Geeks dream in binary

Infinite dimensions

2008-09-10T22:21:00.002+02:00

Today, I was helping a friend installing some remote access software, called Log Me In. So I installed the software, connected to the website and made a connection to my own pc and saw this screen : My own screen in my own screen in my own screen, .... It was marvelous : Escher would have been proud.

Lessons in light ... part 1

2008-08-08T15:19:00.006+02:00

Someone shoot me, please. I came home from my South American trip with over 10000 pictures (and I already made a first selection before sending them home, so probably I shot over 15000 of them ... Completely mind boggling)

So, first things first, let's organize the pictures on a file system in an orderly fashion, being storing them by the year and month shot. Since I have also a lot of pictures from earlier travels, I decided to organize those the same way and store their meta information (EXIF, geo tags, ITPC, ...) in a database, so I wrote me a script (bash of course) that would extract the "date taken" from the EXIF meta information stored in the picture, calculate a MD5 checksum and rename the picture accordingly, generating following file names :

DCIM_20080703153727_d7058310087350d882bb3b2aba98969a.jpg

The DCIM stands for Digital Camera Image and allows me to distinguish my pictures from other ones (wallpapers, ...). I even use a second name, called DMIM, which stands for Digital Manipulated Image, which is an artificial created image created from stitching or transforming an original image, but let us not get ahead of ourselves.

A second script would find all files on the file system, which correspond to a D[CM]IM pattern and copy them to their corresponding directory. In this case to /dev/sdb1/DCIM/2008/200807/

The next step was a bit more elaborate : going through all the pictures manually comparing them to each other (sometimes I took 2 or more pictures of the same object to make sure I got at least 1 sharp one) and wielding out blurry and meaningless ones, bringing their numbers down to around 8600 pictures. This process took me over 2 weeks, due to time constrains and working very carefully (I even hooked up a new monitor for this purpose).

Before being able to start tagging the pictures and selecting my favourites (since a lot of people are asking me when I am going to organize a picture evening), I decided to stitch multiple pictures together using my all favourite tool : Autostitch. Too bad, this is only a demo version of an automation stitching engine (You give him a couple of images and he will make a panoramic image, omitting all images he will not need) and you have to select all your input material manually and you can't give him a directory as input and let Autostitch sort them out, so I started creating directories and copy adjacent pictures to that directory, allowing me to stitch them together later on. I tried to automate the stitching process and I even could base myself on some script I found on a blog automating stitching but you still needed specify which pictures to take and although I decided to adapt the script to allow Autostitch process multiple directories, the application simple does not support it. Another annoying feature is that the resulting picture does not have EXIF information, so I needed to also write me a script to copy some of the EXIF information from the source images to the panoramic one, such as the camera model, the iso speeds, the date taken (which I needed for my organizing script). I was looking forward to a lot of work ... Someone shoot me now.

After a day of work, I had done only 14 pictures and still 90 more to go (sometimes having to restart because Autostitch took a wrong picture and the resulting image was less than perfect).

This morning, I was surfing the web and found a commercial implementation of the Autostitch demo, called Autopano Pro, which runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. I downloaded the application and it seemed it could perfectly handle multiple directories, so I let him stitch my prepared directories and the result was very satisfactory (It even copied the EXIF information from one of the source images). An extra bonus was that it was able to browse a directory for images and found all stitchable images in a directory and build a panoramic out of them. A quick scan revealed I had 500+ potential stitchablestitchable images (I always shoot a lot of pictures) in my DCIM directory. Since this application was going to save me a lot of work and time, I decided to license it (the trial version left watermarks on the image) and now it is in the process of generating as many panoramic images as possible.

After some images have been identified as being a potential stitch, they are stitched together and after a first preview you can render it in full resolution (taking as long as an hour for a 10 source images image) and it will be saved on the file system with a file name containing all the source images. This will allow me to build a script, scanning the file name and copying all source images together with the panoramic picture to its own directory and check its quality and if ok, delete the source image, if not try to re render the picture with a subset of the source images.

This story is definitely to be continued as I finish creating the stitches and start tagging my pictures.

Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check three friends. If they're OK, you're it.

2008-08-01T14:57:00.000+02:00

Finally, the new and long awaited batman movie : "The Dark Knight" was released and the entire group was mobilized for a first peek. The movie is excellent and another hit for Nolan, but what made the film superb was Heath Ledgers performance of the joker : the guy is a natural, the most frightening Joker ever (so sorry Jack Nicholson) and Christian Bale never emerges from his shadow. The way they introduce the joker is fenomenal : best introduction of a bad guy ever !!!!

Oh yeah, the rest of the movie is also good ;)

When we left the movie, I checked my parking chip and the freaking machine told I had to pay 1.848 € in parking fees. Everybody was watching me with some dreaded feeling, all excepting me to blow, but I taught it was funny and my biggest worry was not having a camera around to take a picture. Finally, one of my friends took a picture of it and it seemed the chip he gave me was one he got over a year ago and they switched mine with his to see how I would react : I passed the test flawlessly. Even my girlfriend was in the complot.

Man wanted to work in dynamite factory. Must be willing to travel.

2008-07-29T01:03:00.002+02:00

Can you believe this : this guy has travelled to 5204 cities in 231. I feel like a rookie, compared to this. But then again, I like a challenge.

Growing fat

2008-07-28T02:04:00.003+02:00

I am back in Belgium for almost 2 weeks now and my weight keeps on climbing : I came back a skeleton, only weighing 73,6 kilos. Tonight, after the seventh day in a row where I had at least 5 meals that day and kept on eating snacks and candy for the biggest part of the day (and let us not forget the drinks), my total weight has reached 81,7 kilos.

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

2008-07-27T02:43:00.008+02:00

Before I left on my trip through South America, I decided to clean up all my mailboxes (I never delete a mail) and organize all mails in different PSTs, one for every year. So, I decided to use the import and archiving function of Outlook.

Step 1 : import all mails from a PST to a bulk PST
Step 2 : archive all mails older than a certain date (eg 2005) to a dedicated PST
Step 3 : goto step 1

After an hour or so, I had 10 PST files, each containing all mails sent and received that year. I thought. Outlook had messed up bigtime, it worked for most, but there were still mails from 1999 in the PST of 2004 and vice versa. NOT GOOD. Because I was leaving on my trip, I forget about it, until today and needed a mail I sent in September 2006 and did not find it, because it was in a wrong PST file. Crap. Crap. Triple crap. So, I surfed the web a bit, found myself a program called MessageSave, which made it possible to copy the Outlook folder structure to a filesystem and then you can sort them out quite fast (find will do the job perfectly) and then recreate the PST files. Too bad, the program was expensive.

So, I decided to write it myself. After surfing some VBS sites for half an hour (I hate VB, but hey it was fast, included in Windows and up to the task, but I hadn't used it for 10 years) and writing code for another half hour, the program was finished and worked splendid. Now, it is dumping all PSTs to the filesystem, reoganize them and recreate PST files.

If you would ever need the code, here it is :

' ******************************************************
' Sync_outlook_filesystem.vbs
' Rez Kiyn
' ******************************************************

On Error Resume Next
Dim myNameSpace
Dim ofChosenFolder
Dim myOlApp
Dim myItem
Dim objItem
Dim myFolder
Dim strSubject
Dim strName
Dim strFile
Dim strReceived
Dim strSavePath
Dim strSubFolder
Dim objFileSystem
Dim objOutputFile
Dim strOutputFile

strOutputFile = "./" & Split(WScript.ScriptName, ".")(0) & ".log"

'********************************************************************************************************************
' Initialisation
'********************************************************************************************************************
Set objFileSystem = CreateObject("Scripting.fileSystemObject")
Set objOutputFile = objFileSystem.CreateTextFile(strOutputFile, TRUE)
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set myOlApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set myNameSpace = myOlApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")

WriteLog("Initialising synchronisation")

'********************************************************************************************************************
' Runtime parameters
'********************************************************************************************************************
WriteLog("Querying for runtime parameters")

Set ofChosenFolder = myNameSpace.PickFolder
strSavePath = InputBox("Please enter the path to save to", "Save Emails To:", "d:\Data\")

If not right(strSavePath,1) = "\" then
strSavePath = strSavePath & "\"
wscript.echo "You forgot a backslash at the end of your path." & vbcrlf & "But don't worry, I added one for you."
End If

strSaveFolder = Left(strSavePath, Len(strSavePath)-1)

WriteLog("Fetch mails from " & ofChosenFolder )
WriteLog("Saving mails to " & strSavePath )

