Personal

Read an interesting post this morning about E/N websites. Apparently a phenomenon from the early days of the web, E/N websites meant everything to the publisher, but maybe nothing to the rest of the world. The term may have been the predecessor of the term “weblog” which was shortened to blog. E/N description: The website’s author covers a myriad of topics. It’s not narrowly focused. The author writes about everything or at least everything that’s important to the author. The site might contain something useful for anyone who visits. The content means everything to the publisher, but it could mean nothing to the rest of the world. ...

Diablo 2: one of those games in life I keep returning to. Started playing it when I was 12, and I know it inside out. Roughly once every 1,5 years I’ll have a phase where I want to play some. I’m in such a phase right now. I haven’t been gaming since the Victoria 3 release, and frankly, I don’t have much time to spend either. Something will be sacrificed. Currently this will be study time. I’ve been studying for several hours a day for nearly two years, but with my current increased focus on health and weight loss, I feel I need a break and allow myself some leasure. ...

Had a great time at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam yesterday. Went to see Sabaton live. This was my second time seeing them live, and it was a great show. I love Sabaton because all of their material revolves around history and warfare. They are one of my favourite bands. I was super happy they played some of my favourite songs: “Carolus Rex”, “Stormtroopers” and “To Hell And Back”. I’ve been a lover of metal music ever since childhood, but I had a break from metal music for about 5 years where I hardly listened to any music at all. But over the past 1,5 years I’ve been really enjoying metal music again. ...

Read an interesting article this morning. Apparently the Soviet Union introduced paid time off well before other industrialized countries. Interestingly, but not unexpectedly, the state determined how and with whom you spent that vacation. As members of a collective, citizens were expected to spend their free time in a manner the government and its leading theorists considered beneficial to society as whole, regardless of an individual’s preferences. Ever since the 1930s, it had been customary for Soviet citizens to travel in groups of 25 to 40 people randomly put together by their trade unions. When adults relaxed at resorts or embarked on tours, their children were sent to summer camps managed by state-run youth groups like the Young Pioneers or the Komsomol. ...

Ah, writing. It’s one of the skills that I’ve consistently been praised for throughout my life. I’m pretty good at it, and I think that’s because I enjoy it. It led me to getting an academic degree in English Literature and Culture, simply because I was following the things I was naturally good at. However, just like any other skill, you can only become better at it through consistent practice. This morning I read a wonderful little blog post on writing regularly, and I was touched by his words: ...

I use RSS feeds to read the news, and I use Newsboat as a RSS reader. To in stall on MacOS: brew install newsboat Integrate in already existing terminal workflow Free from distraction Control how content is rendered Carefully curate which content you consume Build your own “Social Media feed” No advertisements or suggested articles Newsboat uses RSS feeds which are generated by websites Links: 202304271004 ...

Last week I accepted a job offer! I’ve been hired as a DevOps Engineer by Fullstaq. Fullstaq specialises in Kubernetes and Cloud Native, so I’m really happy I could join their team. I’ll be doing projects for a variety of clients, and I think it will be a great place to learn and gain more experience in the Kubernetes and CNCF space. Fullstaq has been delightfully welcoming and great to work with so far. The future looks bright! ...

As I alluded to in my article about Obsidian, I am very fond of editing my text in neovim. Naturally, if you want to edit in neovim, you need to have your text as local files. I keep all of my personal notes in markdown. Previously I was using WordPress, but the editing and writing experience became torture which I could not endure any longer. I looked for a different solution that would allow me to edit my files locally instead of in the browser. ...

I’m starting a project with a friend. Developing an application. We make a good team, he’s great at coding and knows the backend too. He’ll do the development, I’m in charge of hosting. We’re setting everything up in Azure DevOps, so it is a great way to practice my Azure skills and apply the things I’ve learned in my recently obtained AZ-104 Azure Administrator certification. Even though it is a small scale hobby project, I still plan to approach it as if it was an enterprise production application. I’ll set up a full CI/CD pipeline with testing in a secure manner. Credentials stored in an Azure key vault and images pushed to a private registry. ...

I’ve transitioned my note taking system towards a Zettelkasten system. I still use directories for folders and make copious links, but more often than not I put them in the larger generic 00-zettelkasten directory in my Obsidian vault. The concept of “atomic notes” is also very important in Zettelkasten methods. Notes should be small and concise. Up until this point I’ve been publishing full articles on my blog. I came across Rob Muhlestein yesterday and I was very inspired by his setup and public zettelkasten. I think I’ll move to a similar approach. Still planning to write and publish full articles as well, but also including atomic notes and personal status updates. ...