I’m on my way to Melbourne and Sydney for a week of business travel in Australia. I will have Monday afternoon off in Melbourne and Thursday afternoon and Friday morning off in Sydney. Since I’ve never been to Australia, I thought I’d ask ChatGPT for some advice on planning my afternoon visits.

While I’ve heard many people talk about creating itineraries with ChatGPT, I had never tried it myself. I find the experience magical. With a few questions and prompts, ChatGPT generated an afternoon schedule for me based on my hotel location and personal preferences. My final request was to generate an iCal file, including location information, that I could import into my calendar, which it did.

I did all of this while flying at 39,000 feet, with a super-fast, stable internet connection. Wow!

Now that my wife and I have selected our next vacation destination, it’s time to add a new category to this website: Costa Rica. I will use this category to blog about our preparations and experiences next summer in Costa Rica.

This is our second major family trip outside Europe, and we’re very excited about what we’ll gain from it. Our plan is to travel across the country for three weeks, visiting six different locations. I will share more details about our detailed plans soon.

I’m looking forward to this trip because it offers a mix of rainforests, volcanoes, and beaches that are perfect for family exploration and practicing my hobby of photography.

Prices for my private WordPress hosting have gone up to over 250 euros per year. I need to consider a different setup, potentially with Micro.blog, as I find this a little too much for a side project that generates hardly any traffic.

I followed @eivind@social.lol advice and moved my WordPress website (camiel.schoonens.nl) to Pikapod early this morning. I didn’t use any of the paid plugins available, as I expected this to be a relatively easy migration process. In the end, WordPress is a filesystem and a single database, and all site content is saved in the wp-content folder.

@camiel 20 euros per month for Wordpress hosting sounds like a lot for a personal website. Are you using any particular plugins or storing a lot of media on your site?

If you consider micro.blog a suitable replacement you could also look into omg.lol's own weblog-service(http://weblog.lol), or blog tools like Pika(https://pika.page/).

The ways to create and publish a website is vast and very few of them should cost as much as you're currently using on Wordpress hosting. For Wordpress you can get a Pikapod for as low as $2 per month, hosted in the EU.

The entire process took me about 15 minutes once I figured out the steps to follow:

1. Download the wp-content folder from the old domain host via FTP.
2. Export the database as a SQL file.
3. Create a WordPress website on Pikapod.
4. Upload the wp-content folder via FTP.
5. Import the database on Pikapod by uploading the SQL file and overwriting the tables there.
6. Update the DNS records to point to Pikapod.

This is our final and confirmed itinerary for Costa Rica, where we will visit six locations by rental car during a 21-day stay.

We had elections today in the Netherlands. I voted early this morning.

Late this evening, but by tomorrow morning in my case, there should be clarity on the outcome and the potential formations of our new government. While I hope for the best, I do have some anxiety about getting the worst, again.

I was inspired by @andycarolan@social.lol ’s ‘User Manual’ he posted here a few weeks ago. I started working on one for myself as well, but I prefer to call it my /about page for now. To me, ‘user manual’ sounds too rigid. What are the implications if someone doesn’t follow it?

My wife and I went out to the movies tonight. What was supposed to be a fun and relaxing evening turned into a very intense and somber evening. The movie was beautiful. We were just not prepared for a cinematic drama.

I suppose we should prepare ourselves better next time before buying box office tickets.

After a three-week pause due to some severe travel fatigue, I completed a recovery run this morning. This 6K run wasn’t my best, but I’m happy I got it in.

Let’s see if I can keep the momentum going forward. I won’t be traveling for another two weeks, so that should be possible.

Afgelopen maandag werd bekend gemaakt dat Joost Prinsen is overleden. Veel van zijn werk werd gedeeld in mijn social media bubbel. Uit al het gedeelde verzamelde ik vijf links die het meest indruk op mij maakte.

1. Kunstof Podcast: In Memoriam
2. Necrologie in NRC
3. Gedicht van Theo Danes
4. Joost Prinsen over Willem Wilmink bij DWDD
5. Ben Ali Libi voorgedragen door Joost Prinsen

This week is my first week traveling with my iPad running iPadOS 26. I’ve read the MacStories Review on the plane today and started using Stage Manager again to organize app combinations.

Stage Manager and the new macOS-like Windows will probably stick with me now. Only a few hours in my experience is that Apple might have finally solved the problem of working with multiple windows on the iPad.

Give it a try if you haven’t done so.

Tapestry is currently in full-time dark mode on my iOS and macOS devices. I enjoy how it brings to mind Twitterrific.

If you haven’t tried it yet, I recommend giving the app a shot. It’s currently my preferred RSS and micro.blog reader.

Currently reading: Lethal Vengeance by Robert Bryndza 📚

Ik had vanavond weer eens tijd om een half uurtje met Home Assistant te spelen.

Ik heb nu een automatisering gemaakt die mijn warmtepomp aanzet op het moment dat er zon op de zonnepanelen staat. Zo hoop ik het huis te verwarmen met de zonne-energie die ik zelf opwek, ook als we overdag niet thuis zijn.

Omdat het huis goed geïsoleerd is, is de warmte van overdag ’s avonds nog steeds aanwezig waardoor ik als het goed is ’s avonds energiekosten bespaar.

Ik luisterde zojuist naar deze aflevering van de BNR Podcast ‘De Technoloog’ over het veranderende business model van het open internet door de opkomst van GPT oplossingen.

Ik denk hier zowel professioneel als privé veel over na. Door de opkomst van GPT modellen lijkt het soms of content minder belangrijk geworden is terwijl het tegenovergestelde waar is. De door mensen geproduceerde content ligt aan de basis van iedere hallucinatie en is daarom misschien wel waardevoller dan ooit omdat de vraag groter is dan het aanbod.

De vraag is hoe is deze waarde te bepalen en hoe krijg je de vergoeding voor die waarde bij de rechtmatige eigenaar?

When you travel as often as I do, there’s always a #TIL moment on every trip. Today, mine is discovering the existence of the ‘Lower Lobby’ in US hotels.

Morgen 4 uurtjes parkeren op het Museumplein in Amsterdam om de tentoonstelling van Erwin Olaf in het Stedelijk Museum te bezoeken.

Totale parkeerkosten meer dan 40 euro. De trein is geen optie want we gaan daarna door naar Bergen aan Zee 🙃.

My running has been somewhat of a challenge over the past two weeks. I’m feeling tired from traveling and dealing with some back pain, probably related to my recent trip. I plan to try running again this Sunday. I’m looking forward to a good run.

Hi, my name is Camiel, and thank you for stopping by. I am a husband and proud father to three children, an Apple fanboy, a runner, a reader, and a photography lover. In my spare time, I’m always looking for a software or hardware side project to tinker with.

I call Oudewater, the Netherlands, home. I’ve been living here with my family since 2006.

Read more about me on my /about page.