'********************************************************************************************************************
' Start synchronisation
'********************************************************************************************************************
WriteLog("Starting synchronisation")

syncFolder strSavePath & StripIllegalChar(ofChosenFolder.Name), ofChosenFolder

'********************************************************************************************************************
' End synchronisation
'********************************************************************************************************************
MsgBox "Finished syncing", VBYesNo
WriteLog("Finished Syncing")
objOutputFile.Close

Set objFileSystem = Nothing

'********************************************************************************************************************
' Function to write log line to logfile
'********************************************************************************************************************
Function WriteLog(logLine)
objOutputFile.WriteLine(Date() & " " & Time() & " " & logLine)

End Function

'********************************************************************************************************************
' Function to sync a folder in outlook with the folder on the file system
'********************************************************************************************************************
Function syncFolder(strFSPath, myFolder)
Writelog("Syncing folder '" & myFolder & "' to path '" & strFSPath & "'")

If not right(strFSPath,1) = "\" then
strFSPath = strFSPath & "\"
End if

CreateDirectory strFSPath

Syncitems strFSPath , myFolder

j = 1

For each Folder in myFolder.Folders
set mySubFolder = myFolder.Folders(j)

SyncFolder strFSPath & StripIllegalChar(mySubFolder.Name), mySubFolder

j = j + 1
next

' syncItems strFSPath, myFolder
End Function

'********************************************************************************************************************
' Function to sync a directory contents in outlook with the contents on the file system
'********************************************************************************************************************
Function syncItems(strFSPath, myFolder)
i = 1

For each Item in myFolder.Items
Set myItem = myFolder.Items(i)

WriteLog("Found item '" & myItem & "' in folder '" & myFolder & "'")

strReceived = ArrangedDate(myitem.ReceivedTime)
strSender = StripIllegalChar(myItem.SenderName)
strSubject = myItem.Subject
strName = StripIllegalChar(strSubject)
strFile = strFSPath & strReceived & "_" & strSender & "_" & strName & ".msg"

If Not Len(strfile) > 256 then
myItem.SaveAs strfile, 3
WriteLog("Saving item : " & myItem & " " & " in folder " & myFolder & " to " & strFile)
Else
WriteLog("Path and filename too long for " & strFile)
End If

i = i + 1
next
End Function

'********************************************************************************************************************
' Function to create a directory
'********************************************************************************************************************
Function CreateDirectory(strDirectory)

On Error Resume Next
If Not objFSO.FolderExists(strDirectory) then
objFSO.CreateFolder(strDirectory)

If Err Then
WriteLog("Error in CreateDirectory(" & strDirectory & ")")
End if

WriteLog("Creating directory : " & strDirectory)
Else
WriteLog("Not creating directory : " & strDirectory)
End if

End Function

'********************************************************************************************************************
'Simple function that removes illegal file system characters.
'********************************************************************************************************************
Function StripIllegalChar(strInput)

Set RegX = New RegExp

RegX.pattern = "[\" & chr(34) & "\!\@\#\$\%\^\&\*\=\+\|\[\]\{\}\`\'\;\:\<\>\?\/\,]"
RegX.IgnoreCase = True
RegX.Global = True

StripIllegalChar = RegX.Replace(strInput, "")
Set RegX = nothing

End Function

'********************************************************************************************************************
'This function re-arranges the date data in order for it to display in chronilogical order in a
'sorted list in the file system. It also removes illegal file system characters and replaces them with dashes.
'Example:
'Input: 2/26/2004 7:07:33 AM
'Output: 2004-02-26_AM-07-07-33
'********************************************************************************************************************
Function ArrangedDate(strDateInput)

Dim strDateTime
Dim RegX
Dim sDate

sDate = CDate(strDateInput)
strDateTime = Year(sDate) & "-" & Month(sDate) & "-" & Day(sDate) & "_" & Hour(sDate) & "-" & Minute(sDate) & "-" & Second(sDate)

Set RegX = New RegExp

RegX.pattern = "[\:\/\ ]"
RegX.IgnoreCase = True
RegX.Global = True

ArrangedDate = RegX.Replace(strDateTime, "-")

Set RegX = nothing

End Function

A short description on everything

2008-07-14T01:57:00.000+02:00

It does not get any better than this : We all know the diameter of the earth, how life emerged from the primal soup or Einstein's relatvity theorem (As a geek, I except you to), but no one really knows how we got to this knowledge, how many lifes and money were spent to discover this information, how many people contributed small pieces to the big puzzle called our origin. For example : Did you know Dalton (the guy who discovered Daltonism) was a big contributor to determine the mass of the Earth or Einstein's theorem was used to determine the age of the universe. Well, I you don't and want to know : here is the perfect book for you : scientific and funny. You will love it

And his closing conclusion is one of the most modest ever.

It's an advanced robot ... probably japanese

2007-05-30T14:06:00.000+02:00

The new trailer of Transformers is out. It's completely mind-blowing.

And beware Transformers are in our midst

Home of Doberman Propulsion Laboratories: The ultimate in watchdog weaponry.

2007-05-29T10:23:00.000+02:00

Finally, I got rid of the Audi. Don't understand me wrong, Audi is a fantastic car : comfortable, built for speed, ... but way too popular. Everyone is driving one of those Audi A4 breaks. And most important : it doesn't have rear traction.

So phase out the Audi and introduce my a new one : a black BMW 320d Touring. More power than you can handle (not really), leather interior, every option you'll ever want (what happened to the acoustic system ?) and rear traction.

It's my third BMW. First model was a 1996-model BMW 3 Compact, the second one was a 2005-model 318d Berline. BMW is bliss.

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.

2007-05-19T14:25:00.000+02:00

I seldom have the tendency to replicate other blogger's posts, but this needs to be saved for the future. I do not really have a true opinion about this person post, but taken in account that the person being discussed is my late uncle, I find the post blog vulgar and sensational. Especially the comments of the poster are stunning and miss any notition of respect.

Dood op de A12

Categorie: Algemeen, Uitgevlogen
Auteur: Frank
Datum: Dinsdag 30 Januari 2007
Tijdstip: 11.17 000000

Soms zit je ongewild op de eerste rij. Gisteravond heb ik een man zien doodrijden op de A12. Het ene moment trapte hij enigzins onverschillig op zijn stalen rad, het andere moment lag hij roerloos in een plas bloed. Dood.

Dat ging ongeveer als volgt. Ik rij mee met een collega, tot we op de A12 ter hoogte van Londerzeel plots een gezette man op vrouwenfiets op de pechstrook zien opduiken. Aanvankelijk rijdt hij nog aan de goeie kant van de volle witte lijn, maar een paar seconden later gaat hij gewoon op de rechter rijstrook rijden. We schreeuwen onze verbazing uit, want laat ons nu net ook op die rechter rijstrook rijden. Onze woorden zijn amper koud, of daar komt zijn volgende stunt al aan. Plots besluit hij de A12 in volle avondspits over te steken. Op zijn dooie gemakje -ongewilde woordspeling!- en vooral zonder omkijken. Het volgende moment, een kwestie van miliseconden, wordt hij gegrepen door een auto. We zien de man met fiets zowat 20 meter hoog de lucht in zweven, om uiteindelijk als een zak aardappelen op de linker rijstrook neer te ploffen. Geen beweging meer. Tien meter verder ligt een schoen. Nog tien meter verder ligt iets wat ooit op een fiets leek. Nog tien meter verder ligt een rugzak. Alle verkeer staat stil. We stappen uit, en zien een andere automobilist het lichaam omdraaien en hartmassage geven. Vergeefse moeite. We bellen de politie. De hulpdiensten zijn er eerder. Veel werk hebben ze niet.

De vrouw die de man had aangereden -een jaar of dertig schat ik ze- was volledig van de kaart. Ze was net weer beginnen werken na drie weken ziekteverlof omwille van een longontsteking. Je zal het maar meemaken. Als getuige stellen we haar gerust dat er geen ontwijken aan was. Het baat niet echt.

Wat bezielde de man? Wellicht een glas te veel, aangezien hij niet echt recht reed. Of zelfmoord. Of beide. Wat maakt het uit. Een mensenleven stelt niet veel voor.

