On Tuesday around noon I received news that my unofficial aunt had had a stroke on Monday evening. She had been rushed to the hospital and they found a big clot deep inside of the brain stem. This news hit hard. It felt like someone just hit me in the stomach with a two-by-four. I … Continue reading »
A bond between a boy and a Lady
To be honest, when I was little we always had dogs in the house. We had big dogs like our Saint-Bernard and our Newfoundlander that looked a bit like this. She was called Lady and was the dog that left the biggest impact on me since I still talk about her a lot. She once … Continue reading »
A cat’s life
You know what, I might actually come back as a cat next life. If I get to choose in which part of the world. And in which family. I’m just not sure if I want to be a male one that hurts every female that he has sex with. Or as a female getting hurt … Continue reading »
The renovation kanban
I admit, I’m taking this personal kanban (#pkflow) thing to the next level. Because we only do work around the house in the weekends and only when we’re home *duh* I decided to create a separate kanban just for the construction, renovation and DIY tasks at hand. I choose one color pen specifically for all … Continue reading »
Practicing legacy rescue techniques
A little over a week ago it was time for our first legacycoderetreat of 2012 here in Belgium. I was lucky enough to work with Adrian Bolboaca again on this retreat. He is a serious influence and inspiration to me when it comes to software craftsmanship. I went to pick him up at the train station. Yes, he really flew … Continue reading »
My first real bike ride in Affligem
It’s been 5 years since I lived in Antwerp, my roots. I’ve lived on the outskirts of the big city all my life. I was used to pavement, concrete, houses and everything. And I always tried to escape the hubbub by going to the park when the sun was out. I used to take my bike everywhere, ride … Continue reading »
Transformer personal kanban
It’s been a couple of weeks since I went to London to spend a day with Jim Benson about personal kanban. I’ve been trying out different things to help me structure and visualize my work for over two years now. Going from To-Do list hell to the comfortable feeling of a personal kanban was something I … Continue reading »
World’s first gamestorming retreat
A big turnout for our first gamestorming retreat experiment. We got people coming over from Germany. Some of the participants were already familiar with gamestorming and some knew about the concept but never really tried it before. Just to get to know each other, we started off with a personal identity card. As the central … Continue reading »
Dealing with legacy in ruby
Last Friday I got to spend another day with the dev team at Protime, running a coderetreat on dealing with legacy code this time. I don’t call it a legacycoderetreat here because it was really different from what J.B. showed us last year. Since I was working with a team that already had their end-to-end tests … Continue reading »
In-house coderetreat workshop
On Friday 13 January I facilitated my first in-house coderetreat workshop at a company in Antwerp. When I arrived there 10 minutes before the start, all seven developers were already sitting there. They were set up, fired up and curious what this day would bring. It’s a little bit different from facilitating public retreats where … Continue reading »
