When we reformed our band 25 years ago, we named it "Division By Zero." I don't remember why. We played gigs in and around Hamburg and released an album on CD. Spotify and the like were still a long way off.

A few years later, a band formed in Poland, also called "Division By Zero," and they also played live and released CDs. They were more successful than us. So, if you searched for a band with that name, you'd quickly find a lot of them and very little of us.

They'd snatched the name from us and probably hadn't even noticed. We changed the band's lineup for various reasons, and that was a good time for a new name.

Back then, only a few people who knew us even noticed. So, it wasn't really a big deal.

Today, we not only have a different name, but the music world has also changed dramatically. Music is streamed, and only a few nerds, like me, are still buying vinyl records.

If we release a single, an EP, or an album today, we can distribute it digitally within a few days. On Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and others

This is handled either by the band's label or by the band itself. We're with a small label, but we still take care of distribution as well.

A few years ago, if you wanted to make music available on streaming services, the only way was through a label. Only they had the ability to upload music. Today, there are numerous services.

If we release a single, an EP, or an album today, we can distribute it digitally within a few days. For an annual fee, I can now happily upload music, and it's available online within a few days.

On streaming services, there's only one band called Green Day. There's only one band called Division By Zero. And there's only one of us, too. Theoretically.

The service we use takes all of this very seriously. It ensures accurate data, requires the labeling of AI-generated music, and warns artists if it looks like there might be fake streams. But not all services are like that.

We rehearse in a former air-raid shelter in Hamburg. A legendary bunker where Tocotronic, Olli Schulz, and other Hamburg legends have rehearsed. It's not exactly cheap, which is why we share the space with some of our friends' bands. One of them is called SPATZ.

SPATZ released an EP last year, which I immediately listened to on Tidal and added it to my albums. I've been following the band there ever since.

Recently, the band surprised me with three new singles and a new album. They hadn't mentioned anything about it, I was surprised. Quite unusual artwork. Strange.

A few years ago, I discovered the band ABAY. I have a knack for finding bands when they've either just broken up or are about to. ABAY was one of those bands.

So I was all the more pleased by their sudden re-release. Which, after clicking play, sounds rather unusual.

Neither SPATZ nor ABAY (I seem to have a thing for bands with all caps) are actually SPATZ and ABAY in this case.

With SPATZ, I'm not even sure if this is an AI project; the covers certainly look like it. But the real problem is something else: the name.

When I, as an artist, subscribe to such a distribution service, I provide my stage name. If the service is primarily concerned with making money and not checking what the users are actually doing, then I can enter whatever I want.

Because a band can only exist once for streaming services, I could simply use any existing band name and exploit the band's profile.

I don't want to accuse anyone of anything malicious in either example; the artists certainly didn't know each other. But I do see a problem.

Although I, as an artist, receive a unique artist ID on Spotify (and other services), there's only one profile for the band name. All releases are merged together in this profile, even if they belong to two different bands.

For artists, this is obviously terrible. In the worst-case scenario, they lose listeners because these listeners no longer like the supposedly new, different music. In SPATZ's case, the sheer number of new releases from other artists means her EP gets lost in the shuffle.

The solution would be to have different profiles for bands with the same name. They supposedly have different IDs.

Until then, I could simply rename our band to Green Day and see what happens.

Over the past few days, I've often pondered how to summarize the past year. Many adjectives have come to mind, but none quite fit. “Tiring,” however, seems to be the best description.

This is largely due to the sheer volume of things happening around us. I avoid doomscrolling, but I'm also not someone who can—or wants to—ignore these things.

Professionally and creatively, AI was (once again) the dominant theme. Similarly tiring, and now accompanied by an eye roll. However, I find it gratifying to see that for many people, AI has become synonymous with inferior quality or even “fake.”

When you consider everything that AI is capable of and is meant to replace, I'm a prime example. Programmer, musician, writer, and new to game development.

Of course, this doesn't stop me from continuing to do exactly that—quite the opposite. Furthermore, I will continue to use the Em Dash in my writing—as a matter of principle!

But somehow, one has to deal with all of this.

For some time now, I've been working on a separate section on my site for more creative writing. A section from which I'd like to keep “the AI” out, a personalized, experimental space. I believe this is a way to differentiate myself. Not from other bloggers, but from boring, run-of-the-mill AI-generated texts.

There will be three sections on my website, the boundaries of which are somewhat blurred. There will be this creative section, which will be rather isolated.

There will be the section that includes, among other things, all my Kirby-related content and which will be expanded next year to include my first Kirby course. Here, I will continue to write about web development and publishing, and probably in more depth.

The blog serves as a link between these sections. More like a classic log. I'm also thinking about certain types of posts, and I'm not yet sure whether they should have their own section or just be a category on the blog.

