Open letter to bunq

The e-mail bunq sent from a no-reply address. So replying was not possible. I decided to write this “open letter” instead. 

This Wednesday I saw bunq(all lowercase, their preference) had a new pricing structure. I found out about this from Twitter. It was a bit of a surprise. But the more the day progressed and now the day after when I received their “we’re listening” e-mail I keep being amazed at their inability to get the point of what I’m (and many with me) are saying.
Continue reading Open letter to bunq

Almost ten months without Caffeine

Back at the end of 2013 I noticed a trend. Whenever(all the time) I drank caffeinated drinks (Red-bull,Cola, Espresso etc.)  I would get cranky really fast and a pretty bad person to be around. I would be productive. So fucking productive. But oh so short tempered.

But of course I didn’t stop drinking that stuff. They even ordered a brand new espresso coffee machine at the office. It was awesome! Fast forward 6 months. I started to notice some other things:

  • Fucked up sleep cycle
  • Muscle cramps
  • Dehydration (if you live off cola,red-bull and mountain dew)
  • Being very stressed
  • Being very very intolerant others failing at stuff.

So start of June 2014 I decided to stop imbibing  caffeinated things.
It was the best decision ever.  Not that I knew that in the first 4 weeks. My dickishness level rose to 9001. This was quickly remedied though. Increasing the intake of sugars(this was not a good idea). It increased my energy enough to get through the withdrawal. The worst of it was the first week. That was horrible.

So far its been almost 10 months since my last caffeinated drink and I’ve noticed some benefits:

  • Sleeping very well ( no more 2 hours sleep cycles but a full 8 hours without a problem)
  • No more muscle cramps
  • A lot less stressed , even though there was still some stressful things going on
  • People still suck, but I’m far less bothered by them.
  • People seemed less annoyed with me ;)

Because of the increased intake of sugars (to counteract the drowsiness from being off caffeine) I did gain some weight again (even though I’m trying to lose it). But that was worth it…

Tips for stopping caffeine:

Just stop it. It will not kill you. But just take a few days off to readjust. Make sure you have nothing caffeinated in stock and just go for it. You will have headaches, you will feel like shit… You may gain weight. But hey. Its another addiction you don’t need to spend money on. It will take months to get to your new energy levels. Don’t give up.

Now its time to kick another habit. Added sugars!

An origin story of Facebook spammers

(UPDATED 1st of November 2014) Recently(18th of august 2014) I started receiving Facebook emails in a gmail address I own.  Not for a Facebook account that I own but for some guy from somewhere in Cambodia.  After a few days of thinking it was just phishing and not legit Facebook notifications I decided to investigate after I noticed I was getting copyright violation notices from Facebook.

Continue reading An origin story of Facebook spammers

Codomo PositiveSSL sec_error_unknown_issuer in firefox fix for apache2

PANIC ! ACK! You just got your Codomo positiveSSL domain validation certificate zip file ,everything works fine in Chrome.. But damnit Firefox doesn’t work..

Continue reading Codomo PositiveSSL sec_error_unknown_issuer in firefox fix for apache2

Backgrounding high load tasks in Symfony2 using Beanstalk

You all have had this problem at one time or maybe you are having this problem now. You have a big ass cpu intensive task to do and you’re all doing it in a webserver request.

Of course this is insanity. Why would you want your webserver to spend 20 seconds on resizing all the 20 sizes of pictures you need, Or generating and emailing that pdf invoice after a customer has paid.

What if you could background this task and have it be processed on a place more suitable for boring and intensive tasks like the console. This saves on timeouts. There may be a solution!

Continue reading Backgrounding high load tasks in Symfony2 using Beanstalk

Looking for a new challenge!

[UPDATE: I am right now REALLY busy setting up a “new” part of the company in Gouda. So “Jobhunt 2014” has been put on hold for a bit ;) But interesting challenges are always welcome]

Due to the unfortunate event of the office I work at closing down and the company’s other office being 105km up north I’ve started looking for a new challenge. Warning this post is going to contain a lot of “I”‘s

I have 12+ years of experience in web development.  My compatriots are the PHP and other parts of the LAMP stack. I love to tinker, doodle and the other things. (See my twitter/google+/blog)

Besides that I also love working on mobile applications in iOS and Android. I’ve built a few apps along the way teaching myself Java and Objective C. (Time to learn swift!)

I’ve worked in the hosting business for over eight and half years.  And I would like to stay in there.

I flourish in close knit development teams where I can teach people new things and learn new things.

I’m looking for something in the south western of the Netherlands (Zuid Holland) preferably near Gouda.

But leaving the Netherlands completely wouldn’t make me sad ;) Working from home would also be an option.

For job offers and things contact me on Google+ , Twitter or via email. I can send you my CV or code samples upon request.

@webdevvie

https://plus.google.com/+JohnBakker_webdevvie

email me via me (add the curly a thing) johnbakker.name

6 months with the Up!Mini 3d printer

IMG_20140525_112844Back in late December  we received a bonus at work. I went to the  Mediamarkt(electronics shop) in Rotterdam Alexandrium to buy myself a little early Xmas gift. I walked in and within 10 minutes my eyes locked in on the Up!Mini. At first it looked like some sort of coffee maker or a juicer or maybe some other home appliance. But it was a 3d printer. As the video playing on the laptop beside it pointed out. I was intrigued and decided I wanted to know more.  Sadly none of the people  at the Mediamarkt seemed to know how it worked or what were the pros and cons of this machine.  But being the DIY nerd I am I threw money at the folks and took the precious home. Continue reading 6 months with the Up!Mini 3d printer

Cacti rrdtool upgrade woes

I wanted to move from my aging home server to a Raspberry Pi for Cacti monitoring. It takes a whole lot less power..

So I do what I always do: move stuff from one server to the other. (I was moving from RRDTool 1.4.3 to 1.4.7 and Cacti 0.8.7g to 0.8.8a)

But while trying to figure out why my graphs were no longer working. I got the following error:

“ERROR: the RRD does not contain an RRA matching the chosen CF”

Turns out something was incompatible between the RRDTool versions.

I wrote a little script for to export and to import the RRDTool files without having to do it manually. (code after the break!)

Continue reading Cacti rrdtool upgrade woes