News is, by definition, something that doesn’t last. It exists for only a moment before it changes. As news has become easier to distribute and cheaper to produce, the quality has decreased, and the quantity has increased, making it nearly impossible to find the signal in the noise. So …

Views that make me happy.

The year 2022 has been an interesting one for me personally. At work, we had a lot of interesting developments, most of which I'm pretty happy with. On a personal level, we had some breakthroughs with matters we have been struggling with for quite some years now. I think I'll …

Verse 1: In the land of the hackers, Where the code never sleeps, There's an editor that rules them all, The one they call Vim. Chorus: Vim, Vim, the editor of choice, For those who crave speed and power, With its shortcuts and commands, It will make you a coding …

Last Friday my better half and me went to a concert. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra was playing a contemporary piece (Con Brio, surprisingly nice with musicians using their instruments as percussion and such), the Violin Concerto by Dvořák and the First Symphony of Brahms. The very reason we went there …

A quiet desolated place: ... and a glimpse of a brighter world:

The easiest way to see how much you need a blog is to do this thought exercise. Imagine going back in time to a 21-year-old in 1952 and asking them what their opinions are, and where you could find a book of those opinions. Here’s what they would say …

This weekend we did a big migration of our stack at work to a new data centre and I am stoked about how our applications and their virtual machines are set up now. Quite a bunch is already automated and having a decent base image is such a nice thing …

The dark days of the year I'm always reminded by my body that I really prefer brighter days over the gloomy ones. I don't mind the dark per se, but my energy level goes down noticeably when the gloom continues for too long. A day with sun really helps my …

I just finally finished Under the Dome by Stephen King. For several reasons it took me from last June till today to finish it; for one, I've been playing more games than in the ten years before combined (still not that much, but as my evenings are short, it eats …

With a whole load of things being the new 'normal', wishing y'all a 'normal 2022' might not sound like how I intend it to. What I mean is, lets hope we get more of the normal that we were used to before that little virus found its way across the …

I stumbled upon this post by Vermyndax earlier today and felt the urge to type. His problem is one that I'm familiar with; I don't pretend to have a magic answer, but I learned some tricks to get myself started. First of all: I don't think it's weird to want …

Yesterday evening, my little gaming group came together online to play some Counter Strike: Global Offence (CS:GO), as a deviation from our regular battles in OpenRA (which is great fun by the way). We played CS:GO before, but for some reason when I launched it from Steam now …

Went on a walk with my loved ones in our very sunny dunes. Shot some mushrooms in the process. I so love dew drops.

I just love me some fog.

One of the ways I am attempting to keep my sanity, is by taking morning walks. Those walks serve both as some light exercise when working from home, and as a way of waking up and resetting my head by submitting myself to the fractals of nature, found in the …

You might be acquainted with the Celery Distributed Task Queue, which is a proven way to process vast amounts of messages. Messages containing tasks for your software stack to eventually finish doing, for example. However, Celery is slightly cumbersome to set up (no rocket surgery, but the RabbitMQ message broker …

It was a pretty good week this week. At work, a big project is nearing realisation, kids have been spending their energy playing outside, and I finally finished two sagas. The first was Battlestar Galactica which for numerous reasons was a multiyear endeavour for me. But what a finale! Suitable …

Morning walks are my way of staying sane(ish) in these times. Good for recharging and stretching the legs, starting the day by waking up with some fresh air in my face, maybe even some sun, or - even better - a lovely blanket of fog.

It's easy to have the blues and be out of energy in these times. Being confined to our homes, changing our ways and lives; not all bad, but a challenge to juggle young kids, work from home and other things. On the other hand, one might find more free time …