Almost everything is already prepared. The creative section still needs some work, but it's slowly taking shape.

I've also made arrangements to allow readers to access only specific sections. So, if you're only here for Kirby and aren't interested in the rest, you can filter accordingly.

All these ideas, redesigns, and a general feeling of fatigue have meant that there hasn't been much text activity here in recent months. I needed to focus.

I wish you all a happy new year. Thank you for stopping by and reading along. All the best for 2026 – see you soon!

Then the usual routine: setup, soundcheck, and then what felt like forever waiting for the show to start. But since everyone was so friendly and there was even some food, the time passed quickly. Then it was time to hit the stage. The sound was fantastic both in front of and on stage, which made playing even more enjoyable. I think the audience really liked it too. We'd love to come back again sometime.

Yesterday I visited the Mojo Jazz Café for the first time. I listened to Hohnen Ford, a singer I'd been recommended on YouTube a while back, and I was immediately captivated by her voice. Unfortunately, the venue is quite long and narrow, so you quickly find yourself in the back and can't see much, but the sound was good.

I took the opportunity to use a Kirby field now to me: Toggles:

So far, I've given a classic five-star rating using a range slider. As I mentioned in my note, I often found it difficult to decide on a number.

Now I have four options:

1. I don't recommend it
2. I kind of liked it
3. I liked it a lot
4. It's a definite favorite

The difference may not be that big, but the visualization makes rating easier because it's not an abstract number on a constantly changing scale.

The nice thing about the Toggles field: I can keep my old ratings; the available values are now interpreted as strings but saved unchanged as numbers. So I only had to change the field, without having to fill all the books with new data.

Since I could previously rate from 0 to 5 and now only 0, 3, 4, and 5 (because those are the most common), I had to add a few fallbacks for old ratings to the page. But that wasn't a problem.

This is what my field configuration looks like now:

rating:
    label: Rating
    type: toggles
    labels: false
    grow: false
    width: 1/4
    options:
        - value: '0'
          text: schlecht
          icon: protected
        - value: '3'
          text: gut
          icon: circle-half
        - value: '4'
          text: Sehr gut
          icon: circle-filled
        - value: '5'
          text: Favorit
          icon: star-filled

I then made a few visual adjustments to the page. The large block at the bottom of the page had been too clunky for a while:

I reduced it, it now looks similar to the actions under blog posts:

In the process, I also made a few bug fixes for the internal links, etc., and removed the year-based breakdown from some views.

I'm quite happy with it for now. We'll see how long it lasts.

Hello friend, I hope this e-mail finds you well.

I'm a friend, an acquaintance, a work colleague, your trusted newsletter. But something's wrong. Something seems wrong. The sender is correct, the address is correct. This isn't spam. But something... something is strange.

Much of what we do today is based on mutual trust. We've created ways and means to ensure that we're really dealing with people or entities we trust. But what if that trust is undermined?

We're already seeing what happens when it becomes increasingly easier to manipulate images, sound, and video. Who among us hasn't looked at an image and doubted its authenticity? It's fake.

This happens to me more and more often. I see an image or video, and my first reaction is: It's not real.

That's why we've relied on media outlets in the past. Entities that, ideally, have reviewed the material they put online. I assume that a reputable outlet won't simply post unverified material.

That's why I pay for certain media outlets. That's why I subscribe to certain podcasts and newsletters. But there's a problem here. What if someone in the middle is manipulating information?

For some time now, there have been a growing number of complaints against major media outlets. They were writing confusing stuff or, even worse, confusing important facts. But that wasn't the case at all. The newsletters were sent out with the correct information, but they reached the recipients with incorrect information.

How could this happen?

In IT, this is referred to as a man-in-the-middle attack.

In cryptography and computer security, a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, or on-path attack, is a cyberattack where the attacker secretly relays and possibly alters the communications between two parties who believe that they are directly communicating with each other, where in actuality the attacker has inserted themselves between the two user parties.

• Wikipedia

But who would stand between the newsletter sender and me? Hardly anyone would make the effort of interfering with my data traffic to manipulate information in my subscribed newsletters.

The answer to this question soon became clear. No one was in the middle; the problem was in the inbox.

Gmail users were particularly affected.
Google recognizes the language of every email and offers automatic translation. So, if Google thinks it recognizes an email written in English, it attempts to translate it into German.

Now, if a German email is mistakenly classified as being in another language, it is translated, and German words are "re-translated" into German. The result is corrupted text.

This may sound a bit bizarre at first, but when a report about Russian attacks on "Ukrainian positions" suddenly becomes "American positions" or other facts are distorted, it takes on a certain seriousness.

