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Getting a fix into Mastodon
Show, don't tell: how I vibe-coded my way to a Mastodon core fix after years of bug reports.
How to Tune a LAMP Stack on Debian for Maximum Performance
How to tune tour LAMP stack without extra tools.
Rescale your Hetzner VPS and save money
Rescale with Hetzner and save money. Get more resources for less.
From Minix to the Cloud: Tracing the Enduring Legacy of Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Andrew S. Tanenbaum Introduction In the early 90s, the debates over operating system design—most famously between Linus Torvalds and Andrew Tanenbaum—captured the attention of many in the tech communi...
New WordPress theme: Twenty Twenty-Five
This week I was playing around with my old theme — Neve— and made some tweaks. For posterity, it looked like this: Neve theme This site has low volume posts, so I was trying to get a list of posts as...
A good blog has ...
A search bar An RSS feed An 'About Me' link A comment option A way to get in touch A clearly indicated date by post A reverse chronological order of posts A way to quickly jump to a specific date A wa...
How to add the total of two solar inverters in Domoticz
How to add the values of two (or more) solar inverters together in Domoticz.
Manage your WordPress wp-content folder
How to get rid of all the thumbnails that are generated by WordPress by default and keep a grip on your wp-content folder.
The Legacy of Bram Moolenaar
This weekend we learned that Bram Moolenaar had passed away at the age of 62. And this news affected me more than I expected. Like so many: I did not know Bram personally. But I've been using a tool m...
Using the SonicWall Connect Tunnel with Firefox on a Chromebook
Yes, you read that correctly. Firefox on a Chromebook! Without tricks. Or at least, not many tricks. Why? When you want to use the SonicWall Connect Tunnel software (from the SMA 1000 Series) on your...
Correctly configuring incoming SPF in Exim on Debian
The Debian documentation is sparse on how to correctly configure incomingSPF checks in the Debian Exim package. It is sparse in the sense that it tells you what to install ( ) but it is not clear WHER...
Audacity Tips
This is a public note to myself for working with Audacity; which I don't do too often, and I want to make sure I don't forget it. I recently created a 5 hour music project: a DJ radio show. The finish...
Floccus is the bookmark manager you have been looking for
Floccus does exactly what you want because Floccus doesn't break your bookmark management flow. The flow being: adding, changing, removing, moving bookmarks in your browser, straight from the bookmark...
Simple jumphost ssh-agent config
You can find many tutorials online on how to use or correctly. This is a short and simple two line fix aimed at a specific use i.e. a single connection to a jumphost. Add this to your .bashrc So now w...
Compact WSL partition and reclaim storage space
Start PowerShell wsl —shutdown Find where your WSL vhdx file is located. Usually under: Start diskpart (from PowerShell or CMD): Run: and next:
I don't understand terminals, shells and SSH
Confession time: I don't fully understand how terminals, shells and SSH really work (and my guess is you don't either). And I don't mean the cryptography behind SSH. I mean how SSH and the terminal —...
ChatGPT and humans as prompt fodder
I woke up Sunday morning with an unnerving feeling. A feeling something had changed. A disturbance in the force if you will. I know that look Mainstream media seems blissfully unaware of what happened...
Fix for when your SSH keys are not working on your Chromebook
If you cannot connect to a remote server from your Chromebook with SSH keys and you get this error: Here is the tip: add an enter to your private key file! Yes really! I spent way too much time figuri...
Five things I'd like to see in Mastodon
I love Mastodon. I am a believer. Not that I think it will replace Twitter or anything like that. But it is definitely its own thing. True to the original ideas of the internet. There are however a fe...
How to get green links on your Mastodon profile with WordPress
The green links on your Mastodon profile indicate that you are the ownerof that link i.e. that website. You can achieve this by adding a little line of code to your website (see Link verification). Wh...
Jonathan Franzen on reading and literature
I've been on a bit of a Jonathan Franzen bender lately. I frequently write about him on my other site. The kickstart for all this was a book club meeting about Crossroads) for which I not only read th...
Welcome to the Fediverse
It was 2017 when I signed up for the Dutch instance of Mastodon. The newfangled thing. But it wasn't until last week that it clicked. It clicked for two reasons. Forget the Metaverse Mastodon is part...
