Boring is okay. A healthy, meaningful life might actually look boring from the outside. And that's okay.

Tomorrow I'll be back to work after the December break. No social media, no laptop, a lot of quality time. I'm excited for what new ideas it will spark. In the past, I have had my best ideas after a 1-2 month mini-retirement. How was your X-mas break, and what are you most excited for in 2026?

HAPPY NEW YEAR and all the best to you 💝. I spent New Year's Eve at Hong Kong airport between flights, and used the time to reflect on #2025. First, thank you for reading my blogs and newsletter. This support of my journey means the world to me.

Funny story about how vim and how it can move you: > I sat back in my chair, exhausted. Changed. Evolved. Immediately opened VS Code and pretended nothing happened. 😆

At the same time, I updated my «Writer's Room» with some behind the scenes of my creative process, including rough & unfinished ideas. Not sure yet where that will lead to, but I like the idea of a writer's room, sharing some ideas more chronological to my second brain. www.ssp.sh/writers-room/

I consolidated my book recommendations from newsletters, the About Now page, and other places into one place. I enjoy most a good book recommendation, that's why I'd like to share mine too. I also added some comments. It's not finished, but it's a start. Check it out at www.ssp.sh/books/

It is this time of the year. #AnnualReflection I have a template I prepared for myself that links to the previous year and asks me all the questions (see second image). This process helps me guide and update my principles, so I can see whether my actions match my long-term vision.

Will AI Replace Human Thinking? Should our kids learn with ChatGPT? This article makes the case for manual writing. Guiding when to use AI, when not (soulless), and how it's a distraction in a field of expertise.

An homage to Bluesky and its AT protocol. Thanks @danabra.mov for the inspo.

Well Being in Times of Algorithms—An essay towards a better World Wide Web, and how well-being is connected to social media.

Another deep dive, this time into the comparison between open and closed-source data stacks, and when to choose which. Consider Omakase, a Japanese phrase used when ordering food in restaurants, meaning «I'll leave it up to you». I see CDPs as opinionated data stacks that do precisely that.

Simple OLAP cache based on DuckDB, adding instant speed up for your DuckDB queries. This is a deep dive into OLAP and Caches, a never-ending (love/hate) story 😃.

Should we go back to the Open Web? With Open Social?

Do you use #2FA? Which app? I got tired of always having to pick up my phone. I searched around, and I found Ente Auth. I switched all my 2FA and can now run on Linux & Android. So convenient. I used MS Authenticator before.

Alright, now also with ClickHouse and Rill Cloud integration, all done through GitHub Actions and dlt. The promise: FinOps Made Easy.

TIL—You can read Kaggle datasets directly with `kaggle:` with a @duckdb.org community extension called Gaggle. Check it out at: www.ssp.sh/brain/kaggle...

Almost there—if you like @obsidian.md, neovim, terminal, writing, or data engineering, please follow. I will not upload often, but when I have something interesting to share. Check out the latest: about my 20 years of note-taking, how I write, and my Mac and Linux workflow. -> yt.ssp.sh 🙌

If you want to know how this looks when I'm writing. Here's a time-lapse sped up 2000% from the original screen capture, reducing 43 minutes to 2 minutes. It's a live capture of me writing an article based on my existing notes and navigating in my Obsidian vault with Vim motions.

Vim motions for writing; this smoothness and flow ‍👨‍🍳👌 (while listening to The Drop)

I added the AI Whitepapers as well (started small). Which ones should I add? Any interesting, insightful, or unexpected come to mind?

Neovim and Yazi on the phone? Why not! Works surprisingly good. Termux on Android, check it out. I cloned my dotfiles 😍😅

Winter time.

There are so many excellent data engineering whitepapers. Just added git for data, a case for client protocols, and lately, more related to AI to my curated list. Pick the one that you like most at www.ssp.sh/brain/data-e.... Which ones are missing?

Did you know that you can follow YouTube channels via RSS? You just need `channel_id` of each channel and then with `youtube dot com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id={CHANNEL_ID}', you can follow them with the RSS reader of your choice. If you have many, I once exported them with a Python script.