T-Online has reported extensively on the problem and the taz newspaper describes a similar case, which, however, was noticed before publication (via achtmilliarden) – all three are German only.

What does this do to us if we can no longer even trust that the texts we write will reach the recipient exactly as they were written? And conversely: If we can't be sure that what we are reading was actually written that way?

Google is working on a solution, T-Online writes.

But the question remains; even if it was just an annoying mistake. With all the AI tools that are now being used everywhere, whether users like it or not, we can never be sure what happens to our data.

What does this do to us?

At least in direct communication, we can mitigate the risk. We can use email services that don't integrate AI functions. Those who have their own domain can usually use it to send and receive emails.

We should also encrypt our emails. If an AI manages to manipulate the contents of a GPG/PGP encrypted email, we have entirely different problems.

Checksums would also be possible. These have long been used in software deployment and make it possible to determine whether data has been tampered with after the source code or the program has been published (and a checksum has been created). If this is the case, the checksum no longer matches the tampered code.

But none of this helps if our apps contain AIs that only begin their work after decryption. As is often the case, open source software can help us avoid this. Thanks to open source code, we can be truly certain that the man in the middle isn't actually sitting on our lap.

If we don't want to lose our trust entirely, if we still want to rely on digital media and our communication, we must take measures now that enable us to prevent manipulation.

And the question remains (and even more so): What does it do to us if we can no longer trust any information?

I hope this e-mail finds you well – and was not manipulated.

I was at the "Fabrik" yesterday and listened to Regener, Pappik, and Busch. I liked it, although as a drummer I have a few complaints, but that's just a quirk of mine.

Three years ago, I decided I'll just try to develop my own game. Things are slowly taking shape, but first things first.

Over the past few years, I've noticed a certain behavior in myself: I want too much. I'd like to write more, not just technically, but also other forms of writing. And I love making music, both with my band and privately. I listen to a lot of different music and often think: I want to do something like that. And I watch movies and series and then think about the story or the mood, or both: I want to do that too. And I like programming small and large tools and hacks and the like.

The time we all have at our disposal is finite. Viewed as a whole and in relation to the day. I can't do everything, I tell myself over and over again. Programming, writing, music, telling stories. I have to make decisions and set limits...

But that's not true at all!

Like so many of us who work with computers today, the moment that sparked our interest lies in childhood. When asked why they became developers, the answer is often that they loved computer games as a child and wanted to build one themselves.

Most of us learned to program, but never followed through with the idea of creating a computer game. I was no exception.

Sitting in front of my Amiga in the late 80s, I'd always wanted to program my own games. But I didn't know how. The little bit of Basic I had managed to master didn't help. Later, when I could build websites, I tried it somehow, but it didn't go well.

Then I did an apprenticeship and learned programming, and when we were able to choose a project ourselves to program and then submit, I thought about writing a game.

Battleship was it back then. Built with Delphi. A multiplayer game over the network! I was pretty proud of that; I was even able to add PC speaker sound with just a few lines of assembly code. My first functioning game!

A while ago, I was sitting there thinking that I couldn't do everything at once: programming, telling stories, making music. Then I thought back and realized: yes, I can!

What I've always wanted to do, programming a game, combines exactly that. It needs a story, it needs music and atmosphere, it needs someone to program the stuff.

So, three years ago, while on vacation, I started with a few notes. I wrote down what I'd like to play, noted down the mechanics, etc.

Up until then, I had programmed a few games with Phaser. Simply because I wanted to try it out. It went okay, but it was nowhere near the level I was aiming for.

Two years ago, I started exploring Godot. A game engine that has become quite popular in recent times. And what it can do!

And so I spend an evening or two every few days working on my game. Of course, I didn't start small; I immediately took on a project that was far too big. And that's why I now build a multiplayer game.

A few days ago, I "finished" all the basic mechanics. Players can walk across a map, they can place buildings. These buildings then do things when players are within range. It all runs over the network/internet.

For now, these are mostly colorful blocks because I'll probably despair of creating good-looking graphics. But we'll see. I'm approaching the project similarly to other programming jobs: First, the basic technology has to work.

Since I've been delving deeper into the whole topic, new game ideas have been constantly coming to me. I have to restrain myself from constantly changing the game's concepts to incorporate new ideas. Instead, I'll probably build smaller games to test certain techniques or figure out how to release such a game.

My big game project will probably be with me for a long time. I've now reached a point where I have enough knowledge to work on it at a reasonable pace. I'm no longer constantly digging through documentations and forums to understand things.

Therefore, I'll probably write more often about what I'm doing in the future. I'm creating a separate category for this so that these topics can be filtered if they are of particular interest or of no interest at all.

This is what it looks like right now:

I told you: blocks.