Using Windows OpenSSH Agent with Windows Terminal and Cygwin
I am back to running Windows Terminal + Cygwin, after a stint with MobaXterm. I blogged about it before. Why: Windows Terminal is pretty good: it doesn't get in your way, and it's fast (very important...
You should blog more
Yes, you. The person reading this. You should have a place on the internet that is completely yours and where you are in complete control of what you post. How often, you ask? Let me reiterate what I...
WhatsApp should really fix these issues
WhatsApp is my most used app, but its development seems stagnant. Which is not always a bad thing for software, but WhatsApp could really improve some things, especially when those improvements seem t...
Reaching 100 stars on GitHub: what I learned from putting code online
When the pandemic started in early 2020, I needed something to get my mind off things. Frustrated with most database form generation solutions I created Cruddiy and put it on GitHub. Two years later C...
Windows Terminal + Cygwin
UPDATE July 2022: I switched to using [MobaXterm which does the job just fine. I don't like that it is not free/open but I do like that it comes with an integrated SSH agent, which makes life a lot ea...
Bypassing Hetzner mail port block (port 25/465)
I recently switched my VPS from Linode to Hetzner. I got more CPU, RAM and storage for less money. Pretty good right? However it wasn't after I migrated that I found out Hetzner blocks all outgoing po...
Ten 2022 Tool Tips
Here's a list of software tools I either started using this year or tools I think everyone should be using. Bitwarden The best password manager. Free if you like, or only $10 per year if you want to h...
Migrating a LAMP VPS
I recently switched my LAMP virtual server to a different VPS provider. The LAMP server that is serving you this site. So the migration worked! Here are the steps, for future reference. Mostly for mys...
Get Back part 2
I finished watching Get Back. Read my article about the first 30 minutes here. It's safe to say this is hands down one of the best documentaries ever. I could not look away. Truly amazing. In between...
The Beatles: Get Back
I am only 30 minutes in to the 8 hour long — highly anticipated — Peter Jackson documentary and I already have many thoughts. I need to get these out before further viewing, because I have a feeling I...
Corbin: static responsive image and video gallery generator
Corbin is one PHP file that — when run from the command line — creates a clean, fast and responsive (aka mobile friendly) video and image gallery with navigation from a directory of images and videos. The output is one single index.html file.
Bloglife @ janvandenberg.blog
For my Dutch speaking readers: on my other blog piks.nl janvandenberg.blog I started blogging daily. Six days a week you will find a short thought or observation that explicitly aims to be above curre...
Auto insert date when starting Vim
I have a file where I keep notes & ideas. And I try to have as less friction as possible to add ideas to this file. To achieve this I made it so that when I am at my terminal I type one letter; The fi...
Connecting a Dell 4K monitor to HDMI
When I installed my new monitor — the Dell S2721QS — and attached it to my Dell laptop, something felt... off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, the resolution was fine (3840 x 2160), screen was f...
A European watches Major League Baseball
I see a shiny grassy green diamond, some guys in uniform. One guy on a patch of dirt in the middle throws a ball, and another guy tries to hit it with a stick. If he hits it he wins, if he doesn't: th...
2020 Music Discoveries
Remember 2020? Yeah, I know. Well here is the list you've been waiting for. Previous lists are here: 2019, 2018 part 1, 2018 part 2, 2017, 2016 and 2015 As usual: a you get couple of words and a YouTu...
Thoughts on Clubhouse
You can't Listen on demand Restart/replay a conversation Record a conversation or audio snippets Trace back when a conversation started See who is talking, you can only hear them Send (text) messages...
Merge two images in Windows from right-click context menu
1. Download and install ImageMagick. 2. Go to Windows Explorer and type sendtoin the address bar. This will open the following path: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo The files here w...
Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach
The man with access to the nuclear launch codes has been deemed unfit for Twitter. And the country that doesn't believe universal healthcare is a human right, all of a sudden believes access to Twitte...
Podcast: Donald Knuth Lectures on Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
I recently read 'Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About' by Donald Knuth from 2001. Recommended reading if you like reading about how a world-renowned computer scientist wrote a book about how...
