This weekend is all about housekeeping. The reason: PureBasic v6.4 was released two weeks ago.1 So I spent the morning updating my open source projects built on it. No new features, just recompiling and testing. I also took the opportunity to bring the documentation up to date. The way you would expect from a well-maintained Git repository, including my offer of professional business support for real added value. Updated projects at a glance: QR Code Detection A QR/barcode scanner for standard webcams or RTSP streams. It provides a virtual keyboard and essentially replaces dedicated hardware, while offering significantly more flexibility.2 Read more

“Now he’s completely lost it” is probably what a regular reader might think. After all, I use plain text (Markdown) as the “single source of truth”1 in my document workflow,2 and now I want proper charts for visualization. Not ASCII bars. Actual pie charts. The kind managers and decision-makers expect. That sounds like a fundamental contradiction. I would argue it is not. In fact, I solved it in a clean way. Read more

Epyy is the name of the new icon and mascot of my open ISMS document workflow on Codeberg.1 The name comes from the Greek ἐπισκοπεῖν (episkopeîn), which translates to inspect or monitor. Think of it as a friendly, and more importantly “living”, document that guides you through the ISO 27001 and TISAX maze. The ISMS workflow is free and open source. If you need professional support or custom adjustments, feel free to reach out. PRs are welcome! Read more

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

Over the weekend, I published a sample repository on Codeberg.1 It proposes treating ISMS documentation like code. The concrete example is an ISO 27001 risk assessment for organizational assets. The focus is less on the document itself and more on the underlying concept. Everything is written in a universal, text-only format that will still be editable in any editor 50 years from now: Markdown.2 Markdown comes with a few practical advantages: Read more

On the third DI Day, I am parting ways with Apple’s proprietary Maps app and switching to CoMaps as an alternative.1 After two confirmation prompts, the app was quickly removed from the phone. Screenshot of removing the Apple Maps app on iOS For quite some time, I have been frustrated with Apple, not just in terms of privacy and digital independence. It is also the steadily declining user experience. As an iPhone user since 2007, I was originally convinced by thoughtful details and clean design. Today, I see the same lack of care and the same aggressive data collection as with other big tech companies. Read more

How many admins does it take to roll out 150 client PCs in one morning? The honest answer for most mid-sized companies: too many. If people are walking from machine to machine with USB sticks, the approach is fundamentally wrong and inefficient. What is missing are clear concepts, monitoring, automation, and scalability. In that order. Without automation, scaling turns into exploding personnel costs. Without monitoring, automation becomes a force multiplier for mistakes. Without clear concepts, monitoring ends up measuring the wrong things. Read more

Second DI Day in the still young year of 2026.1 This time I parted ways with another US-based service: Automattic. Not a Big Tech giant, but still highly relevant on the web. It is the company behind the well-known site builder WordPress and the Gravatar service.2 For nearly 18 years, one of my photos has been tied to my email address across countless forums and websites through Gravatar. Looking back, that feels like a relic from a more naive phase of the internet, when the idea was to put a face to a name in chats and forums. In the age of surveillance capitalism,3 AI-generated images, and fake identities, that original purpose has largely disappeared. If anything, it has become a disadvantage to lose control over your own image online. Even if someone only uses an avatar, a centralized US provider can still track where and when that avatar is requested. Automattic’s terms explicitly allow broad data sharing with third parties:4 Read more

A new publication written by me has been published in today’s c’t 3/2026.1 It shows step-by-step how data from PDF forms can be automatically extracted using the open source tool pdfcpu and subsequently imported back into ERP or ticket systems using jq or curl. Completely without media breaks, proprietary software or subscriptions. By the way, the editable PDF forms are created with LibreOffice. The proprietary Microsoft Office still cannot create PDF forms by 2026. 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