Wouter Groeneveld
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No Time To Learn (Web) Framework X
Keith Cirkel has no time to learn React. He asks whether it’s worth it to learn a web framework like React that will look completely different in five years—or possibly become irrelevant or seize to exist at all. Remember Knockout JS, Backbone, GruntJS, Gulp et al.? Keith reflects: So now I’m left with…
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Pressing Down On Mushrooms
Someone at Mastodon recommended Derek Sarno’s YouTube cooking channel as a fun way to learn more about simple yet bold vegan recipes that are not too daunting to make. His home kitchen videos are funny, his dog lovely, and his onion chopping skills impressive; but what impressed the most was leaving…
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Games That Love To Take Things Away From You
I’m playing Prince of Persia: the Lost Crown as a nice change of pace in-between the long battle slogs of Wargroove. Yesterday, the game suddenly took something away from me. I won’t spoil it for those who have yet to enjoy the game as it’s a very recent one, but it surprised me, it dreaded me, and it…
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Granddad's Cooking Notebook
During my last trip to overbomma (grand-grandmother), I discovered a couple of battered notebooks seemingly discarded in a few drawers in the garage next to the paper bin. One of them had a sticker with my late grandfather’s handwriting on it: Recepten allerlei koken en bakken (various recipes cooking…
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Are Solar Panels Really Worth It?
With the Belgian government changing the way solar panels are (not) financed again, I wondered whether they’re still a worthy investment. Not only an investment but also a way to help reduce the CO2 pollution. Most consumers no doubt will approach solar panels from a financial perspective. That way,…
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The 2025 State of My Jamstack
Four years ago, I pushed the first commit to my little Jamstack utility collection project called jam-my-stack. I’ve been relying on it ever since. The 2022 build pipeline post explained how the stack hooks into building my blogs, and today, I want to revisit the tools in that collection to see how these…
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Favourites of May 2025
There goes another month. An unusual hot one for Belgium as well. It’s just a few more days before the Nintendo Switch 2 descends upon us. I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Nintendo Direct showcase: no launch games grabbed my immediate attention—the only thing that did was the expensive price of…
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The PC Does What Nintendon't: Modding Games
Since the Lode Runner lost levels appearance, I’ve been thinking about others games I’ve created levels for in the past. The list is not very long, most of it again got lost, and this time I’m fairly certain it won’t ever come back. Still, it is interesting to think about the concept of game modding…
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Custom Lode Runner Levels Brought Back From The Dead
When I was little, I used to always carry with me a special floppy disk containing just one file: LEVELS.PZL. That was my magnum opus: 137 carefully hand-crafted levels for the Windows 3.1 game Lode Runner: The Legend Returns. The 1994 remake of the 1982 original Lode Runner was ultimately released on…
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Software Engineering Job Titles
In 2023, I scraped data from software developer job ads to discover local trends such as the most wanted programming language (Java, C#/.NET, and JavaScript—no big surprises there). I didn’t pay particular attention to job titles, yet lately I’ve been thinking about how ridiculous these self-proclaimed…
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Reducing Waste Is A Matter Of Changing Perspective
I’ve been relying on dishwashing sponges to get that muck off for more than a decade now. The problem is that contrary to rough dishcloths, these sponges cannot be reused by throwing them into the washing machine. Over time, the green sandpaper-like surface on top tends to disappear, and if you leave…
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Writing Is Taking A Stab At Immortality
In Irvin D. Yalom’s Staring At The Sun: Being at peace with your own mortality, Yalom reflects on how writing is similar to causing ripples in a pond. Since we have the Dutch translation Tegen De Zon In Kijken, I’ll quote from that edition of the book instead and try to interpret it in English afterwards…
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Biking With Or Without Headphones
That’s the question! Well, not really: clearly, without is the safest answer here? But that is not the coolest answer our youth seems to prefer. Perhaps it’s one of those reverse psychology things: suggest to buy a small white car and they want a big black one instead. I see more and more young folks…
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Junk Contemplations
The coffee table is spilled with Playmobil figures, a dirty towel, a simple wooden dollhouse, an undressed doll, and a purple teddy bear wearing diapers the wrong side up sitting in an empty plastic ice cream container. To my left of the couch, a dolphin plush is chilling next to a pile of assorted picture…
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Favourites of April 2025
Last month I (re)discovered that having stuff is exhausting. As a result of a renovation, we’re moving stuff around the house, and it turns out that there are at least four different corners where we used to chuck books in. Since the bookshelves needed moving too, we figured why not consolidate and give…
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My Sourdough Starter Has Twins
A couple of years ago, I participated in a study of the HealthFerm Citizen Science group in collaboration with the VUB Brussels and ETH Zurich universities. The study, called the Citizen Science Sourdough Project, aimed to collect and map micro-organism samples of sourdough starters with the help of…
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Succumb To Us, Heretic!
