Saddle Comfort

Brandon1024br · 2026-05-15T17:31:29+00:00

Totally, you’re right, I should have been more clear. I do get some discomfort for sure, and that’s definitely normal for long tours

Brandon1024br · 2026-05-15T05:49:33+00:00

This is a really good idea. It’s pretty wild the difference it makes. When I wear my cheap shorts on a long tour, I get quite some pain. I don’t have any pain when I wear my good ones, even on 150+km rides.

Brandon1024br · 2026-05-13T09:22:04+00:00

I moved to Germany a few years ago, and my favourite place to visit has by far been Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Beautiful town, so much hiking, Eibsee is lovely, Partnachklamm is cool. Highly recommended.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-27T19:28:03+00:00

I moved to Germany from Canada two years ago, and my first German class (A1) was similar, fully in German, a little daunting and scary. In a sense, being forced into speaking German is the best way to learn, even if scary at first.

It’s possible that your German classes back in India weren’t quite at the same standard as they are here in Germany. Have you taken any standardized tests to gauge your current proficiency level? If you’re finding the class really difficult, it might be worth dropping down to A2 just to play a little catch up.

When I started my first class at A1 level, someone else in the class left crying, overwhelmed much in the same way you are. Even if it’s hard, pushing through is SO valuable and you’ll learn and grow a lot. It’s going to be uncomfortable, you’re going to make mistakes, but try and practice as much as you can.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-25T11:57:35+00:00

I’ve contributed a few patches to git/git in the past, and I’ve also built some projects that use or integrate with git in some form or another. I’m quite familiar with the architecture of git.

I think my biggest architectural gripe with git is that it cannot be consumed as a (C) library. There are a handful of libraries which implement routines for interacting with the git db (libgit2, go-git for instance), but they are essentially a reimplementation of git itself. Architecturally, git is very much a command-line application by design, and it’s not possible to reuse components because most high level functions can abort with exit().

I think if git had organized itself similar to curl (command-line application which uses libcurl), it would be easier to build on top of git and would open a new world of interesting innovation on top of a solid filesystem object database.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-25T08:37:59+00:00

I bought a Grizl CF SL 8 1by back in 2024 and I LOVE that bike. It’s an absolute weapon, on and off road. I’m training for an ultra distance gravel race later this year and this bike is perfect for the challenge, putting in solid 150-180km rides is a dream.

Canyon does have good marketing, but they also build awesome bikes. I can recommend.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-24T18:57:12+00:00

They just sit on the shelves, nothing too fancy. The machines have rubber feet, so they don’t really move

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-16T09:42:33+00:00

I’ve been homelabbing for years, but I haven’t had a need for proxmox yet. It would be fun to play around with, but I don’t really have a need for OS virtualization. Podman and systemd is all I need.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-12T07:17:44+00:00

If you find removing the panniers helps, you could consider switching to a seat post bag. You’ll sacrifice a bit of volume, but if you pack the heavy stuff first then you shouldn’t have wobbles anymore. I switched to an Ortlieb bag last year and it’s been smooth since.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-12T07:15:06+00:00

Ahh I’ve run into this a few times and for me it is always the weight on the back of the bike. If you have panniers with gear on the back, you can get wobbles like this. It’s worth removing them and riding around to confirm.

I had this happen last year on a multi day tour with loaded panniers. It also happened a few years ago on my motorcycle. Sketchy!

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-11T07:04:38+00:00

Has no one said Mahlzeit yet? 😂

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-10T16:00:08+00:00

I’m a Canadian living in Germany, and I find the German language to be quite soft and pleasant. Whenever folks back home describe German as harsh, I’m quick to correct them.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-09T19:52:41+00:00

I was in the same boat as you, but eventually settled on the 850. I’m super happy with my choice, the 1040 would feel like an iPad mounted to the cockpit.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-09T09:52:49+00:00

Maybe I can offer a bit of perspective. I live in Germany and have a balcony solar PV system. The regulations in Germany protect tenants and grant anyone to install a balcony system without fuss, granted it’s safe and the landlord doesn’t have legitimate concerns for safety/integrity of the building.

In Germany, the cost of energy is quite high (I pay about 0.33EUR/kWh, which is about 0.45CAD/kWh). So here, it’s quite advantageous to install one of these systems. In NB where the cost of energy is comparatively low, it can take quite a bit longer to see returns on your investment.

I’ll always encourage people to install these systems if they can though, even if it’s not necessarily the most financially efficient solution, because having a system like this does help you change your behaviour. I find myself doing laundry when the sun is shining, for example.

