Home - Henrique Dias

Vergeet niet om in te checken: nieuwe lessen

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 09:24:48 +0100

ℹ️ This is a post series where I talk about my experience learning Dutch, in Dutch. If you're not interested, feel free to ignore it. Do you speak Dutch and noticed my mistakes? Ik waardeer het als je me erop wijst!

Welkom bij de derde deel van deze serie: vergeet niet om in te checken. Vandaag ga ik een beetje hebben over mijn nieuwe Nederlandse lessen, mijn kleine reis naar Brussel, en ook alle media in het Nederlands die ik de afgelopen maand heb geconsumeerd.

🚌 Nieuwe lessen

Sinds het midden van januari ben ik met een nieuwe cursus Nederlands begonnen. Ik volg deze cursus bij dezelfde school waar ik mijn vorige cursus heb gedaan. Het is een B1- cursus, dus het doel is dat ik niveau B1- ben aan het einde.

In deze cursus heb ik niet 1, maar 2 verschillende docente. Één op mandagen en één op woensdagen. Ik denk dat dit goed kan zijn om met verschillende mensen te oefenen. Je hoort verschillende accenten, en andere manieren om te spreken. De lessen zijn van 12:00 tot 14:00, dus niet op de beste tijd. Maar het valt mee.

Vergelijkbaar met de afgelopen cursus duurt deze cursus ook acht weken. Verder ben ik er begonnen mee sinds het midden van januari. Dus het ook bijna afgelopen. Bijna. Een paar weken en dan eindigt het. Mijn plan is dat ik na afloop van de huidige cursus een B1 cursus ga volgen. Ik ga echter een beter tijd kiezen.

In vergelijk met mijn vorige cursus praten we heel veel meer nu. Maar dat is ook logisch. In lagere niveaus is het belangrijk om de basis van de grammatica te leren. Zonder hen is het echt moeilijk om te praten. Ik had al een paar presentaties, maar de belangrijkste was mijn spreekbeurt. Dit ging over Limburgse vlaai en hoe het nu een beschermde product is.

🗣️ Nederlands praten

Maandag heb ik over FOSDEM geschreven. FOSDEM was een hele leuke plek waarin ik kon oefenen, vooral met Sebastiaan. Maar ook met sommige Vlaamse mensen! We hebben ook Thor ontmoet, en dat was ook heel leuk.

Tijdens de afgelopen maand ben ik ook begonnen met Nederlands praten met mensen die ik normaal gesproken in het Engels spreek. En het is niet zo eng. Ik denk dat de afgelopen maanden waren heel goed om mijn Nederlands te verbeteren en om meer zelfvertrouw te krijgen.

👂 Nederlands beluisteren

In de laatste dag van januari ben ik naar de theater geweest. Ik heb COCK gezien. Het is een toneelstuk die gaat over een gay die verliefd op een vrouw wordt. Het was in het Nederlands, dus dat was een ervaring op zich. Ik heb het hoofdverhaal goed begrepen, maar er waren een paar grapjes hier en daar die ik heb niet goed begrepen. Maar dat is prima.

Ik heb ook de film De Luizenmoeder gekeken. Ik had de serie al gekeken, maar de film nog niet. Ik denk dat de film de serie een goede einde gaf.

Ik heb niet zo veel die ik wil zeggen, dus dit artikel loopt ten einde. Bedankt iedereen die met mij in het Nederlands praat. Ik weet dat er vaak dingen zijn die ik nog niet weet, en dat maakt het soms een beetje lastig. Maar het komt goed. Tot volgende keer!

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Surviving FOSDEM '24

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 18:16:01 +0100

This past weekend I went to Brussels for FOSDEM with Sebastiaan, who has already written a bit about it. FOSDEM, if you don’t know, is the largest open source software conference in Europe - or in the world, not sure. This was not my first time attending, but it was positively chaotic as usual.

I’ve been to FOSDEM before, in 2018 and 2019, with some coworkers. However, I would say that at that time it was not as memorable. Perhaps I was just following people around in general, and my English was probably not as good as now, which gives a different sort of flexibility.