Cruddiy: table relationship support via foreign keys
Read here what Cruddiy is and what it can do for you: here is the code. TLDR: Cruddiy is no-code Bootstrap 4 PHP form builder for MySQL tables. I started Cruddiy when the Covid-19 lockdowns happened t...
Working 101
Do you struggle to organise your work, because it seems everybody wants something from you? Of do you often wonder whether you're doing the right things? This post helps you to answer those questions....
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
I suspect Moby-Dick — the quintessential Great American Novel — has the curious accolade of being one of the most famous books ever, while also being one of the least read books. Its reputationgreatly...
New WordPress theme: Neve
Frequent visitors might notice a change to the site: I switched WordPress themes. I have been a happy user of the Independent Publisher theme since this site started, and I still use it on my other bl...
How I read 52 books in a year
Principles and habits I developed to read one book per week. With these you can also start reading more.
Bono on Bono - Michka Assayas
I have a soft spot for Bono. The megalomaniac lead singer of probably the world's most commercial band ("the only band with their own iPod"). The Irish humanitarian multi-millionaire. Yes, I get all t...
Who moved my cheese? - Spencer Johnson
People like stories, people rememberstories. So, tell stories! This is what I learned from Seth Godin. But Spencer Johnson clearly understands this concept too. Who moved my cheese? - Spencer Johnson...
Marx - Peter Singer
This was the third book in a twelve part series of introductions to famous thinkers/philosophers (previously I read Plato and Kierkegaard). You might expect these books to be small (check) and compreh...
Unorthodox - Netflix miniseries
I was impressed by the Netflix miniseries Unorthodox). Specifically with the talented actors, the believable authentic world-building and the spot-on casting (so good). With regards to all of these as...
Impatient Optimist: Bill Gates in His Own Words - Lisa Rogak
I have a lot of respect for Bill Gates and tend to follow what he does. So this book, just like the one on Steve Jobs, is a nice reminder of the man's personality and his thinking process. As it spans...
iSteve - George Beahm en Wim Zefat
This is a book just with quotes from late Apple founder Steve Jobs. I already knew most of them, having read more than one book about Steve Jobs. Nonetheless, seeing his most salient quotes in one pla...
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
If one writer is responsible for how we think about robots it is, of course, Isaac Asimov. The terrifically prolific writer and groundbreaking author of the science-fiction genre, produced numerous wo...
Jitsi finetuning and customization
Jitsi offers a great user experience because it doesn't require an account, you just go to a Chrome URL and you're pretty much good to go. You get a full blown video chat environment: complete with gr...
Volume 1: From Savoy Stompers to Clock Rockers - Andrew Hickey
One of my favorite podcasts is "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs". I've written about it before, it's an absolutely terrific podcast. But this post is not about the podcast but about the book! Aft...
Ten pieces of software that removed roadblocks
Successful software is not defined by the number of lines of code or number of clever algorithms. More often than not, successful software is defined by how many roadblocks it removes for the user. So...
String Theory - David Foster Wallace
If you read this blog, you know DFW is one of my favorite writers. I even named my book app, in part, after him. So I could be short about String Theory — it's a absolute pure delight to read — but, o...
The Trial - Franz Kafka
Max Brod is probably the worlds' greatest publicist. He famously refused his writer friends' dying wish to destroy all his work after his passing. This friend was of course, Franz Kafka. And against K...
Cruddiy: a no-code Bootstrap CRUD generator
November 2020: Cruddiy now supports creating and deleting table relations (based on foreign keys) for cascading deletes/updates and and prepopulating select lists. Read more here. So you have a MySQL...
Use find (1) as a quick and dirty duplicate file finder
Run the following two commands in bash to get a listing of all duplicate files (from a directory or location). This can help you clean out duplicate files that sometimes accumulate over time. The firs...
Dylan Thomas - Sidney Michaels
This book is a play from 1965, based on several accounts of the infamous travels Welsh poet Dylan Thomas made in the early 1950s to the US. If you know anything about Dylan Thomas you probably know he...
My Music Discoveries of 2019
Here are my favorite music discoveries of 2019. Earlier editions are here: 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 (part 1) and 2018 (part 2). You know the drill. A few sentences and a YouTube video. No less than 1...