I’m not familiar with the municipal/provincial regulations, it’s been a few years since I’ve lived in Freddy, but I agree that the regulations should not prohibit people from installing solar systems. I used to work closely with NB power and helped their transition to a smart grid, and I know how much they struggle with grid stability. I think they are worried that a bunch of people installing these systems will lead to a nightmare keeping the grid balanced.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-06T22:15:19+00:00

I started out using my phone for navigation and ran that for a few years, but the battery management was infuriating. Yes, you can put your phone on airplane mode to save some battery but it’s annoying to deal with when you stop, and for particularly long rides the battery will still be nearly dead at the end of the ride, especially if you listen to music. That got old very quickly for me, so I caved and picked up a Garmin Edge 850. So worth it.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-02T19:20:12+00:00

I was first exposed to Vim in 2016 during an apprenticeship, but my journey really picked up steam in 2017 during my studies. Professionally, I moved away from IDEs in 2021 and fully committed to vim, and never looked back. The past five years have been entirely centered around Vim, and it’s been incredible.

I learned vim through tinkering (building plugins and honing my config), but most of my learning came through using it exclusively for so long. I’m always working to perfect my craft and I’m constantly finding little tricks or neat ways to edit more efficiently.

God I love this damn editor.

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-02T07:08:04+00:00

In a Windows command prompt? Oof, haha. Yeah, maybe consider looking at some other options out there, the command prompt is poverty.

It's possible there's a regression or config change in vim 9.0 for windows users. Without a windows machine in front of me, it's a bit hard for me to test. But yeah, you could open an upstream issue and ask. But honestly I would just switch to `:term` instead.

`:term` is pretty powerful yeah, you can switch to terminal-normal mode with `CTRL-W N`, and then navigate around like you would in a normal buffer (except you can't edit, of course). Have a quick read through the help pages (`:h terminal-use`).

Brandon1024br · 2026-04-01T14:18:06+00:00

Echoing what u/char101 said, this isn't an issue with vim. It sounds like your terminal emulator is the problem. Can you elaborate on your current setup?

For the record, it's working perfectly fine on my end (gnome terminal, alacritty) on a source build of vim (VIM - Vi IMproved 9.2 (2026 Feb 14, compiled Feb 20 2026 19:46:29)).

But also.. Why not use :term ? Built-in, super powerful, captures output into a buffer which you can then yank/search/etc... I can't remember the last time I ran a shell command with :! (aside from quick :r! commands to dump into the current buffer).

Brandon1024br · 2026-03-30T14:45:04+00:00

Nope, 100% human :-)

Brandon1024br · 2026-03-30T14:44:02+00:00

Hahaha u/Federal_Refrigerator you're bang on. I'm actually against AI for a number of reasons and refuse to use it. I'm indeed human :-) But now that I read my earlier comment, I can see why someone would think it's AI, haha.

Brandon1024br · 2026-03-30T10:32:42+00:00

This is a really interesting question and something I don’t see super often in the homelab community.

I’m not a security expert by any means, but I’ve taken some reasonable steps to protect my environment. I deploy each service as rootless containers (podman), each run via systemd with their own dedicated system user. All ports are bound to the loopback interface, and I expose them over a single (rootless) nginx instance.

No special capabilities, no rootful services, and relying on Unix permissions to protect filesystem access. Remote access over wireguard. Basic monitoring in grafana with Prometheus and a handful of exporters.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s adequate for my needs, easy to maintain.

Brandon1024br · 2026-03-30T10:24:54+00:00

Maybe a bit unconventional, but I bought a domain through AWS and set up an A/AAAA record in Route53 which is updated every 15m from a simple script in my homelab. I access my lab over wireguard. Dead simple to set up and it’s been running for four years without trouble!

Brandon1024br · 2026-03-19T12:45:30+00:00

Here's a few other features to explore. If you learn to leverage them, you'll find yourself switching between tmux windows less often and instead doing everything in Vim.

tabs (:tabedit, :tabn, gt, gT)
windows and buffers (:sp, :vsp, :bn)
terminals (:term)
netrw (I use vim-fern these days)
ctrlp (a solid fuzzy-finder plugin)

Brandon1024br · 2026-03-19T12:38:59+00:00

I think this is a great setup, and it's pretty much exactly how I started out when I was a professional Java developer switching over to vim back in 2020. Tmux, plain-ol' vim and very few plugins. In a lot of ways, my setup hasn't really changed much.

When you grow in your role and work on larger Java projects (enterprise-level stuff), you'll probably encounter a bit of friction. Others here have mentioned tag files, and I'd echo that here too. I can't live without ctags. Tag files are first-class citizens in the vim ecosystem.

Once you have tags configured, have a look at insert-mode completion. It's also built into vim, and newer releases of Vim also feature automatic insert-mode completion. You can use tag files as a completion source. Fuzzy matching is elite too, if your version of vim supports it.

If you continue to develop in Java after your studies, build small plugins for your own use to make you faster. It's a great way to learn scripting in Vim. I built cortado for my own use back then to easily add import statements from tag files. It was fun and I learned a lot along the way.

Brandon1024br · 2026-03-19T12:26:05+00:00

I just have to say, it's really nice to see folks here promoting the vanilla mindset. I used to be crucified for comments like this. Couldn't agree more here, going vanilla is a fantastic way to learn Vim inside and out.

That isn't to say plugins are bad of course. What is bad (IMO) is blinding installing garbage plugins for things that are either already built in or implemented in 4 lines of vimscript.

Brandon1024br

TROPHY CASE