Right now, I'm still having a lot of fun with all this, and I'm making good progress, even if it doesn't look like it. We'll see how long that lasts and whether I can squeeze in some smaller games to try things out.

Since my time is limited, it will probably take me forever, but that's okay, I think. So, in the future, there will be some insights from this world here as well. And now excuse me, I still have a multiplayer bug to fix.

It took me a while to work up the courage to publish this text, but here we are.

I am sitting here on my plateau, and I am looking down. I hear the sound of the water. There still is some space above me, but it's difficult to get there, if even possible.

Below me they are hitting the rock, those waves. I see people and animals floating in the water, clinging to tree trunks and branches. They are floating away slowly. Around me, more rocks. People are sitting on them everywhere. Some are higher than others. Everybody is pretty busy. With things. Important things, no question.

On the water, shaken by high waves, a few ships. They try to pick up the people drowning. There are not enough ships. Every time they pull a few more people on board, the water level rises a little, and more people slide from their ledges into the water. The noise gets louder.

I am a bad swimmer.

As a child, I wanted to be an environmentalist. I founded a Greenteam. We wanted to save the environment, so we collected trash and took water samples to measure the pH. The summers were warm, but only a few days were they really hot. We had a small inflatable pool in the backyard. I never liked swimming, but I did enjoy splashing around.

Today, summers are hot. Very hot. Swimming pools are no longer allowed to be filled in many regions in Germany; there's not enough water. Not enough water?! That was never something we worried about here. It was always the poor people who lived in Elsewhere.

The pools remain dry. The gardens wither, and where once perfectly trimmed, green German lawns stretched toward the sky, one now marvels at dusty brown spikes.

Speaking of brown spikes. Brown is back in fashion. Painted in bright colors, it may be, but the paint is easily scraped off, revealing brown, rusted steel. They're annoyed that nobody is listening to them while they dominate the discourse. They're angry at "those up there" and therefore want to get rid of "those down there." Send them back to where nothing exists anymore, nothing grows anymore, nothing stands anymore, and nothing flows anymore.

I am a bad swimmer.

And even though, when I am on the street as a tall, blond, German man, I have little to fear from those who think they have to save the country from the right, that's only a matter of time. I have friends in same-sex relationships, I speak out critically, I believe in climate change, I'm a left-wing green, and I play in an IndiePunk band.

And while I'm protesting on the streets with many others, those right-wingers are dismantling societies and democracies around the world. They hate those who supposedly take their prosperity by coming to their country. But in reality, they are being robbed by thoroughly different people, people who already have an incredible amount.

These people give us tools. Tools we didn't know we needed. They talk about intelligence. They say we have to be careful that this intelligence doesn't take us by surprise! We need regulations! And then they continue to work on that "taking us by surprise".

These tools are supposed to make our lives easier. They can do so much! Write texts, generate images, and create videos. And isn't all of that incredibly practical?! And funny! Just look: me as a cat! Funny! And there, too, the Chancellor, how he... Wait a minute! What is he doing?! Is that real?

These new tools, what can't they do! Actually, we're not so sure about that. Uncertain, even. Because they create uncertainty. Is that image real? Is that video fake? Is this text written by a human? Is this summarized search result really the correct answer to my question, or is it a halluzination?

I am a bad swimmer.

And while we know less and less what we're supposed to believe, the next update comes along and can do even more, or something different, or... we don't know exactly, but go ahead and try it out! Throw in your prompts!

Have these companies ever asked their "AIs" how they manage energy consumption? What would the prompt be? And how much water would that use? Water that we'll soon no longer have in sufficient quantities.

It's getting hotter and hotter. And the irony is: the city I live in will be largely flooded because of it. Because even though drinking water is slowly becoming scarce, the sea is rising. There are maps that show which parts of my hometown will still be habitable. That's a problem because:

I am a bad swimmer.

And too little is being done. Successes are drowned out by the constant stream of bad news, which is rising alarmingly: border controls in Europe, war, rearmament.

You want to scream out loud: DAMN IT! THIS CAN'T BE TRUE! CAN'T YOU SEE IT?! HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE IT?!

And from the boats and ships they shout: WE SEE IT! FOR YEARS! LOOK WHAT WE'RE DOING! WE'VE WARNED SO MANY OUT OF THE WATER! BUT THE WAVES ARE GETTING BIGGER AND COMING FASTER!

And from across the river they shout: WE WOULD! BUT THE ECONOMY! HOWEVER WE HAVE TO TALK FIRST! WE HAVE TO VERIFY IT FIRST! AND WE STILL HAVE A LITTLE BIT OF TIME LEFT!

