Over the past few days, I once again disappeared down the proverbial rabbit hole. But let’s start from the beginning. On Saturday, I wrote a blog post to outline an automated and deterministic document workflow.1 To make it easier to follow, I also set up a Codeberg repository.2 The feedback was unexpectedly overwhelming and raised many valid points. The repository itself had been put together quickly rather than thoroughly, so I ended up revising it significantly and renaming it in the process. It is no longer just a demo. It now represents a complete, highly flexible, and at the same time very simple document workflow. Read more

In case you need a shell script or Ansible playbook to update your own Forgejo instance, I’ve just uploaded mine to Codeberg.1 The specific reason: There have been a series of updates in quick succession over the past days.2 I noticed some people expressing frustration about having to redo all their updates all over again. This is exactly what automation is for: A clearly defined, reproducible update process saves time, reduces errors and ensures a more relaxed approach. And Forgejo, with its single-file binary, couldn’t be easier to deal with. Read more

PureBasic v6.3 came out yesterday.1 A real good occasion to recompile my projects based on it and make them more visible. Especially in times of heavyweight frameworks, these tools show that functional software can be done differently: single binaries with native performance, extremely small, transparent and easy to maintain. A self-hosted aviation weather planner with DWD ICON-D2 data, which processes raw data on the server side and delivers it as a lean web application. 2 The front end and web server do not require external services or frameworks, including OSM caching, reverse proxy and kiosk mode for permanently operated POI/POS information systems that can be used offline aswell. Read more

Today on public holiday (in Germany) I polished my Nautilus script collection and uploaded it to Codeberg.1 For everyone who enjoys automating recurring tasks such as OCR on PDFs, creating animated WebP images from a selection of pictures, or encoding videos in h.265. The script collection will be updated from time to time. I already have some nice ideas in mind, like posting a graphic directly to Mastodon, more to come. Read more

A Bash script I’ve used for many years got some love recently and I’ve uploaded it to Codeberg.1 The HTTP Limiter is my answer to the bots, scrapers, and pentest tools that constantly hammer on my public facing hosts. Though “hammer” might actually be an understatement. What once seemed like constant background noise has now become the norm with noticeable consequences: Log files grow faster and make you blind to relevant entries. Processing meaningless requests consumes more CPU, RAM, and bandwidth. REST APIs in particular, often implemented in slow frameworks and programming languages with sluggish database connections, are highly vulnerable to DDOS2 attacks. Read more