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Look how strong I am without doing anything!

It's 2030, and you ask me how my fitness goals are coming along. "Great!", I say, "I'm actually working out right now". You ask me how that is possible, as you can clearly tell that's not true. I'm

Visiting the Muiderslot

I have a cute little YouTube video for you! Oliver and I visited the Muiderslot today by bike. We cycled a total of 66km there and back again from our home in Utrecht. It was such a lovely day out! In the morning we mainly shared the road with lots

Testing with guardrails

"We want you to test our software well!" - says the manager type. "We care about quality, you can see that reflected in our company values". "Okay", I say as I try to surpress a cough after that last bit about company values, and

Architecture in Utrecht Wittevrouwen

For a blog that promises to write about urbanism, it's kinda silent around this topic. Let's change that! As I'm trying to get back into photography, I went for a photography walk with a good friend in the Wittevrouwen area of Utrecht. I looked

Getting back into photography

I'm trying to get back into photography, but it's typically a hobby that triggers my perfectionism too much. I am not happy with any photo I take, that's why I stopped about 11–12 years ago. This time, I'm trying to be

Being erratic

This has honestly been the question that I've been dealing with for almost my entire life: How to live when my "output" is so erratic? How to make "the most" of my life? (A question that makes me slightly ill just by writing it

Walking is magic

Sometimes a planned event is all you need to kick your ass into gear. This seems to be what is happening to me at the moment. I'll be walking the latter half of the West Highland Way with a friend in September, which is awesome because it means

July 1st, 2025

It's July 1st, that means half the year has passed. That means we're nearing the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. In the year 2000, we didn't have the Euro yet! And I also was a clueless teenager, a measly 14

Pen and paper are superior to your AI bullshit.

There are currently 5 notebooks on my desk. Actually, I'm lying! There are 7 notebooks on my desk if you count the 2 Rhodia scratch pads I use for throw-away notes. If there's one thing that "AI" and the general enshittifcation of modern tech

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