Hi and welcome back to Tiny Sparks! Phew, what a week this has been. Uni has officially started for me, which ultimately meant one thing: My schedule is way more packed now than a couple of weeks ago. It’s not really stressing me out, but the fact that I could easily fall asleep every day at 8pm shows pretty well,...

When I really like an artist, I usually look up their live performances on YouTube. And occasionally, I stumble upon some real gems. The kind of videos I can watch as many times as I want, and I still get goosebumps. Today, I want to share three of my favorite live performances by great artists. Pure creativity I...

Today is Friday, September 13th, and it’s Orientation Day for new bachelor students at Uni Bern. Which also means that my lectures (and my university career as a whole) start in just three days, on Monday. I wanted to quickly write about this life update, what I’m studying and what’s changing in my life these next...

I just came back from a 15k run, and I feel great. I didn’t feel great before the run, though. Having to run 15 kilometers on a Saturday morning doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. But luckily, this feeling only lasts for the first few 1’000 meters. After around ¼ of the run, everything feels lighter and smoother. I’ve...

Hi and welcome back to Tiny Sparks! Every so often, you do something and then immediately afterward know that it was the wrong decision. Robert recently wrote about this feeling as well. And that’s how I felt about my newsletter-move to WordPress, that I so proudly announced in the last issue. As you can see, this...

YouTube recommended me this video by Dan Go: An interesting piece in general, but two things really stuck with me: Your brain is a piece of software. Consistently upgrade it. Your body is a piece of hardware. Consistently upgrade it. What a great metaphor! You also regularly update the OS of your smartphone...

In the “But, how do I actually…” series, I try to explain how to do computer things in a way that previous me would have appreciated (and future me can reference). This is a written checklist for me, borrowed and slightly adapted for my personal needs from an awesome video by CJ on the Syntax YouTube Channel. The...

Recently, I wrote about how I write daily. In this post, I want to take a step back: Why write in the first place? If you’re not a writer (yet), it might inspire you to start the practice as well. And if you are one already, ask yourself, what are your reasons for writing? Here are mine: Writing to think Writing...

With the use of the WebFinger protocol, you can make your Mastodon account discoverable via your own domain. Without hosting a separate Mastodon instance. For example, my Mastodon account is dominik@mastodon.design. But when you search for toots@dominikhofer.me, you’ll also find my profile1. Here’s how you can add...

Ciao and welcome back to Tiny Sparks! You might have already recognized that something looks different this time. Tiny Sparks doesn’t run on Substack anymore and is now self-hosted on WordPress! There are a couple of reasons for this switch, but in short: Substack has a Nazi problem and I want to own my content....

You know about these playlists that Spotify auto-generates for you based on a mood or activity? Usually, when I go for a run and don’t want to listen to my own running playlist, I throw on one of these running mixes. They’re great. There are even different versions for different tempos, so I can always choose one...

Civil War is a movie that has been on my “to watch” list since it came out this spring. Unfortunately, it wasn’t available to stream anywhere here in Switzerland, so I recently took the plunge and actually bought the movie on iTunes (something I haven't done in a very long time). But buying a movie makes you...