On wednesday I gave a talk at the PHP Usergroup Munich. If you follow me on Twitter you've probably read about it. It was the first talk of this kind that I gave and I liked it. There is no video recording of it, but you can still have a look at the slides on speaker deck.

I want to share some personal thoughts not only on the talk itself but on the whole process behind it. Mostly because the whole topic of public speaking interests me for quite some time now.

First off it definitely was some out-of-comfort-zone kind of thing for me. I played with the idea of giving a talk here and then as I liked to do presentations at university. But I never settled on particular topic, let alone actually doing it. This time Scandio hosted the event and there was the chance to fill the open spot. Perfect chance to make something from it.

The talk itself was not focused on code but more a lessons-learned from the project I have been on for the last year. I found this to be the most challenging part: To frame the rather abstract concepts and ideas of how our system works in a short presentation while also trying to get into technical interesting topics. And - at least according to the feedback I got - I managed to do it reasonably well.

The Preparation

While preparing for the talk, I watched Zach Holman's Talk on Talks again. Of course only after giving the talk I would understand some of his points.

So I had a rough outline and a first draft about two weeks prior to the event. But I only finished the presentation a few hours before it. I shuffled bits and pieces around until a few hours before the meetup. Most of the content was created on the weekend leading up to it. I just felt easier to sit down at home with a cup of idea rather than trying to force it while being at the office. I would definitely try to get it settled earlier the next time.

Giving the Talk

I was in the last spot after two more code-related talks. This circumstance allowed me to reference the stuff that has been presented earlier. Nonetheless I was a bit nervous, not to a negative extent, but enough to find myself rushing through some parts where I had a different idea of what to say.

My only sort-of test runs happened the evening before, and it lead to a few changes in the structure. For the next time, I would definitely try to do such iterations way more often. Overall it helped to just talk about it, because often enough I realized that something wouldn't work. In most cases some information was missing to follow my line of thoughts. Or I would overcomplicate things. While I'm sure there still were enough rough parts in the presentation, I was hopefully able to eliminate the worst ones beforehand.

After the talk

Once I closed the lid of my laptop I felt some sort of relief and pride at the same time. But until then there were a few interesting questions from the audience, even technical ones which I hoped for. The people were nice and it was a good end to the day to discuss some other stuff over a beer afterwards.

Bottom line

It was a fun and educational thing to do for me. I will definitely try do it again. Overall it helped to bring all the information into a proper strcuture to get back to what we're actually trying to achieve in this project. Also it's now way easier to explain my friends and family what I'm doing all day long. I love this refreshed perspective and I'll try to take it as a learning from this whole thing: Go back to the start and try to give a proper presentation of things to involved people, just so I get a clearer understandin myself.

As Scandio is hosting the upcoming PHP Usergroup meeting here in Munich next week, I've got the honor to give a talk there. So on 2015-11-25 I will give a talk titled "Building a Content Management System for IoT Environments". It will feature the project I've been working on for the past year: The challenges we faced and how we solved them with a PHP based system. You can find all details on Meetup.

I will post the slides and a recap afterwards. Must admit I'm both ecstactic and a bit frightened about it.

The last time I saw Hot Chip was at Rock im Park 2008. Thanks to Frederik I had the chance to see them again in London last weekend. Hot Chip played an amazing show, much better than I hopped for.

Side notes: Inclined standings – why doesn't every venue have these? (And: Live Photos are nice for creating gifs.)

Recently Jekyll and Octopress gave me quite some headaches: Just scaffolding a new post would take minutes. The same was true for generating the sites. After some digging around, it turns out that some old Gems were messing with Ruby in a way that would make it super slow.

gem cleanup

The solution was as easy as cleaning out old Gems. Now it's finally fun again to use Jekyll and Ocotpress on this system.

For the last three years I mostly used pair of Sennheiser PX 200 II i wherever I was. I love their portability, the included headset and their sound quality. At work I had an extension cord running across my desk as the original cable wasn't long enough. Having this cable annoyed me quite a bit. So after a colleague got himself a pair of Bluetooth headphones a couple of months ago, I want to get some myself as well. So after weeks of occasionally reading reviews and checking prices on Amazon I ordered a few on Amazon. Here is my interpretation

Disclaimer: This review is exclusively based on subjectivity and full of amateurish interpretations of sound.

The Contenders

I had a chance to test one of the wireless Beats (can't remember which exact model) and the Sony MDR-XB950BT for about half an hour each; And the Sony MDR-10RBT, the Jabra Revo, the Sennheiser MM 400 X and the Plantronics BackBeat Pro for at least a day each. Here my impressions and thoughts on them.

Too much bass: Beats Studio 2, Sony MCDR-XB950BT and Jabra Revo

Even without any kind of Bass Boost or equalizer these three didn't sound balanced but were tilted overly towards drowning everything in bass. I didn't like it and dropped them quickly. Additionally the Jabra Revo had a somewhat mushy sound, which seems like a defect of the pair I had since most other reviews don't mention anything therelike.

Third Place: Sennheiser MM 400 X

They are the smallest in this set. You could definitely hear this lack of size and therefore some atmosphere. But coming from their wire-bound counterpart I did like them a lot; they are extremely light and comfortable to use, and the sound is very clear. Listening to all the other headphones it got me thinking whether the extended use of such small headphones skewed my reception and like for bass a bit.

