Cape Town
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8–12 minutes
School communication is too much, so my AI does it
Seven school WhatsApp groups, 700 parents, tons of information of which the vast majority is not that relevant for me. How I set up an assistant to read them and post only what concerns our daughter — no coding, about half an hour.
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1–2 minutes
42 before 42
When I started running in 2020, I started with a 2k. It was rough. Two years later, I did my first half marathon, and already back then I was toying with the idea of once doing a marathon. Just once, just to have done it. I like number alignments, so the idea of doing 42km…
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1–2 minutes
Radical Speed Month at Automattic
At Automattic, we’re kicking off a month-long experiment where teams team up to tackle problems. I teamed up with Jon to fix the annoying issue of Woo emails landing in spam folders. We’ve got plans for better logging, alerts for unsent emails, and helping merchants choose reliable delivery services.
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4–5 minutes
2025 running recap
In 2025, after five years of running inspired by parenting, I achieved personal bests in both 5k and 10k races, breaking previous records. My daughter, Mila, also participated in running. I ran over 1,000 kilometers this year, despite the expensive shoe budget. Even after a canceled marathon, I found new opportunities for future races.
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3–5 minutes
2024 Running goals
In my 2023 running recap, I hinted at doing my first marathon. Our son had just been born, and I had no clue what was going to be possible, so I didn’t want to commit to anything just yet. My first marathon At the beginning of this year, I decided to enter the Sanlam Cape…
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2–3 minutes
2023 Running goals
This November, it’s three years ago since I started running. I had done the occasional run before that, but three years ago, I was a new parent living in a fairly small apartment during a COVID-related lockdown. I worked from home, and with the lockdown, we rarely had time to ourselves at all. So, I…
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2–3 minutes
2022 Running goals
Normally, I don’t have New Year’s resolutions. In my mind, they are just a bunch of ideas that cause unnecessary stress because I’m not going to meet the goals. Given that I got properly into running in 2021, I did make an exception for the current year. My idea was to at least run one…
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1–2 minutes
Simon’s Town
Shortly after returning from Belgium, we went to the Simon’s Town holiday home of friends. Kim’s mom had been in Bali staying with her son who works remotely from there. To celebrate us being together again after five months, we spent some time together. For all of us coming from hot weather, the cold and…
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1–2 minutes
Stellenbosch
Shortly before going to Europe for three months, we went for a weekend away in Stellenbosch with our good friend Jono. A relaxed weekend with lots of wine tasting, and some very-well groomed cats. Here are some pics of that trip.
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1–2 minutes
Wolseley
Right before the 2020 Christmas break, South Africa had another strict lockdown. We had booked a place for New Year’s Eve in Wolseley, but only ended up getting there by early 2022. I’d highly recommend the Big Sky Cottages we stayed at for this trip. Next to going for a run in Ceres, we also…
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1–2 minutes
Deer Park
We live at the foot of Table Mountain, and one of the closest entries to the national park is via Deer Park. A few weeks ago, we went there for a quick hike. Shortly before that, a fire had raged through the area and the effects of that were still visible. Here are some pics…
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1–2 minutes
Cape Point
In the last months of the pregnancy and several months into the Covid-19 pandemic, many South African activities opened up again but Kim wasn’t feeling up to a lot of physical activity. One of the spots that we enjoy visiting that was easily combinable with late pregnancy is Cape Point, the nature reserve at the…
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2–3 minutes
Linking your site to the South African Covid-19 page
Add a link to the South African COVID-19 portal on your WordPress website.
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4–6 minutes
Eating Cape Town: Lunch & Dinner 🍽️
Most of our family and friends do not live in Cape Town. Moreover, we have a lot of acquaintances and friends of friends visiting Cape Town. In those cases, they often enquire with us what they should do and where they should eat. After the first instalment on breakfast and coffee, let’s move to the…
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3–5 minutes
Eating Cape Town: Breakfast & coffee
Most of our family and friends do not live in Cape Town. Moreover, we have a lot of acquaintances and friends of friends visiting Cape Town. In those cases, they often enquire with us what they should do and where they should eat. So in the next few weeks and months, I’m going to put…
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1–2 minutes
Franschhoek
The weekend after our birthday party, Kim and I went to Franschhoek. Pretty much all previous times we’ve gone there, we’ve done the wine tram and thats still very highly recommended. This time, however, we were spoilt by our family. Things to do We were able to stay at Basse Provence Country House (Rickety Bridge)…
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1–2 minutes
Hiking up Table Mountain
Once a year my team at Automattic, called Sirius, meets in person. Last year we went to Mallorca, but this year my team the long travel down to Cape Town. One of our activities was to hike up Table Mountain. Route We took my favourite route up the mountain via Kasteelspoort. We walked to the…
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2–4 minutes
Climbing the Gutenberg: The new WordPress block-editor
At WordCamp Cape Town 2018, I gave a workshop focused on getting WordPress users comfortable with the new editor that’s coming to WordPress 5.0 at the end of the month. We went through some of the basic features and some of the new options available through Gutenberg. Gutenwho? Johann Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (which…
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1–2 minutes
Franschhoek wine tram(s)
South African wines are world-renowned and we happen to live in the region where the majority of the wine is made. By consequence of proximity – and probably just because we enjoy a glass of wine – one of the activities we like a lot is wine tasting; visiting the wine farms and getting an…
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1–2 minutes
Open source conference planning
For the 4th year in a row, I’m one of the organisers for WordCamp Cape Town. We’ve got a pretty awesome team, and one of the things I really appreciate is that we try out a lot of new approaches. Open planning One of those approaches I’m particularly proud of is that we don’t just…