About

Hey, I'm Kevin. Known online as kvz. I currently work for True, a large hosting provider based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We specialize in facilitating gigantic web sites so we need to nail things like: scalability, performance, security, and in general: cutting edge technology.
In that context I have:

• The lead in research & development
• Consulted clients in building large fault-tolerant & scalable hosting solutions
• Built & maintained a lot of high availability Linux clusters
• Been trying to automate virtually every business/technological process inside the company

In performing these tasks I've used a number of Open Source solutions and this has made me passionate. The communities, the projects, the quality and philosophy.

Open Source

Open Source is a movement. An evolution at revolutionary speed: Developers & other enthusiasts improving each others work to make it better, smarter, stronger, faster, easier.

It's an endless cycle of improvement, and we are going straight to the top.
This process can only be facilitated by sharing what you know and letting others use that freely. This can be in the form of articles, documents, software and even artwork.
Now, looking at the staggering amount of knowledge that's being gathered and made available freely in the above mentioned forms - it's so exciting to think what we can achieve.

Thanks to Open Source, I am where I am today. And this motivates me to contribute and pay back as much as I can.
Hopefully I can help others, make Open Source a tiny little bit stronger, and learn a thing or two in the process.

Projects I like

Some of my favorite Open Source projects at the time of writing: Nginx, CakePHP, Ubuntu, jQuery, Git

Projects I created

Besides the hundreds of articles I've published on this blog, I've written quite a bit of code. Some projects I created grew beyond snippets and now have their own place:

php.js
A library that implements many PHP functions in JavaScript.
Hundreds of co-authors contributed to this project.

Transloadit
A startup by the guys of debuggable & me. Mission: Make the integration of video uploads & processing in your webapp a breeze. Free to Open Source projects & other do-gooders.

System_Daemon
A class that turns your PHP script into a daemon, so you can run it in the background of your server. The class was submitted & accepted as an official PEAR package.

 

GitHub Account
Checkout my GitHub account for a live overview of all thing that I write in the public domain.

Projects I've contributed to

node.js
evented I/O for v8 javascript - changes enabled to run monit against node

aspersa (by Percona)
System utilities to make slow tasks a little bit faster - changes enabled easy automation and were ported back

Presentations

Albeit a terrain quite new for me, here are the presentations that I have given so far.

Eventcache
During the 2nd Dutch CakePHP event, I gave a talk on Eventcache, which is a PHP caching class with a focus on speed, invalidation, and ease of use.

CakePHP REST Plugin
During the first Dutch CakePHP event, I gave a talk on my REST plugin, which can open up any part of your existing webapp as a REST API to your customers.

English

I am not a native English speaker, but I'd like to improve & sharpen my English as much as my technological skills.

So please feel free to help out and correct any mistakes you may find.

Contact & Online presence