Earlier this week one of my posts on the social network X went viral and attracted 32K views in two days. With no major presence on Elon Musk's platform, and no paid advertising, gaining that kind of attention is something special. Let me explain how this happened.

If you're an accomplished developer (as in: you've actually created things in the past), you may recognise this scenario: people reaching out to you, asking you to build something specific. "Can you build X for me?" A fellow technician once urged me to refuse more often: be proud of the things you don't do! Let me explain in this post.

Currently, I am overlooking a lake at Mount Hood while writing this. I hear birds in the distance and see the lake calm, with subtle waves and some mist in the distance. Yet, it is fake, as I am sitting on our top floor, a barely furnished room full of items belonging to a family house with two young kids. I am using Apple's Vision Pro to explore what Spatial Computing can be. I am in awe; let me explain in this blog post.

In today's digital age, safeguarding your data is paramount. Simply creating a copy of your files may not be enough as they can get corrupted, overwritten or blocked by ransomware. Having multiple, time-rotated (and ideally, offsite) backups is a stronger defense. I created a new tool, rsync-backup-rotator, to help you with this.

Imagine a week without your smartphone, replaced solely by the sleek simplicity of a smartwatch. This week I did this, leaving my smartphone behind and letting an Apple Watch take the helm. Many hail this as a liberating escape from our attention-seeking digital sidekicks, but does it truly live up to the hype? Join me on this intriguing journey, where technology meets minimalism, and discover whether less really can be more.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of leading a training session on the application of cutting-edge AI techniques, such as OpenAI's large language models (GPT), for a team of individuals from varied backgrounds, education levels, and disciplines. The results surprised me!

It's been over half a year since I moved from the city to the countryside. I regularly travel between these locations for work and leisure. Being a cycling enthusiast, I keep a bike at both places, and this has led me to discover a funny thing.

The iPad Pro's utility has sparked much debate recently. Some users argue it's a disappointment, failing to meet expectations set by traditional laptops. However, there are less obvious benefits to the iPad worth considering. This blog post delves into these advantages and shares insights into the personal experience of using an iPad Pro.

As part of my software optimisation efforts to cut cloud costs, I needed to replace an existing piece of inefficient server software with something that uses more robust (yet fragmented) tooling available in Debian GNU/Linux. Could the GPT4 language model deliver me some AI magic? Read along!

As part of a greater plan to optimise my entire workflow, I am doing a little experiment this month: using a 15-year old ThinkPad X200 laptop as main computer. It’s from an era before “the cloud”, popular among free/libre software enthusiasts. What can we learn from this antithesis of modernity?

Like many, I faced soaring cloud service costs for my clients, prompting a wake-up call. To stay afloat, it's essential to incorporate software optimisation as a strategy for managing cloud expenses. Join me as I share how I managed to save up to 90% on cloud costs through optimisation!

Chances are that you've encountered a CAPTCHA in the wild: they protect web forms by asking you to type over weirdly rendered characters or by asking you to select photos containing a particular thing. Why are they used and is there a user friendly alternative?

Last week I received a very kind invitation from a Belgian artist, to attend her art exhibition in Antwerp. The work on display involved the Snake '97 game that I have created. Uttering to find the right words and thrilled with excitement, I happily accepted the invitation!

This month I received my reMarkable paper tablet and ever since I have been using it extensively: reading, writing and thinking. The paper-like display makes you forget about its digital innards. Read along for my thoughts.

You learn from working with experts and this month I had the privilege to work with a professional food photographer, my brother. Together we set out to photograph the entire menu of Café Carbòn in Amsterdam, enjoying the fabulous food afterwards. Read along for some food photography takeaways!

When you write for your blog or for your company's website, there are things you can consider to maximise the discoverability, longevity and impact of your writing. Leverage the energy you put in into your words. Today I share with you three of my lessons learned while writing for this website.

Downtime happens and it is nothing to be ashamed of, just make sure that you set yourself up to discover problems as soon as possible! You can use realtime uptime monitoring to automatically keep an eye on your servers and services. Read along to find out how.

The past year I have been experimenting with creating my own tablet operating system using Debian GNU/Linux and the i3 window manager on a Microsoft Surface Go 2 with LTE. After months of intense use I have now decided to abandon the experiment to move back to iPad Pro and the Mac. Read along to find out why.

