Mistral must have had a bad day. I had it create a table with two columns listing all tracks from the 2000 album "The Eminem Show" and their respective producers. First it claimed, it can't create a table. As compensation, it showed the information in an ordered list instead. The track listing looked correct at first glance, especially since it showed the tracks in the original track order of the album. When I looked more closely though, I noticed that a few tracks were missing (among them, n...| niqwithq
Hullo! Here I am, lounging on the couch, watching TV shows. It's a typical Sunday afternoon and my laptop is sitting at a distance on the table, unreachable from my lounging position. A couple of weeks ago, I made it a habit to connect my wireless mechanical keyboard for lazy afternoons such as this, to serve as remote control. But having to use my wireless mouse too is a nuisance (and rather cumbersome on the textile surface), so I rely on the web's innate ability to be keyboard-accessible. ...| niqwithq
The Breakup Letter is a tool I have learned about from the TV sitcom How I Met Your Mother. In one episode, Ted reveals that whenever he ends a romantic relationship, he writes a letter to his future self listing his motives for breaking up. In case he ever misses his ex, this way he can remind himself that getting back together is not a good idea. The Breakup Letter as a tool isn't limited to breaking up romantic relationships. It can be used just the same to end work relationships. If you e...| niqwithq
I'm lost in corporate fog. Everyone goes: "We have to make an impact!" "We have to secure relevance!" "We have to create value!" What is everyone talking about? It used to be different When I started, things were different. A small design agency with around 30 people. That's the company I joined. Of course, it had only previously been bought by a big corporate enterprise with more than 700K employees. But we were the cool design agency, unbothered by corporate dynamics. When I started, we did...| niqwithq
No, I didn't turn 100 years old. My blog didn't turn 100 either (that would be impossible for so many reasons). But with this post my blog turns 100 posts old! And I wanted one word that could sum it up. So my blog turns 100 today–in a way. Hooray, Hooray, Hooray! 🎺 --- Reply by email| niqwithq
Travel blogging refines, structures and narrates personal experiences of travel. While I'm out there in the middle of it, all I can really produce is the raw, incoherent version of these experiences. Travelling requires my whole-hearted attention. The impressions of a trip alone keep my mind busy. There is so much to a foreign culture, to a foreign geographic area, to a foreign society. Writing a travel diary alone is challenging enough. Travel blogging happens in retrospect—slowly, mindful...| niqwithq
It's just a button.| niqwithq.com
How Microsoft sunsets one of the coolest features of late Skype.| niqwithq.com
Music has never sounded better. Writing comes naturally. The thoughts are back on. Great ideas appear by the minute. Insomniac nights make a comeback too. It's no wonder I can't find rest. There's too many thoughts to explore, too much to process. But that's a small price to pay in order to gain access to this special place in my mind. Leaving behind a wasted mind, that's been exposed to everyday life just a tad too long. Escaping thoughts, that have been going on in circles. Getting out ther...| niqwithq
A lesson unlearned.| niqwithq.com
Good news! Everyone can be a creator now! All thanks to a little, magical tool called "Generative AI". With just a single sentence—or you know, not even that—you can create music, blog posts, illustrations, photography, videos, you name it! Unsurprisingly, also before the age of Generative AI, you were able to become a creator. Only before, it took effort. Nobody likes to work hard though! Today, you can be a respected creator and all that is asked of you is to feed a tool with a sentence...| niqwithq
With everything I have, I try to sleep as hard as I can. What I seem to forget is that sleep is a delicate matter that isn't supposed to be "hard" (quite the opposite). A matter not supposed to work under pressure. With all that effort—again, that's not supposed to be effort—I end up exactly where I ended up the night prior: at 1:45 AM. How did I get here? Falling asleep was so easy—always is—so easy. It feels like so much time has passed in order for me to get here. Here is in my dar...| niqwithq
My dad has always been an early adopter. When flat-screen tellys appeared on the scene, only days later we had one in our living room. The same thing happened when Blu-ray players emerged and before that: the DVD player. "Really, dad?", I wondered when one day, I observed the new device in the cabinet above the telly. Of course, I supported his mission to be up to speed with technological advancement. "But, dad? Have you considered our vast collection of VHS?" This device, sleek in its appear...| niqwithq