Corona Links
This is a collection of COVID-19 related information links. Stats Worldwide map, with counts https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/685d0ace521648f8a5beeeee1b9125cd Worldwide stats with specific rec...
Remote - Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1237773562322259970 I saw this tweet yesterday, and If you know me, you know I will not pass on an opportunity for a free book! But more seriously, I have known J...
The Quotable Walt Disney - Disney Book Group
I picked up this book on our honeymoon to Disney World. But I never read it, because; how do you read a book full of quotes? The answer is slowly! Just grab it every now and then. And read a few pages...
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Ralph Leighton and Richard Feynman
The next day I rolled up my picture, put it in the back of my station wagon, and my wife Gweneth wished me good luck as I set out to visit the brothels of Pasadena to sell my drawing. Richard Feynman...
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Today is February 21st, David Foster Wallace's birthday. So it's rather fitting that today I finished reading his magnum opus: Infinite Jest. The notoriously long and difficult book from 1996 with vis...
Gung Ho! Turn On the People in Any Organization - Ken Blanchard & Sheldon Bowles
Gung Ho! is a management book written by well-know author Ken Blanchard. It was somehow never on my radar, so because of the strange title and my unfamiliarity I wasn't expecting too much, and I only...
The perfect notebook
I keep a daily journal. And journaling daily make pocket planners usable as journal notebooks. I tend to be particular about certain things. So when searching for a new notebook — one that I will carr...
A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs
This year I've listened to 519 podcasts and 36 of those were episodes of A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. But it's safe to say that A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is my fa...
Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
It's clever. It's smart. It's eloquent. It's articulate. It's masterfully written. It's the archetype of the whodunit. It's the absolute queen of adverbs. It's quintessential Agatha Christie. I enjoye...
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F* - Mark Manson
When this book came out it was seemingly everywhere. Especially in airport bookshops (I don't know if that's a good thing or not though). Or maybe I am imagining things and the book just sticks out, m...
Humanity's Last New Year's Eve – Niccolò Ammaniti
In 1996 — when he was just starting out — Ammaniti published a collection of short stories titled Fango. This particular story (which was also made into a movie) is one of the stories from Fango publi...
Humankind: A Hopeful History (De Meeste Mensen Deugen) - Rutger Bregman
I don't know what the English title translation for Rutger Bregman's latest book will be. But I do know two things. One: there will be one. And two: it will be a bestseller. I do know now, and yes it...
Me and You - Niccolò Ammaniti
It's probably fair to say Niccolò Ammaniti is one of my favorite writers at the moment. This being his third book I read since last year. Me and You - Niccolò Ammaniti (2010) - 126 pages He has a gut...
The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
When The Black Swan came out in 2007 it caused quite a stir. And understandably so. Taleb has a distinctive and fresh view of looking at the world through the lens of an emperic skeptic. The Black Swa...
Churchill - Sebastian Haffner
Writing a Churchill biography is not an easy assignment, even though it would be difficult to butcher the job. Churchill lead an unprecedented rich and varied life and just writing down the bare facts...
Capitalism without brakes - Maarten van Rossem
In his highly distinctive 'tone of voice', Maarten van Rossem provides the most succinct available lecture on the root causes which lead to the 2008 financial crisis. Capitalism without brakes (Kapita...
Dream Dare Do - Ben Tiggelaar
Dare Dream Do (Dromen Durven Doen)is one of the all-time bestselling Dutch self-management books. Tiggelaar is a popular figure and he has a charming, personal and pragmatic writing style. Dear dream...
The Unicorn Project - Gene Kim
When I read The Phoenix Project last year, I was smitten. I loved the combination of using fiction to describe how to apply — management and DevOps — theory to true to life situations. So when the pub...
Foster: how to build your own bookshelf management web application
foster /ˈfɒstə/ verb 1. Encourage the development of (something, especially something desirable). "the teacher's task is to foster learning" TLDR: I made a personal bookshelf management web applicatio...
Iedere dag vrij - Bob Crébas
I remember exactly where I was when, in 2004, I heard that Dutch ad site marktplaats.nl was sold for a staggering 224,5 million euros to eBay. A polder Cinderella story. This success was, however, no...
