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April Fools 2026

https://blog.koenvh.nl/april-fools-2026

Published: June 4, 2026 21:00

Even though it's already June, I still wanted to make a (short) post about the things I did for April Fools this year. Like previous year I spent some time making some fun contraptions, where asking "why?" would be the wrong question. Sadly this year I had…

Waarom het Ministerie van Defensie een "vibe coder" zocht

https://blog.koenvh.nl/waarom-het-ministerie-van-defensie-een-vibe-coder-zocht

Published: April 7, 2026 10:01

Dit is een vervolg op Vibe coding bij het Ministerie van Defensie. Kort samengevat: het Ministerie van Defensie had een detacheringsopdracht online gezet waarin stond dat ze op zoek waren naar een "senior vibe/AI developer". Daarop had ik een woo-verzoek…

Weird clocks and historic time

https://blog.koenvh.nl/weird-clocks-and-historic-time

Published: March 24, 2026 17:54

I've always liked giving a slight twist to everyday objects, and clocks are no exception. Seeing the time is so ubiquitous that it's hardly something you ever think about. This post is about two interesting clocks I made. Admittedly they're more art pieces…

Wat is er met alle blockchainpilots gebeurd?

https://blog.koenvh.nl/wat-is-er-met-alle-blockchainpilots-gebeurd

Published: March 13, 2026 11:23

Zo'n tien jaar geleden was de blockchain een enorme rage. In talkshows werd gepraat over alle problemen die nu opgelost konden worden met de blockchain. In de krant en op TV werd geprobeerd om de werking van de blockchain begrijpelijk uit te leggen, zoals…

Vibe coding bij het Ministerie van Defensie

https://blog.koenvh.nl/vibe-coding-bij-het-ministerie-van-defensie

Published: February 25, 2026 16:31

Recentelijk kwam ik erachter dat het Ministerie van Defensie op zoek is naar "een gedreven Vibe-Coder en AI-developer specialist die als onmisbare schakel gaat fungeren binnen een OSINT Dev-Ops-team gericht op de ontwikkeling van een schaalbaar, veilig en…

DVD menus and Tamagotchis

https://blog.koenvh.nl/dvd-menus-and-tamagotchis

Published: January 18, 2026 20:09

For a long time I’ve been fascinated by DVD menus. VHS tapes and streaming video just start when you insert them (as long as they last person remembered to rewind them), which is functional but boring. DVD menus always felt like tiny works of art. Plus I…

What you can (but shouldn't) do with rsync

https://blog.koenvh.nl/what-you-can-but-shouldnt-do-with-rsync

Published: January 10, 2026 19:13

rsync is quite an amazing tool to sync files from one location to another remote location, and that for nearly 30 years. Just to be clear, this article is not trying to bash rsync (or /bin/bash rsync for that matter). No, rather it’s a display of how…

Christmas cards!

https://blog.koenvh.nl/christmas-cards

Published: December 26, 2025 20:32

For the last six year I have designed and sent Christmas cards to friends, family, and colleagues. I figured I would make a small blog post about them because some thought does go into it every year. I’m not a big Christmas person — I don’t like the music,…

Streaming on a Stream Deck

https://blog.koenvh.nl/streaming-on-a-stream-deck

Published: December 13, 2025 16:07

If you have read my blog before, then you know that I bought a Stream Deck a bit under a year ago. You also probably know that I like doing silly things with software. My Stream Deck was an excellent candidate for this. tl;dr: I ended up turning my Stream…

Building a custom HUD for Dakar Desert Rally

https://blog.koenvh.nl/building-a-custom-hud-for-dakar-desert-rally

Published: September 25, 2025 19:06

This is a story about Dakar Desert Rally, a game I have a love-hate relationship with. It’s not the first time I write about this game, I previously showed the printed roadbooks I made for Dakar 18 (its predecessor) and Dakar Desert Rally. This time it is…

Let's finally build a new PC

https://blog.koenvh.nl/lets-finally-build-a-new-pc

Published: September 3, 2025 13:30

Recently I assembled a new PC. I figured I would take the opportunity to write a bit about how that came to be, as well as reminisce about the good old times, because as my last upgrade has been about 8 years ago, and I think it’s quite an interesting…

Het verhaal achter het Rijkspodcastregister

https://blog.koenvh.nl/het-verhaal-achter-het-rijkspodcastregister

Published: August 2, 2025 13:50

Voor de verandering schrijf ik een keer in het Nederlands, want dit onderwerp leent zich niet zo goed voor het Engels: het gaat namelijk over de Rijksoverheid en over podcasts (ironisch genoeg is er geen goede Nederlandse vertaling voor “podcast” —…

The tale of backups continues

https://blog.koenvh.nl/the-tale-of-backups-continues

Published: July 22, 2025 13:08

Some time ago I wrote about backups, my love-hate relationship with most back-up software available, how Duplicati had let me down when it came to rebuilding my database, and I switched to my own solution. Let’s have a look at what happened since then. My…

April Fools 2025: Phone books and adverts

https://blog.koenvh.nl/april-fools-2025-phone-books-and-adverts

Published: May 9, 2025 22:13

I am a big fan of doing silly things seriously. Going through with a plan fully, where the motivation is pretty much “because I can” is a blast. They make people laugh. Most April Fools “jokes” are quite terrible in that regard, generally just an…