The never-ending mission.| niqwithq.com
Can you be properly gone with a smartphone by your side?| niqwithq.com
The next user interface.| niqwithq.com
Usability testing doesn't have to be complicated. Where are your users? Out there, of course. Chilling in the sun, enjoying life, probably longing for refreshment. Who are your users? Male? Female? Diverse? In their teens? Twenties? Thirties? If only you could pick them at will. Even without hiring a company that does the recruiting for you. Because they're out there. Waiting to be interviewed. How do you test in the wild? Pick a sunny day. Prepare refreshments and put them in a cooling box. ...| niqwithq
Writing in retrospect.| niqwithq.com
Several months ago, writing basically fell to the ground and broke into a thousand pieces. Shatter. Oops. Did I break it? I think I did. The shards of my writing block filled me with self-doubts and caused a customary identity crisis: I have a blog, don't I? But what is my blog about, again? I broke writing. It took me a while to realise that I was stuck inside a comfort zone, a cosy place both in my mind and on my sofa, where I wouldn't have to face the real world. I wouldn't have to face th...| niqwithq
Being a perfectionist is hard work. It's bloody awful, really. Perfectionism is the enemy of a good habit, the best friend of a writing block. But there's hope, because if we're being honest, you don't have to be perfect and your standards of your own work are probably too high. My way of dealing with this character trait is to embrace a Minimum-Viable-Product-Mindset™ (excuse the software engineering terminology). Enter "First Drafts". Instead of writing a perfect blog post (which happens ...| niqwithq
30 years of browsers and now we get vertical tabs.| niqwithq.com
When inspiration strikes, I'm in an elevated state. I gain a higher level of eloquence. I can express my thoughts perfectly. No wonder that during these times writing feels effortless. I get wonderful ideas and become incredibly productive. Seemingly out of nowhere, an intense energy emerges. I try to use this stream of energy as much as I can. My brain is constantly working and provides me access to cognitive spheres that were before unattainable. It's as if I were driving a car and my brain...| niqwithq
We need to talk about country emoji flags. If you take a good look at the abundance of emojis on my website, and the topics I like to write about, my obsession with them probably won't surprise you. I love emojis and I love travelling, hence I love country emoji flags. For the past one and a half years, I was convinced that using country emoji flags as blog post tags for my fancy travel blog was a neat idea. This allows my users to filter blog posts by country with the added benefit of displa...| niqwithq
Do you have a posting interval? I certainly don't. With this blog it's rather difficult for me. When inspiration strikes, I can publish a blog post every single day for as long as my inspiration phase lasts (on a streak right now 💥). But on the other end of the spectrum the exact opposite might occur, like in the past months, when I was plagued by a writing block. On my travel blog however, things look different. I post three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Instead of art...| niqwithq
The slowness and dedication.| niqwithq.com
Please Look After My Dog For Me is a short film about late Bruce Taylor, who travelled through South Asia and apparently the Philippines in the early 80s. I've been here that long, it's starting to feel like home. I'm living in the jungle, not far from the waves. The hassles to get here were definitely worth it. Bruce's sister reads the words from a post card, four decades after he has passed in 1985. What follows is a collection of video clips, recorded with a Super 8 camera, post cards and ...| niqwithq
The end of an era.| niqwithq.com
About oat milk, AI hallucinations and truth.| niqwithq.com
I don't know what I did, but I broke writing. It doesn't work anymore. For the past two months, I've tried to publish a post on this blog. It can't be done. Everything is shit. I remember days when I had ideas, wonderful ideas. I was productive, incredibly productive. I was able to write without consciously thinking about it. Words just appeared out of nowhere and made their way into my text editor. And now this. It's hard. It's frustrating. Nothing works. I broke writing.| niqwithq
Last week, the anniversary of my travel blog passed by unnoticed. I was too preoccupied with a writing block. Too preoccupied with winter depression. Now that I have noticed it, I've been thinking about my progress. I'm already back home, my infamous trip around the world over and yet I'm still in the midst of it. These days, I'm writing about travelling in Vietnam, in April of last year. I've fallen so far behind that I sometimes doubt if I can ever catch up. The past week, I could even sens...| niqwithq
