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About me

Hi! My name is Marcel Bootsman. This is my personal site on which I share some of my thoughts and experiences about my work, private life and everything in between. Also you might find some technical content here about Open Source, Web development, WordPress and Static Site Generators (Statamic is powering this website since August 22nd, 2023).

Professional biography

My current role, since April 2019, is Marketing Manager Dutch Market for Kinsta.

The journey of my professional life started in 2000, when I worked for IBM and was involved in developing a web version of a legacy terminal-based equipment ordering system. After about 9 years, and a diverse number of roles within IBM, the challenge of running my own company became so strong that I could not ignore it anymore.

In 2009 I started nostromo.nl. I started building websites with WordPress and became familiar with developing themes and custom plugins. Within a year of running my own company, I joined the WordPress community by volunteering. Organizing WordCamps (WordPress centric events) and helping out with translations in Dutch were, and are still, some tasks I really like to do.

Again after about 10 years (do you see the trend here?) I got to think about the status of my company during a walk from my hometown to Berlin for WordCamp Europe 2019. Soon after that event, I made the decision to stop my work at nostromo.nl, and work for Kinsta.

Latest blogs

I attended WordCamp Europe 2023 in Athens June 12th, 2023 New connections, relations, partnerships, friends. A few words that describe WordCamp Europe 2023 on Athens. Read more in this blog.
Moving the walktowc.eu website to Statamic March 11th, 2023 Read this guide to learn how I migrated the walktowc.eu website from static WordPress generated files to an easy to manage and fast Statamic generated site.
Contribute to WordPress - This is how you do it January 16th, 2023 You can contribute to WordPress in many ways. The various contributor groups are explained here so that you can easily choose what you contribute to.
A 46km walk - Here's what I learned January 9th, 2023 I regularly walk long distance hikes, as in 40+ kilometers. This time I repeated an attempt to walk to Amsterdam from my hometown, and failed. Again.
A 2022 update from me December 26th, 2022 Since february 2021, lots of things happened. Here’s my 2022 update.
A winter walk around my town February 14th, 2021 Read about my 30.5km winter walk around my town, Berkel en Rodenrijs. I made a lot of pictures, so come and take a look.

Take a look at the archive with more posts

Latest notes

10 questions for your next hoster February 9th, 2023 Selecting a good hoster for your project is often experienced as difficult. What are the important questions that you should ask?
Fix VLC Player deinterlacing not working January 27th, 2023 Are you experiencing deinterlacing not working in VLC player, while it is enabled in the settings? Read this note to find a possible solution.
Batch convert mkv audio to AC3 with ffmpeg January 18th, 2023 Some devices cannot process certain audioformats in video files. Here’s a quick command to batch convert these files with ffmpeg.
How to solve Home Assistant '400 Bad Request' error with Synology Reverse Proxy December 25th, 2022 When you want to run Home Assistant from behind a Reverse Proxy, running on a Synology, you might encounter a ‘400 Bad Request’ error. Here’s how to solve it.
How to connect bluetooth headphones automatically in Ubuntu December 24th, 2022 Bluetooth headphones and Ubuntu, they just don’t get along. Here’s how to fix auto-connect for your Bluetooth headphones.

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