Willem L. Middelkoop

I am half Frisian: my mem, my pake and my beppe come from Fryslân.

Most of the websites I showed here lately were restaurants, bars and shops.

A website does not have to be a brochure you scroll past.

Great pictures matter.

Tom and Melanie Alaerds sell water filters from Hegelsom, with a 9.9/10 from almost two thousand reviews.

Outcast (1999) is a work of art, and one of my favourite games ever: Cutter Slade, the planet Adelpha, its voxel landscapes and its orchestral score.

My mail, WhatsApp and Signal now live in one app I built myself.

My wife Ellen works at Thinc Ahead, an events agency in Eindhoven.

On Sunday 13 September my son Jurre (7) and I built a game.

On Sunday evening 6 September I built a small app to write by hand on the Framework 12.

On 11 August I wrote in my notebook: the speed at which we move is about twenty times the old top speed.

In August my phone changed.

In August my computer setup changed more than it had in years.

For nine years a smartwatch was on my wrist.

80% is better than nothing.

This month I brought Lemmid Count back: the website statistics of my platform, rebuilt from scratch without AWStats and without a database.

Halfway June I came back from Amsterdam buzzing.

Last Monday I rode the Fietselfstedentocht, my hottest edition ever, on my fixed gear bike.

While working with AI-agents to build things I often iterate through versions of the thing I am building.

Between 15 March and 12 April I crossed three finish lines: the Lentemarathon in Amstelveen, six weeks after my knee gave out, the Venloop half marathon with the Watch left at home, and the Rotterdam marathon on a knee I did not trust and without any time…

In the first week of April I did the SEO job I had put off for years: new landing pages and thousands of cross-links, on willem.com and on two customer sites, generated through the new API of my platform.

In March a website without people reached second place in Google, right under the incumbent, and the phone rang.

Somewhere I find programming with AI like an electric bicycle.

An observer writing a daily log of what it sees watching Earth, it uses no names of countries or organisations, instead it speaks in metaphorical descriptions.

This month I shipped three games in three weeks: a rebuild of Block 89, a brand new arcade racer called Outburn 87, and a new engine for Snake '97, the game millions of you carry in your pocket.

Large language models are commonly accessed in chat form, you ask or prompt something and the 'AI' answers.

Experimenting with new technology sometimes means starting from a blank canvas: letting go of the structures you built over the years, such as a content management system, and re-imagining the world from nothing.

In the last week of January I could not keep my mind on a task.

Doubling my daddy duties with my love for endurance sports, I decided to take advantage of me living in the countryside and run to the store through nature, following local creeks and trails.

Suggested by a friend in thinking, I just finished reading the book 'The Pathless Path' by Paul Millerd.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of my blog.

Since two months I have been using a mechanical keyboard, a NuPhy Air60 with Moss (60gf) switches.

Just look around the modern web today, thanks to AI generated texts and images everything feels polished, perfect... and a little cold.

Why do you need a website, and what can you do to maximise its value while minimising (manual) effort?

AI got me thinking lately, why would one still want to work?

After helping a family member migrate to a new computer, I found myself with an old iMac.

Enjoy distraction free listening to long form audio files like podcasts and audiobooks using this app I made.

In Europe the summer holidays are nearing their end and if you are like many young parents, you probably shot a ton of new photos and videos.

Last week I sat with a customer looking at the new willem.com homepage where I use a narrative to tell about the things I do.

Over the years I have experimented with different digital tools, platforms and apps to get my work done.

In Dutch, there's a great word: voorsorteren.

For my entire career, I've had a clear goal: to stay a company of one.

Last week I ran into unexpected trouble during a routine maintenance procedure on my company's email infrastructure.

Yesterday I finished the Leiden Marathon, it was the hardest 42K I ever completed due to the temperature.

Grossing over $48K a month, the flight simulator game by Pieter Levels spurred a whole flurry of innovation.

While running my rounds around the village, it struck me that I could use ThreeJS to craft a dynamic 3D representation of my workout data.

Gran Fondo, the app that tracks runs and rides, is going open-source.

While sitting in the train the guy in front of me surprised me, out of his fancy pants he pulled this well worn, patina rich, piece of tech.

Consumer electronics often lock us into sealed hardware and forced upgrades, creating enormous e-waste.

Tired of being constantly nudged toward "more relevant content", I built a script to break free from commercial or closed-source podcast apps.