7 Commentaren

Commentaar door Nic — 30 Januari, 2007 om 18.24 000000
Ik stond gisteren ook in die file, gelukkig niet op de eerste rij. Ik had vrij snel door dat het om een dodelijk ongeval ging want er dook plots een zwarte monovolume met blauwe zwaailichten op, gevolgd door een anonieme wagen, vermoedelijk de mensen van het Parket.Wat bezielt inderdaad iemand om op de A12 en dan nog zeker op dat gevaarlijk punt met de fiets te gaan rijden? Zo zie je maar dat er maar een fractie van een seconde nodig is…Grtz,Cyber
Commentaar door RudyOdo — 4 Februari, 2007 om 15.16 000000
Stukje uit Het Laatste Nieuws van 1 februari : ,,De fietser die afgelopen maandag om het leven kwam bij een verkeersongeval op de A12 was ere-gemeenteraadslid [naam verwijderd door webmaster] (55) uit Londerzeel. [naam verwijderd door webmaster] wilde met zijn fiets aan de doorsteek bij de firma Saerens de autoweg oversteken, maar op het tweede rijvak werd hij gegrepen door een auto. Het medische urgentieteam van het AZ-VUB probeerde hem nog tevergeefs te reanimeren. [naam verwijderd door webmaster] werd geboren in Willebroek en werkte bij de Controle der Belastingen in Grimbergen. In 1977 stapte hij de gemeenteraad binnen en maakte drie legislaturen vol bij de fractie MENS. In december 1994 verdween hij van het politieke voorplan. [naam verwijderd door webmaster] laat een vrouw en een zoon na. Hij wordt verast op maandag 5 februari om 10 uur in het crematorium van Vilvoorde. Om 14 uur wordt de urne bijgezet op het kerkhof van Londerzeel. (DBS)'’
Commentaar door MJ — 28 Februari, 2007 om 17.14 000000
Ik ken hem, vriend van mijn pa. Ik zag hem vroeger altijd bij de bloedgevers, met zijn zoon. Was altijd wel lachen. Vaders gaven bloed en wij (mijn broer en ik en nog kinderen) staken ondertussen kattekwaad uit.Hij ree altijd zo naar huis van zijn werk. Ik weet wel dat hij niet vies was van een pintje (meer of minder) maar dat hij echt zo roekeloos overstak?! Hij nam speciaal die weg omdat die "veiliger" was dan oversteken aan de lichten, waar je niet in het midden van de baan kan stoppen..Ik weet niet hoe of wat, heb het gelukkig niet gezien. Kvind het wel erg voor zijn vrouw en zoon. En voor die vrouw, ik zou het niet willen meemaken
Commentaar door wendje — 7 Mei, 2007 om 19.59 000000
@ frank..ten eerste: die man, is mijn nonkel!!!ten tweede: hij was bloednuchter, kwam rechtstreeks van zijn werk!! politie-onderzoek heeft dit uitgewezen!!! (dmv bloedonderzoek, controle tikkaart, enz…)ten derde: hij reed met een mannenfiets!!! ten vierde; een rugzak, nee nee dat was het niet..het was een aktentas!!ik ben zelf niet helemaal zeker..dat jij het wel hebt gezien…en niet gehoord via via..want van je verhaaltje klopt niveel…alleen het feit dat mijn nonkel dood is en een vrouw en een zoon achterlaat!!!
Commentaar door Frank — 8 Mei, 2007 om 10.05 000000
@ wendje:

1) Eerst en vooral innige deelneming.

2) Ik heb niet geschreven dat hij gedronken had. Ik heb hoogstens een vermoeden in die zin geuit. En dat is iets heel anders. Leg mij maar eens uit hoe iemand het verzint om zomaar zonder omkijken de A12 over te fietsen in volle avondspits!? Ik zocht gewoon een verklaring, en niet meer dan dat. Bovendien heb ik deze getuigenis de dag na het fatale ongeluk neergepend.

3) Ik blijf erbij: het was een vrouwenfiets.

4) Ik blijft erbij (bis): er lag een rugzak op de weg, die even daarvoor wel degelijk op zijn rug hing.

Ik heb getwijfeld of ik hier wel op zou reageren, omdat het een gevoelig onderwerp betreft. Maar je insinuaties als zou ik hier wat verzinnen of de sensatiejournalist uithangen die toevallig wat heeft opgevangen, laten mij geen andere keus.
Commentaar door Ella — 8 Mei, 2007 om 21.14 000000
Beste FrankIk denk dat het best is dat jij je vermoedens voor jezelf houdt. Feit is inderdaad dat er die avond een heel spijtig ongeluk gebeurd is maar dat is nog altijd iets heel anders dan dronkenschap laat staan zelfmoord suggereren. Hou je aan de feiten man! En dan nog je niets aan de verbeelding overlatende taalkeuze. Heb jij er ooit bij stilgestaan hoe deze heer zijn echtgenote en zoon zich moeten voelen als ze dit lezen. Enige discretie is hier toch wel gepast. Ik ben zelf ook getuige geweest van een dodelijk ongeval en het is mij nooit ter gedachte gekomen dit op zo een degoutante - gewilde woordspeling - wijze openbaar te maken. Wel heb ik contact gehad met het slachtoffer zijn vrouw en getracht haar te steunen voor zover dit mogelijk was ook heb ik mijn volledige medewerking aan het onderzoek gegeven. Maar dit, sorry gewoon laag! Mensen met enige vorm van respect trachten elkaar te steunen en dit geldt voor alle slachtoffers, ook de vrouw die hem aangereden heeft want zoiets doe je niet opzettelijk. Het moet voor haar ook niet makkelijk zijn want een mensenleven stelt wel heel veel voor! Ik hoop ten zeerste dat jij nooit nog getuige mag zijn van een ongeluk het zal veel mensen uw sarcastisch leed besparen.
Commentaar door Frank — 8 Mei, 2007 om 23.53 000000
Ik geef toe dat ik het nu anders zou formuleren, maar het was hoegenaamd niet sarcastisch bedoeld. Ik was hier niet goed van, en wellicht heeft dat er wat mee te maken. Onbewust afstand houden misschien. Ik zocht naar een manier om uitdrukking geven aan iets wat ik niet begreep, en nog steeds niet begrijp.

En ja, ik was verbijsterd en ook een beetje kwaad omwille van de man zijn roekeloze actie. Hoe raar het ook mag klinken. Ik ben ook getuige geweest van het leed van de vrouw die het slachtoffer had aangereden.

Ik wil er tenslotte ook nog even op wijzen dat dit een persoonlijk weblog is, en geen gazet. Ik hoef me dus niet noodzakelijk bij de feiten te houden. Bovendien heb ik nergens namen genoemd. Dat dit uiteindelijk onder ogen is gekomen van nabestaanden, is iets waar ik dan ook nooit rekening mee heb gehouden. Fout dus… Het is nooit mijn bedoeling geweest om iemand te kwetsen. Bij deze mijn excuses. Maar oordeel asjeblieft niet te vlug, want daar schiet niemand wat mee op. Er is daar iets vreselijks gebeurd voor mijn ogen, en dat moest ik op een of andere manier kwijt.

A New York City ordinance prohibits the shooting of rabbits from the rear of a Third Avenue street car - if the car is in motion.

2007-05-17T19:16:00.000+02:00

Perfection. My way of life :D

I did it again. Last time, I was able to fill up my gastank with 65,05 liters on a tank of 60 liter. Today I bested this record with another 1,33 liters.

How far can one go? Better look up the number of Touring Assistance, just in case of.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

2007-05-13T17:51:00.000+02:00

Finally, I found the collected stories of H.P. Lovecraft on internet. More specific on Project Gutenberg

Ideal format to read on a PDA or a smart phone, which I intend to do.

Enjoy

Earn cash in your spare time-- blackmail your friends

2007-05-02T12:12:00.000+02:00

Look what my friends gave me this saturday for my birthday : Nightmare Spawn and an action figure of Cthulhu

I just love the books of H.P. Lovecraft and be honest, we don't wants to be supreme commander of Hell's armies.

Too bad my cat wasn't very thrilled he had to transfer his command (and powers) to Spawn and a vicious battle enrolled. Spawn defended him well and after a long and exhausting battle, my cat finally retreated, leaving Spawn with some minor wounds, but his necroplasmic body quite easily recovered from the inflicted damage.

All hail to Spawn. I'm so happy ...

I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather... not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car....

2007-04-28T17:24:00.000+02:00

I always had a knack for ignoring my fuel indicator in the car. It has even become a sport to keep on driving when the light is flashing and getting the extra mile.

Wednesday evening the fuel indicator started flashing and I ignored it completely, so Thursday I drove to work and back home. Friday it was still flashing and being stuck in a traffic jam, I started to worry, so I left the traffic jam, drove to the nearest gas station and filled up the tank.

65,05 liters on a tank of 60 liters : this has to be a new record. Completely wasted my reserve.

