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For a number of services, I need a system/service which can receive web hooks, and act when such a trigger is received.

Just a few examples:

• GitHub can send web hooks when something changes in a repo (in any repository you administer, go to "Settings" -> "Webhooks", and add your own hook)
• Tasker for Android can send HTTP(s) requests
• JIRA can send web hooks when certain events occur
• openHAB can send messages to other services

Now it would be useful to have your own receiver for web hooks, and run any task you want. There are a number of tools out there, which can solve this problem. I settled with "webhook". In addition, I deploy everything using Ansible, therefore I had to write a bit of code in order to automate this process.

Recently I was asked how I do backups of my mobile devices. The discussion started when I told that I "survived" a bricked device without data loss.

Disclaimer: I work (well, was working, before we got spinned of into a subsidiary) for EMC. Part of EMCs portfolio is "backup" and for sure I learned a lot from my employer. All my own devices and servers are backed up, some of them multiple times. Backups, devices and communication is encrypted. I'm not using public services (Dropbox, Drive, ...) for the backups.

So, what happened? One Friday afternoon, my Samsung S3 bricked itself. It was connected to the charger on my desk, the display flashed for a moment and then the device was dead. Reset, reboot, remove battery - nothing helped. No access to the data on the device.