In reply to The three cornered container by Chris Corrigan What stands out to me reading this, is that I feel I have an intrinsic preference for the emergent area of the triad. And can quickly loose interest towards the design corner, and specifically the built parts. While I see others flock to those other […]

In reply to Learning How to be Idle on Vacation by Peter Rukavina Your post resonates a lot, Peter. In my journey of the last years overcoming burn-out my inability to rest, other than sleep, stands out. There’s always things to do, work, at home. Simultaneously so much time ticks by procrastinating as well, the […]

This spring E took down her WordPress blog and replaced it with a static website. In the past weeks she did the same for her business website (and added her own sales channel to it, with just the payment provider as third party element). Now I have static website envy. Until 2002 I had static […]

A lovely novella and the 2022 debut by francophone Swiss author Fanny Desarzens (1993). I read the German translation, titled Berghütte (mountain cabin), Galel (the name of one of the characters) is the French title. Three men, with few words between them, share a deep friendship which unfolds every summer against the backdrop of the […]

It’s been a while since my last post in the Books category early February, 32 fiction books further by my count. Recently Cory Doctorow pointed to the work of Welsh / Canadian author Jo Walton on the occasion of the publication of her latest novel Everybody’s Perfect, and I read some of her work these […]

Over the past month or two, after our return from Portugal I’ve been slowly improving and overcoming my burn-out. I’m at a point where I am eager to do certain things again, notice E and Y and my love for them much more again, can get energised from facilitating a workshop with a client, started […]

Favorited Ikigai Collective by David Orban Yes, this type of exploration is important. Without a set purpose as goal, but certainly not without purpose as an experience and source of meaning. I don’t think I have the bandwidth at the moment, and I certainly do not fit the criteria to increase the little group’s diversity, […]

European Data Protection makes it illegal to transfer person identifiable data to outside the EU. Unless there is equivalence in data protection, or an agreement with guarantees and oversight deemed adequate. For the USA this is the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF). This framework depends on the existence of the independent oversight body FTC, and […]

In a session today there was some discussion about agentic skills. A skill is mostly a markdown text file often named, yes, skill.md with a natural language text plus some front matter, describing some specific workflow or bit of knowledge or capability. Somebody external opined that such skills were a good way of codifying organisational […]

In a session earlier today the deployment of a tool was discussed in an organisation’s information environment that is otherwise fully dominated by Microsoft products. After a presentation a director asked “if we add this tool to our (Microsoft) mix, aren’t we working in opposition to our wish for more digital autonomy and digital sovereignty”? […]

Bij de Open State Foundation (waar ik voorzitter ben) zoeken we een nieuwe directeur! Herken jij je in het profiel (PDF), en ben je net zo bevlogen als ons team om digitale transparantie bij de overheid te bevorderen en onze democratie te versterken? Dan horen we heel graag van je! Nadrukkelijk ook als je vindt […]

In reply to Setting up Webmentions by Alex Hyett It’s always good to see a blogger adding Webmentions to their site. Cross-blog conversations are to me what blogging is about. And Webmentions are a useful piece of plumbing to make it so. If your set-up works, then this should show up at your end. Blog […]

Last week I spent a few days in Switzerland. I went to Zürich on Thursday to meet up with a few people, having a pleasant chat with Beat Döbeli about his 30 year old PKM system Biblionetz, and a nice dinner with long time open data friend André Golliez, who chairs the Swiss Data Alliance. […]

The Open State Foundation has its office on the old naval yard in the heart of Amsterdam. Right next to the national maritime museum, in the 17th century warehouse of the Dutch admirality, and across from the 1960’s former Base Commander’s home our (as I’m a board member there) offices are surrounded by other small […]

Het is DOEI! Dag, de eerste zondag van de maand om mezelf en anderen aan te moedigen weer een stapje te zetten weg van BigTech. Stap je mee? Blogpost:

