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Colors have a big impact on how software looks. Personally, I think macOS and iOS are beautiful and the colors are very well selected. Since I am not a designer, but I want to understand why these systems always looks so good, I started designing this website using the Apple colors. The first step I took was creating variables for the Apple colors from the Human Interface Guidelines (iOS/macOS).

I published them on GitHub as gists so you can use them, too. It’s just the raw variables; but I could not find them anywhere else in this SCSS form. Gist macOS-colors-dark.scss, macOS-colors-light.scss, iOS-colors-dark.scss, iOS-colors-light.scss.

Read more for the actual variables.

Many people have ideas. Ideas are not special. What makes and breaks an idea is its realization and/or implementation. Here are some of my product ideas. Implement them, if you like them! Then send me an email to show them to me, please. 😁

I love listening to podcasts while I am out running. The latest one I found is The Happiness Lab from and with Dr. Laurie Santos, a professor teaching at Yale. She looks at happiness scientifically and takes an active approach: You have it in your own hands to improve your happiness. The podcast discusses various strategies with various scientists and experts from their respective field.

This is a collection of these strategies you can employ; with the link to the corresponding episode for more information.

During my time on the Internet, I encountered many things. This post is a collection of the cool things. I will probably update it once in a while. Since I am living in Germany, some of the tips may not be useful for everyone. In order of coolness.

This tutorial explains how to install Mailtrain on a Uberspace 7. Mailtrain is a self-hosted open-source (released under the GPL v3.0.) newsletter app built on top of Nodemailer. I am following the manual installation guide from the official Mailtrain repo and add some additional Uberspace infos. I contributed this guide to the Uberlab and earned my first Ubercup.

Libraries are an important part of programming. However, there should be a really good reason, if you decide to use a library. And if you use one, it should be a good one. These are some from my collection:

This semester I finished my course about automata and languages. I learned a lot and it was really enjoyable. From this field, there was a question about the Pumping Lemma on the computer science subreddit. So naturally, if someone ask about a thing I know about, I’ll try to explain it as best as I can – repetition is key for retaining knowledge!

I did it! I bought an iPad and an Apple Pencil for christmas last year. I write a lot for my university classes and I didn’t like that I often had to cross out things on paper (because I wrote something down wrong) and had to write them again. I was not sure, if an iPad is the right device for me – but turns out it is. It is awesome. If you make a mistake, you erase it and write it again. Wrong sequence of your sentences? Just move them around. The notes come out awesome.

Additionally I learned a few gestures that are really useful:

Die Rechnung ist eines der wesentlichsten Dokumente des Geschäftsverkehrs. Da sie ein formales Dokument ist, müssen einige Regeln eingehalten werden, damit eine Rechnung gültig ist und der Kunde bezahlen muss. Der Gesetzgeber hat eindeutig festgelegt, welche Angaben enthalten sein müssen (§ 14 UStG):

This is a text I found on the internet and saved it. If anybody knows the source, please tell me, so I can give credit.