enjoy the journaling part of it I just built myself a traveler's notebook 😊 Apart from two notebook inserts, this also has an insert for holding my character sheet and my assets, plus a move cheat sheet. ...

Just like last year I’ve decided to sit down today and write my very own retrospective. The year has been difficult in several ways, but whenever I took another look at last year’s post it put a smile on my face, remembering the good things about life in general. In the hope that this will continue to work, here we go with the same look at cool stuff that I did or experienced in 2025… ...

I finally decided to write the following post as every time I have an acute episode of my chronic vertigo and mention it to people, I have to explain my situation and symptoms again. So I decided to write it down here to just be able to link people to it instead 😉. This is not an attempt to get attention or pity, so please spare me that! 😅 I have had a chronic vertigo since fall of 2000 now. It’s not a case of issues with low blood pressure (“blackness in front of the eyes”) or some light-headedness or something like that, but rather a case of the same sensoric input being generated somewhere between my vestibular system and my brain as if I was on a roller coaster or sitting on a merry-go-around. During acute episodes which last hours to days (and sometimes even weeks) this leads to unstable walking, a very insecure feeling when standing and sometimes also nausea and nystagmus, not to mention exhaustion while trying to compensate for all of that. Thankfully, it’s “just” vertigo, my hearing is perfectly fine. ...

For a couple of years now I’ve had the sneaking suspicion that I’m neurodivergent. And while I still don’t have a diagnosis, there are several things I use to cope with my brain constantly going BRRRRRR, thinking (and worrying) about everything while forgetting important things, and I thought some of those might also be helpful to others. Thus, here are five of my favourite lifehacks that I’ve been using to cope with the weirdness that is my brain. Some of them I’ve used for years before I ever suspected something, some of them I only discovered after reading up on neurodiversity. Maybe you find something interesting for yourself! ...

I decided to try my hand at my very own 2024 retrospective to give myself a chance to see more of the good things I managed to get done or that I experienced. And as the news continue to be all doom and gloom I figured why not do this in the shape of a blog post so that a) it’s more easy for myself to revisit that again in the future whenever I get dragged down and b) y’all maybe also get some positive vibes. ...

The other day I was taking care of a fresh mosquito bite with the heat-it that’s part of my EDC (“everyday carry”), and that reminded me that I’d been meaning to do a quick write-up about my EDC for ages. On top of my keys (with some meds and my second factor tokens) and my phone (currently a Pixel 6a) I usually carry a little pouch with me as pictured above. ...

I’m on day 4 of my desperately needed summer vacation1, and twice already I got pinged on my personal social media accounts about OctoPrint related stuff. This happens on every vacation that I take, and during shorter breaks like weekends or just after hours as well, so much so that I’ve pinned a post about it to my Mastodon account (that now also cross references this very blog post): Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social Friendly reminder: This is my private Mastodon account which I also want to be able to read after work, during the weekends & other time off without getting dragged back into work 😉 ...

As hinted at to be my plan in my post about my first proper gamedev experience back in April, I recently took part in my first ever gamejam, Go Godot Jam 4, and during that built a game called “Pew Pew Pew: Danger Zone!”. The jam required all submissions to be built in Godot Engine, which was one of the reasons I chose it - I just recently got my feet wet in game development with Godot 4 and wanted to get some more practice in. Since my partner was otherwise committed, I entered as a solo dev. ...