I woke up. It was the middle of the night. I found myself in my bed, in the alleged birthplace of surfing in the Philippines, in a small place called Baler. Sleepless nights were nothing new to me. In fact, I had been struggling with insomnia for the last couple of years. So I got up to leave the comfort of the air-conditioned room. In the bed next to mine, I left my girlfriend fast asleep. As soon as I opened up the door to the living room, the tropical heat of this summer night greeted me. ...| niqwithq
For as long as I can remember, the TV had been sitting in the living room. Since this were the 90ies, it was a square-shaped tube television. As a young child, I was allowed to watch two cartoon shows on week days. Usually it was one episode of Darkwing Duck followed by either the Adventures of the Gummi Bears, TaleSpin or Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. I know, pure 90ies bliss. Dynamics in the living room changed when one day, out of the blue, dad took my brother and me to Toys "R" Us. In the...| niqwithq
Did you know that an infant marsupial is called a "joey"? "Marsupial" is a class of mammals that carry their young in a pouch. Exactly, animals that carry their joey in a pouch! As a German native speaker I found this term funny. I wonder if English native speakers feel the same way. It might be funny for anyone born outside of Australia, a continent known to be the homeland of a wide variety of marsupials. I learned about this curious fact during my research on emoji names. It began when I a...| niqwithq
Sometimes life gets in the way of good habits. Two years ago, I developed a habit of working out in the morning. Three times a week, I got up from bed, drank a cup of coffee and went outside for a 30 minute work-out in the park. The same year, I developed another habit of playing basketball in my lunch breaks. At 12 o'clock sharp, I closed my laptop, put on my sports wear and went outside to play 30 minutes of basketball. This year, I developed yet another habit. Every other Friday, I publish...| niqwithq
It happened on a Monday evening, an hour after sunset. It was one of those things that you hardly notice at first. After a while though, it was so noticeable that you wonder how on earth you couldn't have noticed it right away. With the declining light of day it slowly crept into my life. Unannounced, it appeared on my living room wall: a strip of bright light. This is not normal. What is this? Why is it here? I started to investigate. It came from outside and I noticed that the mirror in my ...| niqwithq
You definitely need to use a clipboard manager.| niqwithq.com
Answering questions related to my blog.| niqwithq.com
Travelling around 2024.| niqwithq.com
Arriving home.| niqwithq.com
"It can be done", I was convinced. "If only I went eastward as far as east takes me", I thought. "All the way around the world - and eventually return from the west." "How cool would that be?" An idea I was only 24 years old when I had this idea the first time. Having spent a four-month term abroad in Northern Finland, I had acquired a taste in travelling. On top of that, I was newly in love. You know what that means: Everything was possible! But then, life got in the way. I was young. Maybe ...| niqwithq
Blog Post Series connect individual blog posts by creating "series" dedicated to a specific topic. Sometimes, creating a blog post series could simply mean that you spent more time thinking about a topic you have written about previously: My Labelling the Web series, where in a first post, I explain on a technical level what it means to label the web properly, followed by a post that is more directed to a designer audience, followed by another iteration, where I find a new metaphor, taken fro...| niqwithq
It has become dark [on Phu Quoc island]. After I turn the engine on, it dies off right away, as I'm driving my scooter uphill. Maybe getting fuel from the plastic bottle was a bad idea, after all? But then it's starting up, and it's fantastic. I'm driving through the cool evening air, and it's better than any air conditioner. I'm overtaking other drivers, I'm accelerating, I'm having a good time. Many don't have lights, but I'm cautious. — Wer ist Tương Nguyên? / Who is Tương Nguyên?,...| niqwithq
For anyone who loves my series about retro emojis as much as I do, I have good news. I plan on featuring so many more and make this series even more nostalgic. Here they are: the telly 📺 , the floppy disk 💾, the DVD 📀, and the CD-ROM 💽. To be honest, I think it's odd that there are so many optical disc emojis. Who in the emoji community actually cares to differentiate between the three? But yeah, you gotta be precise. If you mention the old Age of Empires PC game to an old friend,...| niqwithq