October last year was Heretic month at the DOS Game Club. In the October 2024 overview post, I briefly mentioned a cool thing a Club member pointed out: how to figure out what the Disciples of D’Sparil enemies are saying before they start hunting you down: If you’ve ever played Heretic, you’ll recognise…
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About a Broken ESS AudioDrive Card
The conclusion of the the PicoGUS experiment back in January was that while the card is very cool, I play more OPL2/3 games that require a genuine Sound Blaster or compatible instead of UltraSound compatible ones. The PicoGUS can do both but the experiments proved that Sound Blaster emulation is wonky…
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Writing Is Redirecting Attention
Something wonderful and weird happens when I write about x. For example, consider x to be the video and/or board games I write about on my other blog Jefklak’s Codex. I like to keep track of the things I enjoy and that includes games; the blog is more like a personal play log than anything else really…
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Nintendo Switch 2's GameChat
I mean, what were they thinking? Last week’s official Nintendo Switch 2 reveal resulted in a lukewarm response at best from my side, which is totally fine given my already big enough gaming backlog and increasingly shrinking free time to fill it with. Among the lowlights: the painful new price tags …
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Your Phone Should Be Distributed, Not Centralized
This is something that I realized this week after leaving for work but having to turn back because I forgot my phone. That phone hosts an app containing my train tickets: without it, I wouldn’t be able to commute to work—unless we do it the YOLO way, of course. I despise apps and have expressed my dislike…
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Favourites of March 2025
This month’s train conversation award goes to two students discussing a paper assignment they resented. I just want to, like, go working or something? Let’s not hand it in. Let’s just stop doing all this. I’m totally not motivated. Dear students, I’ve got some bad news for you: in just one year (they…
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An Ode To The Game Boy Advance
In March 2001, Nintendo introduced an advanced portable model to the gaming market with the release of the Game Boy Advance (GBA, codenamed Advanced Game Boy or AGB). Equipped with a modernized 32-bit ARM CPU running at twice the speed of the Game Boy Color (GBC), this small device was more than capable…
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Wire Transfer Descriptions Should Be Regulated
Moments of utter confusion struck me while catching up on household bookkeeping. After running the bookkeeping script, I’m often left with a puzzling Excel file where lots of manual re-tagging seems to take too long. Why? Because of statements such as this: 13-01 Vilnius -7.79 12-01-2025 12:00 670000…
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My First Console
Joel got a Polystation for Christmas as his very first console. As an imposter machine that came with a million games in just one console, for kids or parents alike that have no clue about video gaming, I’m sure seeing that sticker on the box must have led to many hearts skipping a beat. Until you visit…
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PKM Summit 2025 Notes
The second PKM Summit is taking place in Utrecht, The Netherlands yesterday and right now, a cosy (un)conference on how to create personal methods to fluently process information and ideas. I was only able to attend the first day and had a blast doing so. Last time I was in Utrecht was for the 2024 Dutch…
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It Is Forbidden To Think For Yourself
I finished reading De Lezende Mens (The Reading Human) by Ruud Hisgen and Adriaan van der Weel, a historic take on the evolution of reading and writing that ends with a criticism on our modern emphasis of short and sweet text snippets (social media anyone?). According to the authors—and I am inclined…
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No More Client Tracking Thanks To GoAccess
Last week, I updated the Brain Baking copyright and tracking policy. This is what it said before (in the last section, No Tracking): I achieved this by ditching Google Analytics and hosting third-party libraries myself. So rest assured, Google does not know you were here! Instead, I use GoatCounter,…
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Favourites of February 2025
This month, our daughter will turn two, I’ll be already two months into the new gig, and we’ll finally be rewarded with sunshine. Looking good so far! On top of that, Frank convinced me to attend this year’s PKM Summit, due in just two weeks. I am really looking forward to sharing thoughts on note-taking…
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Je Replie Ma Vue Au Dedans
In Sarah Bakewell’s masterful How To Live I am re-reading as part of my compile your own philosophy strategy, she tries to let someone else take multiple stabs at answering that question by excavating Michel de Montaigne’s Essais. The result is a wonderful book that highlights some of Montaigne’s best…
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