Grüsch dich Meiner!


Welcome to my webpage. This page will help you get to know me better:

  • What work pays my bills? (see About)
  • How to reach me (see Contact)
  • My heartfelt project and my book reviews (see Money Talks)
  • My other projects (see GitHub Projects)

Feel free to scroll through my site. If you encounter anything of interest or any oopsie-daisies, feel free to contact me.

Fair Teams with EvenlyGreat!

How an app solves the tedious task of picking teams for clubs and groups.

Logo of the Elo team app

The Problem: Picking Teams Costs Time – and Nerves

Everyone knows it from the sports club, the school activity group, or the casual team: before anyone can even start playing, you first have to laboriously figure out who plays with whom. Classic methods always share the same weaknesses:

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The Toll of Voting in a Pandemic

On March 15, 2020, nearly ten million eligible voters in Bavaria went to the polls for local municipal elections — just days after the WHO had officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. While other German states and many countries postponed elections or switched entirely to mail-in voting, most Bavarians cast their vote in person, as usual. A few weeks later, Bavaria had the highest COVID-19 case and death counts of any German state.

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Something (Hopefully) Big is in the Works

The classic picking of teams sucks. Let's change it.

Background

As a child and teenager, I hated it when teams had to be picked at the beginning of P.E. class. Not only did it take forever (first, captains were appointed, then they had to figure out among themselves - via Tip-Top - who goes first, and only then did the picking start). Even in my low-birth-rate year, the process took ages, with the result that the group of last-picked kids was already mentally humiliated before the starting whistle. Only those who were already good at the game were in good spirits afterwards, and thanks to a fair amount of various forms of early-childhood nepotism1 and the teachers’ dedicated lack of interest, the resulting matchups were absolutely unbalanced. Awesome (not).2

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