Weeknotes 32 - 2026
Wrapping up work before a one-week holiday, a new treadmill, more DK Bananza, Josh Rouse's new single, and giving up on Obsidian again.
Mijndert Stuij
Lead platform engineer. Runner. Minimalist.
Latest posts
Reconsidering my relationship with the Fediverse
After years on Mastodon I'm rethinking my relationship with the Fediverse and social media in general.
You probably don't follow me on Mastodon
I moved my Mastodon account from toot.community to Fosstodon, but the migration dropped most of my followers along the way.
A not very comprehensive Garmin Cirqa review
Three days with the screenless Garmin Cirqa: featherlight, ten days of battery, no subscription, and it finally lets me wear my normal watches again. My one gripe is the Daily Suggested Workout missing from Connect.
Weeknotes 30 - 2026
Shipping Burst 1.3.0 with 19 achievements, three new translations and a Cross power-up, wrapping up a big Envoy Gateway migration at work before the summer holidays, skipping games while recovering from a virus, looping Switchfoot's new album Forever Now, and switching things up with a Garmin Cirqa, Safari, Helix and Apple Container.
Weeknotes 29 - 2026
Fighting off the flu and losing sleep, picking out new doors for the house, finishing the wristbands in Forza Horizon 6, diving back into Vampire Survivors DLC, and tinkering with Home Assistant while prepping a big Burst update.
I was wrong about game development
Releasing Burst taught me that the hardest part of game development isn't how a game looks or feels, but getting the difficulty just right.
Weeknotes 27 - 2026
Slowly migrating our production cluster to Envoy Gateway, Burst doing well on the App Store and shipping a Zen mode update, reaching Legend Island in Forza Horizon 6, revisiting PSP classics on the Steam Deck, and prepping ribs for the Big Green Egg.
My favorite things on Steam Deck right now
Why the Steam Deck is the best handheld I've ever owned: PSP emulation with RetroDeck and streaming my Xbox through Greenlight, all because it's an open Linux device.
Burst: a free (no ads) bubble shooter game for iPhone
Burst is a bubble shooter game for iPhone with zero ads, no tracking, and no in-app purchases. It has power-ups, six coding-inspired themes, Game Center leaderboards, iCloud sync, and accessibility features. Completely free to play.
Garmin needs to do better
A year with the Garmin Forerunner 570: an alarm that won't reliably go off, buggy software, and why I'm tempted to switch.
The biggest upgrade to CalAction yet
Version 1.6 is the biggest CalAction update since launch, adding on-device AI to pull events from photos and text, easier event editing, and a fully reworked interface for iOS 26.
Weeknotes 24 - 2026
A quarterly tech team offsite at Google Amsterdam, some posts going viral with 45k visitors, getting obsessed with Forza Horizon 6, BBQ on the Big Green Egg, and upgrading all the things on our Kubernetes clusters.
I was wrong about fast terminals
A reader pushed back on my fast-terminal post, and they were right about more than I'd like. On benchmarking shells properly, modern zsh, and the difference between a shell that is fast and one that feels fast.
Cheap to write, expensive to own
Creating code with AI is cheap, owning it will always be expensive.
Life is too short for a slow terminal
I do all my work in the terminal, so it has to be quick. How my zsh starts in 30 milliseconds without a framework, and how to measure where your own shell spends its time.
My Sony RX100 IV takes better photos now
Three Fuji-inspired Creative Style recipes for the Sony RX100 IV's memory recall slots, so I never have to open Lightroom again.
Scale Kubernetes deployments to zero using KEDA
Notes from using KEDA's cron scaler to put dev, QA and staging clusters to sleep overnight: the ArgoCD gotchas (CRDs, kube-system RoleBinding, replica drift), and what you give up in exchange.
Migrating from ingress-nginx to Envoy Gateway
Notes from migrating from ingress-nginx to Envoy Gateway with the Gateway API: shared Gateways, HTTPRoute patterns, ReferenceGrants, and the gotchas that slowed me down.
Weeknotes 20 - 2026
Open-sourcing RSS FullText as my third side project of 2026, finishing Shelldiver and Zero Stress King, listening to RAYE's new album, AWS region annoyances, and hiring a gardener.
Fixing headline-only RSS feeds with rss-fulltext
Introducing rss-fulltext, a self-hosted tool that takes headline-only RSS feeds and rebuilds them with the full article text using readability.
