Merlijn Tishauser

Software engineering, platforms & photography

Welcome to my personal website. I build elegant solutions to complex problems.

Quality is simplicity. And simplicity is quality.

It is the standard I hold myself to: clarity over clutter, substance over spectacle. I work where creativity meets engineering, translating ideas into systems that are resilient, measurable, and useful.

I keep learning—deliberately, continuously—because the work never stops changing, and neither should the person doing it.

Gargle What?!

The Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster was invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox, a major character in Douglas Adams' novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


The effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon, wrapped 'round a large gold brick...

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Smart Home Enthusiast

Building an intelligent home ecosystem with seamless automation and control.

Home Assistant
Philips Hue
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Most recent project

Pi-hole SQLite exporter for Prometheus metrics with a lightweight footprint and clean labels.

Latest release Latest GitHub tag
ai-assistant@portfolio ~ Ask me anything
visitor@portfolio:~$ ./start-ai-agent.sh
AI Agent initialized. Trained on resume and LinkedIn profile.
Type your question below or try: /help, /skills, /experience
visitor@portfolio:~$

Tech Lineage

A branching timeline of the systems and platforms that shaped how I build.

1983 ZX Spectrum 1984 Atari ST 1985 BASIC 1986 Logic 1992 Mac Performa 1996 Linux 1997 PHP 2004 CS Classes 2008 Agile 2008 Python 2012 AWS 2014 Docker 2015 Java 2017 K8s 2019 Serverless 2020 Azure Landing Zones 2023 React 2024 AI Assisted Dev
The first computer I was allowed to play with.
My dad bought this computer, and I was a kid with a newfound interest in technology and creativity.
Copying 500 lines of code from a book to learn the language.
for loops for the win, move that turtle around
The first Mac in our family, system 6.5 as default
I bought an IBM PC to annoy my dad, but installed linux Red Hat 4.2 after 3 weeks, because I hated Windows
Babysteps in adding features to a website, mysql as the database
Formal education in computer science, learning algorithms and data structures
Standups with myself, pair programming with JP the Goat
First language I really enjoyed, learning object-oriented programming
After running servers co-located, someone else was on call for failing disks
Oh my Containers.... so many containers, so little time
Not touched since computer science classes, but CQRS and event driven architectures are the bomb with Java
Inception: Have Jenkins deploy K8s with Jenkins on it to deploy applications
Who needs containers? Serverless computing for scalability and cost efficiency
Automate all the things!
Transform a legacy spaghetti codebase into a modern React application, full hands on development again
Babysteps using AI copilots and accelerated development workflows