- Looking for work. This hasn’t been an issue for me so far, but I dread the day on which I can’t find a new project. Times are tough and I’m not very experienced yet. The irony of companies asking for experience all the time is not lost on me: I need to get experience but I can’t get a job because they all require the experience I still need. The lack of job security can really get to me at times. How will I pay the rent if I can’t find work for a couple of months in a row? I won’t and I’ll have a problem.

- Managing my money. I’ve always had a hole in my hand, a black hole no less. Money disappears into it, nothing much comes back and I wonder where the hell it all went. Usually I find out I spent it on things like that one gadget I loved or nights out in Amsterdam, stuff like that. Putting aside half of what I see coming in has proven difficult for me, even though I thought I had it all figured out. Moving to Castricum made me take money out of that account, because I needed stuff for home improvement. I need more discipline when it comes to keeping money for taxes and BTW (VAT) in my account.

- The paperwork. Since my financial skills are quite poor already, I got myself a bookkeeper. She handles my mom’s bookkeeping as well so we drive over to her house once per quarter and we dump our paperwork. I would never have got it right by myself. Of course, a bookkeeper isn’t free so I earn a bit less each month. The paperwork still does take extra time; the so-called non-billable hours can fill up that fifth day of my working week. I need to invoice, which is quite easy but still takes time and then I need to check, double-check and double-double-check whether I get paid. Which brings me to:

- Agencies, ugh! IBM pays agencies after 70 days when they invoice. The first agency I worked for told me “yeah we can’t pay you until after 30 days” (this got me into some serious trouble in June last year since I didn’t know payment would take 30 days). So I settled, neatly put ‘pay within 30 days’ on my invoice. They did pay on time, except for with the last invoice when they ‘forgot’ to add the traveling expenses.
Then I switched agencies, and I was told “yeah unfortunately we can’t pay you until after 60 days” (which -again- got me in trouble, since I moved at that particular time). I complied again, even though I don’t know if agencies can even do this. So far, they’ve consistently not paid me on time, so the term lasted (almost) 70 days anyway. I made a reminder e-mail just to make sure they actually pay me after those 60 days. It got me an out-of-office autoreply today.

I hear people who love having a company, but I don’t understand them much. Sure, you can deduct almost all VAT on stuff you buy and you get to browse at the Makro store, but those are about all the benefits I can see. If I got a regular job, it would be much easier money-wise and I’d actually be done working when going home. Also, I like job security. Though I have to say, mentioning to people that you run a business is simply awesome.

Helaas is de ninja vaker de evil speenzoekmaker – onhandig als mama net onder de douche staat…

• Meer politie op straat en extra veiligheid door nieuwe stadscommando’s
• Geen hoofddoekjes in publieke functies en een burqaverbod
• Aanpak overlast Oost-Europese werknemers
• Preventief fouilleren op wapens in de hele stad
• Geen dieronvriendelijke halalmaaltijden in het ziekenhuis en zorginstellingen
• Geen halalmaaltijden in school- en sportkantines

Okee, dat is toch echt wel vervelend van ze, dat ze de moslims nu pakken op het eten, en dan echt de kinderen van moslims expliciet discrimineren. Kijk, hun ouders leren die kinderen, in feite, om halal te eten, en hun wordt wel ff twee keer onrecht aangedaan. Ik heb het altijd al een kutstad gevonden.

I’m happy to say I have now a battery powered IGEPv2

From twitter

1. Main Platform
    
   I scored an IGEPv2 some time ago and been playing with it (a lot!)
   Working:
   • Gentoo (100% updated, running ISEE’s kernel)
   • Bluetooth
     This allows me to connect to my BT GPS module (rfcomm), BT keyboard (with regular HID support) and WiiMote (with libcwiid)
   • Wireless
     Although there is no Monitor mode it seems So i’m using a USB ZD1211 module for kismet
   • Sound (perfectly supported by ALSA)

   Not Working :

   • Video Output
     I’ve added the SVideo connector as by direction of ISEE but their kernel has no support for this.
     My current efforts have been unfruitful, but the future looks bright

    

2. Power Platform
    
   Still building this but ordered some parts already :
   • Cells
     Going to (probably) be 6 18650 3.7V 2500mAh protected cells run in a 3S2P setup to give me 11.1V at 5000mAh
   • Charger
     I’ve been playing with the MAX1811 that I sampled some time ago, and am now able to use this to charge one cell reliably.
     Looking into making a true BMS around an Arduino and some PWM switched Buck convertor to charge these 3 cells.
     (Also looking at just skipping this step and buying some premade 3 cell charger)
   • 5V DC-DC
     After joining ##electronics again, I quickly got some help finding the supreme  part for this  platform.
     DPCAV has this excellent module which will fit my purpose perfectly.

    

3. Interfaces
    
   I would like to use my HMD for this project, but as video is not working I’ve ordered a Nokia 3310 LCD on PCB from nuelectronics. This screen has a simple SPI interface, which I can directly interface with the IGEPv2 through a level shifter.
   The PCB also has some buttons, but I’ll probably end up using the wiimote as buttons for this display.
    