Reminds me of the time when me and a friend drove to Luxembourg and on the way back you have exactly 2 gas stations, 97 kilometers apart. So, I was leaving Luxembourg and suddenly my fuel indicator started flashing and my friend told me to refuel at the first gas station. Being completely sure I could make it to the second one, I didn't had the slightest intention to leave the highway for the first gas station. So, with a pressing voice (and some more pressing gestures) he forced me to refuel the car at the first gas station. At the time I was driving a VW Golf with a tank of 50 litres and I filled it with almost 50 liter of diesel. Although my friend completely freaked out, seeing the counters, I'm sure if he hadn't make me refuel at the first gas station, I had managed to get to the second gas station on reserve. :D

Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route!

2007-04-23T23:54:00.000+02:00

1h30 of stand-up comedian about the evil that houses in all of us. Entertaining stories followed by entire moments of schizophrenia and ultimate rage.

Stories of duct tape, ants being dismembered, the aboriginals, Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil, the war on terror, the evil that lies in advertising, rats addicted to heroin, and how to make Brazilian trout.

Once again, Lebbis proves he belongs to the top of Dutch stand-up comedians.

Frozen in time

2007-04-20T00:00:00.001+02:00

1303 - The University of Rome La Sapienza is instituted by Pope Boniface VIII.
1534 - Jacques Cartier begins his voyage, in which he will discover Canada and Labrador.
1653 - Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament.
1657 - Admiral Robert Blake destroys a Spanish silver fleet under heavy fire at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
1657 - Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).
1689 - The former King James II of England, now deposed, lays siege to Derry.
1775 - American Revolutionary War: the siege of Boston begins, which followed the first battles at Lexington and Concord.
1792 - France declares war on Austria, the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars.
1810 - The Governors of Caracas declares the national sovereignty from Spain.
1836 - U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory.
1861 - American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia.
1862 - The first pasteurization test completed by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard.
1871 - Civil Rights Act of 1871
1876 - The April Uprising breaks out in Bulgaria.
1884 - Pope Leo XIII publishes the encyclical, Humanum Genus.
1889 - Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria
1902 - Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride.
1908 - Opening day of competition of the New South Wales Rugby League.
1912 - Opening day for baseball stadiums Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Michigan, and Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts.
1914 - Seventeen men, women, and children die in the Ludlow Massacre during a bitter Colorado coal-miner's strike.
1918 - Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day.
1926 - Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.
1928 - René Caillié is first non-Muslim to enter in Timbouctou.
1945 - World War II: U.S. B-29 bombers destroy the Musashi Aircraft plants. Halting production of the Nakajima Ki-84 fighter planes.
1945 - World War II: US troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.
1961 - Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US troops against Cuba.
1964 - BBC Two launches with the power cut because of the fire at Battersea Power Station.
1967 - A Swiss Britannia turboprop crashes at Toronto, Canada, killing 126.
1968 - A South African Airways Boeing 707 crashes during takeoff at Windhoek, South-West Africa, killing 122.
1968 - English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial Rivers of Blood speech.
1972 - Apollo 16 lands on the Moon.
1977 – Birth of the owner of this blog.
1978 - Korean Air Flight 902 shot down by Soviets.
1979 - Jimmy Carter's rabbit incident.
1980 - Climax of Berber Spring in Algeria as hundreds of Berber political activists are arrested.
1985 - ATF raid on The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound in northern Arkansas.
1986 - Pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed in his native Russia for the first time in 61 years. The concert was viewed by millions on television.
1986 - Professional basketball player Michael Jordan sets all-time record for points in a NBA playoff game with 63 against the Boston Celtics.
1998 - German terrorist group Red Army Faction announces their dissolution after 28 years.
1998 - TAME Boeing 727-200 chartered by Air France crashes into Cerro El Cable mountain after takeoff from Bogotá, Colombia, killing 53.
1999 - Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves in the Columbine High School massacre.
1999 - Largest bombing of Kosovo by the United States in the Kosovo War.
2004 - In Iraq, 12 mortars are fired on Abu Ghraib Prison by insurgents, killing 22 detainees and wounding 92.
2004 - In Utica, IL 9 people were killed when an F3 tornado hits downtown. The tornado was one of 30 spanning from northern Illinois to northern Indiana.

Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.

2007-04-17T00:18:00.000+02:00

Imagine the following scenario : 5 years of Color Bar in Red & Blue Cafe. 100 chosen few. VIP tickets. Free long drinks. Tons of beautiful women. Total extravagance. An erotic S&M show on the slamming beats of Pragha Khan. Exchanging vodka orange for 2 cigarettes.

What does one needs more in life ? Life is beautiful, but more : life is primal

Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.

2007-04-11T19:02:00.000+02:00

Information overload. Google Scholar has way too much information for one to read in one life time.

Enter some generic terms : Business, leadership, management, year of publication and you're received more hits than you can every handle.

And it doesn't matter from which source : Harvard Business Review, Journal of Economics, Journal of Marketing, you name it, they got it. Combine this with an access to an universities intranet, and you're set for life.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

2007-04-08T13:48:00.000+02:00

One word : magnificent

DOS Tip #17: Add DEVICE=FNGRCROS.SYS to CONFIG.SYS

2007-04-05T22:46:00.000+02:00

Found myself another addiction : Second Life. I'll sleep when I'm retired

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce : Rez Enoch. A cyber goth and my avatar in the Second Life.

Isn't he pretty ?

The story of the phoenix

2007-03-25T15:58:00.001+02:00

This marvelous creature, so the various stories say, lived alone in an earthly paradise feeding upon the light of stars. At the end of a thousand years, knowing that death was approaching he descended into the outer world and flew to the land of his name, Phoenicia.

There on the tallest palm tree he built a nest of spices. At dawn, lifting his voice, he sang a hymn so ravishingly beautiful that the rising sun reined in his horses to listen. In that instant the universe stood still and sparks from the flaming halo of the sun set fire to the aromatic phoenix nest. Thus the phoenix was consumed in flames but instantly a new phoenix rose from the ashes. Soon the infant bird grew strong and lifting up its nest flew to Aeliopolis - the city of the Sun. There he placed the nest upon the altar of the temple.

Thousands of birds had followed him together in friendship, the hawk with the sparrow, the eagle with the dove. As soon as the might phoenix has laid its nest upon the altar, he soared aloft once more and winged his way toward the distant paradise followed by a multitude of birds, all singing in harmony.

30th anniversary

2007-03-24T10:09:00.000+01:00

Still one month to go and then I'll be 30 years old. Since you only celebrates your 30th anniversary once (and your 31th, 32nd, 33nd, ...), me and some friends decided to organise a weekend and invite some mutual friends.

Opportunities have been spotted, contracts has been signed, ideas have materialized, the guest list has been short-listed, flyers and invitations have been printed and finally the website has been put into place.

Tomorrow we'll be sending out the invitations. D-day minus 1.

Portrait of an ENTJ (me)

2007-03-23T11:54:00.001+01:00

One may argue this a 'text-book example' of the Forer effect, but this the best description I have ever read about myself.

As an ENTJ, your primary mode of living is focused externally, where you deal with things rationally and logically. Your secondary mode is internal, where you take things in primarily via your intuition.

ENTJs are natural born leaders. They live in a world of possibilities where they see all sorts challenges to be surmounted, and they want to be the ones responsible for surmounting them. They have a drive for leadership, which is well-served by their quickness to grasp complexities, their ability to absorb a large amount of impersonal information, and their quick and decisive judgments. They are "take charge" people.

ENTJs are very career-focused, and fit into the corporate world quite naturally. They are constantly scanning their environment for potential problems which they can turn into solutions. They generally see things from a long-range perspective, and are usually successful at identifying plans to turn problems around - especially problems of a corporate nature. ENTJs are usually successful in the business world, because they are so driven to leadership. They're tireless in their efforts on the job, and driven to visualize where an organization is headed. For these reasons, they are natural corporate leaders.

There is not much room for error in the world of the ENTJ. They dislike to see mistakes repeated, and have no patience with inefficiency. They may become quite harsh when their patience is tried in these respects, because they are not naturally tuned in to people's feelings, and more than likely don't believe that they should tailor their judgments in consideration for people's feelings. ENTJs, like many types, have difficulty seeing things from outside their own perspective. Unlike other types, ENTJs naturally have little patience with people who do not see things the same way as the ENTJ. The ENTJ needs to consciously work on recognizing the value of other people's opinions, as well as the value of being sensitive towards people's feelings. In the absence of this awareness, the ENTJ will be a forceful, intimidating and overbearing individual. This may be a real problem for the ENTJ, who may be deprived of important information and collaboration from others. In their personal world, it can make some ENTJs overbearing as spouses or parents.