During this weekend, not only did I speak a lot of Dutch with Sebastiaan, but also with some other people from Flanders. Out of a coincidence, Thor happened to be in Brussels and we’ve met. I also met with Dietrich, who I haven’t seen in some months. Go follow them.

🚊 Saturday

Saturday was the day to relearn how FOSDEM works: everything everywhere all at once, just like the movie. This year’s edition counted with almost 1000 speakers, almost 900 events, and an astonishing amount of 67 different tracks.

With so many things happening all at the same time, it is extremely difficult to figure out what to do. We wanted to see Daniel’s Curling the modern way talk, but clearly we weren’t the only ones. We did not manage to see it since when we arrive the auditorium was already fully packed.

Instead, I decided to go to the Railways and Open Transport devroom. I don’t know much about public transit and open source, but I find it nevertheless fascinating. I have thrown some notes of things I want to look at, but haven’t had time yet. This devroom also proved to be extremely popular and was hard to get inside. My strategy was to remain inside once I got a seat.

At the end of the day, we visited the Open Source Design devroom, where I learned about the Modos paper laptop, which sounds like an incredible project. Also got to get an insight of designer’s works in the open source community, how it goes, difficulties, what could be improved, and so on.

☕️ Sunday

Sunday went fast. There were last people I think. It was likely partially caused by many people spending what-perhaps-is-considered-too-much-time at the Delirium Café. With a quieter day and a better strategy in place, we entered the room for You too could’ve made curl ahead of time. It worked out fine, but it seemed the affluence for this talk wasn’t definitely as large as the one on Saturday.

Two other talk highlights of this day were the Sequoia PGP project, which I did not really know about. It seems cool. I wish the GPG tools were easier to use and it seems that this project is precisely that.

So you think you know Git?

So you think you know Git is a talk I recommend rewatching. I’ve made a few updates to my dotfiles after this talk. And what a great talk it was! We were there in advance, but not on purpose. And such a good decision that was! The room got 100% full and many people were not allowed to stay since no one is allowed to sit on the stairs due to fire safety rules.

🧇 Other Notes

Vlaamse Suikerwaffle

Fascinating Lime Beer

Deadly Airbnb Stairs

There are still some things I want to note, but they don’t make their own paragraph - I think. So I’m just leaving you with a bullet point list of what I hope are going to be quick notes:

All talks are live-streamed and also recorded, so you can watch them wherever you are. After the conference, they start getting published online. I’m not sure about the timeline for this, but I do hope it’s soon as there’s one or two talks I want to watch.
Always go to the room of the talks you want to see way earlier than you think is early. You’ll be surprised by how many other people also want to hear about the same thing as you, even if it sounds like the tiniest niche ever.
Fresh suikerwaffles have completely ruined my waffle experience from now on. I don’t know what I’ve eaten during the rest of my life, but I think I had the most delicious waffles I’ve ever had this weekend. And they were plain suikerwaffles.
The Airbnbs I choose in Brussels also have creepy stairs. I don’t know how I do this, but it’s not the first time. I always think I’ll die there.
Lime beer is an oddly fascinating beer. I was a bit surprised it was green, but I honestly have no idea what I was expecting. Very tasty I must say. Always try something different.

I should learn how to take better notes next year. I’m not sure on how to act on the notes I have taken. I just noted down the links for the things that looked the most interesting to me, and I definitely want to see there’s anything I can do with the maps/transports/railway-stuff.

Until next FOSDEM!

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Recently in January '24

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 09:53:09 +0100

January was a very busy month, which I did not really expect. More importantly, it’s already gone. One twelfth of the year has already passed. How crazy is that? Let’s quickly dive into the latest events.

✍️ Website

January was somewhat of a prolific month when it came to writing articles, especially the first half. I wrote a whopping record of 13 articles in such a short amount of time. I don’t think I’ve ever published so many articles in such short amount of time. Nevertheless, that seems to have stopped. My favorite post to write this past month was “When Does Abroad Stop Feeling Like Abroad?”.

