Weekly review cw 42

Events

This week there was a meeting of the DDD Meetup group in Hamburg. That means skipping training to network over pizza and drinks. The talk was informative → you can find my article about it here. I had the opportunity to talk to like-minded people. On Christian's recommendation, I signed up for the Java Meetup group. Lectures on meta-topics related to DDD or software architecture will be held there regularly. I will report.

Blog – Fallback image

As part of my automation, all articles are published on Mastodon. For quick notes, I don't bother picking out a hero image, which results in a big blank spot when the link is displayed in Mastodon. To avoid this, from now on, there is an article image for every article under the URL ending in /og-image. Here are two examples:

• A post with Hero Image https://yadl.info/en/blog/2024/domain-driven-design-meetup/og-image
• A note without a hero image in German https://yadl.info/de/notes/2024/was-hilft-bei-einem-wutanfall/og-image
• A note without a hero image in German https://yadl.info/en/notes/2024/was-hilft-bei-einem-wutanfall/og-image

I think it's particularly great that the title is incorporated into the picture in the respective language. If you want something like that, check out my colleague Maurice. He encapsulated the functionality in a Kirby plugin. The plugin will be available next week here.

Software engineering

The side hustle 'Crossposter' continues to take shape. The decision is based on a combination of Clerk (user management), N8N (process automation) and Netlify Functions(backend hosting as FaaS).

• Thanks to Clerk, we don't need our own user management and are given React components for the frontend and webhooks for process automation in the backend.
• The processes are clearly defined work steps in response to events, which is why we do well with N8N. For connections to well-known services such as Medium, we get an integration solution as a plug-in. For everyone else, an API (e.g., Mastodon or Bluesky), which we connect with the flexible HTTP module, is sufficient.
• We host the frontend at Netlify and at the same time can push the server functions into the repository without hosting a separate backend and maintaining a simple deployment path.

Overall, we do not need any separate data storage. The user's login details are secure with the service Clerk. The processes are stored in N8N (there is a SqlLite active in the background). This makes the solution lean, and the added value is enormous - every article in your WordPress or Kirby CMS is automatically published on Medium, Mastodon or Bluesky. Alternatively, you can keep your Bluesky feed in sync with Mastodon without any additional steps.

Table tennis

This week, we had the strenuous and extremely important task of “Financial Planning 2025”. I locked myself in for three hours with my treasurer, Reinhardt Singelmann, and tackled our new task. Our focus is to expand NTSV youth work and improve adult training without moving us into a deficit as a department. We managed the balancing act. We can continue to offer youth training times and establish system training for adults.

So that I can do this work even better in the future, I registered for further training at the Hamburger Sportbund: the DOSB club manager*in C (1st license level) I promise myself to achieve more and expand our department, especially in the areas of club development, sponsorship and public relations.

The focus on youth training is obligatory - so last weekend I continued with my C-license trainer training. This was the last course before the exam in mid-November. Our lecturer Sebastian Becker is active in the Hamburg table tennis squad and was able to spice up the course with his experience reports in the performance area. There were lots of tips for coaching, comments on mental strength and coach-player communication.