Welcome ... I'm Kristof

I've been a passionate software developer for almost 30 years and currently a tech-savvy IT manager. I tinker with things like this blog in my spare time, because creating things never lets you go. Here is more about me ...


Red Bull 12
New Photos

Speyer Automotive

In September, my wife and I took a trip to the Museum of Technology in nearby Speyer. I don’t really know why I’ve never been there before, not even as a child, because the collection of cars and aeroplanes is quite unique in Germany. A dream for every boy, even if he’s not as young as he might think :)

Built on the old site of an aircraft manufacturer, the 100-year-old hangars provide the perfect space for exhibiting large vehicles with wheels and wings. And exactly this can be found in Speyer: A large part for cars of all kinds and the outside area for aeroplanes and even ships. Even a spaceship, the Russian Space Shuttle alternative Buran can be seen there.

Here are a few pictures of the car exhibition that I brought back from there and which will be used as post header images hero on kiko.io in the future …

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SVWW vs Kaiserslautern @ 2023-11-12
SV Wehen Wiesbaden

SVWW vs. Kaiserslautern @ 2023-11-12

The winning streak continues in curious fashion

2:1

Travelling by scooter in Germany in the middle of November is no fun. Just like on Sunday. Light rain at just under 9 degrees Celsius and quite a bit of wind. Brrr… but what can I do, there are no car parks at the arena. Not at all today, because it’s against Kaiserslautern, which is only about 100 kilometres away from Wiesbaden and therefore a lot of visitors are expected. It’s a kind of derby.

1. FC Kaiserslautern is one of the great traditional clubs in Germany, which has celebrated a total of 4 German Championships in its history, but has really lost momentum since its relegation to the 2. Bundesliga in 2006. Between 2018 and 2022, the team even only played in the 3rd division pf German football, but after their last year’s promotion, they are hoping to be promoted to the top division again soon. Recent results in the cup have shown that they have a strong team and it was to be feared that they would overrun Wehen Wiesbaden in their run, although their last league game was lost against Fürth.

It was also rather uncomfortably cold in the stadium and I wondered once again how the young lads do it on the pitch in their shorts, especially the goalkeeper.

But the fans created the right atmosphere. As expected, the entire guest stand was full. 12,100 spectators in total; a new season record. The SVWW fan block was also packed this time and the ultras had come up with a nice choreo with complete stand banners and red smoke (see photos).

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Floral Magic VIII

Add Link to Trello on Android via Share Menu

I have been collecting interesting links in various Trello boards for many years and also process some of them automatically, such as my Tiny Tools.

However, the official Trello Android App has the problem eversince that, when you want to create a URL as a Trello card in the browser, the URL is entered in the Description and not as an Attachment, where it actually belongs.

Share Link with Trello App

I have solved this for myself for years using a bookmarklet in the Chrome browser (see Add website to Trello card the better way) and get along quite well with it. However, there is one catch, that has annoyed me ever since:
I find an interesting link in the Mastodon WebApp, for example, and tap on it. What opens, however, is the WebView integrated in Android and not my standard Chrome browser, in which the bookmarklet would be available. So, for links that I want to store, I always have to open the WebView menu and select “Open in Chrome Browser”. I cannot use the general SHARE menu. At least not so far … :)

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Watergate 9
A New Blog

Experimenting with the font LEXEND

Easier reading for users and more beautiful typography

A few weeks ago, a blog entry (I can’t remember which one) drew my attention to a font called LEXEND. In this article, the author also went into the scientific background of the font, which was developed to simplify reading and thus support those with reading difficulties. The website lexend.com, operated by The Lexend Group, therefore also advertises the font with all kinds of reading statistics, although it is open source and is also freely available via Google Fonts.

Lexend

I simply liked the font style and wanted to try it out on this blog, which has always used the Open Sans font. It was harder than I thought…

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SVWW vs Hansa Rostock @ 2023-10-29
SV Wehen Wiesbaden

SVWW vs. Hansa Rostock @ 2023-10-29

Another step to class retention

1:0

Football again. After my little excursion into the Europa Conference League, my team from SV Wehen Wiesbaden was called upon again on Sunday and with them the fans in the stadium. On the one hand because it was raining (and that is sometimes no fun in the front row) and on the other hand because the boys had won the last away game in Osnabrück and now had the opportunity to temporarily establish themselves in the midfield of the 2. Bundesliga. Another win was needed against an opponent from Rostock who, after a good start at the beginning of the season, had lost the last 6 games!

Since I have no chance to park my car anywhere at the stadium, I have already planned before the season to always go there with the scooter, which is a pure pleasure in the summer. With 10 degrees and light rain it was diemal but rather suboptimal conditions. But anyway…

I had expected that a lot of police, water cannon and other executive equipment would be on site, as it was already the case at the Schalke game, because the Hansa fans have a pretty bad reputation … But no. Not particularly many Rostockers have taken on the 700 kilometer journey and so the opposing stand was only half full and the police relaxed.

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SGE vs HJK

SGE vs. HJK @ 2023-10-26

Europa Conference League: Eintracht Frankfurt against HJK Helsinki

6:0

My newly awakened love for German soccer reached a small peak last Thursday when my colleague Uli asked me, if I would like to go to the evening match of his favorite club Eintracht Frankfurt against HJK Helsinki as part of the preliminary round of the Europa Conference League. He had come by a happy coincidence to two tickets. Of course! Let’s go!

Now I’m not an Eintracht fan, by any means. In the Rhine-Main area, the Frankfurt club is either hated or loved by the people, because its fan base is a bit more aggressive, i.e. they are disreputable and with them the club. But I’ve never been to the Waldstadion (as it used to be called) or the “Deutsche Bank Park” (as it’s called if you put money on the table), one of the big soccer arenas in Germany, where international matches and other big events are also held regularly.

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Split Junk

Handling IPTC metadata on Android and Windows

Most of the photos that I prepare for this website for example, I take with my big Nikon camera in RAW format and then edit them under Windows in Adobe Lightroom Classic. I always give the image a name and a few keywords, which are then also displayed on the photo page. Lightroom stores these as IPTC metadata in the sidecar file and writes them, when exporting the image, directly into the header of the generated JPG file.

Now, however, I take pictures on the go with my Pixel smartphone and process them with the Google Photos Android app, and although the IPTC standard is only 30 years old, Google doesn’t support it! You can give the image a “description” but it is not written into the image as a metadata, but is probably lying around somewhere on the Google servers.

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Floral Magic XCI
A New Blog

Get and use a dominant color that matches the header image

Vibrant Color library and recalculating its HSL output values

The pages of this website are all structured according to the scheme Header, Content, Footer, where the header contains an individual hero image and, like the footer, has a dark gray background color. I chose dark gray at the time because I needed contrast and it matches all the other colors, since the header image is slowly overlaid by the header background color as you scroll.

In July last year, in Discoveries #19 - Visual Helpers, I introduced two tools that deal with determining the dominant color from an image, and since then I’ve been buzzing around in my head about using one of them to color the header and footer to match the image.

After a short testing period I decided to use Vibrant Colors (also because of the good example by Konstantin Polunin on Codepen) and how it works and how I had to adapt the results to my needs I want to highlight in this post.

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