Photos Archive Gallery

During January I’ve also created a digital shoebox, where I also added new content that I didn’t use to have online. I am happy I did it. It’s a nice place to throw some things that I want to publish, but have no clear place of where they should go. In other news, I also added an “archive” view to my photos and graphics pages.

🍄 Life

I started my new Dutch course, for level B1-. I have classes twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 12:00 and 14:00. The timing is far from ideal, as it kind of cuts through the middle of the day. I’m lucky I can take this classes, but for the next course I will try the 9:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I will likely write more about classes and my “Dutch-learning” plan in another post.

I have met with quite a few people during different occasions during this month. I have also joined a Homebrew Website Club Europe call for the first time. Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to join any other events, as I’m either too tired or I have something else already planned.

I also had to visit Den Haag in order to visit the Portuguese consulate to renew my ID card. It expired in the middle of January, but I didn’t want to schedule an appointment too soon since the government kept saying the new standardized (EU law) ID cards would be launched until the end of 2023. Nothing has happened, and we’re still issuing non-standardized ID cards.

In the middle of December I then decided to make an appointment, which is usually fine: issuing a new ID-card usually takes 5 working days abroad if I pay the urgent fee. Unfortunately, the earliest appointment was a week after my ID card expired. It seems to already be available to pick up from today, but they’re only open for pick-ups between 14:00 and 16:00 and I really can’t go today as I have important meetings.

💪 Health

I started going to the gym three times a week in January: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It’s been great so far. There’s not a lot I want to say here, but I’m now doing more cardio-related exercises and functional strength training too. Before it was mostly traditional strength training with weights and stuff.

📚 Reading

I finally finished reading Harry Potter en de Steen der Wijzen. It took longer than I wanted, but that’s my fault as I’m not giving it enough time to read the book. I also started Harry Potter en de Geheime Kamer, which I already have over 50% read.

🍿 Entertainment

When it comes to movies, I went to the cinema two times this month. I watched both Wonka and the new Mean Girls movie in the cinema. Both were good, in their own ways. I had to also watch the older Mean Girls movie at home, since I had never watched it before.

In the series department, I want to give a shout out to The OA, which was one of the first Netflix original series. I had never watched it before, but it captivated my interest. I think it’s very nicely made, and it’s sad it ended up being canceled after the second season. Also watched the second season of New Heights, which I recommend.

The most unexpected event this month was going to a theater, in Dutch. I went yesterday to Breda to see the production of COCK by Theater Oostpool. I certainly did not understand all the jokes and everything that was said. However, I followed the main story line - and also understood some jokes. I think it was a great experience.

Looking forward for February. There are quite a few things I have planned.

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Attempt at Visualizing Eve Room (and Weather) Metrics in Grafana

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 09:14:45 +0100

Some weeks ago, I sort of discovered this Grafana dashboard from a Hackerspace here in Eindhoven. Since then, I’ve been wanting to create such an “observability” dashboard for the microclimate inside my home, and also balcony. I already own quite a few temperature and air quality sensors, so it can’t be that hard - I thought.

It is important to mention that the sensors I have are from Eve Systems: an Eve Weather, which sits in my balcony, and two Eve Rooms, which are located in the bedroom and the living room. To note that one of the Eve Rooms is the older iteration that does not support Thread. I also have some Loxone stuff - not by choice -, which also gives me very interesting data, from energy consumption, to CO2 in the different rooms. However, that part is not the focus today. The focus today is on the Eve Rooms and Eve Weather.

The Eve Rooms and Eve Weather are purely HomeKit devices. As you’ve probably already guessed it, there is no way to take the data out of HomeKit directly. Eve has an app where I can download the data from the devices, but that needs to be manually done.

I wanted something in real time. Therefore, I thought: I have a Raspberry Pi. There must be something I can do with it. Indeed: I can actually just install Home Assistant. Home Assistant allows me to add HomeKit devices and then bridge them back to the HomeKit network. They will still show up in my Apple Home, and I will be able to get the data out of the devices, automatically.