Due to my obsession with British television this summer (Yes, I've finally watched The Crown), I've decided to adjust my writing to British English on this blog. As a matter of fact, I already did, months ago. What this means for you is that you have to get used to changes in my writing, including: Using "colour" instead of "color". Using "neighbourhood" instead of "neighborhood" (hmm, or maybe I'll just use "hood"). Using "favourite" instead of "favorite". Using "holiday" instead of "vacatio...| niqwithq
Ever since I left uni and started working, I had a strong sense of finding purpose in my career. I sincerely believed that I could find happiness at work. That out of all places, it was just hiding somewhere at the office. Nine years of work experience were filled with struggle. Many times I've tried to change something about myself to fit the narrative that I had made myself believe for so long. Changing jobs, changing professions, changing careers. I struggled because somehow, work didn't f...| niqwithq
I haven't changed. I'm still the same nerd I have been over a year ago. The same nerd that loves web forms, no matter when it comes to designing or using them. What has changed is my perspective. The UX Designer self that I have been shaping over the last decade has always just accepted the status quo. The idea that we need to design forms. This idea underlies the common notion that we need forms. But do we really? I remember a 2018 software conference that I was visiting. "User data is the n...| niqwithq
Shit, I actually forgot about the telephone emoji in the prequel to this post. How could I? Since I'm already here, I might as well talk about more retro emojis and take you back to better days also known as "the nineties". If you believe one early essay of my schoolboy self, my mum was obsessed with the telephone back then. She could spend hours on the phone, talking with her girlfriends Gabi, Ute, Elke, my auntie or my granny. When one day, our household was hooked up to the internet, thing...| niqwithq
As a working citizen in Austria, you can be so lucky. Every 4 years, you get the opportunity to take up to 1 year off work to educate yourself. The idea is to learn new skills that could help you in your career. If your employer agrees, you can go on educational leave. All sponsored by the state! Since regulations have been quite lax so far, many people decide to spend the time travelling, while educating themselves in a not-so-demanding way. In my case, I'm learning Spanish. I'm attending an...| niqwithq
It's the most beautiful button I've ever seen. Why? Because it's in the shape of the country I'm from. Austria. The Bundesland Now, what is a "Bundesland"? It's sounds like the most German word ever. Also, it sounds surprisingly similar to "Bundeslade" (The Ark of the Covenant), which was a legendary biblical relic, hunted by myriads of archaeologists, among them Indiana Jones and of course the Nazis (well, at least according to Steven Spielberg). A "Bundesland", however is a federal state in...| niqwithq
The idea of taking sounds came to me, when I visited a pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City. In the praying hall stood a golden buddha statue. In front of it were wooden bowls filled with limes and oranges: sacrifices for the buddha. Following my typical tourist routine, I snapped a photo of it and sat down on the floor. Then I noticed the music. Like every other tourist, I could have just taken my pic and be done with it. But this buddha statue came with its own soundtrack. I opened up the Voice Memos...| niqwithq
I'm a simple guy. All I really want is that people remember the intentions of the web that hit the mainstream some 30ish years ago. A web that didn't exploit users for maximum profit and surveillance capitalism. Today, it seems, whenever companies build a product, all the user exploitation is ingrained into the product's design by default. Can't we build technology for the benefit of users instead of abusing their data, their privacy, their freedom?| niqwithq
I'm sure you're still wondering: Niq, where the bloody hell are you right now, Mr. Worldwide? Please don't call me Mr. Worldwide. Anyway, I'm still travelling. This is my ninth month on the road. And I'm still keeping you in the loop. With the newest revision of my /where page, I've just had to radically simplify it. There used to be so much going on, but now I want to focus on the essentials. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. Also, with this new design I feature not o...| niqwithq