4. Case
    
   I really need to start looking at packaging all this….

Feel free to post any comments/questions

From twitter

1. check gravatar for a user-manageable avatar
2. else fall back to the fifo avatar system:
   1. check for a local avatar
   2. else check if there is a URL to redirect to
   3. or else display the "unknown" avatar

 If you set up a gravatar URL, claim your fifo userid so you can benefit from this, or ask me to set your email address for you.

van lol god

From twitter

From twitter

From twitter

From twitter

The somewhat longer version is that life is great here. Me and Kasia are doing great; I'm having such a great time being with her. Work is great too. I'm doing pretty cool stuff, both coding and tinkering with networks and unix systems to squeeze out every possibility to get even better performance. We're currently serving 50 million ads a day (and yes, online ads.. I sold my soul) with just a hand full of servers, running a Ruby application. The team I'm working with consists of only smart an experienced people, which makes it even better. I'm learning every day.

My Swedish isn't really great yet. I've signed up for a course, but I have to wait some months to start, since it's fully booked. In the mean time I'm doing some Rosetta Stone, but not so much. I hear a lot of Swedish at work, but everybody speaks English, so there is no real need to speak Swedish. Reading is not so hard, since there are a lot of commonalities with Dutch, but speaking is a lot more difficult.  However, I had a small breakthrough yesterday, when I went to the hairdresser. She doesn't speak English, so I was forced to speak Swedish and I had an actual (and pretty decent) conversation with her! I guess it's all about not being shy and just try.

Swedes are friendly people and very modest. Business is somewhat different than in the Netherlands. For example, meetings are different. In the Netherlands, often people go into a meeting with a goal. Decisions should be made. A general consensus is OK, but there should be a result after a meeting. Here it's different. Meetings are for listening to people and talk about the stuff that needs attention, but decisions are made at the coffee machine. I read some articles about this and some said that Swedish mentality is closer to the way people do business in Belgium, but I'm not sure. Belgians seem far more hierarchical; one person is the boss. Here, it's more about compromises and talking.

Some people asked me if Sweden is expensive. I guess it can be, but apart from the alcohol, it feels a bit like the Netherlands. Of course my salary is in Swedish Kronor, so it's harder to compare, but I don't really have the feeling that products are that more expensive here. I must admit that I'm not very price aware, so it's more a gut feeling. VAT is higher; 25% and 12% instead of 19% and 6%, but I guess you get a lot back from that. Alcohol is excessively expensive though. Half a liter (note to Wayne: "I'm sorry sir, I don't know what a liter is") of beer costs roughly Euro 6,50 in a bar and a Mojito is roughly Euro 13,-. Next to that, you can't buy wine or (normal) beer in the supermarket. There is only one company that sells alcohol and it's run by the government and there a bottle of beer is about Euro 1,50. In the supermarket you can buy 3.5% vol. beer, but that just tastes like water.

But you get a lot back for the stuff you pay. Public transport is good. I think it's better than in the Netherlands. Metro runs pretty much on time (in the Dutch meaning of the word) and often. Swedes tend to have a thing for time. If the metro is 3 minutes late, it's late. 13 past the hour isn't a quarter past, it's 13 past. Interesting difference.

Another thing you get is health care. Paying for that is done through taxes, directly. Not through strange systems with insurance companies. If you need health care, you will get it. Everybody is equal. The first 900 kr (90 euro's) per year, you'll have to pay by yourself, and then it's free for 365 days.

How do I know this? Experience. 3 weeks ago I broke my right ring finger. I went snow boarding with a friend and at the beginning of the first run, I touched the ground with my hand while trying to keep balance. It hurt, but I thought that it would be just a contusion. It wasn't even a cool crash or anything and I had been standing on my board for only 5 seconds. I went to the first aid at the slope to have it checked, but the guy there said it was probably only a contusion and that it was just a little bit swollen. so, I continued boarding for a couple of hours. My finger turned blue and purple the next day, but when the swelling disappeared after a couple of days. I still couldn't move it and it still hurt, so I decided to see a doctor and after some x-rays it turned out to be broken. At the hospital, I got a cast that is coming off today. I'm actually sitting at the hospital while writing this piece. I just had x-rays and I have a doctors appointment in an hour. Hope it healed a bit and that they'll take off the cast, because it's really uncomfortable and typing is pretty hard.

I'll try to make some more time in the future to blog and I hope I can get a mobile subscription soon, so I'm able to be online a bit more. But I'm alright!

From twitter

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

This is FULL CG, click for more info

From twitter

Char is not the only person fooling us Dutch people. We have another Uri Geller show coming up and then there is Derek Ogilvie. I have to be ashamed of myself and say that even I believed that guy for a while, until I remembered Char and the Zembla report. I wondered if similar reports exist about Derek Ogilvie, and indeed they do. In a blog post by a spectator of his show the skepticism is quite clear. But this guy is better than Char. Cut the scenes for his shows right and you have a guy who knows that the wallpaper in the second room to your left on the first floor has been torn apart.