Beforehand, I had to quickly order a network switch because of the lack of Ethernet ports in the place I want to put the Raspberry Pi, as well as two small Ethernet cables. They arrived the next day and that worked out well. I installed Raspberry Pi OS Lite, setup a few packages, installed Docker. Everything went relatively smoothly. I decided to use Docker for installing Home Assistant, Grafana, and also InfluxDB.

Setting Up The Containers

I’m using Docker Compose to manage my containers. I will not go into detail on how to install and configure each one of these things. However, I am sharing the Docker Compose file here just in case. Note that there are some variables coming out of a .env file:

version: '3'
services:
 homeassistant:
 restart: unless-stopped
 container_name: homeassistant
 image: "ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable"
 volumes:
 - homeassistant:/config
 - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
 - /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro
 network_mode: host
 privileged: true
 grafana:
 restart: unless-stopped
 container_name: grafana
 image: grafana/grafana:10.2.3
 ports:
 - '3000:3000'
 volumes:
 - grafana:/var/lib/grafana
 influxdb:
 restart: unless-stopped
 container_name: influxdb
 image: influxdb:2.6-alpine
 environment:
 DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_MODE: setup
 DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_USERNAME: ${USERNAME}
 DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_PASSWORD: ${PASSWORD}
 DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_ORG: ${ORG}
 DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_BUCKET: ${BUCKET}
 DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_ADMIN_TOKEN: ${ADMIN_TOKEN}
 volumes:
 - influxdbv2:/var/lib/influxdb2
 ports:
 - "8086:8086"
volumes:
 homeassistant:
 grafana:
 influxdbv2:

After starting it up, I logged in into InfluxDB, to make sure everything was okay and working. Then logged in into Grafana, changed the default password, connected to InfluxDB, and so on. And I also logged in into Home Assistant, where I connected all the Eve devices as per instruction.

Everything looked fine. I connected Home Assistant to InfluxDB and it started spitting out metrics. And this is where I noticed: the frequency at which I am getting metrics out of each sensor, as well as which metric is not… consistent. Not. at. all.

Looking at Grafana

The Eve Rooms provide temperature, relative humidity and air quality, while the Eve Weather provides the first two and also air pressure. I let everything run since 13h yesterday until now in order to gather more data and be certain if there are some problems or not. Let’s take a look.

Dashboard Since Beginning

On the dashboard, you can see all the data since the beginning of the experiment. You may have already noticed: some graphs look relatively normal, such as “Volatile Organic Compound Density” of the Living Room. It has a lot of data points. Others however, look extremely boxy.

I checked the data directly in Home Assistant, and the result is similar. From what I researched and could figure out, it seems that the sensors are simply not reporting the data frequently enough. I took a look at my old exported data from the sensors and it changes every at least every 10 minutes. And the values are always different. So I don’t see why they wouldn’t do it.

And another question for example: why does the Living Room report the air quality so often but rarely updates the temperature and humidity? Why do none of them report data in a consistent, regular, interval?

Dashboard With Last 6 Hours

Looking at the screenshot above, the problem is more clear. In the last 6 hours there’s simply no temperature data from the bedroom, but the other metrics got updated. I really doubt the temperature in the balcony hasn’t changed even .01 during the whole night. I checked in Home Assistant: indeed the last metric for the temperature came on yesterday. I’m sorry, but that’s simply not correct. The display from the sensor even shows a different temperature!

What Now?

I honestly don’t know. I’ve searched on the Internet and the problem seems to most likely lie with the Eve products. However, I can’t find that much because, realistically, very very few people are using Home Assistant with these devices I would say. My goal with this was to have a real time feed of the sensor data. If that’s just not possible, I can’t do much about it.

One option is to simply download the data manually every month using their app and making a visualization out of it. Then I wouldn’t need my Raspberry Pi anymore 😅. The other idea would be to buy a different, hopefully more reliable, sensor just to see if the problem actually lies with the sensors.

Do you have any similar experience? Or even any sensor recommendation that I could try?

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Making a Digital Shoebox

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 10:37:33 +0100

A few days ago, I was navigating the web as normal. After some clicks here and there, I found myself on this page. I looked around and realised: it is a digital shoebox. I resonated with the author: I too keep around (shoe)boxes with the most random things. So I decided to also create my own digital shoebox.

