We had a little “Meet your Idol” moment when we visited Laura Kampfs Workshop near Cologne last week.

If you do not know Laura Kampf yet you can check out what she is doing on YouTube. Laura is a maker, artist and recently became the unofficial janitor of LA. We love her work and values, definitely a channel worth following.

Since Laura moved to her family in LA she closed her workshop here in Germany. Over the years, she collected so many great tools and materials for potential DIY projects, so she decided to hold a big yard sale. We took the chance and grabbed two tickets.

It was quite exciting to see her workshop in person – even though seeing that place in the videos for the last couple of years, the workshop-layout and the yard were different than we expected. Anyhow it was great to browse through everything and discover her projects from past videos, such as the tiny house, the little camper bar “Kleine Kneipe” or the DJ Booth.

We bought a rubber band for a DIY shoe rack, a metallic letter “O” for our gallery wall and some small pieces such as strobo light bulbs (they do not work, but I love the red and orange plastic) and colored glass. to round things off, It was my lucky day: I got two a bandana and small toolbox from the crane game and also won a drinking bottle from the tombola. Thank you!

Its sad to see Laura leaving Cologne area, but I am really happy for her having such a great community in LA and being with her family of course.

Thanks for all your great work Laura – see you on Youtube! 🙂

We went to Museum Ludwig and visited the amazing exhibition “Kids Take Over” by Francis Alÿs. The exhibition shows children from around the world at play. It was amazing, I can definitely recommend visiting that exhibition if you got the chance.

At the end there was an interactive room where the visitors could invent own games. My girlfriend stumbled upon a game a visitor “Zoé” invented:

Game Titel: “Lets Eat?”
Objective: Ask a stranger if they have already eaten. If they have, ask them what they ate. Your goal is to eat the same food within the next 24 hours. E.g. Oats with Berries,(Soy)-Milkshake, Daal, Spinach Salad.

I would off course add, to adjust the dishes according to your nutrition needs and allergies.

I noticed that I love tinkering with my website — creating new pages and improving the site overall. However my initial plan was to start a website in order to write more and learn English, so lets write this article about my desire to write more.

Ideas to write more often

• Try to publish one article a week—short or long, it doesn’t matter.
• Join a IndieWeb Carnival
• Take article inspiration from other personal website such as this one or this one or this one
• Finish one of the 10 articles I started. This is a hard one for me.
• Ask people on the Fediverse how they got into regular writing.

So how do you folks got into regular writing?

I recently discovered the Album Saturno 2000 and totally fell in love with cumbia rebjadas – slowed-down, pitched-shifted cumbia songs.

The genre started in the 70s when the turntables of DJ Gabriel Dueñez short-circuited during a set, playing the records at lower speed. I love it when a music genre starts with such a happy accident.

This reminds me of a story I heard about my favorite music genre from my youth „Desert Rock“. The genre was born with so called gasoline parties in LA – a bunch of people drove out in the desert and played concerts with gasoline powered generators. The story goes that these generators had an unstable electrical output: The fluctuating voltage and current from the generators allegedly created a pulsing, uneven tone that became a signature element of the genre. Though I just researched this and cant find any source that validate it.

Anyhow, the cumbia rebjada Album was released by the label Analog Africa and contains 15 tracks with artists from Colombia, Equador, Peru, México and Venezuela. My favorite Track is La Borrachita.

This website is my happy space in the web.

A space where I can write what comes to mind, without the urge to publish regularly. A space to explore and experiment with web design ideas, fully embracing the fact that it may be a work in progress and not necessarily finished anytime soon. A space to connect with old friends that I have not been in touch since my social media exodus. A space to meet new friends. A space to share not only words, but also photography and digital sketches. A space where I have full ownership of my content.

I have to admit, I have a soft spot for interactive elements. However, I understand that not everyone experiences the web in the same way. Many people either dislike or get distracted and disoriented by animations that cannot be paused. It’s important to me to respect that.

That’s where the prefers-reduced-motion media query comes into play. It’s a simple yet powerful way to tailor the experience for those who prefer less motion.

How its done

I created two classes to either show or hide an element, such as the motion divider.

• My interactive motion divider gets the .motion-hide class, which hides it when the user has a preference for reduced motion.
• My static divider gets the .motion-hide-default class, which is displayed when the user prefers reduced motion.

This way, I can easily control which elements are visible based on user preferences, creating a more inclusive experience.

/* If the user prefers reduced motion, hide elements with the class 'motion-hide' */
@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
    .motion-hide {
        display: none; /* These elements will not be displayed */
    }
}

/* By default, hide elements with the class 'motion-hide-default' */
.motion-hide-default {
    display: none; /* These elements are hidden initially */
}

/* If the user prefers reduced motion, show elements with the class 'motion-hide-default' */
@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
    .motion-hide-default {
        display: block; /* Change to 'inline' if you want them to be inline elements */
    }
}

The goal

I’m trying to foster a sense of community where everyone can enjoy the content without feeling alienated by design choices. So, here’s to a more inclusive web!

Im a bit obsessed with a certain ballet piece which I first saw in my childhood and a lot of times since then. As a matter of fact its playing right now, wile writing these words. It is full of animals and just magical: Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971)

I always imagined living in this world. I would dance with my fellow pigs and mice out in the summer field. I would smash the dishes and furniture in the dollhouse, because we were hungry and there was only plastic food. The frog and I would jump over the sea petals and try to avoid the big fish. When it would get late me and my squirrels friends would paddle our rafts into the sunset.

I am really thankful that it is available in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/tales-of-beatrix-potter

A couple of weeks ago I finally started my membership at the local library (@stbibkoeln) and now I wonder: Why didn´t I do that 12 years ago when I moved to Cologne?

I really love the priniciple of renting over buying – libraries feel like the perfect embodiment of that sharing economy. So it was about time.

Since I started my membership I already borrowed a variety of stuff:

• A Steeldrum
• A Korg Volca Synthesizer – which I totally love
• 5 Books – I am reading more regularly now because there is a return date
• 2 Movies – they have a online-media library that kinda looks like netflix

This feels like a membership that I want to keep for the rest of my life.

As children, we were thrilled when we first got a computer—a 286 MHz model, if I remember correctly. I knew that computer games existed, but I had no idea what they actually looked like.

One of the programs I enjoyed was an IBM typing practice tool designed to teach 10 finger typing. My sister and I played it frequently, convinced it was a fun computer game.

Thanks to that experience, I can now type with all ten fingers! Would I still have loved it, when I knew it was primarily an exercise?

Recently I stumbled upon online typing games such as this one https://www.keybr.com/. Instantly hooked again.

Im officially part of the cool kids club of the decentralized web: I federated this WordPress blog with the ActivityPub Plugin by Matthias Pfefferle @pfefferle.

It seems to work: The plugin has created a mastodon profile that anyone can follow. New blogposts are automatically posted there.

Not sure if I can comment or reply with that profile. Time to explore.

Plunch

@plunch

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This is a federated account that automatically posts articles from my website. However, I am experiencing some issues with the WordPress federation. If I don’t answer, it’s probably because I didn’t see your comment, so be sure to contact me on my main profile.

11 posts

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This is it: My first blogpost is online. And with it my brand new personal website.

It took me quite a while to get to this point since I started over a couple of times. But I really enjoyed the process of tinkering around and exploring how my website will look. It is not finished yet but I am letting it out in the IndieWeb: Why wait, it will evolve over time anyhow.

I’m looking forward connecting with you folks.