A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway, the writers' writer, is famously known for having spent his early years in Paris. Freshly married, this struggling and then unknown writer was honing his craft and subsequently defining wha...
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey
When I started college in 1998 this was literally one of the first books I had to buy. It was part of a — cheaply thrown together — five-pack of paperback management book 'classics'. And my particular...
Een Mooie Jonge Vrouw - Tommy Wieringa
I have written about Tommy Wieringa before. And this little book is once again a clear example of the mans' writing ability. Effortlessly and thoughtfully he creates a smallstory — a tragic love story...
PHP: how did it become so popular?
PHP empowers a giganticpart of the internet. So it is, by definition, a very popular(i.e. prevalent) language. But it also very popular (i.e. well-liked) to dislike PHP as a — serious — language. This...
Glove Pond - Roger Thorpe
Roger Thorpe is just as good a writer as Douglas Coupland is. As a matter of fact, he is also as real as a Douglas Coupland character. Glove Pond is his first novel. Glove Pond - Roger Thorpe (2007) -...
Gomorrah - Roberto Saviano
When Gomorrah came out in 2007, apart from spawning a popular TV series), it shook the world. The workings of Italy's lesser known 'other mafia' — the Camorra — are laid bare and Saviano subsequently...
Sex, Blogs and Rock-'n-Roll - Ernst Jan Pfauth
The rather sensationalist title would normally be a reason to not want to read this book. But since this book came out in 2010, the author E.J. Pfauth has become known for more than just this book. He...
Popular post postmortem
Yesterday I wrote a story about how Git is eating the world. And in less than 24 hours more than 10.000 unique IP addresses visited this article! This is not the normal kind of traffic for this site. So that calls for its own article.
Git is eating the world
Software is eating the world and Git is the fork with which it is being eaten.
Giacomo Joyce - James Joyce
A couple of years ago I stranded about half-way into Ulysses. It did not click. One of the greatest novels ever written, but I had little use for it. So I put it aside for another time. Recently I cam...
The Death of Murat Idrissi - Tommy Wieringa
Tommy Wieringa is of course famous for his novel Joe Speedboot. A tremendous novel, where Wieringa demonstrates heaps of writers' finesse. This book — the Death of Murat Idrissi — is no different. Eve...
Create a Chrome bookmark html file to import list of URLs
I recently switched RSS providers and I could only extract my saved posts as a list of URLs. So I thought I'd add these to a bookmark folder in Chrome. However, Chrome bookmark import only accepts a s...
Generation X - Douglas Coupland
I am a Douglas Coupland fan. And I think his debut Generation X still holds up as one of his best novels. I probably read it for the first time over ten years ago. And I have since then read several o...
The Trumpet of Conscience - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was only 39 years (and 2 months and 19 days) old when he was murdered. Thirty-nine.I never realised this — until I am 39 myself now. When he died he had already received a Nobel...
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace could write. And not just write, he could really write extraordinarily well. In related news: water is wet. Wallace's writing struck me as an epiphany, a beacon of light, a clear...
About Wordpress, emojis, MySQL and latin1, utf8 and utf8mb4 character sets
PSA: the MySQL utf8 character set is not real Unicode utf8. Instead use utf8mb4. So you landed here because some parts of your website are garbled. And this happened after a server or website migratio...
Thomas Dekker: The Descent (Mijn Gevecht) - Thijs Zonneveld
I finished this book in one sitting. Partly because Zonneveld has a pleasant writing style. But also because the rather recent story of a hugely talented and (very) young cyclist who early on in his c...
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five is a well-known classic. And I had been wanting to read it for quite some time now, and now that I finally did, I must say it was absolutely not what I expected. In a good way. Sla...
The Fall (De Val) - Matthias M.R. Declercq
Matthias M.R. Declercq pulled of two remarkable things. Not only did he manage to find this extraordinary story about friendship, ambition and sacrifice, he was also able to write it down in exception...
Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker is one of the most profound books I have ever read. It has directly impacted my attitude towards sleep and subsequently altered my behaviour. Books that change your beha...
Humor schept evenwicht (Humor creates balance) - Jaap Bakker
Jaap Bakker, a local storyteller from a small rural town in the Netherlands (Urk), has written down anecdotes and jokes from the last hundred years or so. Either things he experienced first hand or th...
