The IT Blog

Commander, Leader, Manager – What’s your Style?

To be honest, I have never really given much thought to defining leadership styles. Over the years, I’ve seen a number of styles that I liked, disliked, admired, and some that I loathed.

Recently, I worked on a project with a person whose approach felt very different from what I was used to. It really stood out and got me thinking about the different leadership styles I’ve seen over the years.

Decentralization of BlueSky

Bkuesky has gained quite some traction in the last couple of months. One of the key features that is often named pro BlueSky is the idea of decentralization.

In the recent episode of the “Haken dran” Podcast, a study was mentioned that does a deep dive into the technical details. The article is this one: How decentralized is Bluesky really? — Dustycloud Brainstorms, a german “version” was named as well: Deep Dive zu Bluesky – Teil 1: Die technische Sicht.

The essence is: Bluesky is not (yet?) decentralized. Well – I’m still sceptical. Money is coming from Venture Capital – and those companies usually want some Return-on-Invest. Well, let’s stay curious. – I’ll stay focused on Mastodon.

How to Opt Out of Google’s Page Annotation on iOS

Google’s new Page Annotation feature for its iOS browser automatically changes your website and adds to Google Search results. These auto-added links are not marked as “added by Google” and thus make the links look like I added them myself.

Is it worth joining Mastodon?

These days I just hit the mark of 1500 followers on my photography account @hikingdude@mastodon.social on Mastodon.

That’s really – great, satisfying, surprising. Choose whatever you want. For an influencer on other platforms (the Entertainment media) this might not be a lot. But.. Wait…

Not Surprised TikTok Is Addictive? You Might Be Surprised By How Fast!

I don’t think anybody will be surprised to hear that social media can be addictive. Well, “fine” so far. But what did indeed surprise me was what I heard recently when I heard the c’t “Haken dran”-Podcast (german only).

How to fix: Jellyfin Library Scan Hangs

Just recently I wrote about How to install Jellyfin on a RaspberryPi. It all started promising until – after adding a couple of movies – the Library Scan suddenly hung. Unfortunately I didn’t dig too deep into all kinds of logs (which I certainly forgot but which might have given a hint).

75% of Software projects fail – why?

A lot of software projects cost more than expected, take longer to finish and / or deliver a result below expectation.

SmartTVs going from bad to worse?

When we bought a new TV a couple of years ago, I was really to use all the Smart features from our SmartTV. But after a while the discomfort has outweighed the features. Recently we had the opportunity to “test” a newer SmartTV in a hotel and I must admit – it hasn’t gotten better! But I was surprised that the rabbit hole was even deeper and darker than I would have expected …

How to fix: Android Connected, No Internet with Pi-Hole

Since quite a while I was running a Pi-Hole DNS server in my network to block ad- & tracking requests for all devices in the network (more info about Pi-hole are on Wikipedia).

All was great until at some time our Android devices suddenly couldn’t connect to the WiFi anymore. They reported “Connected, No Internet“. All other devices, connected via LAN or WiFi were just fine: PCs, FireTV Stick, other PIs – no issues. When I disabled the use of PiHole, they were able to connect again.

How to replace Synology Video Station with Jellyfin

Unfortunately Synology has discontinued their support for Videostation starting from DSM version 7.2.2 as can be read in the Release Notes for DSM | Synology Inc.:

#6 Video Station is not available on DSM 7.2.2. Refer to this article for workarounds to stream videos to end devices.

Time to evaluate the alternatives …