Even websites that go back as far as the early 90ies differentiated visited from unvisited links. How is it possible that this basic feature is missing on your website? I mean, this is 2024. Niq, aren't you supposed to be this accessibility nerd, who cares about this kind of stuff? There's this person in the back of my audience, who has been reading my blog for a while now, complaining that my website is missing this fundamental feature. But they are standing way in the back and instead of re...| niqwithq
When creators want to have a little fun, they build something, which they don't put on display, but hide away in the details: The app icon of Apple's Voice Memos app shows the waveform of the sound that the word "Apple" makes if you speak it out loud. If you are trying to open a website while offline in Google Chrome, you can play a little platformer game with a T. Rex, if you press the space bar (you can also access it if you type chrome://dino in the address bar). For Instagram's 10-year an...| niqwithq
All my life, I enjoyed being gone. No matter if my brother and I went to summer camp, my classmates and I went on school trips or my family and I went to the Northern Adriatic Coast. I always enjoyed being gone. As such, I never became homesick. Being gone Being gone meant seeing something I wouldn't see in my everyday life. Every year in summer, my family and I went to Northern Italy, to a place called Lignano Sabbiadoro, just at the tip of the Adriatic Sea. Unlike home, all of a sudden I ha...| niqwithq
There's nothing out of the ordinary about my Tuesdays. Usually, they are just ordinary 24-hour-long Tuesdays. But there was something different about this particular Tuesday. It's the fact that it lasted 32 hours and 20 minutes. What on earth happened? The time machine Imagine a traveller. The traveller is on a very special mission on September 3 of 2024. At the first glance, nothing seems special about his mission: he wants to travel to San Francisco. He's a traveller after all. What's so sp...| niqwithq
"Why are people so bad at picking profile pictures?", I thought to myself precociously after picking up my Uber Eats order. It's a phenomenon I stumbled upon many times in the recent weeks. After an increased frequency of food delivery orders out of laziness and an ever-increasing desire for a bit of routine on this trip around the world, it's something that I could observe many times. People always look so very badass on their profile pictures when in actuality, they make such friendly and p...| niqwithq
Now, you are about to travel to an unknown place. You want to experience this place and make the best of your time. You're travelling, after all. Some research seems appropriate. Who do you trust most: Google ratings? TripAdvisor reviews? Random YouTube comments? ChatGPT? Or your friend, a person you actually know, and who is originally from that place? Enter the travel joker. The idea The idea seems natural. If you are lucky enough to have a person in your life that comes from the country yo...| niqwithq
Even with all the navigation assistance imaginable, the real challenge of driving a scooter in Taiwan is the left turn. In Taiwan, motorbikes with engine power less than 125ccm, are only allowed to go in the first two rightmost lanes. Driving on the right side of the road, in bigger cities, including the capital Taipei, where 3 to 4 lane roads are quite common, this restriction complicates your ability to make a left turn. Theoretically, it's not allowed. But there is a hidden design in Taiwa...| niqwithq
For more focus on your desktop.| niqwithq.com
The fact that there's a fax emoji shows that someone out there must have had a similar train of thought: Yes! Faxing is still a relevant part of life in the 21st century. We need a fax emoji! 📠 To be fair: there's a CD emoji 💿 and I love it. And nothing less can be said about these: the VHS tape 📼, the camcorder 📹, the beeper 📟, the radio 📻 , ...and of course the joystick. 🕹️ Show some love to retro emojis. 🖤| niqwithq
Five years ago, I was finally fed up with the daily quest of locating my keys. I lost them. Every day. I had to locate them. Every day. Sometimes twice a day! Soon, I realized that I spent too much of my precious time on locating my keys. It was time for a change. The Organized Mind There's one book that helped me never having to locate my keys again. It described my problem precisely: Few of us feel that our homes or work spaces are perfectly organized. We lose our car keys, an important pie...| niqwithq
Arriving forty-three times.| niqwithq.com
In German corporate speak © the term "war-deciding" (kriegsentscheidend) has been floating around for years. As cringe as it is that people working in software projects started to use military terminology, it gets even worse. Even after the war in Ukraine started, people kept on using it. No sensitivity for the people that are actually in a war a couple of hundred kilometres away. Stop the corporate language wars!| niqwithq
