Eclipse 2026

Eclipse 2026

I’ll probably not be the only one to take pictures of and write about the solar eclipse of 2026. Last time I witnessed one was 27 years ago, and my family and I travelled to the north of France to witness the complete eclipse. This time I stayed home, but I did take some pictures. The eclipse was “only” 90%, but it still was and is an intriguing phenomenon to witness. Pictures taken with a Canon 6D, Canon 70-200 F2.8 lens, 2X extender (so effectively 400mm). I had to use an ND1000 filter to dim the light enough to take the pictures below. The collages are made with ChatGPT, but no images were altered using AI.

Actually, an eclipse is quite boring to photograph, unless you have the really long lenses, isn’t it?

I made a game!

I made a game!

Or rather, I made Claude make a game for me. I wanted to experiment with something Claude had not yet seen in the context of my deveopment work. And I also have a fondness for retro consoles. So I pointed it to GB Studio and told it to make a game for me. Star Trek themed scoller/shooter.

Over the course of maybe 4-5 evenings I had it refine gameplay, generate artwork, create game assets, write code and debug animations. And I must say, I’m impressed. So impressed even I put it on itch.io for everyone to download. If you’re interested, visit https://freeman82.itch.io/5-year-mission for the project page, or https://github.com/roaldvandoorn/5yearmission if you want to report issues, or want to contribute to the project.

It generated a game in which the player pilots the Enterprise through 5 missions, of 10 levels each, reaching an iconic planet afterwards. Featuring highscores, music, sound effects, a complete experience.

Year 1 – Klingons

Year 2 – Romulans

Year 3 – Ferengi

Year 4 – Cardassians

And finally … The Borg

Highscores

Boxart

One year of photos during Covid-19

We’re almost one year in to the pandemic and it’s effects in the Netherlands. March 18, 2020 was the day I started working from home. In this time we’ve had several phases of more or less lockdown. As a result, I’ve started taking more pictures of places I went. A selection of my best pictures of this corona year. Almost all pictures exclusively shot with my Canon 60D.

EKON23

Earlier this week I presented at the Entwickler Konferenz in Düsseldorf, or EKON 23, on all things Delphi-related. It was a lot of fun to talk to so many familiar faces, and to see so many new people there. It really fills me with joy to see that the Delphi community is still alive and looks to be growing again.

At the end of this post you can find the slides for the presentations I gave, but first a few pictures.

My presentations can be found at the following locations.

Continuous Delivery with a legacy VCL application:
https://github.com/roaldvandoorn/conference-presentations/raw/master/20191027%20-%20EKON23/CD%20with%20Legacy%20VCL/EKON23%20-%20CD%2BVCL.pptx

Cross Functional Agile Teams:
https://github.com/roaldvandoorn/conference-presentations/raw/master/20191027%20-%20EKON23/Agile/Agile.pptx

I hope to be back at EKON24, 2-4 November next year. See you all there again?