This site no longer runs on a small virtual server in some data center, but it just moved home. Literally home that is, it now runs from my old RaspberryPi3 that sits on top of my fridge. This became possible because we got fast internet into our cottage in the middle of the Swedish forest.

With government subsidies and spreading costs over the local association, getting connected cost us 1800 EUR in total, which is a steal because they had to dig an extra kilometer just to get to us. Yes, there is an acutal glass fiber running all the way into our kitchen and I could get 1GBit/s up and down, if I had the use for it.

I was shortly considering switching back to Wordpress here, but decided against it, even though there did not seem to be a performance problem on the RasPi. I might still do it eventually for the comments and easier posting from mobile, but I would have to write a script to insert the posts that I made in the meantime from the markdown files into the database, since the RSS-import of WP fails.

Caddy is no longer just a proxy for nginx to get automatic LetsEncrypt certificates, but it serves the files itself now and interfaces with fastcgi, among other things for my instance of TT-RSS that I use as my main news and blog aggregator.

I saw a claim on Twitter that made me think:

If you think it's crazy how much a child's life is affected by being born into a religion, wait until you hear about class!

(my translation from Swedish)

My first reaction was, No way! Religions are much more restrictive. But then again, I guess it depends very much on the context. Even in secular societies it can be hard to break out of a cultish religious context, but I won't deny that class might be more limiting for most. To make the same case for other places in the world, like women in the middle east and central asia, would be more difficult.

2019 is a good year for butterflies, at least in Sweden.

Spending a week in a cabin is fun, but the cross-country skiing itself does not fill the whole day, so there is ample opportunity for board games. The latest additions to our collection are azul and Deep Sea Adventure.

We awoke to -20°C this morning in Bruksvallarna, after spending much of yesterday driving northward to get here. Still, here in the region of Härjedalen we are only in the middle of Sweden, when it comes to it's large north-south extent.

Bruksvallarna is known for cross-country skiing. The tracks were a bit icy today, but the forecast promises fresh snow for tomorrow.

Since I just mentioned it, maybe it's time to comment on how well, or not, we like our electric Nissan Leaf, now that we have had it for 15 months, going into the second Swedish winter with it.

We bought it used, very reasonably priced, since it's the base model with no frills, from 2013, still the early days of electric cars. Plus, it has a quirky history, being imported from California. This brings a few minor annoyances with it, like the AC temperature setting in Fahrenheit, or that the car cannot be convinced to recognize the European tire-pressure sensors in our winter tires.

But overall we're very happy with it. It's a comfortable ride and covers my commute (2x20km) plus the occasional detour without causing "range anxiety". In summer, a full charge would last for two trips to town and back, so I mostly charge to 80% only then. In winter, the number of charge percentage points needed for a single trip increases from ~20% to ~30%, which still leaves a comfortable margin.

I use the app LeafSpy to read the car's internal information and it tells me that the battery is at 82%, which after more than five years lifetime seems to be slightly above average, when comparing to statistics.

But all the numbers are not what's important. I found driving to work became more relaxing with the Leaf. Stop-and-go traffic is much less stressful than with a stick-shift and the lack of combustion engine decreases the noise-level, which in turn means that I can listen to my podcasts or audiobooks at lover volume - again preventing stress.

In addition, mileage is cheaper (less than half the cost) and less polluting than a fossil car. So we can feel smug about that, too.

I love this kind of trick. It's non-obvious, at least to me, and such a nice illustration of the cleverness that craftsmen and DIY-folks have.

The only time I tried tiling myself was last summer, around our old kitchen stove. It came out quite ok, but not perfect.

Last spring, during one of our long drives I was stupid enough to bump into the car in front of us, at low speed. Luckily, there was not much damage, but our car's front was compressed a centimeter or two, such that the left headlight no longer was properly attached.

Since it's an older car and not the kind of damage that affected operation, I just let it be and did nothing much. But now it was time for an inspection so I had another look yesterday. After thinking for a few minutes, I found a spot on the light casing that could hold a screw, such that it works as an attachment for a strong zip tie. This, in turn, now pulls the light into place and secures it. I love zip ties.

This morning, the car (2009 Toyota Yaris) passed the inspection with flying colours - yay! Now it is ready to be sold. The replacement will be a Nissan Note, which is the right compromise between a city-traffic and long trips, that our electric is not meant for.