The ENTJ has a tremendous amount of personal power and presence which will work for them as a force towards achieving their goals. However, this personal power is also an agent of alienation and self-aggrandizement, which the ENTJ would do well to avoid.

ENTJs are very forceful, decisive individuals. They make decisions quickly, and are quick to verbalize their opinions and decisions to the rest of the world. The ENTJ who has not developed their Intuition will make decisions too hastily, without understanding all of the issues and possible solutions. On the other hand, an ENTJ who has not developed their Thinking side will have difficulty applying logic to their insights, and will often make poor decisions. In that case, they may have brilliant ideas and insight into situations, but they may have little skill at determining how to act upon their understanding, or their actions may be inconsistent. An ENTJ who has developed in a generally less than ideal way may become dictatorial and abrasive - intrusively giving orders and direction without a sound reason for doing so, and without consideration for the people involved.

Although ENTJs are not naturally tuned into other people's feelings, these individuals frequently have very strong sentimental streaks. Often these sentiments are very powerful to the ENTJ, although they will likely hide it from general knowledge, believing the feelings to be a weakness. Because the world of feelings and values is not where the ENTJ naturally functions, they may sometimes make value judgments and hold onto submerged emotions which are ill-founded and inappropriate, and will cause them problems - sometimes rather serious problems.

ENTJs love to interact with people. As Extroverts, they're energized and stimulated primarily externally. There's nothing more enjoyable and satisfying to the ENTJ than having a lively, challenging conversation. They especially respect people who are able to stand up to the ENTJ, and argue persuasively for their point of view. There aren't too many people who will do so, however, because the ENTJ is a very forceful and dynamic presence who has a tremendous amount of self-confidence and excellent verbal communication skills. Even the most confident individuals may experience moments of self-doubt when debating a point with an ENTJ.

ENTJs want their home to be beautiful, well-furnished, and efficiently run. They're likely to place much emphasis on their children being well-educated and structured, to desire a congenial and devoted relationship with their spouse. At home, the ENTJ needs to be in charge as much as he or she does in their career. The ENTJ is likely best paired with someone who has a strong self-image, who is also a Thinking type. Because the ENTJ is primarily focused on their careers, some ENTJs have a problem with being constantly absent from home, physically or mentally.

The ENTJ has many gifts which make it possible for them to have a great deal of personal power, if they don't forget to remain balanced in their lives. The are assertive, innovative, long-range thinkers with an excellent ability to translate theories and possibilities into solid plans of action. They are usually tremendously forceful personalities, and have the tools to accomplish whatever goals they set out for.

For more information, see Myers-Briggs Type Indicator on Wikipedia

Stage fever

2007-03-22T21:38:00.001+01:00

I'm getting nervous to blog something. Every time I see someone looking at me, I'm thinking : Have they been reading my blog, the pressure of fame is becoming too much. NOT

Today had another 102 visitors, I don't understand where do keep coming from.

Let me tell you a bit more about myself. I'm the guy who seems to get from one situation in another one, from one adventure into the next. I'm the guy you see sitting at the bar talking and telling stories the entire evening. Most of the time someone has experienced something fantastic, I have a better story. Do I make them up ? None, I just can't understand how some people can lead their lives and stumbling from one anecdote into another one. In Medieval times I would have been the travelling troubadour, travelling the countries and entertaining city by city with my stories.

The story of tonight is in fact not worth mentioning, but I think it was rather fun.

So, last Saturday on a prom, I met someone new and you could feel the magic in the air. It being already late (3h30pm) and not risking to become too frisky on the first encounter, I empty my beer in a gone, said goodnight, exchanged phone numbers and drove home.

For some reason, I decided to return to Antwerp not taking the highway (If you have been drinking the highway is most of the time the safest way to get home. Seldom they are conduction alcohol control on an highway), so I was making some speed when suddenly I saw a police officer in the middle of the road, who signed me to slow and to stop. I opened my driver's side window

Me : Good evening sir
PO : Good evening. Alcohol control. Have you been drinking ?
Me : (Being honest) Yes, I've drunk 2 pints of beer
PO : Just 2
Me : Yes, I still have to drive over 70 kilometers to get home (And now I realise this was my first mistake, if someone has to drive over 70 kilometers, he takes the highway)
PO : I will have to ask you to conduct a test. Can you please park your car ?

So I pulled over my car to the parking lane and kept waiting in the car
PO : Can I have your drivers license
I did so
PO : And your identification
Identification coming up
PO : And your insurance
Completely missed that one and gave him the old one and he corrected me, so I started to get nervous.
PO : Your vehicle registration
After 2 minutes of searching, I finally found it

Meanwhile a second officer had inspected my car and told the first one that my vehicle was equipped with a pull hook, so the first one asked my permit.
Me : You need a permit ? Never heard of it, besides this is a leasing car, which was handed over to me from my predecessor.
PO : You need an extra permit if you have a pull hook installed
Me : Never heard of it

Police Officer 2 meanwhile had assembled the alcohol tester and asked me to blow very hard until I heard a beep. Due to my asthmatics nature, I have been doing long tests for the last 15 years and my long contents is almost 6 liters, but to no avail I had to restart 2 time, before the tester proved me 'drunk'. In Belgium that is more than 0,5 promille.

I couldn't believe my hears. I had only drunk 2 pints of beer, most of time I drink a quadruple of that amount, but this time I ought to be safe.
PO : You'll have to come to the station, to conduct a blood analysis test

So, completely dismayed I stepped out of my car and locked the car. Now my car has a coming home function, so the lights stay on for another minute after locking the car.
PO : You have forgotten to switch off your lights
Me : Nope, they switch off automatically
PO : I think you have drunk way (notice the WAY) too much and you have forgotten to switch them.

Not feeling to argue, I entered the police car who was going to drive my to the station. The second police officer entered the car and starting to explain the procedure (He was quite nice, but firm). I asked him what happened if I had drunk too much, because I couldn't see how it could have happened, so he told me I would lose my permit for at least 3 hours.

Suddenly I felt very tired, knowing that I had to call my parents to pick me up (given the fact that half of my family has drinking problems and my parents wouldn't be too happy)
Just having departed, I heard the first police officer calling it of the controls for the day (Had I only arrived 2 minutes later).

Arrived at the station, they put me between a drugs dealer and a whore, with whom I have a nice talk for 15 minutes (I didn't know 80 grams of Cocaine went that amount of money on the street and neither did I know you have to pay more if you want a whore to undress completely).
Made some real good friends that evening (ahem)

Meanwhile the second police officer was trying to reassure me
PO2: You see sir, you are not the only one in the station tonight (being compared to a drugs dealer and a whore, I really felt better)

The first police offer called me over to his desk and asked me to blow (again) until I heard a sound. After 1 minute of grinding, the blood analysis test printed a ticked with only 1 number : 0,19. (Meaning I had 0,19 mg of alcohol in my blood, which is way lower that the 0,25 mg that is allowed), so I was safe.

Not, the first police officer let me do the test again with the breathalyzer and again it beeped positive. Back to the blood analysis machine: 0,19. At that time, I started looking around for a hidden camera. The first police officer not believing the machine contacted a third police officer (they do go to a great deal of trouble to earn a buck) and that one finally brought the relief :
PO3 : Those new testers tend to display an A (positive) if they started running out of batteries

So, finally, I was off the hook. Police officer 2 returned my stuff and escorted me back to the police car. Meanwhile police officer 1 kept on telling me : It's not always bad news, eh.

During the trip back, both officers kept on apologizing them for the trouble they had caused and the time I had lost and now I had a good story to tell to my friends (I do know better ones, but hey). Arrived at my car, I both shook their hands and wished them a good night and drove home.

Time of arrival at home : 6am.

Motivation

2007-03-04T10:39:00.000+01:00

Psychology tells us that motivation- true, lasting motivation- can only come from within. Common sense tells us it can't be manufactured or productized. So how is it that a multi-billion dollar industry thrives through the sale of motivational commodities and services? Because, in our world of instant gratification, people desperately want to believe that there are simple solutions to complex problems. And when desperation has disposable income, market opportunities abound.

AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That's why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators® designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!

I have heard about reverse psychology, but I've some serious doubts about the effectiveness of these poster. Nevertheless, it's always a nice laugh to see one of your collegeaus gasping in disbelief at one of the posters behind your desk, not knowing if it is a joke or me just going mental.

