A bloody healthy and funny dose of New Zealand for me.
🎬 What We Do in the Shadows
Feeds from people participating at the IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf, May 2025.
Matthias Ott
• Matthias Ott
Streams of Consciousness
Jeremy wrote a little something about streams, in particular about streams on personal websites. His home page actually is like a stream: links, notes, and blog posts all appear underneath each other in chronological order.
Many of us are now rediscovering or reviving their ...
Matthias Ott
• Matthias Ott
Reflections
A lot of us are still working from home these days. Many are in meetings every day, more and more people are holding important customer presentations or running workshops from their little home office, and some are even joining podcasts and online meetups as guests, or are s...
Matthias Ott
• Matthias Ott
Analytics Analysis
When it comes to tracking and analyzing a website‘s traffic, Google Analytics (GA) seems to be the obvious choice: everyone knows it, it’s powerful, it’s free, it’s used by millions of sites. 53 % of sites worldwide, to be precise. No wonder many clients ask for it and many ...
Matthias Ott
• Matthias Ott
Tapetenwechsel, or: Breaking the Sameness
We all want to do our best work. We all want to create something of value. But what if you’re stuck? What if the solution just doesn’t show up, the idea just won’t come, the interesting just doesn’t want to happen? Writers sometimes call it writer’s block, but not only write...
Matthias Ott
• Matthias Ott
Spirits That I’ve Cited
I have a tip for everyone who’s now – or very soon – trying to find out whether a text was written by a human or an AI.
Sure, you could train another AI to look for clues and confidently call it a “classifier”. But chances are, your classifier won’t be fully reliable. It might not work on short texts. Or, it might incorrectly but confidently label AI-written text as human-written. Also, people will sure as hell edit AI-written text so that it can’t be detected anymore.
Given that you have no idea how those algorithms really work, you might as well just use the classifier written by the same company that is currently gifting you the gift of AI for free. Sounds really reassuring, right?
Instead, how about you try this:
Look for the soul.
🎬 The Power of the Dog
This review may contain spoilers. Tap or click to view.
I would watch this again; to see if I notice some more subtle clues earlier and pay more attention to the individual chapters on their own. The storyline is so well done: it progressively changes the impression you have or had of both Phil and Peter. And in the end I didn‘t know how to feel about any of them really – pity or aversion or simply empathy.
A great film about men and their hardships/obstacles/difficulties they faced and how those manifested themselves in their behaviour and characters in very different ways.
🎧 Sky Void of Stars – Katatonia
Preparation for tomorrow’s concert.
🎬 One Hour Photo
I don’t want to focus too much on the negative, but this film didn’tstir up much excitement in me. Maybe just because it looked dated (and alittle bit like a 90’s commercial). Maybe because I thought it onlyscratched the surface of what it could have been. Maybe because I wasreminded that I personally don’t like Robin William’s acting all thatmuch.
Anyhow, it’s an ok movie. I liked the directly photography-relatedscenes and the monologues or rather the protagonist’s thoughts onphotography.
🎬 Creating The Queen's Gambit
I wish this was longer.
🎬 The Queen's Gambit
What happened? I watched a series?! I guess I can handle 7 episodes. Andthis was really good! Loved all the characters, especially Beth Harmon’sand her adoptive mother’s. The plot was great, too. It was very wellacted; I thought all the facial expressions during the matched werefantastic. The film sets looked lovely (the CGI not so much, though),and a lot of piano music meant I enjoyed the soundtrack, too! It was abit long in the middle, but otherwise this was a very enjoyable watch!I’m kind of interested in chess now.
Matthias Ott
• Matthias Ott
A Birthday Audio Gear Upgrade
Today, I turned 41. It was a wonderful, relaxed day with my family – and my parents’ dog who is a bit of a maniac… 😅
I also got to try out my two “office” birthday presents: a new microphone for voice, the Røde Procaster, and an audio interface, the MOTU M2.
The Røde Procast...
🎬 Don't Look Up
This review may contain spoilers. Tap or click to view.
Once again, I enjoyed Leo‘s performance in a movie. Jennifer Lawrence was great, too! And both their characters are well written IMHO. And I do agree with the movie‘s message. But man, is it on the nose! No subtlety whatsoever. Unfortunately it‘s way too long again, too. The first one and a half hours are just dragging. Towards the end, it does get better, and even has a few gags that are actually funny (when Leo amazingly delivers his last TV-speech, and then it cuts to him in the car with the bag over his head: pure gold!). But that unfortunately doesn‘t lift it above its mediocrity. Hm… that sounds probably harder than I mean it. Anyway, not quite for me.
🎧 Myriad – GAUPA
Here‘s one more female-fronted band, I‘m currently enjoying. Like these songs, like their sound, like her vocals (which do sound quite a bit like Björk).
Matthias Ott
• Matthias Ott
Updating My Site in 2023
Alright. Enough talk. Let’s get to it.
One of my plans for 2023 is to redesign this website. Here is the thing: it is easy to promise things to yourself. It is much harder to deliver, especially when the project is quite large and you have to do it in your spare time, like ...
Matthias Ott
• Matthias Ott
The Year of the Personal Website
We all know that it is going to happen. It’s not a question of if, but when Twitter will collapse. By the way: one day, Medium will follow. So will Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Or Mastodon.
Many people are now desperately waiting for their Twitter archives, hoping that th...
🎧 Marked For Death – Emma Ruth Rundle
Listening to ERR quite a bit at the moment.
🎬 Next Door
This review may contain spoilers. Tap or click to view.
What a morning! Twist after twist after twist.
Nicely filmed, great acting with fantastic dialogue.
My only nitpick is that I somehow found Daniel’s voice to sound somewhat hyper-clear/-real which made it sound a little unnatural.
But overall, this was great!
🔗 May – August 2021 – Daniel Pietzsch’s Photo Journal
Finally, after a year, I made an entry to the photojournal again.
Our three weeks summer holiday, weekend camping trips, some bike riding and other activities in Düsseldorf.
🎬 His House
Grief can be a witch – or a curse. Whatever it’s called, you have toopen yourself up (quite literally) to get rid of it.
The story and topics are important and interesting ones. And overallthis is well made. But it didn’t really grab me for some reason. Maybebecause sometimes it felt to me that the delivering of the horrors wereoverdone – especially the ending. The special effects were sometimesmore of a distraction.
But overall a good film, with quite a few good scenes. I would watchRemi Weekes’ next one.