In 1993, introducing the concept of inline images to the web was a revolutionary idea. Even more so, it was highly debated on mailing lists and almost considered blasphemy. Today, I extend upon the idea of the /where page. In general, I like a /where page, that's straight to the point. A simple page, that shows your current location. Nothing fancy. My own /where page lives up to this simplicity. It's plain and simple and still quite charming in its little box with the call to action button. B...| niqwithq
Do you remember prank calls from your childhood days? You call the police. The police show up, but it was just a prank call. After they have gone, you call them again, but this time it's a real emergency. This time though, they won't show up, because they suspect another prank call. This is what Korea feels to me right now. The city of Seoul and the government of Korea are using emergency and government alerts to notify the population about basically anything: Heavy rain, thanks to the monsoo...| niqwithq
I love emojis. I can barely write messages without them. Sometimes, picking emojis takes more time than writing the actual message (that's of course when emoji names come in handy). I love emojis! Therefore, when I launched my website a year ago, I already knew what this website needed. It was clear to me that emoji aesthetics would fit in perfectly with the design language I was aiming for. So, I decided that for every blog post I get to pick a fitting emoji. If you read my blog in the brows...| niqwithq
A nice escape from reality.| niqwithq.com
I love the idea of blog post sequels: Write about a certain topic on your blog. Let some time pass. Revisit old ideas of yours and that certain topic you wrote about. Write about it again with a new perspective. I wrote sequel posts about Reply by email, Labelling the Web and my Trip around the World. And I already know that I want to revisit About writing and Web Forms for Everyone soon. Blog post sequels are neat.| niqwithq
Two months ago, I found myself in a typical Hong Kong-style café that offered one signature dish of the Cantonese cuisine that I just had to try. The pineapple bun. Disclaimer: This post is not about the "web3". The title is a stupid coincidence. It's the third part of a series called Labelling the Web. Technically, there is no web3 anyways, there is only one web, and it definitely needs better labelling! The pineapple bun Don't get your hope's up just yet. There's actually no pineapple insi...| niqwithq
My mornings are all about Australia. When I made my way there this March, I wasn't ready to be down under yet. It took me some time to adjust and mentally arrive in this place. I visited the Sydney Harbour, Bondi Beach, Manly and my secret gateway from it all, Woolwich. 25 minutes later, and I stop thinking about Australia. My evening are all about the Philippines. I was culture-shocked within hours after arriving here. Why? Because everyone speaks English! After five weeks of Vietnam, where ...| niqwithq
I'm wide awake. Travelling can be exhausting. But two months of resting in the Philippines allowed me to recharge my batteries. I'm rested. Ready to travel again. I had doubts about this idea for a while: The idea of a literal trip around the world. The idea of literally circumnavigating Earth. Start in the middle of Europe. Head east. To Greece, then Singapore, then Oceania. Travel through Southeast Asia, then East Asia. Head further east. Over the Pacific Ocean. Cross the International Date...| niqwithq
Getting used to a new environment.| niqwithq.com
Why are you still writing about New Zealand? Wasn't that 3 months ago? — A dear friend of mine, who's reading my travel blog. The delay After four months of travel, I've finally finished processing the first one in blog form. As you can tell, there is quite some delay between the now of the Philippines and the then of New Zealand. What's taking so long? First of all, I want to tell the entire story of my trip around the world. It wouldn't feel right, if I left parts out. Second of all, I wa...| niqwithq
I've noticed a new development in my life. Recently, I've started writing YouTube comments. Not only that: I told one of our hosts in New Zealand how much I enjoyed staying in their place in the highlands of Canterbury. I told the product team of Buttondown how much I love using their newsletter tool. I told the Austrian embassy in Manila how much it sucked that they wouldn't forward my absentee ballot and I couldn't cast my vote for the European elections. Providing feedback is my new drug. ...| niqwithq
I love language. Have you ever heard of onomatopoeia? It's a term for words that are named after the sound they produce. In Austrian German, we call a tram „bim“ because it always goes: Bim! Other examples for onomatopoeia are "ping-pong", "flip-flop" and „tuktuk“. Unlike language, I wouldn't say I love numbers. What I do love though, are numeronyms. Just like acronyms, numeronyms are abbreviations. But they are a lot cooler because they abbreviate using numbers: 24/7 means open 24 ho...| niqwithq