Weeknotes 16 - 2026
A proud dad moment at a dance show, running progress, getting hooked on Shelldiver, new Jack White music, and a week off with family.
Responsive images in Hugo using Render Hooks
Replace Hugo shortcodes with Render Hooks for automatic responsive image generation — a modern approach using WebP-first srcset with JPEG fallback
Weeknotes 14 - 2026
Easter weeknotes: website overhaul with new layout, projects section, and stats page. Plus gaming, reading Bill Gates' memoir, and training updates.
AWS SCP Catalog
An open-source Terraform and OpenTofu module for managing AWS Service Control Policies across your organization with reusable, pre-built SCPs
Weeknotes 13 - 2026
Launched CalAction on the App Store with first sales rolling in, playing Oh No! UFO! and Grind Survivors, and saying goodbye to a friend.
CalAction is now available on the App Store
CalAction is now available for download on the App Store, making it easy to import .ics files into your calendar and manage your events.
Introducing CalAction Beta
CalAction is a new iOS app that makes importing .ics calendar files easy via file, URL, clipboard, or QR code. Now available on TestFlight.
Weeknotes 11 - 2026
Making progress on a secret iPhone app, diving into Diablo II for the first time on Steam Deck, and new music from Josh Ritter.
Weeknotes 8 - 2026
Carnaval parades with the family, recovering from surgery, our corgi Sam turning one, and replacing Nginx with Envoy Gateway at work.
Weeknotes 7 - 2026
A fun team off-site in Amsterdam with VR games and Petanque, playing Kirby Star Allies, and dealing with electrical wiring woes at home.
Weeknotes 6 - 2026
Weeknotes are back! Launched Upgrade My Cloud, discovered Arcadium on Steam Deck, and enjoyed new Arctic Monkeys music.
Just run
Why I'm ditching running data, Garmin stats, and pace goals to get back to running for the pure joy of it. Sometimes less tracking is more.
2025 GOTY
My 2025 Game of the Year is Donkey Kong Bananza on Switch 2, plus thoughts on Risk of Rain 2 and gaming with my daughter.
Less, more
A simple list of habits to cut back on and habits to build: less scrolling and overthinking, more deep work, reading, and creating
Log out
Why I logged out of Mastodon and social media for my mental health, how dopamine and FOMO kept me hooked, and why I don't miss it at all
2025 so far
A check-in on my 2025 goals after three quarters: running progress, a promotion to lead engineer, and refocusing on what matters.
Some running top tips
Seven honest running tips from 20 years of experience: run slower, prioritize sleep, skip the runfluencer gear, and stop comparing yourself
A static website on OpenBSD
Step-by-step guide to hosting a static 11ty website on OpenBSD with httpd, relayd, Let's Encrypt, and an A+ security headers score
I love shaving yaks
Why yak shaving in software engineering is actually valuable: tackling tech debt, writing docs, and refactoring code delivers constant small wins
Pro tips for remote working
Practical remote work tips from two years of working from home, covering focus time, breaks, workspace setup, and staying productive
Smartphone resentment
How my phone addiction suddenly flipped into resentment, and why that unexpected shift might be the freedom from screen time I needed
Forever games
My forever games I always come back to: OpenTTD, Civilization V, Dead Cells, Diablo, Hades II, Splatoon 3, Mario Kart, and Smash Bros.
Garmin Forerunner 570 vs 255
First impressions of the Garmin Forerunner 570 after upgrading from the 255S: AMOLED screen, battery life, weight, and build quality.
My phone number is poisoned
After 20 years with the same phone number, recruiters won't stop calling thanks to leaked data. A plea for email over unsolicited cold calls.
I got promoted
From senior DevOps engineer to lead platform engineer: 17 years of career lessons and why platform teams are the future of DevOps
Silence as a tactic
How I learned to stop filling awkward silences in salary and promotion negotiations, and why staying quiet shows confidence and gets results
I need to reset my inboxes
How I'm fighting digital distraction by consolidating inboxes, scheduling check-in times, and being more mindful of information intake
Practice optimism with a single question
How one simple dinner table question helped me practice daily optimism, focus on the positives, and build gratitude as a family habit
Oops, I bought it
Dell U4025QW review from someone who swore they wouldn't buy it. Spoiler: the 40-inch 5K ultrawide was absolutely worth the splurge.