Netherlands and more

Preface

I’ve been using my Linksys E4200 router for about eight years and was quite happy with its very robust operation. However, any hardware is destined to get outdated over time.

Firstly, as soon as we’d moved from our former apartment into a three-storey house it became evident the Wi-Fi coverage was suboptimal. In some remote corner you’d sometimes hardly get any connection at all. Secondly, it didn’t support modern IEEE standards such as 802.11ac, which was also hurting the bandwidth.

Thus eventually I’ve decided to go for a mesh Wi-Fi system.

Read on »

TGIF — time for wine (and a review)!

I’ve been using the electric corkscrew Xiaomi Mijia for more than a year now and I’m pretty happy with it.

It features a rechargeable battery, which means there’s one more gadget to charge. However, I dare say you won’t need to charge it frequently unless you drink wine a crate a day.

Read on »

If you like ordering cheap gadgets and other stuff from AliExpress (and similar online stores) like I do, you may find this useful.

For all shipments originating from within the EU no extra charges are to be paid in the Netherlands.

For all other countries, the Dutch customs regulation establishes a duty-free threshold of € 22 per package.

Read on »

It’s a known fact some common words in one language may sound pretty rude or even offensive in another. Furthermore, some words in the same language can be confusing.

Take Dutch and English.

If, for example, one typed “Buurvrouw, wat een mooie koolmezen, maar wat doet mijn haan op uw ezel?” into Google Translate, he’d be presented the following translation:

Read on »

Good morning dear patient! Please tell me, what do you observe on this photo?

Read on »

It’s a short how-to on inscribing your jo (wooden stick), tanto (wooden dagger), bokken (wooden sword)—or anything else made of wood—with an arbitrary text or image.

Read on »

MySQL Workbench is a very handy administration tool for the MySQL database server. Unfortunately, it has been removed from mainline Ubuntu repositories as of Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo.

Read on »

Today I’ve received a parcel from the almighty AliExpress. A pretty puzzling one.

You’d be puzzled, too. What do you think an “inflatable treasure” is?

Read on »

I’ve made a simple online service for looking up Dutch abbreviations and their English translations.

Please meet afk.best!

Read on »

The Dutch will never stop to impress me with their ingenuity.

Being sustainable is now trending in Europe—and in Holland in particular. So in June 2019 my client, NS, has installed a special kind of swing at the Utrecht Centraal railway station.

This new attraction was presented during the “Sustainability Week” (Duurzame Week), and it can charge your mobile phone!

Read on »

Interest rates on mortgages in Holland have already been sliding for about seven years.

Dutch banks traditionally update their interest rates in August following the propositions by the Ministry of Finance.

According to De Hypotheekshop, the average mortgage IR is 2.18% as of end of August 2019.

Read on »

Today I’ve experienced a real paradigm shift. As I’ve found out, cubes are not the only shape you find sugar formed into (which has been my conviction for more then four decades to now). There also exist sugar cylinders!

Read on »