Pesky's links

Sijmen's Wii

Thu, 14 May 2026 05:31:36 +0000

Sijmen Mulder has setup their Nintendo Wii to serve their website running NetBSD. If you coonect over IPv6 the files are served directly from the Wii, IPv4 traffic is proxied through another host which speaks to the Wii over IPv6.

It's always fun to see projects like this, Sijmen links to Alex Haydock's blog post where they also host their website on a Wii and further link to more inspiration!

See also This blog is running on a recycled Google Pixel 5 by Dom Corriveau with my notes for more.

I discovered this via Hacker News.

Nieuwe Belgische locomotieven van NMBS verschijnen in Nederland voor test- en toelatingsritten

Wed, 13 May 2026 17:53:48 +0000

It seems the test runs for the new Belgian HLE 17's are well underway in the Netherlands in the Hanzelijn, between Lelystad and Zwolle.

These are Alstom Traxx 3 MS locomotives capable of running in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany at speeds up to 200km/h. The locomotives will run the EuroCity service between Rotterdam and Brussels taking over from the TRAXX F140 MS2 (Serie 186).

Martin van Vulpen has shares these details along with some more pictures.

As an aside, some more information on the Hanzelijn:

De spoorlijn tussen Lelystad en Zwolle geldt al jaren als een geliefde testlocatie voor nieuw spoorwegmaterieel. Dankzij de moderne infrastructuur, de aanwezigheid van het beveiligingssysteem ERTMS en de mogelijkheid om met hoge snelheden te rijden, vormt de lijn een ideaal proefterrein voor uitgebreide dynamische testen. Hoewel de Hanzelijn ontworpen is voor snelheden tot 200 kilometer per uur, worden dergelijke snelheden in de praktijk vrijwel uitsluitend tijdens test- en toelatingsritten gereden.

EU clears Lisbon light rail contract after CRRC dropped from bid over Chinese subsidies

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:18:10 +0000

In March 2025, Metropolitano de Lisboa published a tender for roughly 450 million euros to build the Violet line. After bids failing to meet the budget, the tender was revised with a budget of 600 million euros and was published a month later in April 2025.

The 11.5km Violet line is planned to begin in Loures, connect with the yellow line at Odivelas, and continue further to Hospital Beatriz Ângelo. The tender includes 12 light rail vehicles and three years of maintenance.

The new bids included FCC, Teixeria Duarte, MasterStyle and Mota-Engil, with subcontractor CRRC. The Mota-Engil consortium was the lowest bid out of the four. An investigation was launched on 5 November 2025 into Mota-Engil's bid under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), which came into effect on 13 July 2023. Chinese rolling-stock manufacturer, CRRC, was found to have an unfair advantage because of foreign subsidies. The Mota-Engil consortium was permitted to swap CRRC for Polish rolling-stock manufacturer, SEPA, and continue the bid.

Given this was the first time FSR conditions were applied and used in a public tender, it will be interesting to see what precedents this sets for the future. Also worth reading is Dan Jensen's analysis of the decision, titled The Lisbon FSR ruling was never about the price.

Open Source Gave Me Everything Until I Had Nothing Left to Give

Sat, 09 May 2026 04:17:06 +0000

Kenneth Reitz writes about his experience and the importance of setting up boundaries between yourself, your employer and your projects.

I discovered this essay through the Brain Baker's March favourites.

Barcelona: The Drunken Metro and the Sober Bus

Sat, 09 May 2026 03:37:45 +0000

Jarrett Walker introduces the concept of standard (i.e. rectangular) and polar transit network topologies.

Transit grids can be standard or polar, but are almost always some subtle fusion of the two. The polar grid arises when there’s a huge center on which the network logically converges, because desirable destinations are packed most tightly there.

Barcelona's bus network is a good example of a rectangular grid with horizontal and vertical routes. Utrecht, on the other hand, has a distinct polar grid focusing on it's historic centre and railway station. With this layout it's common to see shorter bus stop spacing towards the centre and/or higher frequency as several bus routes overlap.

What would be interesting to look into is if rectangular grids also show a similar pattern of shorter stop spacing or higher frequency at hotspots in the city.

Using a keyboard, mouse and touchpad

Thu, 07 May 2026 06:26:16 +0000

I first learnt how to touch type many years ago at school through BBC's Bitesize learning, more specifically their Dance Mat Typing game. A few months ago I happend to run into this resource again through Chad McCullough on Mastodon and I was delighted to see it's still active and working. The memories!

QuickQWERTY

Thu, 07 May 2026 06:14:51 +0000

QuickQWERTY is a well designed touch typing website, built by Susam Pal, that helps create muscle memory through units. The website is also open source and the README has some more information. I'm using this to help correct some bad habits I've picked up along the years.

GoVolta stopt met ritten naar Hamburg

Tue, 05 May 2026 16:36:48 +0000

Reports from Martijn van Vulpen and mobilithib both confirm that GoVolta will be suspending their Amsterdam to Hamburg service in June. It seems the carriages will be used on the much more popular Amsterdam-Berlin route, upping the frequency from three to six trips per week. It's also expected that the train service will switch to buses soon until the suspension in June.

I actually believed this would be GoVolta's major differentiator, given there are currently no direct trains from Amsterdam to Hamburg. Also, this service could have been extended in the future to meet their ambitions to connect with Copenhagen.

Zoomquilt - The infinitely zooming image

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:41:30 +0000

Infinitely zooming art by Nikolaus Baumgarten and other illustrators, the about link on has some very interesting internet history on this project.

I discovered this site through the weird_wide_web_hole.

Chasing A380s across the Pacific

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:56:27 +0000

Some close up shots of A380s flying across the Pacific from LouB747, a 747-8 pilot. They look incredible.