Favorited The Archivist In Me Turned This Blog Into a Book by Wouter Groeneveld On occasion I’ve mentioned here that one way of ensuring longevity of this blog is to publish it as one or more books with a proper ISBN, and have the national library store their two obligated copies. We did this in […]

Trains at Atocha station Madrid I spent the week in Ciudad Real in Spain, under an hour by high speed train (~200km) south of Madrid. I was there for a plenary meeting of CEN/CENELEC’s joint technical committee (JTC) 25 that works on European standards for data management, data spaces, and cloud & edge. The need […]

There is a lot of sloppy journalism out there. Obvious questions not asked, basic facts not gotten straight, numbers literally not adding up, tens to thousands of orders of magnitude errors. The perennial sensationalist phrasing and populist use of emotion laden words as supposedly neutral wording. And then there is ignorance of basic knowledge becoming […]

This weekend we took a train to Rotterdam. We decided to spend a day there, as our Canadian friends Peter and Lisa were coming up from Bruges in Belgium, which was the last stop on their cycling holiday. Before meeting them and after coffee the three of us strolled to and through Museumpark and visited […]

We spent a week and a half in Portugal this spring. Traveling together is something we do well with the three of us, and something I find healing. Although I found it hard at times to be in the moment, and to not let myself get irritated over small things. It was Y’s first ever […]

As I mentioned in my previous post The Long Walk, I struggle to get out of the house and away from my laptop to take short walks in the neighbourhood during the day. We live at the northern edge of Amersfoort, and across the small Laak river in easy walking distance there’s a polder at […]

It is now two years ago that during a day trip E and I had a conversation about my wellbeing in which I broke down in tears and we came to the conclusion there and then that I was burnt out. A good moment to take stock of where I am at. What came before […]

In reply to Stop and think by Paolo Valdemarin This made me stop and think. My company contains a well above average number of actual philosophers, 50% of our team. Some with PhDs. Usually combined with practical technical knowledge. Not sure if it gives us a better handle at the future though. Yet, ‘holding questions’ […]

In the past week I’ve started three personal experiments that use AI (in this case Claude Code). For each, the experiment lies in automating steps in my cognitive work that are useful or necessary but not the actual cognitive work itself. They’re helper activities, supporting the main task. For two of the three that is […]

Since the start of last year I have not been spending any money at Amazon. I’ve been happily buying my reading elsewhere. Today for the first time I ran into a genuine bump. I noticed that Canadian SF author Dennis E. Taylor released a fifth book in his fun and entertaining Bobiverse series last year, […]

Favorited Headless Everything For Personal AI by Matt Webb I see this being adopted around me too. Not just CLI’s though, also more APIs, pulling in data sources from elsewhere. And most interestingly: I see adoption by people who did not program or treat their computer as their personal toolbox they can adapt before. Until […]

My grandfather Klaas Zijlstra (1905-1993) was a farmer and cattle raiser. He grew up in Fryslân and always wanted to be a farmhand it seems (his father was a housepainter). There was ambition too, from leaving school at 12 and moving out on his 16th, he sought out farmers to work for that had a […]

Uit de Haagse krant van woensdag 25 juli 1928: Tegen radio-gerucht Raad van Amersfoort neemt maatregelen De Gemeenteraad van Amersfoort heeft een verordening aangenomen, waarbij verboden wordt radio-luidsprekers in werking te hebben met geopende deuren of vensters. Is dit waarom je bij rampen ramen en deuren gesloten moet houden alvorens de regionale radio aan te […]

Earlier this week I started reading an ebook and was a bit irritated because the book did not show me a table of contents. This seems to be a regular thing in ebooks. Already earlier I have complained here about why ebooks, or perhaps mostly e-readers, make so little use of the affordances of digital […]

Favorited AI Policy and Human.json by Claudine Chionh Favorited Adding human.json to WordPress by Terence Eden Claudine Chionh and Terence Eden both mention human.json, a data file that lists people and sites you know are written by humans, as opposed to generated by AI. A rekindling of FOAF? In these days of needing to assume […]