The story of my first year as a writer.| niqwithq.com
The world needs to know about my new calendar app.| niqwithq.com
I would like to have more of that menu, please.| niqwithq.com
Driving a scooter in Vietnam without using Maps.| niqwithq.com
About a month ago, I updated the apps on my phone. Signal, my favorite messaging app, announced that it now supports usernames. "So, Signal has usernames now." I thought, when actually not thinking at all. I chose a cool username and immediately forgot this ever happened. Until I read the Internet Review's post about Signal usernames, and it became oh so obvious. Signal has usernames now! My phone number is a sacred piece of personal information that is supposed to stay a secret. With the pow...| niqwithq
I hear birds chirping. The wind is blowing softly. The sound of a scooter passing by. I hear myself whispering "This is fascinating" as I approach the amazing statues of Vinh Trang Pagoda in Mỹ Tho, in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. I walk closer to one of the bigger statues. The wind keeps on blowing. A soft "gong" sound in the distance. And now the chanting starts. There's music playing next to the statue. It's a duet of a male and female voice that keeps repeating some kind of chanting. As...| niqwithq
For years, I've been telling myself that I want to read more. For years, I didn't listen. What did I do instead? I read in a way. But I did that kind of reading, where I read in bed, just before going to sleep. In general, there's nothing wrong with that. In my case though, this meant that I would read a maximum of 2 pages until my eyes would get too heavy, and I dozed off. With that kind of speed, you're not really making progress with your reading. Trust me on that. Making reading a priorit...| niqwithq
Travel now, sleep later.| niqwithq.com
A name stuck for eternity.| niqwithq.com
The /where page movement.| niqwithq.com
The magic of the /now page.| niqwithq.com
Writing an about page for your website is like introducing yourself in a group setting. Who are you? What would you like others to know about you? What are you all about? As you can imagine, writing an about page is not that easy. I procrastinated writing my own for quite some time. It took me six blog posts before this website had an about page (and for that matter, a menu). But at some point I couldn't procrastinate any longer. How would my readers know who I was, if I never introduced myse...| niqwithq
Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the w...| niqwithq
In the upcoming weeks, I'll take a year off and travel around the world. Naturally, I will blog about this epic adventure. But not on niqwithq.com. And here's why. Writing in German When I decided to document my trip in blog form, I thought of a selected group of people that would be happy to become my readers. I call this group friends & family, with a focus on my family (hi mom). That's when I wanted to try something new and write in my first language, which is German. German doesn't go wel...| niqwithq
How the latest watchOS update expected me to relearn ingrained behavior.| niqwithq.com
It's easy to forget how much happens in your life if you don't look back from time to time. I usually browse through my photo gallery, when I reflect on my past year. This year, I also reflected on the music I've been listening to. As an avid last.fm user, I can time travel to any period of my life and check out long forgotten favorites from my music library. When I reflected on 2023, I created a Spotify playlist of my favorite music for every month of the year. January I celebrated New Year'...| niqwithq
I have been living in a bright, modern, 2-room apartment for over 2 years now. It's on a busy street in Ottakring, Vienna's 16th district, but since it's facing a nice inner yard, it's incredibly calm. Everything about my apartment is amazing. Except for one thing. Only weeks after I moved in, I discovered the problem. The problem with my bathroom ventilation. My bathroom ventilation is supposed to be smart. So smart, that it turns on automatically, once the humidity reaches a certain level. ...| niqwithq
The ingenious idea of turning a blog post into a talk.| niqwithq.com
Simple instructions on feeling bad about your writing.| niqwithq.com
The story of how I became a user.| niqwithq.com
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How my first website ever was hacked and what we can learn from it.| niqwithq.com
Elements on websites need accessible names so that they can be perceived by all users.| niqwithq.com
Why designing for accessibility improves everyone's user experience.| niqwithq.com