Anyhow, here are my favorites ones. Some of them already date back to 1998, but they still rock

And the one with a very special meaning for me, since I choose to differ

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

2007-02-17T02:06:00.000+01:00

I had a presentation yesterday at school about the nowadays marketeer and one of the videos shown was this video about Web 2.0

Enjoy

Rez Kiyn - TomTom : 4-2

2007-02-09T16:57:00.000+01:00

In december, I bought a TomTom GPS receiver and installed TomTom navigator 5 on a PDA.

Although GPS devices offer a limitless number of advantages, I'm not too fond of GPS devices, since most of the time I know a better route then the tin man and sometimes it simply doesn't know your location.

Had I gone mad ? No, it was a Christmas present for the girlfriend, but a couple of weeks later, we split up and I kep the TomTom for myself. You never know when I may come in handy.

So, now, we are 1 month later and the score is 4-2 for me. Some examples :
- Last weekend I entered the address of a friend of mine and TomTom showed me a route, which was 9 kilometers longer than my usual one. And changing the planning preferences didn't change anything : 1 point for me
- That evening we drove to a restaurant, we couldn't find and TomTom saved the day : 1 point for TomTom
- On Wednesday, I had to go to Heist-op-den-Berg and he routed me to a street with the same name in a completely different city. Again, everything was entered right : 1 point for me
- On the way back, it was kinda foggy (You could see 1 meter ahead) and the route back was under construction and TomTom got me home within a reasonable time frame : 1 point for TomTom
- Yesterday I had to drive to Asse and TomTom guided me again to the same street in a different village (very strange) : 1 point for me.
- I changed its trajectory and finally he found the destination and I managed to get there 5 minutes and 5 kilometers faster than the proposed route : 1 point for me

I must admin : a GPS is handy but not for people with a knack for orientation

Autobots : Transform and roll out!

2007-01-29T08:20:00.000+01:00

Finally, somebody in Hollywood have the brilliant idea to make a movie about the Transformers : The cult series of the 80's.

We thank you Michael Bay.

In attendance of the movie, I'm sure gonna catch up on my Transformer knowledge on the Transformers Archive

Let's hope the movie won't look too much like a Citroën commercial ;)

My precious

2007-01-21T13:57:00.002+01:00

I've always been into vampires and immortality, overal being interested in the occult.

And one of the best series the last couple of years ago, has been Angel. Ok, I know, the vampires in the Buffyverse are not your regular, down-to-earth vampires we all know from the myths and legends, but nevertheless the series has been quite entertaining.

So, finally, I found all episodes in one box and this for the cheap price of 99 euros, so I ordered it immediately.

Come to me my precious

Cat 5

2006-12-21T16:48:00.002+01:00

My apologies I has been such a long time since my last post.
But life has been busy ... very busy ... way more busy than I imagined, now seeing my last post of November 5.

I have always been a fan of userfriendly and a couple of years ago, the posted the following cartoon (geeks only)

Now, a couple of months ago, a cat in our neighbourhood got a litter of 4 little adorable kittens, but rejected one of them. So we took the little bugger in house and it has become the most human-loving kitten you'll ever see. (Remember Mowgli ;)

A kitten being a kitten, it'll play with every wire or sock, it can find and suddenly he discovered one of my UTP cable lying around and start biting on it. So I remembering the cartoon of userfriendly, I quickly took a picture of my own 'Cat Five'

In for a surprise

2006-11-05T21:56:00.000+01:00

Sinds a couple of weeks now (4 to be correct), I own a GSM with an integrated camera. Ok, me and the rest of the world, big deal.

But I'm getting rather fond of the little gizzmo. Especially because this always me to take pictures of all the marvelous and irregular things one sees when driving to work.

This price of this week goes to the guy, who (understandable in Brussels) ignored the 'do no park' sign and in the morning discovered why.

Some movers really need the space to unload their truck and where kindly enough not to damage the hood of the car.

Rez Kiyn ... now with improved networking and social skills

2006-10-19T16:43:00.000+02:00

Since 2 days, I'm the proud owner of ONE La Fonera social router, thus enabling all my neighbours (who accidently all seem to have their own Wifi installations) access to the magnificent world of Internet ....

Of course, I'm offering this unbelievable service FOR FREE. So, I hope to encounter you on my network one of these days.

Customer care ... the Telenet way

2006-10-04T21:53:00.000+02:00

Like most of you already know (or just read in the previous post), 2 months ago I found a new job and I was asked to prove if I had a broadband connection at home (which I do), enabling me to work from home and thus receiving a working-from-home allowance.

So, I contacted the e-helpdesk of Telenet, explaining them my problem and asked them for a duplicate of my contract (since I have been a Telenet customer for over 6 years now and I don't bloody remember where I did leave the original contract). Those who are paying attention are possibly wondering why I didn't prove my broadband connection just be providing my future (and nowadays, current) employer with an invoice ? Well, I'm not going to elaborate on this one, just let's say it wasn't possible.

After a couple of days, I didn't receive a copy yet and I rang the helpdesk (contact 2), explaining them the same thing and they told me my former e-request was being handled and I should receive the contract in my mailbox (being the black metal thing on the front wall of my house) within the next days. So, I waited for another week and nothing arrived.

A couple of days later, I called the helpdesk (contact 3) again and they asked me to be patient, what I was for another 4 days and then I rang the helpdesk (contact 4) again, did again my entire story and they agreed with me it was quite curious I hadn't arrived yet (since they surely did sent it to me) and they promised me to send it again. Another week passed by and nothing arrived, so I called them (contact 5) again and the friendly lady said she double-checked everything and it was indeed sent to my home address and it would arrive any time now.

Not entirely trusting, I decided to give them another 3 weeks (the time I was abroad) and then would call again. Coming back home from holiday on Wednesday, there was no mail from Telenet, so I rang again (contact 6) to ask if they had sent it to the correct address, which was the case and I then proceeded with asking if they could sent it by e-mail, which they would do. On Monday, I rang again and now, the lady at the helpdesk told me that indeed something had gone wrong and she would create a special dossier to make sure the situation was solved and she would ring me back in the afternoon. (Number of conversations with the helpdesk at that time : 7).

No one rang me that day, so I rang the helpdesk again the next day (contact 8) and had to tell my story all over again and she would have a look at the dossier. While waiting for the lady to return to the phone, the connection was lost and I had to call again, reaching another lady having just to tell my story again (call number 9) and she said the dossier was indeed created and I asked her again to sent the contract by mail or fax it, because I was becoming quite urgent. So, she added a addendum stating the urgency of the problem and said I would receive an e-mail within the next 2 days. 3 days passed and I didn't receive anything, so I called (contact 10) again, told the entire story again (I'm a patient guy, the lady at the desk understood my problem, added another priority to the dossier and didn't dare to make any more promises about when I would receive the contract).

So, I waited for another 3 days and called again (call 11) and was connected to the most- couldn’t-care-less-helpdesk person in the world, so I explained everything and asked them if they could set the contract by fax, which was according to him, technologically not possible (Telenet being a telecommunications company and such) , so I asked him if he could have a look at the status of the dossier, which he didn’t even bother to do, so I told him I would be obliged to cancel the contract, just because I needed a proof of a broadband connection and clearly Telenet couldn’t help me on which he responded, if that was my feeling, I should do it. (Please do fire the guy or give him a course in customer relations). So I contacted all my connections and friends to receive a copy of the contract, since Telenet was clearly not able to help me.

The next Monday, after my first day at the new job, I typed a very friendly e-mail explaining my problem and my hassle with the helpdesk and explained how it was easier to keep a customer nowadays than to find a new one, and the inability of the helpdesk to grasp this concept. Then, I looked up the e-mail addresses of the entire board of directors of Telenet (I’m not going to disclose where I found these addresses) and sent them my very friendly mail.

The next day nothing happened. Until around 8pm I received a mail from the CTO, expressing his regrets and that he would handle the problem the next day. So, the next day, I receive a phone call from the customer care department, saying that the contract was sent to my home address and to my private e-mail account, which was indeed the case.

A first, I didn’t think one of the directors would even blink an eye to solve such a trivial problem. I just wanted to vent my anger about the total absence of customer care of the helpdesk, but now, I mighty impressed by the signal Telenet is sending towards his customers.
(I'm not going to disclose the mails to protect their privacy and mailbox)

MORALE : It’s good to know someone in high places or in my case, at least, have the means to get their attention.

A new life, a new career ... a whole new kind of stress

2006-10-04T21:47:00.001+02:00

Monday was my first day at my new job : being a project manager at Getronics.