No, man! There's no time left! The first ones are already floating back there! I can barely see them anymore! They're far away, but they're still there! And here, the water level is rising! My feet have been wet for a long time! Why can't you see that? Or don't you want to?

I'm a bad swimmer. And the water's rising. And I'm doing what I can, but that alone isn't enough. And so I'm left with my texts; our texts. Like little beacons, signals even, that can be seen from the other rocks and that can connect and network us.

But I'm a bad swimmer, and the water's rising, and a text like this won't save the world; it will only soothe my conscience for a few moments.

There's still some air left before the water's up to our necks. What do we do now? What? Wait?

I'm a bad swimmer, and a chill runs down my spine while the world burns outside and the waves crash against my rocks.

Sound Effect by Soul_Serenity_Sounds from Pixabay

I read somewhere the other day that it's that time again and we're happily flying through the Perseids, and you can now see a particularly large number of shooting stars.

And so, last night we actually planned to go up to the "Energieberg" to take a look. However, it clouded over, so we stayed where we were and looked up at the sky when it cleared up.

I had brought my camera with me, even though I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get any decent photos without a tripod. I fiddled around a bit with the settings, long exposure time, etc. I don't have a camera suitable for that sort of thing, but you can rotate the display. So I simply laid it on the ground and took a photo:

On the small display, it seemed as if I could actually see something! Today, on the computer, the surprise came: stars! A look at the previous and following images, however, was moderately sobering:

All the long-exposure images showed exactly these star constellations, which turned out to be dust upon inspecting the camera. Yep, I am a professional. My phone (see picture at the top) did the best job.

I did see shooting stars, though—three of them, one of which was quite bright. That alone was worth it.

Kev asks in his blog about how we take notes, I'm happy to answer. I'm taking this question as an opportunity to write a little about my setup, without getting too technical. I'll be writing about the technology in several posts – and I already did.

I have two important rules for note-taking without which it won't work:

1. The setup has to stay out of my way; everything has to be as simple as possible.
2. It shouldn't be so simple that I immediately forget my note after saving it.

The heart of my setup still is Obsidian. I've equipped Obsidian with a few plugins, but I'm cautious not to fall into the optimization trap. I want to use Obsidian for writing, not for tinkering with it. Plugins, yes, but only if they are really useful and I don't have to deal with them all the time.

My Obsidian setup serves two purposes:

1. Writing, publishing, managing, and scheduling posts
2. Quickly capturing and linking notes

It's not meant to do anything more. No project planning, no to-do lists, and the like. I've played that game before, and it always led me to stop using Obsidian. I know that many users build large setups and try to do everything with them (see also Notion and the like). However, I'm a big fan of separation of concerns. The "buy concert ticket" to-do has nothing to do with my writing.

There is one exception, and that is my Content Plan, which is a read-only view which is fed by the metadata of the texts. It simply serves to give me a better overview, since I now write for three blogs and a podcast.

The structure in Obsidian results from all of this:

The structure of the sidebar is largely derived from the structure of my website. With a few exceptions:

• META contains my templates and clippings
• KONZENTRIK contains posts from other blogs and podcasts
• JOURNAL contains daily notes (more on that later)
• PERSONEN contains, for example, authors of books I write about
• ZETTELKASTEN contains my notes

My Obsidian-Kirby-Sync ensures that all text on my website is always synchronized with Obsidian. I won't go into that in detail here; I've already described it in detail.

Notes

When taking notes, it's important to me that I don't have to worry about where I'm creating the note or whether I need any metadata. I want to be able to write something quickly and then forget about it.

Firstly, I can quickly create a note in the Zettelkasten (note box). This is usually a longer note, meaning something I do consciously. There's no automatic process for this.

But there's the Journal folder, and there I can create a daily note with one click. These daily notes serve as a repository for all the notes and references that pop up that day.

During the day, everything ends up in this daily note, and at the end of the day (or during the week), I consider whether to separate individual notes and move them to the Zettelkasten, for example.

I have several ways to create a note. Directly in Obsidian, of course. There's a shortcut in the sidebar that jumps directly to the daily note. Most of the time, though, I don't even want to have to bring Obsidian into focus.

For short notes, I use a Raycast shortcut that lets me append a line to the daily note. To do so, I simply press SUPER+N and Raycast opens:

Collecting from external Sources

A key part of my setup is remembering references. I read many websites, especially blogs, in Feedbin. From there, I can share posts. I've created a few shortcuts here:

So, in Feedbin, I just need to press 4 and the post lands in the daily note, including some metadata:

Now, I don't exclusively read in Feedbin, but I still want to quickly "save" a page as a note. To do this, I use the Obsidian Web Clipper. It's a core plugin that comes with a browser extension.

