Japanese
In October 2020 I decided to start learning Japanese. I started by learning Hiragana & Katakana, then continued with several apps, websites, videos and a private teacher. After a while I felt the need to visit a language school with helped tremendously. I was able to pass the JLPT N5 test in early summer 2023 in Düsseldorf. After that I continued on my own again.
I think I could have achieved much more progress in that time but for me it feels better learning at a slow pace. Currently I focusing on improving my vocabulary and studying new kanji. This section will be updated in the future to give you a better insight of how I learn and what I use. For now I can only recommend using Anki, no matter what you want to learn.
Speedcubing
This is one of my favorite hobbies. It all started when I discovered an old Rubik's Cube at my mothers house when I was a teenager. It was around the time we had internet access for the first time, so I decided to make use of it and check online how to solve it. It didn't take long until I discovered Youtube videos teaching a very simple "layer by layer" method. I was hooked.
My first solves (while looking at a cheat sheet with the algorithms) took around 10 to 15 minutes. A few days of practice later I improved to times around 1 to 5 minutes and shortly after even times below 1 minute. Unfortunately I wasn't really able to get any better with the system I was using at that time—it had too many steps to perform.
I then discovered the Fridrich/CFOP method. It was much faster but it also had a lot of new algorithms to learn. Eventually I was able to learn all of that and join my first competitions around Germany and some other places in Europe. I lowered my times to be always below 30 seconds, averaged somewhere around 20 seconds and had personal best times close to 10 seconds.
Nowadays I don't attend competitions anymore but I still solve all kind of different cubes/puzzles every other day. My current focus is on solving it blind. You can check my blog post about it.
Magic & Sleight of Hand
I've always loved magic, no matter what kind. Watching the great magicians on TV as a child always made me smile in awe. In school I bought my first deck of poker cards and performed my very first card tricks for friends. I couldn't get enough, each trick I saw someone do made me want to learn how it is done.
I spent countless days and nights perfecting sleight of hand moves and it never got boring to me. To this day I enjoy bringing my cards wherever I go to bring joy to the people. I makes me happy to be able to make people forget the moment they are in, it's amazing to me.
Coding
When I was in 7th grade I had the opportunity to attend a 2 week class for learning the basics of HTML and even a little bit of CSS. After this class ended I was extremly hooked with the whole topic and wanted to continue learning. In my free time I continued improving my HTML skills and learned how to write CSS, PHP and MySQL-Queries.
The revolution of this website is the result of this. I might include some screenshots of former version in the future. I love crafting web-apps to this day and I even managed to make this my job after I graduated school.
Motorcycle
Starting with 16 on a 15HP Honda Varadero 125, now continuing on a ~100HP Kawasaki z900. This has reaslly become a passion of mine and I was able to connect with a lot of cool people that I would have never met.
Bouldering
In late 2023 I went to a boulder gym close to where I live. A friend of mine took me there and showed me the basics. What can I say—I was hooked immediately. 3 weeks later I was going to the gym at least 1 or 2 times a week, bought myself some basic equipment and eversince I love going there and improve my skills. It's one of the best sports activities I have ever done, it trains the whole body, is simple to learn and is fun to do!
Neural Networks & AI
When I first saw movies like Matrix, Ex Machina and I am Robot I developed a little technophobia. No so much that it would scare me away but at least to have a certain amount of respect of what might be coming in the future.
During the recent years I've been playing around creating neural networks and genetic algorithms. It is absolutely fascinating to me and I'm excited to show my results here in the future. If it doesn't take over...
Scuba Diving
In summer 2019 I went diving for the first time and shortly after I decided to do my very own licence. I went to a diving school in Wiesbaden and was able to get my PADI Open Water Diver Certification. Unfortunately I'm mostly diving indoors. There are really cool indoor diving locations in Germany but to be able to go diving in the ocean is still on my bucket list. The only time I went diving outside was to get my certification done.
Chess
Every now and then I enjoyed playing chess but I never really took the time to get a deeper understanding of what I am doing and what I should be doing. Chess seems simple at first but can become quite complex. In summer of 2023 I started playing more regulary and tried to improve my moves. I made friends with other chess players, we're looking forward to host some public chess games in the future. I'll let you know here.
Lockpicking
There's not much to say about this hobby other than the story how I got to it. It is very rare that I lose or forget some thing, but it still happens. Unfortunately it was my apartment keys. I paid way to much to get my door opened, so I decided to learn lock picking to do it myself if I ever lock myself outside again.