Use PostgreSQL REPLACE() to replace dots with commas (dollar to euro)
If you have set up your database tables correctly you might be using double-precision floating numbersto store currency values. This works great because dollars use dots to represent decimals. The pro...
The Effective Executive - Peter Drucker
Pick up any good management book and chances are that Peter Drucker will be mentioned. He is the godfather of management theory. I encountered Drucker many times before in other books and quotes, but...
Getting Things Done - David Allen
For some reason I had never read the David Allen classicGetting Things Done. But I found out that 18 years after its release it's still a good introduction to time and action management. Getting Thing...
Ten years on Twitter 🔟❤️
Today marks my ten year anniversary on Twitter! There are few other web services I have been using for ten years. Sure, I have been e-mailing and blogging for longer, but those are activities —like br...
Blue Bananas - Wouter de Vries jr. & Thiemo van Rossum
Blauwe Bananen (Blue Bananas) is a management book that was number one for 38 days on managementboek.nl. It is aimed at people who generally don't read management books. So it sometimes tries to be un...
Plato - R.M. Hare
Writing short introductions to classic philosophers are hard. This book tries, but falls a bit short as a true introduction. Plato - R.M. Hare (1983) - 117 pages Plato, the first documented, Western p...
High Output Management - Andrew S. Grove
This classic management book started off with two confusing and underwhelming chapters, but ended up being one of the best three management books I have ever read. And I would highly recommend it to a...
My music discoveries of 2018 part 2
This is part 2 of my best music discoveries of 2018. Earlier editions are here: 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 (part 1). Hands down my favorite tracks of 2018 are still One. Sentence Supervisor with Yelena...
Bad Blood - John Carreyrou
Everything you read and hear about Bad Blood by John Carreyrou is true. It is an incredible — TRUE — story, told exceptionally well, about the lethal cocktail of greed, ambition and narcissism. Bad Bl...
Kierkegaard - Patrick Gardiner
Kierkegaard - Patrick Gardiner (1988) - 154 pages In general, philosophy has a reputation of being hard to understand, and Kierkegaard certainly does nothing to lessen this reputation. He was largely...
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
On my honeymoon in 2009 I asked the store clerk at the Hemingway house on Key West: "what's a good book to start with?". She recommended The Sun also Rises. The Sun also Rises - Ernest Hemingway (1926...
Joy Division and the making of Unknown Pleasures - Jake Kennedy
I picked up this book in the bargain bin of a HMV in Manchester in 2006, when I was on a — sort of — pilgrimage. But I left it on my bookshelf for 12 years, thinking I probably knew most of it already...
Faith - Jimmy Carter
I literally received this book from the hands of Jimmy Carter himself at a book signing in New York. I never met a president before — even if only for a few seconds — so I was keen to read his book! M...
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf (1927) - 254 pages This was an exhausting book to read. Because it reads like a prolonged poem with a stream of thoughts about everything and anything and with very...
Can we replace paper?
Paper always beats rock and scissors. Because one of the few inventions greater than writing itself, is writing on paper. Paper writings are absolute, self-contained and transferableunits of knowledge...
Advent of Code
Advent of Code is a yearly programming contest created by Eric Wastl and it is currently being held at adventofcode.com. That means that this site spawns two daily programming challenges — until Chris...
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Red Dead Redemption 2
It's been over a week since I 'finished' the most anticipated game of 2018 (or maybe even of the last five years); Red Dead Redemption 2. I say finished in quotes, because I clocked in around 50 hours...
First Man
For a movie where you can't expect surprises about the main story line — because it's in every history book — this movie certainly did not disappoint! In fact, First Man is a phenomenal movie. The ope...
Save data from your broken Raspberry Pi SD card with GNU ddrescue
This week my Pi stopped working. After hooking up a monitor I saw kernel errors related to VFS. So the file system was obviously broken. Oops. The end conclusion is that the SD card is physically 'bro...
The Phoenix Project
Why you should read the Phoenix Project: a Novel About IT, DevOps and Helping Your Business Win.
My 2018 music discoveries (first half!)
Long time readers will know I love sharing my music discoveries. You can read the 2015, 2016, 2017 editions here. At the half-point of 2018 I feel it is time again because of some exceptionally exciti...