Nonetheless, once I tried to push the bass a bit further (using the fantastic Mac App Boom) they sounded even better and much more rounded. But I got constant troubles with the Bluetooth reception in situation where there are more multiple Bluetooth devices, e.g. the office with it's multitude of Apple keyboards, Magic Mouses and Trackpads all cluttering the Bluetooth spectrum. The other headphones were more resistant to dropouts.

Runner-up: Sony MDR-10RBT

I do like them, they sound good, their reception is extremely good and they are very comfortable. Honestly, I cant really say anything negative about it. These are the ones my colleague settled one and he was kind enough to let me test them every once in a while.

Winner: Plantronics BackBeat Pro

These were last ones I ordered. I was already in between keeping the Sennheiser's or ordering a pair of the Sony's for myself. The first impression out of the box: They are huge, even for over-ear headphones and also a bit heavier than the Sony for example. But I like them the most, they sound pretty awesome.

Comfort & Controls

Their size has been my biggest concern: They are big and I probably won't wear those in the subway. But they are comfortable nonetheless – even after a prolonged period of usage (5+ hours) they never get too heavy or uncomfortable.

The controls on the headphones are very easy to use: The touch controls of the Jabra Revos are surely an interesting user interface concept, but I would constantly end up skipping tracks when I just wanted to change the volume. All functions have their very own controls that are easily reachable, so I don't have to fiddle around my ears.

Sound

The sound is just awesome. I don't have much experience but to me they sound very well balanced. There is enough bass for some heavy metal stuff and the mids and highs sound very clean – however one does describe this in audio-language. Voices and podcasts also sound quite natural. Definitely the best audio quality of all the headphones I tested.

Other Features

I can't really tell how good the noise canceling is for a lack of references. But it is noticeable in an office setting – I often find myself missing conversations when listening to music on a low volume and ANC is active. Often I see this as relief. Albeit initial skepticism, I use the "OpenMic" feature occasionally: it will record the sounds from the outside and directly push it through to the speakers. Great for listening to something around you quickly.

The Bluetooth reception is also very good. Only minor dropouts when I actively put a lot of other Bluetooth devices in between the headphones and the source. Otherwise they they're superb. Even the lag for watching videos is still acceptable – at least good enough for the occasional YouTube video.

Batterywise the headphones tell me still have "Battery medium" – after approximately using them for at least 12 hours since a full charge. I will see how this evolves in the long run.

On Bluetooth Headphones in General

From this unrepresentative set of test objects, it seems that there is a significant difference regarding the stability of a Bluetooth connection. With Bluetooth 4 seeming to be the most stable especially in contrast to some Bluetooth 2 devices. The same goes for the sending instance: One can tell my older early 2011 MacBook Pro (Bluetooth 2.1) sounds much worse than the 2014 MacBook Air (Bluetooth 4.0).

And what sucks most about using almost any Bluetooth device on the Mac: The media keys of the headphones can only control iTunes, no Spotify or whichever other player that normally would respond to the media keys on the keyboard. But there are a couple of solutions to circumvent this: mac-bt-headset-fix and BTHSControl – I use the later one for now.

If you can read this, then I successfully moved this blog to DigitalOcean. I wanted to do so for quite some time but somehow never got beyond creating an account at DO. My server at HostEurope was fine, no real pain there, but I have been curious to toy around with something new.

So I'm still in the process of figuring everything out, but for the meantime it looks like the server config, nameserver entries and deployment mechanisms seem to run quite well. I might soon write a bit more detailed about the deployment mechanism later. But for the meantime some references that helped me quite a bit in the process:

• Getting A+ on SSLLabs with Nginx and StartSSL: I already had some SSL certificates in place on the old machine, but it was configured using Plesk. This site helped me quite a bit regarding figuring out how to this the hard way™.
• Automatic nginx virtual subdomains with sub-folders or sub-directories: I don't want to dig around in the server configuration whenever I throw some tiny pieces on the server.
• ngx_http_spdy_module:In preparation for HTTP2. I had to update the pre-installed nginx though.
• and of course some pieces from Essential Security for Linux Servers and the extended discussion about that article.

My personal End Of Year post for 2014, random thoughts, no particular order.

I spent the first half of this year studying in Aarhus, Denmark, meeting awesome people and having an extremely nice time. Travelled to Oslo and Copenhagen while already being in the northern countries.

Upon returning I got my masters degree in media informatics from the LMU Munich. That marked the end of being a student for six years. It has been an amazing time, I learnt a lot both personally and professionally and met some of my best friends.

Just a couple of weeks later I started working as Fullstack Developer at Scandio. Enjoying these new challenges.

I ran my first 5k in 25 minutes (and 5 seconds, okay). I joined a gym for the first time in my life and am still going there seven weeks later. Proud of myself and it's nice to move when sitting all week.

I have been at the Prima Leben und Stereo festival this summer, and saw Linkin Park in autumn. Will do my best to see even more bands live in 2015 (got tickets for the Black Keys and Rockavaria so far).

Looking forward to make 2015 even more of a blast.