My things

As the event-planning application grows, individual classes are becoming less interesting than the relationships between groups of classes. I have already spent considerable time thinking about Guests, Groups, Tables, Chairs, contact information, the Event Document and the graphical objects used to describe a venue. Each of those concepts can be designed reasonably well in isolation. But a collection of well-designed classes does not automatically produce a well-designed application. The next question is architectural: How should all these classes be organised so that the business data, graphical representation, user interface and business rules do not gradually become one enormous interconnected structure? This is particularly important for a desktop application because the same underlying information may appear in many places at the same time. A Guest may appear in a Guest list. The same Guest may appear as a name beside a Chair on the floor plan. ...

Based on a LinkedIn post originally published on 7 April 2026 Over the past decade, German households have faced several reasons to become more cautious: the disruption of the pandemic; a sharp rise in consumer prices; higher energy costs; two consecutive years of economic contraction; weak investment; and uncertainty around industry, trade and employment. Living in Berlin, I have also observed caution in everyday conversations. People frequently discuss costs, future security and the need to preserve a financial buffer. It is tempting to connect these observations to a simple narrative: households are spending less, saving more and gradually freezing the economy through fear. That hypothesis deserves examination—but it should not be presented as established fact without separating several different economic measures. Higher deposits do not automatically prove fear, and higher nominal consumption does not automatically prove greater purchasing power. Interpretation depends on definitio...

 

Among the many people I have encountered while reconstructing my family history, few have led me into as many different archives, institutions and historical documents as my great-grandfather, Dr. med. Jürgen Christian Georg Berendsen (1855–1932) . He was born in Schleswig, became a physician, established a medical practice in Ratzeburg, married three times and raised a large family. His life extended from the years before German unification to the final months of the Weimar Republic. For many years, my knowledge of him consisted largely of entries in an old family book and fragments of family recollections. His name, occupation and dates were known, but the person behind those facts remained elusive. A surviving portrait provided a face. A medical dissertation provided a connection to the history of German surgery. Then archival correspondence began to reveal details of his education, professional career, marriages, children and homes. In 2026, this research developed into a ...