Honestly for the moment I don't have much too tell about it : I only have been there for 3 days, I ain't seen nothing yet. But I can you tell this : I like it there already ...

Neologisms : part I

2006-08-13T19:25:00.000+02:00

Terrazaria, Noun (usually in the plural) : a non-homogeneous collection of terraces on a common geographical location. Although the terraces are not grouped together or aligned along a common axis, they maintain a line of sight between each other, so it is possible for visitors to easily change one terrace for another in a matter of minutes.

Amongst potential locations to encounter terrazaria are Montmarte, France and Velikij Novgorod, Russia.

Who is General Protection and why is he reading my disks ?

2006-07-29T09:12:00.000+02:00

This morning I got out of bed and was overall bored (not something that happens too often), thus decided to install an old adventure game and had some few hours of 'i can count the pixels' fun.

But to no avail, Windows XP simply refused to install the game, with the infamous "General Protection Fault", a message I hadn't see for almost a decade or so.

So, it's back to surfing for porn ;)

Computer networks ... now with practical use

2006-07-23T20:04:00.000+02:00

The following story is loosely based on a at-the-job-situation.

During my last year as Computer Science-student, we had a course called "Datacommunications" and as every self-respected networking course, we used Andrew Tanenbaum's book, called Computer Networks, which in my opinion is still the best networking related book that money can buy. For the exam, we had to study the better part of the book and most students did flunk this course (btw I got a whopping 90%). Over the past 6 years, I've forgotten most things, but one of the examination questions stayed with me :

Imagine that you have trained your St. Bernard, Bernie, to carry a box of three 8mm tapes instead of a flask of brandy. (When your disk fills up, you consider that an emergency.) These tapes each contain 7 gigabytes. The dog can travel to your side, wherever you may be, at 18 km/hour. For what range of distances does Bernie have a higher data rate than a transmission line whose data rate (excluding overhead) is 150 Mbps? (Thx to Georgi's blog for the exact phrasing).

Well, a week or so ago, one of our applications started to show some incoherent behaviour and the manufacturer asked us to upload a dump of the application's database by FTP. No problem there, except the most business firewalls block FTP as a protocol, thus we needed intervention of the firewall team, which costs money. In addition, uploading an entire database takes 1) bandwith and 2) time and 3) someone who supervises the upload for security reasons, and thus makes uploading of a database a very costly operation.

And then the question, that has laid dormant for 6 years in my memory, bubbled to the surface and suddenly I realized what the most cost-effective way was, to send the database to the manufacturer : a box of DVDs shipped with next-day delivery and it only costs 7,50 dollars.

Bottom line of the story : never ever underestimate the bandwith of a box of DVDs.

And the winner is .... not applicable

2006-07-13T20:21:00.001+02:00

As many of you may know or not know or simple don’t care, I'm one of those fools, who believes he can improve himself, by depriving himself of the few free hours one has after work, and use them to obtain an additional degree. In my case, a Master in Commercial Sciences.

Why ? Well, there are a zillion reasons, but most all : I’m still pissed (at myself) for never finishing my Master in Computer Science 10 years ago. So, since obtaining a Master in Computer Science is quite stupid nowadays, because I have already a Bachelor in Computer Science and almost 6 years of working experience, I thought it was better to get a degree in an area everyone needs : Money.

(Please insert some really career-related reasons)

Last Thursday, me and my fellow students were invited by the teaching staff for a gruesome 3 hours lasting proclamation to conclude our second year of Commercial Sciences. I was not very inclined to waste 3 hours just to get my results, so I simply didn’t go (had a very urgent appoint with the barber) and called the headmaster the next day to get my results. Ok, I passed, no news there (ahum), but no one could tell me my exact degree. Did I simple pass, or did I pass with Cum Laude or even Major Cum Laude …. Who will tell ?

Well, the headmaster told me an envelope would tell my degree, since they were no longer allowed to give the exact results by phone or in person ?????

Finally, after one agonizing week of waiting, I finally received an envelope in the mailbox and impatiently tore it open to envisage my well-earned degree. My eyes scanned to document and found …. NOTHING. No degree, nothing, da nada, rien, noppes. And slowly a panic got hold of my heart, when I started to realized the impossible must happened … I just passed … no degree, no better than the rest, just passed.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO …..

So, got me a calculator, started counting and found my percentage was a mere 74%. Not really fantastic, since I lost some percentages on the final exam of the year, thus losing my chance at a Major Cum Laude, but nevertheless high enough to obtain a Cum Laude degree, but to the paper simply refused to reveal a degree.

Total disillusioned, I looked up the school charter and discovered that to obtain a degree one must :

a) Obtain more than 68% percent.
b) Do not flunk for a course
c) Must have followed a curriculum with more than 27 credits.

So, back to the drawing board, I mean, paper, and discovered my curriculum only consisted of 27 credits, because we were given the opportunity to be exempted from courses, by obtaining 75% on tests at the beginning of the year. And due to those exemptions, my curriculum diminished to 27 credits instead of 31 …

The road to success is closed down … due to small print.

Geek mutant powers

2006-07-03T18:18:00.000+02:00

A couple of weeks ago, me and some friends went to see X-men 3 : The Last Stand. An awesome movie and a really must-see, if you're into comics.

But I wouldn't dare to call myself a geek, if I accepted everything they threw at me. Besides the incredible mutant powers, which in my opinion, can be proven in a scientific way, there was a minor detail that captured my attention during the film. In fact there are a lot of details that captured my attention, but this one was worthy of my geekness.

*** SPOILER AHEAD ****
At a certain moment during the film, Magneto and his gang are planning to attack Alcatraz Island and sees no other way to reach the island than by levitating the Golden Bridge from his pillars and relocating it to bridge the gap between Alcatraz and the main land. (If you ever have been to Alcatraz, you'll know there are a zillion ferries to make the trip from Pier 39 to Alcatraz, each with a boarding capacity of over 200 people. But then again, you can’t except one of the most powerful mutants alive to simple buy a boot ticket).

So, really impressive scenery, but during this scene, reality jumped back in and bit me in the arm : Is the Golden Gate bridge wide enough to bridge the gap ??

Well, let’s consult our by-all-loved Google maps, locate the aerial picture of the bay of San Francisco, open the picture in your favorite picture editing tool, select the Golden Gate bridge (the section between the 2 towers is around 0,9 miles) and move/tilt/rotate until you’ll come to the same conclusion : You can’t bridge the gap with the Golden Gate bridge.

Reminds me a bit of the movie Independence Day when they managed to run a virus developed on a Macintosh on an alien computer.

Customer intimacy

2006-06-18T09:58:00.000+02:00

A new for something completely different: a crash course in Strategic Management.

I always wondered how certain companies stay in business. Everyone knows the little restaurant of shop in the middle of your town and every time you pass by, there isn't a single customer. How do they survive? How do they pay their rent? How can they afford the BMW, whereas I and my girlfriend both work full-time and even I can't afford me one? (This is not completely true, but you know what I mean). Well, thanks to my forth-coming degree in Commercial Sciences, I now know: They don't. If you have a look at the statistics, there are indeed a lot of businesses that don't survive, simply because the people who started them don't have a clue about continuity and rentability. (Ok, I was planning to tell you about my new glasses, but one way or the other my story and mind always wanders off ...)

Most of those business owners have a good idea, manage to realize this idea and are able to sell it, thus making a profit. After a couple of years, they've become quite profitable and then they get greedy and put all their earned money in the newest Porsche or a mansion. And everyone is happy. Well, not really, you can't run a business on 1 idea or 1 product (well, honestly, a happy few can) and when the time comes to differentiate themselves, to keep the competition of their back, the money is gone and it's too late.

So, stop, rewind, record, bottom line of my story : a business needs to differentiate themselves for their customers and according the some much smarter people than me (Porter, Tracey and Wiersema, ...) you can excel by using some generic strategies and one of them is customer intimacy and the optician, where I bought my glasses obviously never heard of it.

Like every well-bred male, I hate making expenses for my appearance (Do you have any idea how much a good pair of shoes costs and I agree my present pair is ugly and worn, but they are still functional)/ My girlfriend has been bugging me about buying myself a new pair of glasses, since my (nowadays) old ones have been missing in alphabetic order: a bolt, some paint, a nose part and style. Why would I need to spend money on a new pair of glasses, if they are still functional and most of the times I wear contact lenses. So, the answer is no.