I can highlight part of the text on a web page and click on the extension:

I could now make changes in the small popup. I could even integrate an "AI" that summarizes the text for me or something similar. However, this works very poorly (probably due to my local Ollama setup) and is more annoying than helpful. If I don't select anything in the text, the entire text is transferred.

Clicking Add to Obsidian creates a completely new note in my META folder in Obsidian:

(By the way, my screenshot tool thought it had to censor the URL, but I realized it too late.)

So now this clipping is slumbering somewhere under META, and that's of little use to me for now. I don't want to have to deal with it, but I also don't want to forget it.

My daily note has a data view. These are basically dynamic views that you can populate with queries about your own notes:

In my case, I go through all the clippings and select those that have the same date as the daily note. This gives me a list of all the clippings in the normal view:

This then appears above my individual notes.

This gives me a very good overview of everything I've recorded on a given day, and I can decide whether I want to create more from individual clippings or notes—a blog post or a detailed note in the Zettelkasten.

I feel very comfortable with this setup. I can quickly jot down anything, and it's always saved as a note with just one click or keyboard shortcut. At the end of the day (or whenever), I have a solid overview and can figure out what to do with it.

As I said, this isn't a magical setup, but it serves its purpose very well. It supports me and it stays out of my way.

One of my favorite benches in the forest around the corner performs a popular Homer Simpson meme this year. Nice to take photos of, not quite so practical for sitting.

You can’t really get around podcasts these days. Twenty years ago, I started podcasting myself, and it looked a bit different back then. Also: 20 years?! WTF?!

"I'm also throwing something in the bowl: elbrauschen.de splash. Flush! narcissistic ass.

Still one of my favorite forum posts. Elbrauschen, that was our Podcast. At the time of this lovely forum comment, I was already running it on my own.

And this podcast, which eventually found its way into the virtual toilet of the internet – which I find especially fitting because blogs had been described a few years earlier as the toilet walls of the internet – this podcast went online exactly 20 years ago today.

Twenty years ago, the intro jingle played for the first time, and Steffen and I welcomed our first listeners with:
“Elbrauschen – Podcasting from the Waterkant.”

Podcasts were brand new. Just the other day, I got an email from Apple celebrating the 20-year anniversary of Apple Podcasts.

Back then, it was relatively easy to land in the iTunes podcast charts. Only when the professionals started showing up – most notably the Tagesschau – did it get harder. These days, you’re lucky if people even find you.

In 2005, something started to blossom that we’d already seen happening with blogs. Suddenly, there were people making funny, wild, serious, amateur, and professional podcasts. While everybody was trying to figure out what exactly a podcast even was.

Today, everyone knows the term, and many well-known podcasters like to claim they were early. Which, in most cases, just means they had a show before 2020. Every so often you want to raise a finger in correction, but what’s the point? Other than some personal satisfaction, and confirming that you’re a self-absorbed asshole.

In 2005, we somehow managed to publish an episode every day. Let me repeat that: EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Alternating between Steffen and me. Weekends off.

We watched what others were doing, which was still easy because the scene was so small, and we especially looked across the pond to the U.S., where the big inspirations were coming from. Especially Adam Curry with his Daily Source Code.

And while we were already seeing this huge new medium full of potential, the traditional media started paying attention. Newspapers began writing about it. One example: the German taz wrote a piece about three podcasts from Hamburg and even met with Steffen for an interview.

Yeah, since then, I have been “the rowdy one” …

Podcasts have come a long way. But at the core, it’s still the same: If you’re into it, just do it! Sure, it’s a lot harder to get discovered and heard today – but it’s still fun!

And from a technical perspective, the topic is still relevant. Before the podcast, there was RadioTux – we called it radio-on-demand back then. A Linux radio show that we ran and that still exists today (as a podcast) – probably one of the oldest still active ones. It was running on a homemade CMS.

Elbrauschen used one of the first CMSs made specifically for podcasts, Loudblog. I think it was a WordPress fork. Later it moved to WordPress directly. Today, I’m developing my own podcast plugin for Kirby – of course, I use it myself.

Elbrauschen didn’t last the full 20 years. Toward the end, around 2009, new episodes only went up sporadically. I tried to relaunch it in 2010, but that remained just a single attempt. The traces on the web are slowly fading, but I still can’t bring myself to let go of the domains.

I experienced that time as incredibly exciting, blogs, podcasts, so many new possibilities! For me, it was mind-blowing. And so I enjoy looking back and, over the past few days and weeks, I’ve found myself getting the urge to maybe start something again, alongside Server Side Stories.

We’ll see. For now, I’m listening to some old MP3s and cringing a little at the stuff I put online back then.

I wonder what Anonymous listens to these days?

