Puppet vs. Ansible: Game-Changing Differences in Modern Infrastructure Automation

After working extensively with both Puppet and Ansible, I’ve discovered some powerful features in the Puppet ecosystem that deserve more attention. In this post, I’ll share my experiences with Hiera and Puppet Bolt, highlighting how they compare to Ansible’s approach. Hiera vs. Ansible’s host_vars and group_vars One of the most significant differences between Puppet and Ansible is how they handle variable hierarchies. Ansible uses host_vars and group_vars directories, which provide a straightforward but somewhat rigid approach to configuration data....

March 31, 2025 · 8 min · Manuel Herrmann

SaltStack from Zero to Efficient: A Practical Journey

Let’s face it: infrastructure management can be tedious. But what if I told you that SaltStack has some seriously useful features that can transform your experience from mundane to efficient? While many configuration management tools like Ansible, Chef, or Puppet offer similar functionality, SaltStack distinguishes itself through its powerful event-driven architecture, efficient minion communication, and exceptional templating capabilities. These features make it particularly well-suited for managing complex, dynamic infrastructure at scale....

March 30, 2025 · 10 min · Manuel Herrmann

Getting Started with Emacs Lisp: Core Concepts Explained

Getting Started with Emacs Lisp: Core Concepts Explained Emacs Lisp (often abbreviated as Elisp) is the programming language that powers the extensibility of the Emacs text editor. It’s a dialect of Lisp that has been adapted specifically for text editing tasks. While it might look unusual at first glance, understanding a few key concepts opens up a world of possibilities for customizing your Emacs experience. In this article, we’ll explore some of the fundamental concepts in Emacs Lisp that often confuse newcomers....

March 29, 2025 · 6 min · Manuel Herrmann

The Essential Emacs Hotkeys Every User Should Know

For over four decades, Emacs has stood as a pillar in the text editing world, beloved by programmers, writers, and power users alike. What makes Emacs particularly powerful is its extensive keyboard shortcut system that allows users to perform complex operations without ever touching the mouse. Emacs comes with an excellent built-in tutorial that can be accessed with C-h t (Control-h followed by t). I highly recommend all new users complete this tutorial to get comfortable with Emacs’ fundamentals....

March 28, 2025 · 6 min · Manuel Herrmann

Lessons Learned from Journaling with Emacs org-journal-mode

As I delve into the intricacies of Emacs and its powerful org-mode ecosystem, I’ve discovered that org-journal has transformed my daily note-taking and task management workflow. Looking at the configuration shared, there are several valuable insights worth highlighting for anyone looking to enhance their personal knowledge management system. The Power of Daily Granularity One of the most impactful lessons I’ve learned is the importance of splitting journals into smaller, more manageable chunks....

March 28, 2025 · 3 min · Manuel Herrmann

The Rust Programming Language and the Advent of Code 2018

I recently got reminded about AdventOfCode2018. Be sure to check it out before end of december. Till now i did the challenges in rust, perl, bash - no specific language - just depending on the time i have. If you have plenty of time, the challenges from the last years are still available. Additionally i was looking a little into the programming language rust. ...

December 7, 2018 · 3 min · Manuel Herrmann

Hand written letters from 1941 and neural networks

As another side project i am currently trying to convert a letter into computer readable text just from a scanned image. ...

May 20, 2017 · 2 min · Manuel Herrmann

The official Harpoon page went online

The official Harpoon website is now online and available at https://harpoon.0x17.de/. ...

January 16, 2017 · 1 min · Manuel Herrmann

Pixel Animations

I’m trying to learn more about pixel animations, which could help to build some basic sprites for a small game that could happen sometime later in my life. Currently i’m trying to reproduce some of the tutorials from saint11, which can be found here. ...

January 12, 2017 · 1 min · Manuel Herrmann

Harpoon: Current State

Harpoon is a flexible chat client for common protocols - written in C++ - and will stay online when you aren’t. You will get push notifications for private messages when you are on the run. Here are some screenshots of the current state: ...

October 17, 2016 · 1 min · Manuel Herrmann