Much like the author of the linked shoebox, I do also keep around boxes with stuff. Stuff from postcards, to photo film, to a the ticket from a train years ago, or just a flyer from a museum I visited in some other country. And I do often look at this boxes. I do enjoy the idea of having them and checking them every now and then.

Digitally, I’ve also had something similar: a directory named “random” where I put all sorts of things that do not have a really good place to go. It has happened before that I’ve wanted to share one or two of these things, but I’ve always had to wait until I has back at my laptop in order to do so.

My Digital Shoebox in Dark Mode

From today - yesterday actually - on, I also have a digital shoebox here on my website. It fills that niche space of things I have on this website, but don’t really fit any other category. Some are just normal posts, dated, but I wouldn’t want to be spamming my readers with them. Others are just minisites that I’ve made in the past. Others are recreations of things I’ve found physically but thought would be fun to share digitally!

When you open it - if you open it - you might recognise some links. Some of the things that now sit in my shoebox were linked before as “experiments”. Others are brand new. I have added quite a few posts in the past two days after taking a few looks at my random directory, as well as other random places on my laptop.

Maybe some of the posts I made yesterday could’ve actually gone into the articles page. However, I did not really want to spam my few readers with way too many posts at once. Adding them to the articles page, if I ever want, is trivial. The other things, however, have really no clear place to go.

Please check it out and let me know what you think!

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Parlamento dos Jovens

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 22:02:51 +0100

At school, I participated a few times in the Youth Parliament. The Youth Parliament is an initiative of the Portuguese Parliament that gives a chance to young students to somehow get a feel of what politics involve. In the end, the measures that come out of this are actually debated by the real politicians in parliament.

Summarizing: every year there is a defined topic. Each school that is participating has one or more lists of students. These lists must debate between themselves and have an agreement of measures they want the school to represent, as well as which students go to the next phase. The next round is at district level, where the same happens, but with a lot more people from the different schools. This culminates with the nationals, which are held in the parliament.

One year, somehow, I managed to end up at the nationals. Not as a deputy to defend the measures of my district, but as a secretary. This session is also live streamed on TV, so I can say I showed up on TV, with a camera focusing on my face, where I actually spoke to a parliament chamber filled with over 200 people.

Nonetheless, I created this post to share some pictures from this day. I’m not sure if it’s accurate, but I think I was one of the youngest people there, in 2012. They also managed to only take two pictures during lunch, one of them with me, of course. I do think this is quite a nice initiative. I’m not sure if other countries have something similar.

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When Does Abroad Stop Feeling Like Abroad?

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 18:33:27 +0100

The title of this post is just a question I added to my impossible list back in September 2022. It has been sitting there since. After making a little cleanup to the page today, I thought: I really want to develop this feeling a bit more, and explain it better, as well as how I feel in this moment regarding my plans for “living abroad”.

I have been living in The Netherlands for over 3 years now. In 2 years, I will need to ask for permanent residence. That is quite trivial, as a citizen of another member of the EU. However, there is something else that becomes possible upon that date: I can request for citizenship if I want.

Choosing a path is not always easy

Getting Dutch citizenship for me would involve doing the inburgering exams, in which language exams are included, as well as societal knowledge exam. Up until this year, the language level required to obtain Dutch citizenship was only A2. Form this year on, if I’m not mistaken, the requirement has been changed to B1. I think that makes sense.

I’ve read about people online feeling ashamed that they have a Dutch passport and yet they can’t speak any Dutch. If A2 is the level required for citizenship, I understand how that could happen. It is the same in Portugal, but I think it doesn’t make sense. Anyways, I am not going to elongate myself about which language level should be required for citizenship.

The caveat that comes with obtaining Dutch citizenship is having to renounce my own. There are exceptions, such as being married or in a civil union with a Dutch person, or if your citizenship can’t practically be renounced. However, at the moment, I don’t fall into any exception. The current political panorama doesn’t depict a very positive change either. I do think double nationality should be allowed by default. This also affects Dutch-born people that have lost their citizenship without knowing because they moved abroad and obtained some other countries’ citizenship.

