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What I'm doing now.

A moment-in-time readout of what I'm building, reading, and chewing on — inspired by the /now movement.

Amsterdam, Netherlands · Senior SWE at Booking.com · two toddlers at home — updated May 2026

This page goes stale on purpose — honest over impressive. The long-form thinking lands on the blog; this is the scratchpad behind it.

~/life.log — v2026.05

$ tail -f ~/life.log

…▌

measuring…
v2026.05 · current

Building

+

This blog

Turning a static site into a full backend — block-based posts, real analytics, a CMS I don't hate.

+

An AI coding workflow

Documenting every tool, hook, and shortcut that makes AI actually useful in a professional codebase.

Reading

+

The Pragmatic Programmer

Re-reading. Hits different when you have 8 years of mistakes to map it to.

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Deep Work — Cal Newport

Trying to reclaim 2 focused hours a day from the always-on engineering culture.

Learning

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Distributed systems fundamentals

Specifically consistency models and how they actually play out in production databases.

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How LLMs really work

Not surface-level. Going through Andrej Karpathy's nanoGPT videos and building intuition.

Thinking about

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Writing in public

Is it worth it? I think yes — but only if the writing is honest about what you don't know.

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The 10× engineer myth

AI makes 10× output real. But 10× judgment? That's still rare. That's the actual edge.

The blog is where this thinking ends up. If I'm focused on the wrong things, tell me.

Read the blog Steer my focus
Previous versions2 snapshots
v2026.01January 2026
  • -Building: first pass at the blog backend — static Markdown, no CMS yet.
  • -Reading: Designing Data-Intensive Applications (the storage chapters).
  • -Thinking about: whether to write in public at all.
v2025.09September 2025
  • -Building: internal tooling at work; learning the codebase.
  • -Learning: React Server Components, properly this time.
  • -Life: settling into Amsterdam, second kid on the way.

Want the longer story? About me

_ae

Have a lovely day.

Hope the day treats you kindly.

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WORK

Nice try, robot — I still found the bug.

Work: Nice try, robot — I still found the bug.
FAMILY

Phone in the jar. Dad is back.

Family: Phone in the jar. Dad is back.
HEALTHzzz

AI is more hyped than my legs.

Health: AI is more hyped than my legs.
PERSONAL

Three lines. Giant list, retired.

Personal: Three lines. Giant list, retired.
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