Blog

An architecture to build a YouTube / Netflix service

In this article, I present an architecture that I use for building my video streaming website with open source components. I am new to the video streaming technology, but I was positively surprised at the number of tools available to make a video streaming service. Technical requirements of the service Should have authorization for retrieving the videos. Should include a commerce and payment (iDEAL) platform. Should be performant (also in uploading and processing videos). A Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago
Clean Room

Lessons learned from trying to consume no content for a month

As published in this article, I took up the challenge of banning most content consumption out of my life for a month. In this follow up article I report on how the month went and will discuss the lessons learned for the future. Major benefits during the month First, it felt great to be around my 1-year-old son without being distracted by my phone. It felt more like super high-quality time instead of having to Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

Een realistisch plan om een basisinkomen te betalen in Nederland

Vertaling van het originele artikel wat in Engels geschreven was. Het idee van een universeel basisinkomen is populair aan het worden aan beide kanten van het politieke spectrum. Vooral in de Verenigde staten is er een discussie aan de gang welke wordt gevoed door voorlopers van de innovatie zoals Elon Musk en Mark Zuckerberg. Het primaire concept is dat elke burgen een onvoorwaardelijke maandelijkse toelage krijgt die hoger ligt dan de armoedegrens. De toelage krijg Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

How to get Bluetooth headphones to work with Ubuntu

So, in the name productivity and as a reward for cleaning my office room, I decided to reward myself with high-quality headphones. My office room is next to a busy cycling street, and during rush hour it can be challenging to focus. Furthermore, my girlfriend is tutororing math at home causing the doorbell to ring many times during the day. My previous headphones where all in the €50 price range and did not have noise Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

A realistic plan to pay for a universal basic income in the Netherlands

Een Nederlandse versie kan je hier vinden The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is gaining traction on the whole political sphere. The central concept is that every citizen gets a monthly allowance that is above the poverty line with no mandatory requirements (e.g., having to apply for a job). Even if you do have a salary, you would still get the monthly UBI on top of it. As the concept is assuming a Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago
Phone Recording Concert

No content consumption for a month challenge

I am never bored, and I am an expert at spending leisure time. When there are 100 people in the room I am less conscientious than 82 of them (understandmyself.com). I would not be one of the victims when the world’s economy is fully automated and taken over by robots because I will have no problem finding enough activities for me to spend my time on. For example, in the last two weeks, I spend Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

First month of the blog, 500 visitors!

This article gives an overview of how the first month of the blog went with insight in statistics from behind the scenes. It is mainly interested for people that read this blog or that are thinking of starting their blog. Data & statistics Post & page visits (what people viewed): Referrers (where people come from): Countries: Clicks (from the posts): Monthly views and visitors: I am quite happy with the visitors in the first month. Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

How to create custom actions for the Symfony 4 EasyAdminBundle

I am working on an API application that automates the deployments to a Docker Swarm cluster which inspired the this article. The application is using a combination of the API Platform and the EasyAdminBundle, which are the opinionated choices of the Symfony community for the Symfony Flex recipes of “api” and “admin”. One trick that is helpful to know is how to create custom actions in the admin overviews. The final system should automate the Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

Songs from Nick Cave you should listen to

When I was a kid and developed a taste for music, I was exposed to the music of my father. For the younger generation, in my youth, we did not have YouTube or Spotify, so we were limited to the music your parents bought (or later downloaded). When we went on holiday, we only had music in the form of the cassette player and then CD’s in the car (my dad does not enjoy listening Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago
Jenkins pipeline

A continuous integration pipeline with Jenkins in Docker

This article should be useful for people that want to build their continuous integration system with Jenkins or those who are evaluating the option. We show in an example of a Jenkinsfile where we build a Symfony application with Composer, execute PHPUnit tests and how we pushed the Docker images to a custom repository. Furthermore, we show how we execute the pipeline on a Docker Swarm cluster with a custom Jenkins agent. The reason for Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago