I like Xiaomi gadgets and own quite a bunch of them.
I’ve been using their thermo-hygrometer Xiaomi Mijia for about a year now. This neat gadget provides temperature and relative humidity readings.
Xiaomi Mijia E-Ink thermometer review
My entrepreneurship ‣ VAT number for zzp’ers is (finally) to be replaced
Each legal entity in the Netherlands receives a special identification number called btw-nummer shortly after the registration (btw is Dutch for “value-added tax”).
This number is necessary for invoicing, both domestic and international, and—obviously—for VAT payments.
So what’s so special about it? Well, it turns out that if you’re a self-employed entrepreneur, your VAT number is based upon your BSN identifier. Which is quite a blunder from the privacy point of view.
Querying any vehicle’s data by its number plate
The Netherlands has a public service that provides information about nearly any vehicle registered in the country, given its number plate.
The service is called OVI (Online Voertuig Informatie or “Online Vehicle Information”) and is being run by the State Traffic Service RDW (Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer), whose responsibility encompasses road infrastructure as well as vehicle certification, including mandatory periodic checkups (APK).
Google: quick and paranoid
There are sometimes things in the software world world that I, being a developer, still fail to understand.
One of such things happened when I’ve made the yktoo.com repository public on GitHub.
Second dan Aikido Aikikai
Even though it’s been more than a year, I feel I need to mend this.
On March 19, 2016 I’ve passed my first dan Aikido Aikikai exam. Then, a few months later, I received an official dan certificate from Hombu Dojo.
Sound Switcher Indicator is granted a free JetBrains license
JetBrains, the maker of the most intelligent and versatile IDEs (IDEA, WebStorm, PyCharm, and others), has recognised my humble contribution to open-source software in the form of the Sound Switcher Indicator, and kindly granted me a free All Products Pack license.
The yktoo.com website code goes public!
The source code for yktoo.com 3.0 is stable enough to be open for general public, which is something I was going to do from the beginning.
You can now view it on GitHub.
A kind of magic: two-sided conventional USB
Recently I’ve come across a couple of USB cables of Chinese origin (what else).
Cables that are a real innovation in my view. Carrying just regular USB Type A or Micro USB connectors, they can be plugged in both ways!
Update your subscriptions: the site is migrating
Update: the new version of the website is now live; all comments have been retained and copied over from the old version.
Below is the original message:
A new version of yktoo.com will go live on Monday August 19, 2019. Not so much has changed in the looks of the site, but inside it’s totally different.
In this regard its RSS feed links will change:
- Old:
https://yktoo.com/en/blog/atom(Atom) orhttps://yktoo.com/en/blog/rss(RSS) - Current: https://yktoo.com/en/index.xml (RSS only) — as of 19 August 2019
Self-hosting Commento with Docker Compose
A while ago I’ve made a decision to migrate off Disqus, which is arguably the most popular external commenting system for website owners.
The national temperature record is broken
We’re four days into a record-breaking heatwave here. An “orange alert” (code oranje) has been declared in almost every province of the Netherlands:
The 75 years old absolute temperature record established back in 1944 has been broken yesterday.
Sound Switcher Indicator ‣ 2.2.2
The version 2.2.2 of Sound Switcher Indicator has been released. It immediately follows the version 2.2.1 and includes a hotfix for the PulseAudio auto-reconnect feature.