Writing on software, aviation, and life.

Lange duurlopen zijn waar de moeilijke problemen loskomen. Het eerste uur is van het lichaam; daarna is het hoofd vrij om te keren wat aan het bureau niet lukte. Debuggen werkt hetzelfde: kracht helpt zelden, afstand wel, en wat bovenkomt is meestal niet de oplossing maar de verkeerde aanname eronder.

De cockpit leert de strengere versie. Vlieg eerst het vliegtuig, en in de tijd die dat oplevert laat het juiste probleem zich zien. Hardlopen biedt diezelfde tijd zonder de hoogte, door elke optie weg te nemen behalve geduld. Dat is hier geen deugd maar een techniek, en de techniek die een patch die werkt scheidt van een antwoord dat klopt.

Some decisions are only arithmetic, made once the facts are in. The ones that matter come earlier, when waiting for certainty costs more than being wrong. Across flying, ultrarunning, building software, and tasting whisky, the same problem keeps appearing in different clothes: how to act on incomplete information, and how much margin to leave for the gap.

Weather is a probability dressed as a fact; a race is a bet placed hours before it pays out; code that compiles is not code that is correct; a cask is a decision no one tastes for decades. What the four teach is not courage but a better relationship with uncertainty: how much room to keep for being wrong.

My mind is always ahead of the moment. I notice things before I can explain them — patterns, connections, details that don't sit right. Writing is how I bring order to that. Not to share conclusions, but to make the thought sit still long enough to examine it.

The four domains I move through — code, flight, distance, whisky — all demand decisions with incomplete information and refinement without a clear endpoint. They suit the way my mind works. The cost of noticing everything is that you cannot stop. It is useful. It is also, sometimes, exhausting. But it is the only way I know how to be.

The moment I arrive at the airfield, something shifts. The rush drops away. What remains is the preflight — thorough, clockwise, unhurried. Not as formality, but as foundation. On the ground you still have a choice not to go. In the air, you work with what you prepared.

The SportCruiser came my way when a flight school standardised its fleet. The alternatives didn't fit — literally. Together with a few flying friends I bought it. Not a single regret. Flying is the privilege of being above everything that was pulling at you an hour ago, provided you took the time for everything that came before.

I had run marathons before. Many of them. Edinburgh, Hamburg, Valencia, Porto, Budapest — cities I wanted to see on foot. At some point a marathon on a Saturday became a training run. And then, inevitably, further. Ringkøbing became my first real ultra: one hundred kilometres around the Ringkøbing Fjord in Denmark, clockwise.

I knew I would break. At seventy kilometres I thought I was dying. At eighty I have almost no memory. At ninety I stopped thinking entirely. My daughter ran the last ten kilometres beside me. I finished. For days afterwards I walked like an old man — and made plans for the next one.

Whisky is not something you drink. It's something you understand — or try to. For years I've been doing exactly that, handling bottles, reading labels, tasting time. Strongly enough to get married at a distillery in a kilt while it snowed in the Scottish mountains.

Meanwhile I was building software. At some point those two worlds collided. Just after Brexit, with a gap in the market and a codebase I'd already written once, we launched European Whisky Auctions. It has been growing ever since. Two constants, one platform.

My thoughts never stop. I think by writing — composing with words, pulling and pushing until the text has the right rhythm and the thought finally holds. This blog is the extension of that. Not a stage, not a lesson. Just: what I notice when I pay close enough attention.

The four pillars — building software, flying, running ultramarathons, tasting whisky — are all built on the same foundation: deciding under uncertainty, refining without an endpoint. Working and being right are two different things. That gap is what keeps me going.