Recent Posts

Wplace screenshot from the Munich area

Wplace—paint the world one pixel at a time

Linkpost | In Miscellaneous
| 1 minute read

The weather forecast for this weekend doesn’t look too great (at least for where I live in), so why not visit some strange and fun places on the internet?

Here’s something weird I recently found: Wplace. The idea is simple, but powerful: Overlay pixels on top of a world map, then let anybody edit those pixels, one pixel at a time.

The result is fascinating: from simple logos and drawings, through meme imagery and icons to the most complex and artistic pixel drawings. Though the terms of service do forbid the use of bots, I can’t imagine some of the images having really been painted pixel by pixel. There’s a 1 pixel every 30 second throttling, probably to prevent misuse or bots, too.

Some of the stuff is quite breathtaking, some just crude or immature. Kinda like the whole internet.

It reminds me of of the Million Dollar Homepage from 2005, remember?

A surreal artistic illustration showing three people in business attire walking across a large, colorful DNA double helix structure that serves as a bridge through a cloudy sky. The DNA strand displays vibrant rainbow colors including pink, orange, blue, and purple. Below, a small figure with an umbrella appears to be falling through the clouds. The scene has a dreamy, fantastical quality with soft pastel clouds in the background.

The 30-year-old trust formula that still runs the world

| In General
| 10 minute read

“To me, you’re not just Systems Engineers—you are Speaking Engineers. I’ve got plenty of engineers working on great products. However, I need you to speak to customers and earn their trust in our technology.” That was Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, talking to a room full of technical profes…

Screenshot of Seth Godin in a video on Udemy, in front of a bookshelf with books, explaining some concept.

Seth Godin on Udemy: Thriving in an AI future

Linkpost | In Tech
| 1 minute read

Just finishing this course by Seth Godin on Udemy, and it’s great!

Udemy: Thriving in an AI future

The best insights on AI don’t come from the technologists. They tend to be too deep inside the matter, often missing the human connection, the creativity angle, or the bigger picture.

And that’s exactly what you’ll get from this course.

Fun fact: Seth Godin used to work with SF authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury, building interactive computer games and early digital media projects in the 80s. He says he’s basically preparing himself for the advent of AI for decades, so he has some good insights here.

Disclosure: I got access to the course for free as part of a different project Seth is working on (more on that, later). I do think the price of € 69,99 (or whatever it is in your local currency) is worth it.

Any opportunity to learn from people like Seth Godin is priceless. Don’t miss the final Q&A sections, they contain lost of nuggets of wisdom!

Update (2025-09-19): Changed the generic post picture to a screenshot of Seth Godin from his course.

A detail section of this blog’s header image featuring a cartoon illustration black and tan dog with a red bandana on a blue background with falling autumn leaves, rain, sound waves, and letters spelling "KING" on the left side of the image.

Autumn is here!

| In Tech
| 9 minute read

Quite literally: this blog is now officially in autumn mode! 🍂

During our summer vacation, while watching over our dog Elvis, I spent some time doing recreational coding on the balcony of our vacation home in Sottomarina, Italy. The result is a seasonal bit of JavaScript/SVG animation for this blog’s header, which you can now enjoy on the main page, constantin.glez.de. But only during the autumn months, of course!

What started as a simple idea to add variety to my header turned into a 903-line journey of learning physics, mastering SVG patterns, and discovering just how much fun coding can be when there are no deadlines or requirements—just curiosity and Claude as my sparring partner. 🎯

Here’s what I learned along the way:

Whimsical steampunk factory scene with cartoon workers operating brass machinery among clouds and stars.

The unexpectedly complex rabbit holes involved in making music playback a 1-click experience

| In Tech
| 15 minute read

All I wanted was to press a button and hear SomaFM Groove Salad through my home stereo. 🎵

What I got instead was six weeks of diving into AV receiver telnet commands, Raspberry Pi power mysteries, and NFC webhook proxies. Sometimes I spent an entire week debugging my Home Assistant setup only to discover I’d been using the wrong IP address the whole time 🤦‍♂️.

But here’s the thing: the journey is the reward. Sure, I could have just lived with telling Alexa to turn on my AV receiver, connect to it over Bluetooth, then asking it to play what I want. But then I wouldn’t have learned how UPNP broadcasts get mangled by WiFi bridge modes, or that a 2.2W Raspberry Pi can teach you more about power supply stability than any electrical engineering textbook.

