Ready for 2024

My tiny sabbatical ‘in between jobs’ is almost over. I’m finishing this unique period with a short family holiday break on the island of Lanzarote.

Per 2024 I’ll will be starting with a US based Product and Tech company and I very much look forward to journey ahead of me. My role will be based out of the Netherlands, and similar to my previous role involves quite some travel due to working with an international team.

For the next step in my career I wished to experience what working for a British or US based company would be about, and I’m happy that it worked out like that. I believe I will benefit from my previous experience working with teams in EMEA, APAC and LATAM and look forward to putting previous learnings into practice in this new environment.

It was an absolute joy to have some time off from work; Time to reflect, time to be a good friend, husband, father and son. I’ve enjoyed the ‘me’ time by visiting some brilliant musea, reading lots of books, running 4-5 times a week, working with my hands, and planning for my return to work.

I’m ready for 2024 and feel happy and fortunate to be in good mental and physical health. I wish you the same. 🍀

The Web is Fantastic

The real web is built on links. Hyper ones, in fact. Links you can share on your website. Links you can send to your mates. Links to pages that can be indexed by search engines so you can find things again (in theory).
Robb Knight

This is a great post by Robb that exactly describes how I got introduced to social.lol, Default Apps and the Hemispheric Views Podcast.

Home Screen – December 2023

I updated the home screen that I use for my ‘personal’ focus mode last night. I’m quite happy with the end result.

Subscription review

I used my Christmas holiday week to review the subscriptions on apps and services that I use. I reviewed all my active subscriptions and decided not to remove any for now.

Like every 9 months I am doubting on a next extension of my expensive Banktivity license though, but still haven’t found a good alternative to the product.

Curated RSS feeds

Last night I figured out that I can use my self-hosted FreshRSS instance to subscribe to OPML files containing RSS feeds from others. By doing so I can effectively subscribe to someone else’s Blogroll and have a form of curated RSS in my own feed reader. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Here are some of the OPML files that I subscribed too:

App Defaults curated by Robb Knight
Frank’s Blogroll curated by Frank Meeuwsen
Apple News curated by Plenary App

The next thing I now need to figure out is how I can have FreshRSS generate a dynamic OPML file of my own Blogroll / RSS favorites.

Museum Voorlinden

The books I read in 2023

Every year I do my best to read more than the year before. 2023 was again such a year with a lot of books in the crime genre. I really enjoy the books in the series ‘Munch & Krüger and ‘Robert Hunter’.

In the Munch & Krüger series by Samuel Bjørk I read:

Ik reis alleen ⭐⭐⭐⭐
De doodsvogel ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
De jongen in de sneeuw ⭐⭐⭐
Sneeuwwit ⭐⭐⭐⭐
De terugkeer van Mia ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the Robert Hunter series by Chris Carter I read the first four translated novels:

Handtekening van het kwaad ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Gezicht van het kwaad ⭐⭐⭐
Jager in de nacht ⭐⭐⭐⭐
De beeldhouwer ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the Harry Hole series by Jo Nesbø I read the newest book in the series:

Bloedmaan ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

My Top 2000 submission for 2023

As of today, you can vote for the Top 2000 of 2023. I just did that just now and this is my entry for this year.

Voting for Top 2000 has been an annual ritual for me since 2006. Since 2020 I have started saving my entries, first on Spotify and now on Apple Music.

My entries since 2020 are available as individual lists on Apple Music. Because there is overlap in the different years, I have also put all entries (without overlap) in one playlist with my 114 favorite songs.