Welcome to Sexy Admin! Personal blog about tech, Mac, and more.
Good intentions are like promises to yourself: they usually start with a lot of motivation, but quickly lose momentum if they are not consistently implemented. In order not to lose this momentum, I got started right away and am keeping track of the current status on the #dutgemacht page.
I started by looking for an alternative to Microsoft 365. In my next post, I’ll tell you why I ultimately chose mailbox.org.
It’s unbelievable how fast time flies. Good intentions sometimes feel like old bookmarks in Netscape Navigator — you have them, but rarely use them. I did manage to revive one though: I migrated my personal blog from Ghost to Hugo. If I’m counting correctly, this was migration number three. My blogs seem to share the same fate as personal homepages with “Under Construction” GIFs.
Why all the effort? Starting in 2026, the first Sunday of every month will be Digital Independence Day. That felt like the perfect excuse to document my own side projects, detours, and little aha moments on the path toward digital independence — without tracking, algorithms, or cookie banners. Almost like the old days. Just with better CSS.
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How time flies. Exactly 4 years ago, I wrote a post on this blog on the MacBook 12", and now I’m writing again with a new MacBook.
Is it a current MacBook 12"? No, I decided on the MacBook Pro 15" for professional reasons, and I have to admit after just a few days that my MacBook is slower than I felt it was in recent months. While I thought until 3 days ago that my mobile macOS world was in order, I now realize that I just got a bit older and calmer, and so the convenience of my MacBook didn’t really bother me in my daily routine.
We met on an ICE train, so what could be more natural than Goldmarie and I building the corresponding LEGO model.
The LEGO High-Speed Train consists of 610 pieces and has the LEGO number 60052. The assembly was completed after about 2 hours, and we immediately took it for a spin. Our cat Belana is still a bit skeptical at the moment.
The tracks from the set only make a small circle, so we immediately expanded it with the Flexible Track Set 7499.
A week ago, I was able to pick up my new MacBook at UPS in Kassel. Conveniently, I had the macnemo.tv Episode 63 that evening, and I was able to unpack and start it up live on the show.
I have to admit that I haven’t had a mobile Mac for about 4 years, and I also thought that since the Mac Pro (Late 2013) and the iPad, I wouldn’t need one anymore. Unfortunately, that was a mistake. As much as I tried to use the iPad as a full-fledged replacement, I also noticed that I (still) failed at many use cases. I love my iPad, especially when I’m sitting on the train and need some entertainment. It’s also no problem to manage a web server with an iPad or write a few texts or edit a presentation. But actually, I only did “small things” with it. So I quickly realized that this wasn’t enough for me in the long run and decided at the end of 2014 that I did need a mobile Mac again. But Apple just didn’t release a MacBook Air with Retina Display, so I had to wait until March 2015. When the MacBook was announced, it was clear that this was the mobile Mac for me. Then came the question of color - for the first time, you could choose from different colors. For iPhones and iPads, the issue is settled for me. An iPhone and iPad is and remains white or now white/silver. But with the MacBook, I was immediately drawn to the gold one. :-) So I wasn’t sure and simply decided to look at them on April 9th directly at the Apple Store, as I wanted to go there for the Apple Watch anyway. But what I experienced there was, personally speaking, a farce. The Munich Apple Store had no MacBooks to look at, let alone to buy on-site. I can tell you that a lot of bewildered faces were seen that morning. Okay, so I ordered it from the Apple Online Store. My first choice was actually the model 1.2 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core M, Turbo Boost up to 2.6 GHz, 8 GB 1600 MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM, 512 GB PCIe-based Flash Storage, but then I decided on the smaller model with 256GB SSD and the 1.3 GHz CPU instead. Honestly, I don’t need 512GB of disk space on the go, at least not built into the Mac. I also got the Digital AV Adapter - as most people know, the MacBook only has one USB-C port, and I simply needed a normal USB port.
The cold long evenings are beginning and that’s the best time for a new home server project. My QNAP TS-412 has been annoying me for a while now, so a few days ago it went into the eBay bay.
An initial brainstorming session led to the following new server setup:
I’ll document the server build on my blog, and I’ll also find a few words about why the setup was done this way.
What could be better than starting a new year with new hardware. The refresh of my home IT began in November 2014 with the replacement of the QNAP TS-412, and now I can hopefully complete it by the end of April.
So what’s specifically on the list:
Let’s see when I’ll replace what, and especially when Apple will release the MacBook 12" to the market.
A mirror is a wonderful thing - you stand in front of it and can see yourself from the outside. There’s a particularly large mirror in the elevator of the high-rise where I live. They give you the feeling that the elevator is bigger, but you can also use them to quickly take a selfie in the morning.
A year ago, on a whim, and because I read about someone who took a photo of their child every day and gave them a collage of the images as a time-lapse for their 18th birthday, I started taking a photo of myself in the morning on my way to work, or even just when taking out the trash. The photo is then uploaded directly to an iCloud photo stream, and Ben, Marc, and my girlfriend are thus greeted with a photo of me every morning. :-)
The year 2014 is off to a good start. I had to set up my FreeBSD server from scratch, but now I’m on a nice Atom server running FreeBSD 9.2 with my blog. :-)
Cheers, Lars