Anyways, going back to the main point. I have been living here for 3 years and I will definitely say that my home, at the moment, is The Netherlands. I’m learning the language and I definitely want to be more engaged in the society. For this, language is important. In addition, if I decide I want to live here for the foreseeable future, voting is extremely important.

At the moment, I can vote for municipal and the water board elections, but not for regional or national elections. For that I need to become Dutch. Regarding Portugal, due to the way the system works, I can vote for national elections, but my vote has an extremely small impact that is in no way proportional to the Portuguese living abroad. I don’t feel like I’m contributing to Portugal’s politics in any way, even if I vote, which I do. At the same time, I am not able to do it where I live.

And here comes the question: would I renounce my Portuguese citizenship in exchange for a Dutch passport? I think that at the moment the answer is an italic, a bit shivering and uncertain, yes. The thing is: if I plan to live here for the foreseeable future, want to learn the language, it makes sense to be able to be involved in the politics of the country I’m living in. The process takes time, and it certainly can also be sad. But after all, my birthplace will always be Portugal.

In the event that I would decide to return to Portugal, it is more than possible to get my Portuguese citizenship back. At least at this moment, the process seems to be relatively straightforward. Just need to fill some papers and pay. Similar to renouncing: also filling some papers and… paying.

Now… feelings? I think I feel reasonably good about this thought process. I don’t really know how my family or friends in Portugal feel about it. I think there’s quite a lot of patriotism in Portugal regarding citizenship and being Portuguese. I would certainly prefer to be able to keep both citizenships. However, if that is not possible when the time comes, I think I will make the decision that makes sense for me. Of course that what makes sense for me - explained above - might change in the future.

Always look at the bright side

In a similar topic, I have a goal this year: do the inburgeringsexamen, which includes also doing the Staatsexamen either for level B1 or B2. There is no specific reason to do it. People from outside of the EU would have to do it mandatorily in order to apply for a permanent residency, but that’s not the case for me. However, if I ever want to apply for citizenship, at least the inburgering process is already done. In addition, I think it can give me a nice sense of accomplishment.

So to answer the initial question: when does abroad stop feeling like abroad? I think that starts when you start calling it home, and culminates on you deciding you want to live there for the foreseeable future.

I hope you enjoyed the post. If you live abroad - and even if you don’t - and you had to renounce your citizenship in order to be able to fully participate in the society of the country where you plan to live for the foreseeable future, what would you do? Feel free to send an e-mail or something else. Tot volgende keer!

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No Space Left on Device

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 08:32:22 +0100

I think that most of us that deal with Docker have, at some point, being confronted with the message “no space left on device”. Well, that is what happened to me this morning: I woke up, looked at my phone, and had three alerts since 2am that there was no space left on device. Miniflux was down because PostgreSQL goes automatically into recovery mode, but other that than, everything was still up and running.

Now, how did that happen? Docker! Sometimes I feel like Docker is conspiring behind my back in order to use the most space as possible. I rent a VPS at Hetzner with a 40GB disk. Considering swap and other things, then we only have around 32GB that can be used. It is fine. I don’t have that much on disk… do I?

I recently migrated to a new server, closer geographically. On the way, I also documented all the steps and necessary programs in order to make it easier for the next time. What I do think I forgot was to “clean” my Docker installation in the end. I’ve also likely created a lot of containers that are not used when setting up Soju a few weeks ago.

The solution is, nevertheless, quite simple. Just run the following:

docker system prune --all

At the moment of speaking, this outputs a warning message saying it will remove all of the following:

all stopped containers
all networks not used by at least one container
all images without at least one container associated to them
all build cache

That sounds perfectly good. With that, I got around 20GB back. Twenty! That’s crazy. That’s half of the full hard drive filled with useless Docker things. Now it is all fine, but I’d like to be able to avoid this sooner. Maybe setup some cron job to alert me if there’s less than X GB free on disk? Or maybe just run this script in the cron job itself? That I don’t feel very safe about: what if some useful Docker container is, for some reason, down? Then it’ll get deleted.