This month I received a shipment from China containing some special hardware, Android devices with embedded printers! To make life easier for the restaurant and business owners that use my food ordering app, I want these devices to automatically print new orders. If only I can get these machines to work with my software... challenge accepted!

Apple now designs its own processors and I had a chance to work with the very latest from Cupertino: a brand new MacBook Air with M1 processor. Never ever have I been so blown away by a MacBook Air, pun intended. Let me share some thoughts why I think Apple Silicon is a big deal.

This month I needed to create additional dimensions to a capacity queue mechanism. The food ordering app that I created needed to be able to restrict capacity based on the number of orders, the contents in individual orders and the dispatch type (takeaway/delivery). Read along to find out how I used a Lambda Architecture to do this.

Every now and then I switch my gear to keep a tap on what is going on outside my regular tech habits. You’ll be amazed by what you can learn from trying out different things. This week I had a chance to test the Surface Laptop Go running Windows 10. Quite frankly, it amazed me!

As part of the food ordering app I am building, I needed to design a reliable way to link the app to external systems. These external systems are beyond my direct control and include different checkout registers, kitchen management systems and ticket printers. Read along for more on designing for the unknown and unreliable.

Online ordering pages are more important than ever before. The COVID-19 virus, the resulting lockdowns and the social distancing rules have emphasised the need for a well-designed webshop user interface. This is surprisingly hard to get right!

Earlier this year Microsoft released their brand new Surface Pro X tablet computer, in many ways this is a forward thinking device. As I like working with tablets I wondered what exactly makes a great tablet? Is Surface Pro X any good? Read along to find out.

Last month I received an automated alert indicating excessive bandwidth usage, usually a sign of trouble. When this happens, you should follow a standard incident procedure, trying to isolate the source of the traffic before shutting it down. The cause of this incident was not what I expected however... requiring a different kind of mitigation than a simple blockade.

Online payments are now more important than ever as businesses are disrupted by the COVID-19 virus. It drives my customers to seek new ways to make money online. I designed and implemented a (micro)payment system. This post is about achieving simplicity by solving complex challenges.

This week I flew to Gothenburg to meet people from a large international shipping company, talking about the development of enterprise level software. During the meeting there were various experts in the room, one of them asked me on choosing the right software architecture (for big, complex, enterprise level apps). A very good question, well worthy for a blog post.

If you use different devices and computers to get things done, you might want to synchronise contacts, agendas and tasks. You can use any of the 'big cloud' services for this, like Apple iCloud, Microsoft Office 365 and Google Gmail. But, if you prefer not to share your addressbook and calendar with big American companies, you can do it yourself.

For an exciting new project I have been experimenting with computer vision using TensorFlow. I wanted to achieve realtime human pose detection to drive interactive video projections and games. Time to dive into the world of machine learning, tensors and computer vision!

Over the past few years I have been moving my data and work from local computers (mostly laptops) into the cloud. Cloud computing is done by servers in a datacenter, powerful computers that do the hard work. As my company grew, I needed more capacity. It was time to add some power to my cloud!

Last month Apple released iPadOS, the first dedicated operating system for iPad. It differs from iOS with its support for the larger iPad screen, including multi / split screen windows. I develop apps and it was time to take advantage of these new possibilities that iPadOS offers.

This month I was lucky enough to attend Global AppSec Amsterdam, an international conference for hackers and security specialists. There were presentations from former intelligence agents, bounty hunters, academics and software vendors. I learned about some of the newest hacking techniques, met with interesting people and played some cool retro games. Read along for more.

When you're building websites, apps or email services you may run into domain names and their configurations. When everything is working as it should, most of this is invisible. But when troubleshooting a domain name configuration, it may be necessary to dig a little deeper... read along to learn how!

A year ago I tried to create the ultimate commuter bike, a modified Sensa Cintura with the Gates CDN/CDX carbon belt drive. I received lots of messages from cyclists and commuters from all over the world. From the Swiss alps, France, Italy, Germany, United States and even "down under", Australia! You all wanted to know: how does the upgraded bike hold up?

Last Christmas my wife gave birth to our son, a little boy that would change everything! It's an incredible experience to become a parent, especially if it is your first kid. It introduces a whole new way of living, having to deal with regular feeding, caring and sleepless nights. Read along for my (biometric) findings and some practical tips!