How I made and printed 252 rally pacenotes

https://blog.koenvh.nl/how-i-made-and-printed-252-rally-pacenotes

Published: May 7, 2025 20:23

In Splitsing drie links niet snijden 500! I wrote about how I ended up making a Dutch co-driver voice for EA WRC. Whilst I was doing that, I ended up rummaging through the game files. It’s always interesting to see how the game works internally. Whilst I…

A tale of backups

https://blog.koenvh.nl/a-tale-of-backups

Published: May 5, 2025 22:00

I have data. Admittedly most of that data does not have a lot of value, such as a list of motorway mile markers in the Netherlands and their coordinates from 2021. Still, I have no reason to throw it away, thus I just keep it on my disk just in case I ever…

Adding a button box for my sim rig

https://blog.koenvh.nl/adding-a-button-box-for-my-sim-rig

Published: March 13, 2025 22:03

I will preface this by saying that this will mostly be pictures. I think there’s more to show than there is to say. I like simracing (driving virtual race cars). Becoming one with this machine, even if it’s virtual, is a blast. Over the years I’ve expanded…

The end of my FOI adventure with the UK Cabinet Office

https://blog.koenvh.nl/the-end-of-my-foi-adventure-with-the-uk-cabinet-office

Published: February 15, 2025 22:30

(this is a continuation of the previous part, and the first part) Previously I received the result of how my request was handled, which was, in summary, only blacked-out text. I have now received the final response, which ends this adventure with the UK…

Splitsing drie links niet snijden 500!

https://blog.koenvh.nl/splitsing-drie-links-niet-snijden-500

Published: January 23, 2025 21:04

I’m Dutch, and even though this blog post is written in English, I’m a big proponent of the Dutch language. I also like rallying, not in the political sense, but in the “going very fast in a car through the forest” sense. Traditional rallying consists of a…

DialNS - a DNS resolver over the phone

https://blog.koenvh.nl/dialns-a-dns-resolver-over-the-phone

Published: December 29, 2024 15:40

I picked up a Christmas project. For quite some time I had wanted to toy around with telephones, because I’ve always been intrigued by the world of automated phone numbers. The fact you could dial a number, and the response from the other end could be…

What the button in my car did

https://blog.koenvh.nl/what-the-button-in-my-car-did

Published: December 20, 2024 20:57

Previously I wrote about a mysterious switch I found in the car I had recently bought, and my search to see what it did. It got quite some attention, including on Hacker News (although in true HN fashion, most of the comments are not about the previous…

What does this button do?

https://blog.koenvh.nl/what-does-this-button-do

Published: November 29, 2024 14:23

Last week I bought a car. After twelve years of service, my old trusty Peugeot 107 in blue has had its best. Expensive repairs were coming at some point, and I did not feel like waiting around for them to come. Plus the existing list of faults (like the…

My continued FOI adventure with the UK Cabinet Office

https://blog.koenvh.nl/my-continued-foi-adventure-with-the-uk-cabinet-office

Published: November 1, 2024 18:55

(this is a continuation of the previous part) The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has not come back to me yet regarding the original freedom of information (FOI) request. Admittedly that was not fully unexpected given the usual timelines they work…

My FOI adventure with the UK Cabinet Office

https://blog.koenvh.nl/my-foi-adventure-with-the-uk-cabinet-office

Published: August 13, 2024 22:00

A friend of me alerted me on 1 May 2024 that a Call for Input was published by the Minister for Women and Equalities, back then Kemi Badenoch. The call was titled: Call for input: Incorrect guidance on single-sex spaces and gender self-identification. This…

Improving the resiliency of RPKI Relying Party software

https://blog.koenvh.nl/improving-the-resiliency-of-rpki-relying-party-software

Published: November 13, 2021 15:48

For the last months I have been working on RPKI Relying Party security. The question I asked myself was: is it possible to disrupt RPKI Relying Party software by introducing a malicious CA/repository into the tree? The short answer is: yes. For a more…

The asterisk around the corner

https://blog.koenvh.nl/the-asterisk-around-the-corner

Published: September 1, 2020 22:52

It seems that a lot of hyperboles get thrown around nowadays. I have read a lot of cases where people say you should never do this, or you must do that, as if there are absolutely no exceptions ever. A few cases I have seen: You must always use HTTPS You…

A month of Astiga's new synchronisation system

https://blog.koenvh.nl/a-month-of-astigas-new-synchronisation-system

Published: March 8, 2020 17:44

This is a follow-up to the previous blog post, which you can find here. Astiga's new synchronisation system has run for about a month now. Which seems like a nice time to evaluate it. Some stats: About 50 TiB has been synced in a month, which is a bit…

Astiga's new synchronisation system

https://blog.koenvh.nl/astigas-new-synchronisation-system

Published: February 15, 2020 01:51

Lectori salutem. If you are reading this, then I am going to presume that you know that Astiga is a music streaming service that streams music from your cloud storage (WebDAV, OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) to your browser, phone, television,…