After 3 months of nagging, my mother pushed the right buttons to persuade me: if you buy a new pair of glasses, I'll pay half of it. Right... So major irritated for having lost the battle against my 2 women, I drove to the closed shop to purchase myself some glasses.

First shop was bummer, the shop intendant didn't even blink an eye to help us, although he was able to help the other customer, who incidentally spoke the same language as he did (Belgium has 2 main communities: French and Dutch speaking and they don't get along very well) and the prices were …. high. So me even more pissed, I got in my car again and was on my way home, never planning to enter a shop again in life (which is indeed one of my life long dreams, besides the Aston, the yacht and a billion or 2)

But because you want to be a good boyfriend, I made the ultimate sacrifice, stopped in the neighboring village, entered a shop, choose myself a pair of glasses and went home (this took me about 5 minutes). My girlfriend was overjoyed and I was pleased the nagging would stop. (Guess again).

Three days later I called the shop and asked them if my glasses were ready. Yes, sir, they are ready and you can pick them up today. It seemed the shop that day was only open till 6'o clock instead of 7'o clock, so I told him I was determined to pick them up today and being 5'o clock at the time, I left work (too early, which I had to make up on Friday) and drove like a mad-man to the shop. Arrived at the shop, it was already closed, although it was only a quarter before 6.

Ok, that you have to close early I can understand, but that the shopkeeper didn't even called me to inform me about this and thus saving both some times and a lot of frustration, is unforgivable.

So, Friday I had to work late to compensate for my missing hours (for nothing) and yesterday I and my girlfriend went to the shop to collect my glasses and had a little talk with the shopkeeper about me standing for a closed door on Thursday. He said sorry, and that's about it. No explanation, no reductions, no good will, nothing. I must say I’m quite happy with the glasses now, but that's about the last time I entered his store and If you come to think about it, there are a lot of businesses who don't have clue on how to serve their customer, no customer intimacy at all.

Furthermore, I can say the last 2 days have been the most eventful ones in my life, but it's too early to tell about it. But do keep an eye on this blog.

A bridge too far

2006-06-13T18:40:00.000+02:00

For my final exam (only 2nd year, still one to go) we had to prepare an assignment in group. One of my classmates was so kind to open up his house to us and while sitting and working at his house, an old feeling got hold of me : I want a house of myself. (Which is not so strange, since it has been genetically imprinted in every Belgian).

So, one evening, instead of preparing for my exam, I started searching the internet for a house and a miracle happened : I found my dream house, it was splendid situated, had a lot of space and was quite cheap, compared to similar houses. Really, all I every wanted in life (except for the Aston Martin, the yacht and a billion or 2) was that house. Impatiently waiting until my girlfriend came home from work I told her about the house and lucky me, she shared my enthusiasm for the house completely and suggested I immediately should contact the broker, which given the time of day, didn't answer the phone.

During that night, neither of us slept and the first thing in the morning, I called the broker who at the time was still on her way to work (sometimes I'm a bit impatient), but promised to call me back. An hour later, she rang me back with the message that I was very lucky, since there were 8 other people who were interested in the house and the first person in line just had cancelled his appointment and now we were the first to visit the house. (How convenient). Realizing that this house must be one hell of a deal, I contacted my parents and told them I've found a house and asked if they could accompany me, since we would have to make a quick decision and I wanted a second opinion.

Overjoyed, I called my girlfriend at work and told her we could visit the house on Thursday around 8'30. But rational as we are, we were a bit skeptic about only being able to visit the house in the evening and it was indeed a very cheap price. So, we came up with the master plan to visit the house on Wednesday ourselves and to have a little chat with the neighbors to gain some insight in the history and flaws of our soon-to-be property.

That evening, we only succeeded to depart around 8'o clock, thus losing the advantage of visiting the house in daylight, but nevertheless we were quite determined to visit the house ourselves. After a drive of half an hour, we finally reached the community, but couldn't find the street, where the house was situated and being technically challenged (read : too cheap-ass to buy a GPS device) we lost almost one hour asking people for a street name no one knew. Around 9'30 and completely fed up with the search, we stopped in a pub in the neighboring village and asked the barmaid for directions.

She perfectly knew the street, she even knew the house and surprise, surprise, the neighbor of the current residents was sitting at the bar and of course, she know him too. My girlfriend swift as always, bought the man a beer and the man proposed us to show the way to his home and our we-just-need-to-sign-the-check property. During the trip, I and my girlfriend were continuously wondering ourselves if we would find any flaws or detect the reasons why the house was so cheap.

Just having crossed a bridge across a motorway, the friendly neighbor pulled over and pointed to a house on his left. I think it's fair to say that it only took us 1/2 of a second to realize the reason for the cheap price : The motorway we just crossed ran through the garden of the house and as a bonus, a high voltage tower was standing next to the house.

Of course, the neighbor started talking about the house and we learned that he was a good friend of the previous owner, who sold his house 1,5 year ago to the current residents for half the price, they were asking. Right ......

Completely disillusioned we returned home, realizing why it takes other people over 2 years to find an attractive house and not the 2 days we thought. So, the next day I called the broker and told her we wouldn't be visiting the house, since we already did and found out the house was very close to the motorway on which she responded : yes, we get that reaction from all the visitors. Well, don’t you think it would be a good idea to tell people this before they travel through half the country to visit the house.

Later that day, when looking through the pictures of the house again, my girlfriend realized that on one of the pictures, you can actually see the railing of the bridge in the right corner. That is, if you know it's a bridge. Nevertheless, I'm quite confident the house will be eventually be sold, if they lower the price a bit and find some people who have hearing problems, no children who like to play in the garden and never ever are planning to organize a BBQ.

One chance to make a first impression

2006-06-11T23:47:00.000+02:00

So let's start my blog with a post about a product and a company I always (let's put it kindly) mocked at : Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2.

I've been running Windows XP for almost 2 years and to be honest about it, I'm quite happy with this version of Windows. I left the Microsoft productstack around '95 when I had to reinstall my brand new Windows 95 operating system for the 9th time in a WEEK. So, like every good IT-guy, I have had a love-hate relationship with Microsoft for the last 10 years. Nowadays, when I grow older, have become less extreme in my prejudicides, don't have so much time as in the old days and Microsoft products became better, my relationship with the company formerly called MickeySoft became better.

But no one could have imagined that one day I would be starting my own blog about the latest version of Windows on the latest version of Windows. (Oh dear God, how I betrayed thou).
Downloading was a breeze, it only took me 35 minutes with 3 segmented downloads to download the 3.5 GB image. I however had to install it 2 times, because the first time, it simple refused to load the graphical shell, after the second install, it started perfectly, albeit a bit slow (strange are the ways of computer electrons).

First impression about the product : graphically very nice, but slow as hell. Feels like running a Windows NT on a i386. On the other hand, nihil nove sub sole. I also have my doubts about the stability of the products, but hey it's a beta for a reason. Also installed the Office 2007 beta 2 and Windows Live Messenger beta at the same time. Beta + Beta + Beta = Alpha ?

Reminds me about a story of a friend of mine, while he was working at a computer store. One of the customers came in, raging about something not working on his pc and some idiot completed reinstalled his pc and now it was even worse, so my friend tried to calm him down. After a while the man started to tell his story and it seems, he had bought a brand new pc at a local store a couple of months before, running at that time the latest version of Windows (I think it was Windows ME). A couple of days ago he had bought a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 Joystick, bundled with Monster Madness (also a Microsoft product). So he installed everything and every 5 minutes the pc compeletly stalled, with the only option to reboot it. The man had gone back to the local store and the shop keeper had told him to return the pc and he would have a look at it. After returning the pc (and of course charging a fee), it seemed that the entire pc had been reinstalled, thus leading in a loss of all data and worst of all, the problem still existed. So the man fed up with his old store, entered the store of my friend, told him the story at which point my friend answered : Oh, I know what the problem is, you're running a Microsoft game on a Microsoft Operating System with a Microsoft Joystick, no wonder it doesn't work. The man left the store and never came back.

We had a good laugh at the time, but this give a nice impression about the love-hate relationship between myself and MS. But now it's time to call it a night and i'm sure i'll enter some more Vista-related posts on this blog in the near future

Introducing ... myself

2006-06-11T23:25:00.001+02:00

Have been hearing about blogs for a couple of years now. Seldom read one, never tought of starting one myself. Err... correction. Never started one, because

1) I don't have the character to post something periodically
2) Who in the world is interested in my ramblings ?

However, a couple of days ago, for reasons totally unknown to myself, I decided to start a blog and discovered I already created on more than 2 years ago (please see reason 1)

So what you can expect ? only time will tell ....