GNU coreutils comm is amazing
Most people know sort and uniq(or even diff) and usually use a mix of these tools when comparing two files. However sometimes, there is a shorter solution than piping different commands together: comm...
My Vim setup
The following lines are in my .vimrc file and make working with Vim all the better! I keep it pretty basic, so I don't use the very popular fugitive.vim or NERDTree plugin. Put these lines in /.vimrc...
The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder is one of those books that always seems to pop up when 'computer-people' share book recommendations. Exhibit A, exhibit B, exhibit C and so on — you get the p...
My 2017 music disoveries
I did a music post for 2015 and 2016, so here is 2017! Whether it's blogs, podcasts, movies or the YouTube algorithm, if you keep your ears open there's always new music to discover. So here we go in...
Favorite 2017 purchases
Here's a chronological list of some of the physical things/tools/gadgets I bought in 2017. Physical as in, I'm leaving out experiences, books and cryptocoins. Here we go. The Sony MDR-ZX110 headphones...
Django in 10 minutes
Setup a Django MySQL CRUD program in 10 minutes with virtualenv, pip and Python.
Super Mario Odyssey
When the first trailer for Super Mario Odyssey came out it underscored the magic all Mario games seem to share. Because my four and five year old, who have no prior sentimental knowledge of Mario, mad...
U2 - 11 O'Clock Tick Tock live at Red Rocks
Read why 11 O'Clock Tick Tock is the best song from the U2 Red Rocks set and how it was a forebode for things to come. As it hints to what lies ahead.
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
This book by Ashlee Vance sat on my wish-list since it came out two years ago. So, long overdue, last week I finally got to it and boy, what a 'fantastic' read it is. There is lot to say about the man...
The Joshua Tree Tour 2017
When the Joshua Tree came out in 1987 it catapulted U2 from a great rock band to the greatest rock n roll band in the world. Critically and commercially there was no way around them anymore. With four...
Hacker News: sort user submissions by score
Hacker News is pretty much my goto site and sometimes I submit links or take part in the discussion. However when I recently tried to get a list of the links I submitted ordered by Hacker News score,...
Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary
This book had been sitting on my to-read list for way too long! But I finally found a second hand copy, so here we go! You could say this is the official autobiography of Linus Torvalds, the creator o...
Business Model Canvas
You are probably aware that there are a lot of ways to visualize or model business and management related things. There are few fields of expertise with so many models and theories (sure, math and phy...
The Strokes - I don't want what you want
We're at a point now that we can already reflect on the influence and legacy of NYC band the Strokes. A new book"Meet Me in the Bathroom" has been labeled as "the First Great History of New York’s 21s...
The search for a new watch
[caption id="attachment1639" align="alignleft" width="300"] Old watch[/caption] Three years ago I got a Casio WV-200E-1AVEF. It's a good watch. I wear it everyday. What I specifically like about it is...
500 podcasts later
I keep track of the podcasts I listen to in a Google spreadsheet. This week I entered the 500th one. I started to keep track in november 2015, after a few months of listening. And I probably even forg...
Wordpress is amazing!🔥
This blog is powered by WordPress. That means that the content you read was edited in the WordPress administrative interface and that same content is now presented to you by the WordPress engine! Word...
A new home!
Welcome to j11g.com, my personal blog about anything and everything that interests me. So mostly technology, music, books and podcasts. To get started you'll find a collection of posts from the piks.n...
Thoughts about the Snapchat IPO👻
Last year I wrote about Snapchat and their unique approach to things. I'd like to think that my predictions at the end of that blog came true 😎. Why? Because we see Instagram betting big on streaming...
Rising NBA stars
The 2016/2017 NBA season has been a lot of fun so far. Just like the previous season. All kinds of records are being broken. It seems the game is changing. Or maybe it's because we just keep track of...
I still love RSS (you can too!)
RSS. It's kind of a weird acronym and people can't even seem to agree on the true meaning behind those three letters. It doesn't sound too sexy, but it does sort of have a recognisable logo. If you ha...
My music discoveries of 2016
Last years' post was pretty popular, so let's continue this. You know the rules, so let's go! I've always had a soft spot for Conor Oberst's (aka Bright Eyes) fragility. After a rough period he droppe...