This is the story of how a simple goal—press button, get music—led me down some of the most beautifully complex rabbit holes I’ve explored in years. And why that complexity is exactly the point. 🐰

Four hooded figures in dark robes riding horses through a destroyed modern city street at night. The scene is illuminated by vibrant neon lighting in pink, purple, and orange hues from damaged storefronts and buildings. Debris and rubble are scattered across the wet pavement, creating an apocalyptic cyberpunk atmosphere.

The four horsemen of a dying career (and the shields that protect you)

| In Productivity
| 9 minute read

Working for my then employer’s Munich office in 2011, I felt it—that hollow sensation when your career becomes a treadmill. The acquisition of the company I originally joined had stripped away the technological beauty and purpose I’d thrived on for more than a decade. The rigid culture, the pure commercial focus, the loss of autonomy.

I wasn’t incompetent, broke, or irrelevant… I was just bored.

And boredom, I realized, was the first horseman of a dying career.

A network of fungal mycelia with golden-orange spores connected by luminous thread-like structures radiating outward from a bright central hub, set against a blue background, resembling the interconnected web structure of fungal networks.

How to thrive as an Expert Generalist in the age of AI

| In General
| 8 minute read

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

— Robert A. Heinlein

When I read a recent article about Expert Generalists on Martin Fowler’s blog, I immediately changed my LinkedIn title. Finally, someone had named what I’d been doing for 27 years without realizing it!

A black and tan dachshund named Elvis sitting on wooden flooring, wearing a pink bandana with watermelon print. He has soulful dark eyes, floppy ears, and is looking directly at the camera with an alert, friendly expression.

Welcome Elvis to this blog!

| In General
| 8 minute read

Over the last few days, I’ve been working on putting Elvis, our Dachshund, onto this blog’s banner. The goal was to create a smooth animation where Elvis appears by rising from the bottom of the banner, then leans his paws over the border—adding some personality to the site while exploring modern web animation techniques.

A surreal, colorful collage of musical instruments, notes, and music symbols.

Using Claude to create a playlist for Exploding Kittens

| In Miscellaneous
| 1 minute read

What happened was that last weekend, my family and I played Exploding Kittens: Good vs. Evil, which we were recently gifted. What a fun game! A random idea struck me: why not ask Claude to put together a playlist for us?

Hi Claude, we‘re about to play a few rounds of Exploding Kittens (“Good vs. Ev…

Abstract, wave-like structures, like sand dunes, from blue-green to yellow.

Introducing: Office hours!

| In General
| 2 minute read

What are office hours? Office hours have their roots in academia, where professors would publish certain hours at specific days of the week where students could simply come in and ask questions. It’s an easy way to meet without the back and forth of finding a date/time that works. Why office hours? …

A magical library interior with towering curved bookshelves reaching up to a ceiling covered in golden autumn leaves, warm ambient lighting, and a silhouetted person standing before a large circular window that floods the space with golden light

How to turn imposter syndrome into a superpower

| In Productivity
| 5 minute read

Here’s a secret: after almost 13 years at Amazon Web Services, I still felt like most people around me were smarter and more capable than me. And now, as a blogger looking at other writers? That feeling hasn’t gone away. If this sounds familiar, you’re experiencing imposter syndrome—and you’re in ex…

A dreamy, ethereal landscape with soft pink and purple clouds in a pastel sky. Flowing sine waves made of code characters weave through the scene in translucent ribbons of light, creating gentle wave patterns. Several colorful butterflies - including blue, purple, and pink ones - flutter gracefully across the composition. The overall mood is serene and fantastical, blending programming elements with natural beauty.

Animating SVG with plain JavaScript and CSS

| In Tech
| 5 minute read

Refactoring my banner into SVG was only the beginning: the next step was animation. I continued with the “AI as a teacher” model and asked Claude to explain to me concepts like IIFE, how the browser’s DOM processes SVG elements, which SVG properties are GPU-accelerated and other CSS performance conc…

Abstract digital landscape with flowing wave-like forms in vibrant magenta, purple, and cyan colors, overlaid with glowing geometric patterns and data visualization elements against a starry black background.

This time I coded it myself: using AI as a teacher

| In Tech
| 7 minute read

If you’re a returning visitor, you might notice the header image on this blog looks more sharp and crisp—that’s because it is! ✨ After creating my own URL shortener, I wanted to modernize my header image. I built it back then in 2022 using p5.js, but the resolution wasn’t great. Now I wanted a more …