TIL—SQLX! > SQLX is an open source extension of SQL and the primary tool used in Dataform. As it is an extension, every SQL file is also a valid SQLX file.

The slides are out now - check the HTML version here: www.ssp.sh/slides/25-11... or the PDFs here: ssp.sh/slides/25-11... If you like, give Presenterm a go. All based on Markdown.

Yesterday I presented at the Swiss Digital Days 2025 here in Switzerland. I translated the talk and recorded it for upload. The talks summarized my 20+ years of note-taking and how I use Markdown and Obsidian to create a Second Brain to manage my life and business. Happy for feedback.

To overcome complex cloud cost analysis, @ssp.sh showed how dlt can ingest and normalize AWS, GCP, and Stripe data into a unified cost dashboard. The result is a single view for ROI analysis powered by a simple ELT. Check out the full solution! 👇

Git is the default way of versioning software. Git-like workflows allow DevOps and fully automated deployments with instant rollback scenarios. I've always wondered: isn't such a workflow also possible for working with data?

Updated! #dataengineering #acquisitions #databs

Classical piano sounds in the morning, the best! Anyone else notice it helps with being productive? :) If not tried, check it out named "The Duke" at www.focusatwill.com.

Why should you have your own website? Still worth it in 2025? Some thought.

New data engineering project just dropped. As always, I am collecting what is potentially the most up-to-date list of really valuable open-source data engineering projects. #dataengineering #databs

This next article tackles the challenge of getting multi-cloud cost insights with a simple pre-setup framework that is extensible with dlt. The project that comes with this article contains incremental import pipelines, models them in metrics, and showcases them as unified dashboards.

If you could improve the design and usability of my website and second brain, what would be something you'd change? I was wondering, if I invest $1k for a professional, to improve CSS and design, how far could I improve the experience? 🤔 Any designers or Hugo experts follow me?

Created a small Obsidian plugin to open specific files in one shortcut. I use the Vimrc-plugin, and now I can map specific files to a specific leader shortcut. E.g open my todo's with `space+space`, or my daily note with `space + d`. Leaving it here, just in case it's useful to anyone else.

Presenterm is just goated! Quickly set your color theme and write some Markdown, and it looks gorgeous! I hope I never need to go back to writing PowerPoints the old-fashioned way. Such a waste of time, locking your knowledge in and away forever. cc: @pmillerd.com

Anyone else still using this old and buggy @obsidian.md plugin called Graph Analysis? Getting relevant notes, not based on AI suggestions, but based on math, locally. I wish it wouldn't freeze my vault every now and then 😅

I think this is going to be an interesting talk. Basically, condensing all the knowledge I have about note-taking from the past 20 years into a single presentation. «Knowledge Management in the Digital Age—from Zettelkasten to Startup Owners». Anything specific you are interested in?

Deleting a an oracle database or any DB on AWS RDS is a skill. 🫩

My enjoyment every day my site and my stuff is online, when half of the internet breaks. Self-host takes a little more effort, but the independence is freeing.

Today, I sent out a newsletter that is distributed only via email. However, because I believe the content serves as a friendly reminder of how the pendulum is swinging back and offers nuggets of wisdom on how to live life, I’m sharing it here as a blog post as well. #reflections

Today's Office 🕯️. #mood

Apparently, one of my most popular articles this week is the note I wrote three years ago on how to solve the Rubik's Cube. Maybe I get more credits because I write about other cubes (OLAP/data)? 😄 Are you able to solve a Rubik's Cube? If not, please use my guide hehe: www.ssp.sh/brain/rubiks...

Nice! I recreated a similar option for Linux/Hyprland in Omarchy 🙃 github.com/sspaeti/wayl...

My writing process has four modes. 1. NORMAL: jumping around, reading 2. INSERT: writing, thinking, making connections 3. VISUAL: copying, highlighting, formatting, designing 4. COMMAND: automate, fix, macros. In case you can't tell, I use Vim motions in Obsidian 😉.

What's a data warehouse?

TIL—Claude code has reverse search on `ctrl+r`!

testing. chat.ssp.sh/join/RPIA-3Z...

What writing devices are you using? Mixing up makes all the fun, no? 😉