I use the emdash (–) frequently because, so I was told, at most of the places where I previously used the "normal" dash (-), it's wrong. And it’s been marked as incorrect by my grammar tools. Consequently, I’ve started to consciously use the emdash.

So, please don’t take this as an indication of AI-written texts. There aren’t any here – the AI only helps me with the translations.

Two pictures, a lot of money, and some questions. Why I received a warning letter and you might receive one too.

One thing that always makes me nervous: a spike in visits on the legal notice page of this website. What are people looking for there? It can't be good!

In Germany, we have something that makes people like me nervous: cease-and-desist letters ("Abmahnungen"). A cease-and-desist letter is a "friendly" notice that something has gone wrong, but legal action or similar would be waived if a certain amount of money is paid and the issue is resolved.

I've already had the pleasure twice.

I always take care not to step on anyone's toes on my site. I avoid cookies wherever possible, no nasty pop-ups, and of course, I don't just use other people's images on my site, paying attention to copyright.

In the past, I've often told people that they can't just search for images on Google and use them on their websites. Naturally, I never do that either – except for…

Case 1: Twitter

My first cease-and-desist letter arrived after I deactivated my Twitter account and published my archive on this website. I went through the entire archive and replaced all media I had shared but not created myself with placeholders.

I thought I had been very thorough, reviewing my tweets several times, which was quite a substantial task after over 15 years on Twitter.

Nevertheless, I got a letter by a law firm on behalf of a major press agency. I had allegedly used one of their images without permission. Had I missed something?

The "convenient" thing about these cease-and-desist letters is that they include direct links to the pages and images referenced. In this case, it was a single tweet in the archive that contained a screenshot. Uh-oh… the screenshot showed a snippet of a news page: title, teaser, and the main image of a news story.

The main image in this screenshot was from the press agency. Damn!

I wasn't entirely sure (and still am not). I hadn't directly used the image; it was part of this screenshot. The screenshot was also old, having been posted on Twitter several years earlier. But frankly, I didn't feel like pursuing the matter further, so I paid, deleted the image, and shortly afterward, the entire archive because I found it too risky as a result.

Case 2: Open Graph

You probably know what an Open Graph image is, right?

A brief digression: when you share a link somewhere, e.g., on Mastodon, not only is the link displayed, but you also see a small preview consisting of a title, teaser, and often an image. These pieces of information are stored on the website as Open Graph data.

If you view the source code of this page, you will find such data here as well:

<meta property="og:title" content="Do not show stuff - Maurice Renck">
<meta property="og:description" content="You see me here, sitting at the keyboard with red and blue fingers. I just gave myself a good slap on the fingers.">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://maurice-renck.de/en/blog/2025/do-not-show-stuff/og-image">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1600">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="900">

This data is hidden in the page header, not displayed, but is intended to be read and used by services like Mastodon:

For me as a website operator, this is a good thing because a plain text link naturally attracts much less attention than such a nice preview. That's why many websites include this data. I even provide a plugin for Kirby that generates such an image.

So, when you share a link to a website on Mastodon, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., it is very likely that these services will generate and display such a preview.

I also like link or bookmark cards. You might know them from Medium or Ghost, where they are quite popular. A link to my website then looks like this:

As you can see, a small box is displayed, and similar to Mastodon, the Open Graph data is read and displayed. The Open Graph image is also used for this.

I wanted to have that on my site too, so I wrote a plugin, years ago that calls all the links on a page and retrieves this Open Graph data. I just needed a way to display it.

To do this, I wrote a Kirbytag that takes a URL, queries the saved data, and then displays such a card.

This:

( embed: https://maurice-renck.de/de/kirby/ogimage )

becomes:

Nice, isn't it?

I constantly use these cards in my notes. I two types of notes: simple text notes and bookmarks. Bookmarks always have a link and a link card.

On the long note list, many links can appear, and to prevent the page from becoming unnecessarily slow, I resize and cache the image. An Open Graph image is about 1600×930 pixels, way too big for such a small preview.

The attentive reader may guess that the drama is slowly unfolding here.

On my link list, I had linked an article from the "taz", retrieved the Open Graph data, and displayed a card, including the linked image provided by the aforementioned press agency.

Finally, some mail in the mailbox!
The next cease-and-desist letter…

Again, well-documented as to which image in which post was the issue. So, I deleted the cache and rewrote the Kirbytag to initially display only the (fav)icon.

But…

I Have Questions

I understand that by caching the images (and thereby creating a copy), I probably at least entered a gray area, but I see that almost every service mentioned above does the same thing:

Here, too, images are resized and cached, as you can see when looking at the image URLs. Why aren't they drowning in cease-and-desist letters?