But all they do is guess. James Randi, the guy who’s trying to uncover all these frauds, tested Ogilvie and he only got 1 out of 20 tests right. Randi has a reward worth US $1,000,000 for the first person to pass his test. He has yet to meet the first person to pull it off.

So we know all of this. We know Uri Geller, Char and Derek Ogilvie have all been unmasked. So why do we still believe them? Why do the networks and these clowns still make money out of emotional people who are willing to believe anything? The answer to that is the same as the answer to why religion exists. It soothes people, they’re lured into a false sense of security. Your loved one is with you, don’t worry. What is his name? Oh is it a she? Does the name start with an R, E, or a T? Tina? Oh no of course, I meant to say Caroline. She’s with you. And she says you should give me more money.

Speaking of the GUI, it has become quite a magical environment. Widgets respond correctly to keyboard commands and focus events. We’ve been paying a lot of attention to little details. The look has been completely refreshed from the alpha release, following a more modern layout style. The GUI also scales with the browser vertically, leaving less screen real estate wasted:

A precise E.T.A. for the public release is hard to give. We’ll try to post more frequent updates as the 1.0 target approaches. Thanks for hanging on.

Bookmark It

From twitter

No idea how long this will keep on working. But there's something strange with Google's deletion of 'bad' images on streetview.

First, view THIS page. Notice the accident that happens, and also that you can not move anywhere.

Then, view THIS page and take 1 step forward. Everything's gone!

Also, on the first link you can see the default automatic blurring of faces and license plates. But the face of the unfortunate cyclist has been blocked to a further degree. Why's google deleting this, but at the same time still knowingly keeping this up?

Oh and for archival purposes, a screenshot of the happening :-)

*auch* :-p

Just like about every year…

We’re going with at least 8 people from #eth0, so that should be quite entertaining.

© foobar for Fooblog, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: brussels, conference, eth0, fosdem

Now, I was wondering why I should go there since I haven’t seen any rats or signs of rats, but I thought I’d better be safe and check it out. The good news is, it probably won’t concern my area since all the houses there are new and have proper sewers. But most of the people I saw live in the older part of Castricum. Through the sarcasm and anger I heard several (shocking) facts:
- These people have been dealing with this issue for fifteen years. For the longest time, the town council got complaints but haven’t responded. Juicy detail: upon the question of how many complaints there were and how they were dealt with, there was no reply from any of the represented parties. I got the impression they haven’t been very adequate in the past.
- In cases where Rentokil did show up to fix the problem, they did their job poorly and they were apparently unsuccessful.
- The old sewers are made of glazed stoneware pipes (NL gresbuizen), which is a weak material and has disintegrated at certain places. That is where the rats can exit the sewers. Apparently these pipes should have been replaced years ago, but that hasn’t happened. One lady complained the maintenance in her street was now 6 years overdue.
- It took ages before people even had an inkling of where in Castricum this problem is going on. Of course the people who live in it know, but it would have been nice to know how widespread this problem is. There was no map, only a small indication of places that have been investigated. This brings me to the next point.
- Three neighbourhoods have been investigated. Actually only two-and-a-half, since one neighbourhood was only partly investigated. All the places they checked showed clear signs of rats. They would NOT admit, however, that it was an actual plague.
- In 1998, the Dutch government decided that consistently checking for rat plagues was no longer in their best interest. Since then, there has been no consistent data about the existence and/or nuisance of rats in the Netherlands. The reason why they cannot call this a plague is because they have no actual recent data indicating ‘normal’ values to compare against.
- The focus of this meeting was very much primarily put on what people have to do in their own homes in order to prevent rats from entering them. There was no insight into what the town council is going to do about the problem in public places, or if the sewers are finally going to be replaced.

People were very angry, and rightly so. I haven’t seen even one rat or met any of these people and this outrages me too. This is one big pile of negligence and governmental failure. I just hope this problem doesn’t move towards where I live.

From twitter

Het lijkt er sterk op dat ik op 12 februari a.s. de sleutels van mijn nieuwe appartement in Hilversum in ontvangst mag nemen. Had er ondertussen iemand interesse in een miniscule studio in 020 Noord?

Can somebody please come and help me?
I need a towel.
I need hot water.
I need soap.
I need a bucket.
I NEED TO VOMIT and clean up the mess I already made.

*explicit words inserted here*

Let's be clear here:

People who donate money, and then ask if you have donated already, do not care about the cause, but only about letting the world now that they are better than the rest. And YES I AM TALKING ABOUT HAÏTI.

On a related note: People who show grief and sadness when a celebrity dies, do not care about the celebrity, but only about letting the world now that they are better than the rest. (Michael Jackson, Lady Die, etc... )

Do you really care? Then give your money, your goods, your dog if I care, and shut the F up. Hell, you can even feel good about it! But don't bother me with your blather, your whining, your TV shows, your radio programs, your one million newspaper items, your internet spam, your ANNOYING PRESENCE. You make me vomit.

Yes. Maybe I care about the cause. Maybe I don't.
The fact is that you will never know. And I wish that you would extend the same courtesy to me. You and the rest of you.

Now I'm off, donating food to myself.