Let's encrypt all the things!
You may notice something different on your favourite blog. Left of the URL in the address bar there is a little green lock! This means piks.nl is now served to you via SSL/TLS. You know, https:// inst...
Rogue One: one is enough for me (spoilers)
Sure, I am not the biggest Star Wars fan. Not by a long shot. But I do have a mild admiration for the first original trilogy, which made quite an impression on my younger self (he isLukes' father! Go...
Best of 2016
Best-of lists signify another year is coming to a close. People feel a need to sort and order things to make room for what is to come. Or something like that. So here is an assorted list of best new t...
My Chromebook Acer C730E-C480 review
Last week Google was kind enough to provide me a Chromebook. I had been eyeing one for some time, but I had no reason why I would need one. I have a laptop, smartphone and a tablet. So what would a Ch...
China Observations
Last week I had the chance to visit China, specifically Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Shanghai. These are my observations of China, completely biased and uninformed, for personal future reference. https://t...
Snapchat
Snapchat is everywhere these days. And with everywhere,I mean a lot of people are talking about it like it's some sort of elusive enigma only the young kids are able to tune in to. The digital equival...
Ubuntu on Windows
Today's big news is that Microsoft has made bash available on Windows 10. No container, no virtual machine, no recompiled sources: Here, we're talking about bit-for-bit, checksum-for-checksum Ubuntu E...
Trump - The Art of the Deal
In 2004 I picked up this book about Donald J. Trump. Published in 1987, it is a story about the, then just, 40 year old Trump's insane real estate successes. And I was genuinely interested. From what...
My January timeline
I've always loved timelines. Visually seeing where things are in time resonates pretty strongly with me. This love goes back to my earliest memories of the dentists' office where a huge year-round cal...
My music discoveries of 2015
Most end-of-year lists are compiled of songs from that current year. That's fine and all, but great music is timeless and you might discover things later, so my list will be a bit different. These are...
My Favorite Podcasts
So you read the previous post and now you're wondering what podcasts to listen to. Well you're in luck, because this post will tell you. What's to like? But first, why listen to podcasts anyway? Sure...
Podcast Renaissance
ren·ais·sance (rĕn′ĭ-säns′, -zäns′, rĭ-nā′səns) 1. A rebirth or revival. 2. A situation or period of time when there is a new interest in something that has not been popular in a long time. Podcasts h...
How this site got hacked
(This is a crosspost from my other blog, that actually got hacked. This is for you, a Google search user, struggling with a hacked website). Last week I noticed some strange behaviour on my site. When...
On Writing - Stephen King
This weekend I read On Writing - A memoir of the Craft by Stephen King - something I should have done 10 years ago. This book is not a work of fiction as you might expect from mr. King but rather it i...
Masters of Doom
On my last vacation I finally got around to reading Masters of Doom by David Kushner. This book from 2003 keeps popping up every now and again and people always rave about it. I put it on my Amazon wi...
Things about Egypt
We recently returned from a trip to Hurghada, Egypt. Hurghada is located by the Red Sea with amazing underwater life and verysunny and hot 'above-water' life. We had a wonderful time! We didn't visit...
The Minecraft timeline
The story of Minecraft sounds like a great movie script. Notch as the protagonist genius programmer, who, from an underdog (indie) position, single handedly changed the game industry by just doing wha...
If I were the CEO of Twitter
I still love Twitter. I've been using it since 2009 and it holds a special place. For reasons that I only recently learned to put in to place. Twitter is a protocol. It's a (unique) way of communicati...
One year with the PS3
This month marks one year of me owning a Playstation 3. What started out as a quest for an 'easy' Netflix device, ended in getting a PS3. Maybe it seems I am a bit late to the game,because the PS4 is,...
Thoughts on Heartbleed
This week, part of the internet broke. Again. Some important people even called it an 11 on a scale from 1 to 10. And I don't disagree. After the recent Apple goto fail SSL bug and NSA RSA debacle thi...
jan.usesthis.com
I always enjoy reading usesthis.com. Especially from "software people". And I am always a bit surprised when I read what hardware some people use >8 hours a day. Some people really use some old stuff!...