If a page defines an image as an Open Graph image and there is no licensing that permits embedding this image on other pages, why am I being punished for using it and not the site operator?

News sites often use images from such press agencies and also define them as Open Graph images. I can imagine how this works: someone sets a lead image in the CMS, and the system automatically sets it as the Open Graph image. The person responsible probably isn't even aware of this.

I would rather not assume malice here, but isn't this a massive trap for everyone who displays Open Graph data and can then be held liable?

Revenue Streams

Of course, no one should just use images (or other works) on their website without permission. Photographers should be fairly compensated for their work.

Anyone with a bit of technical knowledge can quickly figure out how it all came about.

In both cases, the service Pixray was used, as I could quickly determine from the log files. This service apparently searches the web for its clients' images, after which they can take action.

A brief look at the site made me decide to pay and not pursue the matter further, since it emphasizes that cease-and-desist letters are part of the business model. It says:

You should have a clear goal for how much revenue you want to make from copyright enforcement this year, next year and in the years that follow.

• https://pixray.com/

So, I didn't hold out much hope for a different resolution. Maybe I acted a bit hastily — who knows.

Conclusion

The technical conclusion is explained quickly: No more displaying Open Graph images. The embed Kirbytag was reworked so that it no longer displays these images unless I explicitly allow it via a parameter or the URL belongs to a list of sites where it’s okay.

Aside from the technical implementation, I still find all of this questionable and puzzling. It’s probably a gray area, and since my site has a readily accessible legal notice page, it’s easier to go after me than an anonymous Mastodon account.

However, I would argue that most website operators assume they are allowed to use an Open Graph image as such. This image is explicitly marked to be displayed when shared. And no one would use an almost 2000px wide image for a small preview—or at least, I hope not.

If I use this data, I would have to research every link from now on to see whether the rights to the image have been granted or if I had to purchase them from, for example, the press agency.
In my opinion, this renders the idea of marking an image as an Open Graph image absurd.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something? I'm not a lawyer.

The cease-and-desist letters are already several months old, and I didn’t want to write this text in a frustrated mood. I've drawn my conclusions, but many questions remain open and perhaps this text serves as a good warning for anyone who has similar functionality on their website.

By the way, you’re welcome to use my Open Graph data, including images. They are either under an appropriate license or created by me or programmatically generated.

If you have more answers than I do, feel free to leave a comment, I’d appreciate an "aha" moment or two.

I was already on the verge, the branch feature/redesign had long been created, the stylesheet already opened, and I wanted to "just" expand my existing design with a small feature. This would probably have cost me days, if not a few weeks, again.

A long time ago, I started filling a folder with screenshots and downloads of designs that I particularly liked. For some reason, I rummaged through this folder again a few days ago. I came across a screen that immediately excited me again and would make the website look like an open book. The typography and text layout were already similar to my site, so it just needed this split view and a bit of CSS…

And suddenly, I was moving things around and destroying layouts, compressing grids, and then sat there looking at my… well… work. "No!" I monologued in my head, "No, no, no! You have enough things that need to be programmed. You can now adjust your design and probably need a whole while for it, during which you will most likely write nothing again!"

O-Oh! I love coming up with more or less cool functions and designs for my site. What could you do with all that! But the thing is: Without good writing, I don't need everything around it either.

So instead of adding new things to the site, I deleted the branch and, in the same second, removed something from my site. A certain satisfaction spread.

I like websites that convey the most important things with just a few elements: their content. It's like with texts, music, and certainly many other creative things: It's always easy to add more, but challenging to reduce them to the essentials.

Incredibly hard. There are so many possibilities!

Many new and old blogs that I read manage this well, and I regularly look at them to ground myself before I get lost again in things that may look great but don't improve anything.

Here are a few example sites that focus on the essentials and are therefore so good:

• Dominik Hofer
• Manuel Moreale
• Maggie Appleton
• Marcel
• Anthony Fu

Development

I have been earning my money since 2017, mainly through working as a developer at konzentrik. We develop (micro) services and websites using NodeJs, Kirby and other technologies.

We are currently working on our new service: Sociabli, which helps distribute content across various services.

The tools and plugins that we use ourselves are also available at https://tools.konzentrik.de.

Writing and speaking

Of course, I blog and note a few things here on my website. I have a newsletter and am currently writing a new podcast.

Together with Mark, I run the podcast Server Side Stories and am currently considering reactivating my podcast "Erzählen".

Kirby

Course

I am currently working on a comprehensive Kirby course with the working title "From zero to Blog" in which I explain how Kirby works by building a blog.

Plugins

I develop plugins for the CMS Kirby:

• Kirby Podcaster
• IndieConnector
• Kirby Komments
• OG-Image
• Pexels Field
• Dark visitors