Over the past few months I have been testing different bags and cases to fit everything I need to run my business. As I commute by bike, the bag needs to be waterproof. The problem with waterproof gear is that it is usually very bulky. I need my gear to be both portable and representative, a challenge worth a blog post!

Earlier this month I drove around town for a week in an electric vehicle, a brand new Smart Electric Drive (EQ fortwo). I used it to commute, for my daily groceries and to visit family, friends and customers. What's it like to drive a fully electric car on a daily basis?

This week I went to Frankfurt for business. I had to perform maintenance to servers in a data centre. This seemed like a great opportunity to test the Apple Watch's usefulness in real life (other than health and fitness). I wondered, is the Apple Watch the modern tool watch?

Yesterday a young woman brought me her laptop, it didn't start anymore and it only showed an error message. It turned out to be a broken harddisk. It startled her when I told her that all data on the disk was lost. She told me it contained precious photos of her pregnancy and young child. What could I do?

One way to make your website faster is to make it smaller. Not with tiny fonts, but with less bytes! More than half the weight of an average website is because of images. Yet very few people optimise their images for the web and performance, time to find out how much bytes you can safe!

This month I have been working on website statistics, tracking traffic using different technologies. Some of my customers use Google Analytics, others use AWStats, and some use both. Which is better is often debated, but few people really understand the differences. Time to shed some light on the magic of web statistics.

For the past 10 days I have powered my personal electronic devices (phone, computer, wearables) using nothing but energy collected using a small solar panel. I disconnected all grid-connected chargers. I hoped that by going off the grid, even in such a small way, I would gain insights that enable me to save energy (and money).

This week one of my clients was hacked and asked me for emergency assistance to help secure their server infrastructure. It was a web server that ran WordPress websites on Apache (with PHP/MySQL), including a few webshops with customer data. This hack could easily have been prevented with the following best practices, is your server secure?

For the past few weeks I have been using the Microsoft Surface Pro as my main computer. It's a modern tablet computer that can be used as laptop with the type cover. With the Surface Pen, it's a versatile PC that works in a lot of different ways. Time to find out if it's any good and how it compares to my other tablet computer, iPad Pro.

This winter I use a Sensa Cintura bike with a Gates Carbon belt drive as my daily commuter. It's a bike designed to be nice to ride thanks to its sporty lightweight frame. It's also meant to be low on maintenance thanks to the belt drive and Nexus Afline 8 integrated gear hub. After 1800KM in just eight weeks, it was time for some upgrades.

Few years ago my brother threw a beer on my iPhone in an Amsterdam bar. The poor thing didn't like the Dutch brew as much as I do: it died. While waiting for a new phone to arrive, I used an old one that couldn't do anything but texting, calling and... Snake! The idea for Snake '97 was born and this month it was time to update the wildly popular game.

For a few years now, I commute to work using a bicycle. I have lost more than 15KG since I stopped using my scooter. This week I tested a VanMoof Electrified S, an electric bike with an industrial, minimal design. Is it any good? How does it compare to a normal bike? Will an electric bike make you lazy? Read along to find out!

At my home I have this crazy fast optical internet connection. It is a 600MB up and down fibre connection which directly arrives in my home (no copper cables involved). It's like a private internet highway. Reason enough to find out if I could do something to make better use of all this speedy fiber galore...

Today I called my provider to quit my office's ADSL internet subscription, I don't need it anymore. I have turned off my local area network and switched my workflow onto mobile internet only. The simplicity and savings actually surprised me so much, that I made blog post for it.

Over the past years I have been no stranger to crazy experiments, but this time I really wanted to push it into the extreme: programming on an Apple Watch. Would it be possible to actually write code on such a tiny device? Why even bother? This post is about the case for crazy experiments, and why you should try too!

I wanted see if I can find something better than my old fashioned pencil and paper that I use for designing software as professional developer. I knew iPad Pro from my test last summer, figuring out if it could replace my primary development machine. While it may not be able to completely replace my thrustworthy ThinkPad, it turned out to be a totally different story when it comes to paper.

The lack of physical clutter, distracting branding, or blinking LED's makes the iPad Pro a textbook example of minimal design. My despiction of distraction explains my interest in using the iPad Pro as only computer to test if it is up to the task. Is Apple's latest effort on iOS enough to enable it to do serious development work?