Johan's feed

https://johan.im/writings

16 posts

Life 38% · Tech 25% · Writing 19% · Music 13% · Nature 6%

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  1. The Bear

    I watched the season finale of The Bear S05 yesterday, which also is the final season. The whole series is incredible. The hyper focus on character driven storyline is such a good call, and the actors don't fumble. The series has mixed a few twists and turns, but have always kept its eye on people and in extension family. It has never felt bland and shallow. I've loved being in its universe, I've loved the dialogue, the cinematography, the soundtrack. I'd recommend reading through its Wikipedia…

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  2. Status update: August 29, 2026 — 16:33

    Reviving an old cast iron pan and baking cinnamon buns.

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  3. Status update: August 28, 2026 — 15:01

    Reads about FreeBSD

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  4. (untitled)

    Obsessing over Charli xcx's [new album](https://open.spotify.com/album/4bR7pd6TVS53l24qFV4wI8?si=7AWV7F-DRu6RhyD4iMbaiA)

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  5. (untitled)

    Going back to work

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  6. Deptool

    Since beginning to self-host my site and other projects on my bare metal Ubuntu server, there's been a fair share of Manual Configuration Management™ by yours truly. Since I'm a huge Linux noob, this is my design, and it's all very boilerplate. But still, it only takes a couple of websites or servers for the nginx and systemd config is starting to be annoying: I can't scp or rsync over local (version controlled) copies automatically, due to how I've locked down my SSH user (it can't do sudo).…

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  7. Covers

    Exhaustive list of actually good cover songs: "Nothing Compares 2 U" Performed by Sinéad O'Connor, original by Prince. "Hurt" Performed by Johnny Cash, original by Nine Inch Nails. Honorary mentions "All Along the Watchtower" Performed by Jimi Hendrix, original by Bob Dylan. "Knocking On Heaven's Door" Performed by Guns 'n Roses, original by Bob Dylan. That's it.

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  8. My gym app

    In the spirit of moving off third party services and becoming more "tech independent", I decided to code my own gym tracker app. I've been super satisifed with Reps & Sets by Graham Bower. It has perfect UX, follows iOS's UI guidelines mercilessly, and does just enough for me. However, Graham's latest update is iOS 26+ only, and I'm still holding out on iOS 18… Bummer, but that's on me. So in order to get around some of the (very rare) bugs in Reps & Sets, I was going to do my own gym tracker.…

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  9. (untitled)

    Building my own gym workout app

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  10. (untitled)

    Watched Spain - Portugal (cheered for Spain).

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  11. (untitled)

    Watching Brazil - Norway with newborn son

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  12. (untitled)

    Publishing my new site

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  13. David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God

    No notes

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  14. The Grass Is Singing

    A slowly unfolding story, beginning with the murder of a woman. We get to follow the prequel story leading up to her murder: how that woman, Mary, marries a farmer in 1940s South Rhodesia (or is it South Africa? I never really got to know) and has a *really bad time*, bluntly speaking. There are so many layers to this book, I'm not smart enough to put it down into words. First of all, Lessing doesn't shy away from picturing the blunt racism in southern Africa back in the day. There are many…

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  15. The Promise

    A novel set in South Africa, spanning over multiple decades from pre-apartheid to present. We follow the five individuals of the Swart family, and the family's ultimate decline. It was quite hard to get into: took me a proper 150 pages before I "got" the rhythm. Galgut isn't marking out the conversations with interpunctions, like 98% of other works do. In a middle of a paragraph, the plot could jump to another setting or person. This was super annoying at first, and I got tired after having to…

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  16. Travel Light, Move Fast

    The third an final book in Alexandra Fuller's memoir series about her upbringing and family, which began with [_Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_](/reading/dont-lets-go-to-the-dogs-tonight). This book continues in the same style, and centers around the author's father: Tim Fuller. It tells us about his background and deeper episodes about his general character, recognisable from _Don't Let's Go…_ and [_Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of…

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