Today is not only the birthday of important people, this blog is also one year old. This is a good opportunity to look back and evaluate which goals have been achieved and which have not.

There are also updates to some articles.

Articles written

If I counted correctly, this is my 18th article and that’s about one every three weeks (but the tendency is falling). In the beginning I had a clear focus on security topics that I read about. Later it became more topics from my daily experience and these are just more fun for me and will probably be the focus in the future. Even if that means there will be fewer articles.

My last article of the old kind was Zero Trust Again. I kept coming up with similar ideas but quickly discarded them.

I am a bit proud to have written the article by and on ChatGPT and Security (although with another focus) two days before Bruce Schneier.

The article with the most passion has become Backup: No plan survives the reality. I hope to write more in this direction.

Unwritten articles

There are many similar articles that I have started but not yet published. Some because they become very long and therefore cost a lot more time. With others, I have found that the prepared content was only redundant to other sources I have read, without adding any specific value. Others, on the other hand, also fit into 280 characters and are better served on Twitter.

In OneNote, I created about 20 articles as a draft or at least as an idea.

I have already touched on thoughts on IT security in times of demographic change and the limits of automation in the article on ChatGPT. There is one thesis in particular that I would like to discuss: The amount of security is constant and the more systems and applications there are, the less there is per system/application.

I wanted to write an article about my experience with Postbank, because the tweet came up short. Now that Postbank has been taking three weeks, maybe it will be something after all.

I wanted to describe my photo workflow: From C1 and C2 camera settings via Powershell to Lightroom and Photoshop. I don’t have the time, because my expectations are higher than the time I have available. Maybe there will be several small articles.

I wanted to give a review of my IT (smartphones, desktop and laptop). There have already been some insights in the articles about burning plugs or the backup topic. This article has failed so far because I don’t have any photos of the old devices that can be used for it under copyright law. But the problem will be solved after 70 years at the latest.

Another article about my sources on security topics (blogs, podcasts, etc.) is planned.

I am curious myself when I will implement some of it.

Updates on articles

Multi-factor authentication: I’m still waiting for my new NitroKey 3C NFC, which I ordered more than six months ago. However, it could still work this month. Then there will definitely be a report on my experience.

I switched to BeyondCompare when I wrote the article on the BackUp. In the meantime I have adapted all synchronisations and I am very satisfied. It’s very helpful to see what will be copied before the backup is created – especially which files will be deleted. Because it works so much better, I also back up even more consequently on a regular basis.

The PC replacement I considered after the satanic fire is still on hold. On the one hand, I have been waiting for the AM5 platform. But it’s still too expensive and is focused more on performance than on saving power. And on the other hand, because I would also like to use Flight Simulator on the PC, I still need a graphic card. Maybe I should monetise this blog with cookies after all. Turning it off would probably save more money than I could earn with advertising.

IT and security

The technology is similar to the contributions. It was a pre-requisite before the first post and got little attention after that, except when TLS certificates had to be renewed (none ever expired) or I broke the DNS.

I had to add some WordPress plugins for nicer images or tables of contents on later articles.

On the subject of Google Fonts, I made sure I wasn’t affected.

In my security concept, I entered more new tasks than closed old ones. Interesting suggestions came from WordFence or the AWS Security Hub.

Patching has been an issue before and the alternative operational options (Kubernetes, EC2 without LightSail) have not progressed either.

The evolution of costs is interesting. To see that operation only takes up 60% of the costs (S3 even only in the single-digit cent range). The other 40% are security-related issues (Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Security Hub and AWS KMS). In my work context, it is usually even more severe and underscores the fact that while cloud operations can be low-cost, secure operations are not always so (even if they are sometimes more secure than on-premise).

Unfortunately, I have to conclude that the focus on functionality (new articles here) instead of security, which I criticized in my work, also applies to me. Let’s see if it gets better by next year.

The costs would probably be at least 50% lower with a WordPress-as-a-Service. If it would be more secure, I don’t know, but that would be a possibility. In any case, more effort on my part is needed here to achieve the goals of self-hosting in AWS. The other WordPress sites of my multi-WordPress instance to photos are not running yet. The cost is around 12 euros per month, on the same level as Lightroom, which is fine for a hobby.

The workflow has changed in so far that, at least in the last post, improvements have been incorporated by DeepL Write.

Summary

So a lot has happened and a lot will happen. All in one, I’m satisfied, even if I had hoped for more.

If I had finally activated the comment function, I would have a feedback channel for my readers, but I assume that everyone will also find an alternative way to tell me something when necessary.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)