Have you ever had this issue? What have you done?

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Reflecting on What I Want To Learn Next

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 22:17:03 +0100

Due to all the restructuring that has been happening at work, I am supposedly going to be working at a different company from next Monday on. The team will still be working on the same projects, albeit with more to choose our own direction. This has also given me time to reflect and think about what I want to learn and do next.

Over the past few months, I have been feeling unchallenged. It mostly comes from all the uncertainty of the restructuring. With it, we weren’t able to start any larger project that would involve deeper technical dives where I could learn much more. Nevertheless, looking at what we are planning right now, I still have doubts about the future.

Reflecting about what I want to do and what I want to learn can be quite an eye-opener, especially in these moments of uncertainty. So, what have I been thinking about lately?

Somewhere in Summer 2022, I Think

Learning Rust

I have been eyeing Rust for quite some time. It lays down dormant in my “things to learn at some point” list. In my personal life, I also busy with learning Dutch. Work and learning Dutch at the same time, plus some other small projects, doesn’t leave much time, or rather, mental capacity, for other large learning endeavors.

I have followed a few tutorials, written very small programs, but I haven’t had yet the need to make something bigger. I need ideas. I think that’s one of the most challenging things for me at the moment is to get ideas of something to make. For some reason my mind always discards any idea if it doesn’t have a very clear or practical use-case for someone else. That shouldn’t be what I’m striving for though.

Diving Into the Lower Bits of the Internet

Quite literally, the title: I want to learn more about the lower level protocols of the Internet. During my bachelor’s, I had a Networking course which I thoroughly enjoyed. Unfortunately, during my master’s, there wasn’t any networking-related course that I could take.

I could read about protocols, such as TCP and UDP. I do understand their fundamental differences and know vaguely how they both work. I know how HTTP connections are built on top and some other protocols too. However, I feel like that knowledge is not very well consolidated. I want to consolidate it further. For that, I need some practical application. Something to do.

Yet again, we’re back at what I said when I talked about Rust: I need to feel as if I’m doing something useful in order to enjoy learning. But it doesn’t need to be useful, at least not for others. The learning process in and on itself is already worth it. Maybe I can mix this with my will to learning Rust and combine it into some mini-project?

Get More Comfortable With Linux Internals

I currently use macOS. Before that, I used Windows. That felt like an improvement years ago and made me dive more into the Unix-related world. However, macOS is not Linux. I feel comfortable using Linux, don’t get me wrong. The goal here is to learn more about its internals.

Recently I read about eBPF and that has certainly ignited something in me. The idea that we can attach a piece of userland code that will run in the kernel when some events happen is quite intriguing for me. The opportunities that creates in terms of networking and observability seem to be immense.

I think the question here is: how to combine all three? There’s three main points here: ‌(1) Rust, ‌(2) lower bits of the Internet, and ‌(3) more comfortable with Linux internals. I feel like there should be some mini project that could come out of mixing and mashing all these together. I just can’t figure out what. Getting something out of 1 and 2 is probably simpler than adding 3 into the mix. Nevertheless, it should be possible.

Maybe I should just choose a protocol, such as HTTP 1.1, and implement its basis in Rust using the TCP (or UDP) sockets. Then use Wireshark and pwru to trace and investigate the packets themselves. I do think I did something quite similar at university in C. So maybe not that far fetched.

Anyways, disregarding the last idea, I don’t see exactly how the things I want to learn and work on - while feeling that I’m making a good and useful impact -, fit in my current work. I guess I will see. I’m giving it at least 3 months, and maximum 6, to see how I feel about work and if it’s improving, unless something else more interesting shows up. I have been quite transparent about it, so that won’t be a surprise.

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Vergeet niet om in te checken: Nederlands praten

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 11:06:56 +0100

Vorige maand besloot ik om een nieuwe serie op deze website te beginnen: vergeet niet om in te checken! Vandaag ga ik nog een beetje meer schrijven over mijn Nederlands leervoortgang en ook over wat is tijdens de vorige maand gebeurt.

