About
My name is Taco and this is my personal website. I’m a dutch guy living in Norway with my wife and three children.
I moved to Norway in 1999. I married here in 2000, we got a son in 2002 and twin-girls in 2006. Because of this family expansion we started building our own house in 2006, which we named ‘Kykuit’ . ‘Kykuit’ is Old Dutch for ‘view’ (’utsikt’ in Norwegian) and also happens to be name of the Rockefeller Estate in New York.
This is a family site dedicated to my children. I’m kind of documenting their history as it happens. History in the making, so to speak. It’s also an easy way to keep my family in Holland updated.
I really enjoy photography. I like writing too, but don’t have the time for both. I chose pictures as my main means of communication on this site. You know, a thousand words and all. So, I guess you could call this a photoblog if you will.
Cecilie is the love of my life. She was born and raised on an Island in Sunnmøre, Norway. She loves the sea. As a matter of fact, that’s where we met: on a cruise ship sailing around in the Mediterranean. We both worked onboard. She’s a bureaucrat, for which I tease her a lot. She is more beautiful than the day we met, which I don’t tell her enough. She complains that I’m not as romantic as I used to be, in which she’s right.
I hope I can grow old with her.
Sean is our son. He’s four years old as I write this. I think he’s very smart. I started off speaking Dutch to him, but didn’t manage to keep it up. I regret that a bit as it’s getting hard for him to communicate with his grandparents in Holland. He’s left-handed, which means he’s gonna be an artist (or so people have told me). He also talks a lot and his vocabulary is pretty amazing for a guy his age. When I’m looking for a word in Norwegian, I ask him. Contrary to his father (who doesn’t like heights), he loves climbing. In accord with his father, he loves tools.
Then there are the twins, Mia & Ami. Two little miracles. Right now they are four months old and they manage to squeeze us for every drop of energy, they keep us from sleeping and they cry until our ears hurt. But, you now it’s going to be worth it. Miracles don’t happen every day. Two miracles hardly ever.
Since we don’t make it a secret: all our children are IVF-children.
On to the technical details for those who are interested.
This site is powered by Wordpress open-source weblogging software. I used the Blix theme, which I modified so that all the colours are now shades of grey. This makes it more suitable to publish pictures. Contact me if you would like to have the stylesheet.
This site is hosted by DreamHost.
Most pictures are taken with a Canon 300D (Digital Rebel). Besides the kit-lens (Canon EF-S 18-55mm 3.5-5.6), I own a Canon EF 50mm 1.8 II and a EF 75-300mm 4-5.6. I also have a tripod. If anyone wants to buy me a birthday-/ Christmas-present: I would love to have a flash unit for my Canon camera.
As my darkroom I use Adobe Photoshop CS2. My preferred photo browser is Adobe Bridge (included with Photoshop CS2), which I also use for importing, meta-tagging, labeling and rating. I use iView MediaPro3 as my archiving software. Anyone who is interested in this stuff, I recommend reading The DAM Book.
That’s it for now.
This page was written in May, 2006. Don’t expect it to be updated anytime soon.