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LLM circle jerking

Let me use a viral image for once, yeah? I made the mistake of browsing LinkedIn after my 2-week holiday, and boy, was I absolutely ASSAULTED with "oh my god, AI is so useful", "oh my gawd, AI made me a 10x engineer", "omg, AI

Humanity hates people.

We could have made our environment welcoming to cyclists and pedestrians, but we didn't. A car centric environment is the norm in many parts of the world, making it dangerous to be outside if you cannot or do not want to drive a car. Cars are getting bigger

The Best in Test meet-up recap

I had a great time last Tuesday evening at The Best in Test event, organised by Sopra Steria. When I came in at around 5PM, I saw Bas Dijkstra and we were both like, "we haven't been to a testing meetup since...forever?!". This must be

Don’t let them colonize your mind

In the disturbing film, A Clockwork Orange, the protagonist's eyes are being forcefully kept open, and he has no choice but to watch the most horrible scenes in order to “rehabilitate” from the awful crimes he has committed. I won’t attach a picture from the film, as

My thoughts about InCoWriMo

This is not a well-known phenomenon at all, but I stumbled upon the hashtag #incowrimo on Mastodon somewhere in January. Intrigued, I looked into what it was, and it stands for International Correspondence Writing Month. It happens in February, and the idea is that you mail a handwritten letter or

Best Reads March 2025

I'm writing down which articles make a lasting impression on me in my Hobonichi Cousin every day. Let's put them in this blog post, for you, and for my future self. The month isn't over yet, so hopefully I'll add some more

Why I don't want to be in a WhatsApp group with boomers

Almost everyone I know is in at least a couple of group chats on messaging apps. Here in Europe, WhatsApp (by Meta) is still the most popular choice to run a group chat. My second orchestra also put every member in a WhatsApp group, but unlike my main orchestra, they

An "AI" by any other name

"AI"? You mean......

Sad smoke alarm noises

At LLEWT book club yesterday, Sanne Visser said: "Nobody ever gave a smoke alarm an award" and I laughed so hard tears streamed down my face. I think it's recognisable for many testers. There are times when we are warning of what could happen if we

Local goodness

I managed to absolutely surprise myself with this one, but it fits. As most of you might know, I play the clarinet. It's very boring to play the clarinet alone, so I'm in an orchestra. That orchestra needs to be managed, so there is a board.

Thank you

Many thanks to everyone who liked and shared the posts on my blog and LinkedIn where I was announcing that I was searching for a new IT assignment and where I was asking people to not put me in a box. Don’t put me in a boxI’m trying

Harmful Software Collaborators

Looking for bugs in code that has harmful intentions is like trying to make a shit sandwich taste good. It's futile. It's the wrong focus. I get it, it's easy to be a harmful software collaborator. Maybe you are still at a point in

The real reason we need to invent a time machine

I was reading a very interesting article in The Guardian: 'All people could do was hope the nerds would fix it': the global panic over the millennium bug, 25 years on. At the turn of the millennium, I was a mere 14 years old, and did not know

Don't put me in a box

I'm trying to find a new assignment as a self-employed Test Consultant, and this confronts me with some facets of job searching that I don't really enjoy. My main complaint is that most roles try to fit you into a neat little box, and I don&