In het vorige artikel schrijf ik dat het een beetje langer dan ik verwachte was en dat er andere dingen die ik wilde daarover schrijven waren. Ik ben ze helemaal vergeten. Dus ik moet aan iets andere denken. Ik ga het vandaag hebben over TV series, boeken een Nederlands praten.

📺 TV Series

De afgelopen maanden heb ik een paar TV series in het Nederlands gekeken. Sommige waren makkelijker dan andere om te begrijpen, maar het is prima. Mijn strategie is om de series te kijken met Nederlands audio en ondertitels. Natuurlijk zijn er veel dingen die ik niet begrijp, maar ik heb altijd het hoofdverhaal begrepen. Daarom ben ik erover blij.

Maar nou, welke series heb ik gekeken? De eerste was Anne+, die een queer webserie is. Sinds het een webserie is, dan zijn de afleveringen niet zo lang. Dat was een goed begin voor mij. Er is ook een movie, maar ik denk dat ik het nog niet heb gekeken. Ik weet het niet zo zeker.

De tweede Nederlandse series die ik heb gekeken was Dirty Lines. Desondanks zijn Engelse titel, is het ook een Nederlands series. Het is gebaseerd op het boek 06-Cowboys en het gaat over het verhaal van de eerste sekslijnen in Nederland uit 1987.

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In een andere categorie, heb ik De Luizenmoeder gekeken. Als je dit ben aan het lezen, dan spreek je Nederlands. Dus ken je het zeker. Ik heb de film not niet gekeken, maar de hele series wel. Misschien binnenkort.

De volgende is een Belgische series: Knokke Off. Er zijn ook een paar Nederlandse mensen. Dit was veel moeilijker om te begrijpen, een mijn vriend (die Nederlands is) vond het ook ingewikkelde. Toch waren de ondertitels goed genoeg om alles te begrijpen.

Eindelijk, en ook de laatste Nederlandse TV series die ik heb gekeken, is Als de Dijken Breken. Het gaat over… je kan het raden… wat zou gebeuren als de dijken breken. Het was heel dramatisch, en het is een goede herinnering dat de veiligheid van de dijken moet serious worden genomen.

📚 Boeken

Dit gaat een heel kort deel zijn. Ik heb niet zo veel boeken in het Nederlands gelezen, maar de laatste tijd ben ik de Harry Potter boek series aan het lezen. Ik lees de boeken in mijn Kobo terwijl in naar de audiobook luistert via Storytel. Ik denk dat dat een goede strategie kan zijn om de uitsprak van alle woorden te luisteren. En de stem van Jan Meng is ook heel leuk voor dit soort verhaal denk ik.

Bovendien heb ik Harry Potter en de Steen der Wijzen al gelezen en nu ben ik bezig met het tweede boek, Harry Potter en de Geheime Kamer. Die boeken zijn niet makkelijk volgens mij. Er zijn heel veel worden die ik niet ken, maar ik denk dat ik het verhaal goed kan begrijpen. Bijvoorbeeld merkte ik al veel verschillen tussen de boeken en de films op. Ik denk dat dat een goed teken is.

🗣️ Nederlands Praten

Als laatste deel wil ik ook een beetje over Nederland praten… schrijven. Sinds ik terug ben van Portugal, spreek ik zoveel mogelijk Nederlands tegen mijn vriend. Tijdens oud en nieuw hadden we een klein feestje waarin ik praat ook in het Nederlands. Daarnaast probeer ik ook met Sebastiaan in het Nederlands ook te chatten. Het gaat beter dan de vorige keer dat ik dit heb geprobeerd.

Ik heb ook gemerkd dat ik veel fouten met pronomina maakt, namelijks met pronomina die naast een voorzetsel gaan (als een object?). Dus voor jou, voor mij enzovoort. Ik moet eraan werken.

Nou, dat was het einde. Ik weet het zeker dat ik veel fouten heb gedaan, maar dat is deel van het leerproces. Ik hoop dat je een leuke maand heeft. Tot volgende keer!

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