Francesco Schwarz

In “Returning to the primordial state” I reflect on the “Memento mori” training course I attended as part of my volunteer work as a hospice caregiver. isellsoap.net/articles/ret...

Finished Kafka’s biography by Reiner Stach today. Part 1: https://isellsoap.net/media/books/kafka-die-fruehen-jahre/ Part 2: https://isellsoap.net/media/books/kafka-die-jahre-der-entscheidungen/ Part 3: https://isellsoap.net/media/books/kafka-die-jahre-der-erkenntnis/ Truly captivating.

My first assignment as a hospice volunteer came to an end this week. Thoughts: isellsoap.net/articles/15-...

Submitted my identity declaration to the Human Consent Registry, a public, machine-readable record of how AI may use a person’s likeness, voice, and movement. https://registry.rslmedia.org/

Finally got around to creating a meta page: https://isellsoap.net/meta/ Nice bonus: I can now apply to join the Meta Webring: https://meta-ring.hedy.dev/ 🤘

Today a coworker said something funny: “I was just down a rabbit hole, and it was so beautiful there.”

A deep dive into the rebuilt architecture behind my self-hosted activity tracking setup: smartwatch ingestion, iOS shortcuts, Strava synchronization, aggregation pipelines, and responsive data visualizations. isellsoap.net/articles/evo...

Making media relations visible on your own digital playground feels so damn good. Created the Star City page yesterday https://isellsoap.net/media/shows/star-city-2026/ after discovering it on Apple TV+, marking it as “anticipated“, linking it to […] https://isellsoap.net/notes/2026-05-06-08-59-08/

#btconf 2026: beyond the talks isellsoap.net/articles/btc... All the stuff I experienced besides the conference talks.

Is this _the_ Andrew? https://www.captioning.scot/about Nice to see the face behind the live captioning. 👋 #btconf

#btconf talks recap of day 2: isellsoap.net/articles/btc...

this is a fantastic piece by @ky.fyi

#btconf talks recap of day 1: isellsoap.net/articles/btc... The hardest part was writing it on my phone while on the train home, instead of on a laptop. I know what I will bring with me next year. 😉 Day 2 recap following soon…

Good first evening yesterday. Met new people, and drank a few Alt. #btconf

While reading the last part (of three) from Stach’s Kafka biography opus I’m starting to explore Kafka’s work bit by bit. Read one of his short stories yesterday: “Das Urteil”. Written in a single eight-hour session in 1912. Kafka singled it out […] https://isellsoap.net/notes/2026-04-25-10-22-28/

Constructed a house for the beans in the garden yesterday. Also: Apple trees in full blossom. 🌸

It’s that time of the year again. Just in a few days beyond tellerrand starts. This time I’ll go with a great coworker of mine (it’ll be his first #btconf experience). Can’t wait!

Imported all chess games I ever played on chess.com with a daily cron job importing new games automatically. https://isellsoap.net/media/games/ Example game: https://isellsoap.net/media/games/2026-03-21-17-02-29/ Only raw data import for now […] https://isellsoap.net/notes/2026-03-21-19-23-33/

When syncing activities to Strava, I now persist Strava’s map polyline on my website and subtly showcase it beneath the activity stats. Examples: isellsoap.net/activities/2... isellsoap.net/activities/2... isellsoap.net/activities/2...

When syncing activities to Strava, I now persist Strava’s map polyline on my website and subtly showcase it beneath the activity stats. Examples: https://isellsoap.net/activities/2026-02-15-14-30-02/ […] https://isellsoap.net/notes/2026-03-02-17-34-43/

It feels oh so good to lift my reading and watching lists out of the darkness of some todo lists on my phone to where they belong: upfront on my website. 🥰 https://isellsoap.net/media/books/anticipated/ https://isellsoap.net/media/movies/anticipated/ https://isellsoap.net/media/shows/anticipated/

Since I implemented iOS shortcut flows to post content to my website, I do it more regularly and more often than ever. One thing I noticed: writing alt text for photos is a lesson in empathy and mindfulness. What are the details that matter? How would you describe this to another mind? I dig it.

LGTM

LGTM

Trying to add a yearly archive to the media section on my website turned into a moment to pause. Thinking about an upper bound regex for years and guessing how long I will actually live on this planet. 😮 Something like that? `^(?:19(?:8[7-9]|9\d)|20\d\d)$` (very optimistic) 😀

Added shows I’m watching to my website: isellsoap.net/media/shows/ Interesting data model challenge, merging it with how I deal with books and movies, and how to display them in the main teasers view.

Added shows I’m watching to my website: https://isellsoap.net/media/shows/ Interesting data model challenge, merging it with how I deal with books and movies, and how to display them in the main teasers view.

Basic version of my “media” page is up and running: https://isellsoap.net/media/ Features books and links I’ve read and movies I’ve watched recently.

A couple of days ago I read “Kafka: Die frühen Jahre” by Reiner Stach. Here are my thoughts: isellsoap.net/media/books/...

Screenshot of my recovering cardio fitness (VO2max) after the metatarsal fracture. Slow but steady.

Visualizing Strava data https://github.com/marcusvolz/strava by Marcus Volz. How cool is that?!

Just heard about the death of Catherine O’Hara. Loved here bits in the “I Like Me” documentary about John Candy. RIP.

Linking to one’s Bluesky profile on your GitLab profile page, only the user’s DID is allowed to enter. Odd. Or cool? 🤷‍♂️

I’m pretty late to the party, but autoloading classes in PHP with Composer is pretty sweet. 😍

Bone conduction headphones. From a security and ergonomics perspective by far one of the best things I discovered in recent years.

Strange shape-outside behavior and how I fixed it.

The “nice” thing about a metatarsal fracture and having to pause running for 3,5 months is this: you can fall in love with it again and anew. At least that’s what I felt today. 🤫

Over the holidays, I digitized many old photos from the 90s, with correct timestamps and location data. It’s nice to reminisce about old memories and share the photos with old friends & family.

My thoughts on Tim Berners-Lee’s memoir “This Is for Everyone”: isellsoap.net/articles/tho...

The “illusion of completeness” still leads users to overlook content. I’ve put together an overview examining five CSS patterns that counter it: pseudo-elements, local background-attachment, scroll-driven animations, and mask-image variants. Enjoy! isellsoap.net/articles/ove...

A honest feedback to a job interview experience from 2018: isellsoap.net/articles/job...

About to see Oasis in Dublin. 🤩