Jeroen Sangers

Email exists to stay on top of things,… I am much more interested in getting to the bottom of things Via Adventures in Home Working

It is good habit to add a personal note when inviting someone to connect through LinkedIn to explain how you know the other person and why you want to connect. However, lately I noticed a small inconvenience with this approach:

I invited a few people with a personalised note and instead of the acceptation of the invitation I received a reply to my note.

It is no big problem, as I simply reply back and ask them to accept my invitation. Maybe LinkedIn could think of a 'Reply & Accept' button?

As I have been blogging for 10 years now, I thought it would be a nice idea to look back at almost 1000 posts on my sites. Today an overview of the year it all started: 1997.

Though I already had a personal web page for some years, I didn’t spend a lot of time on it. My main interests these days were Jong Nederland and Fimcap. In November I had a great weekend with all JN volunteers on a national level, and in December I joined a Fimcap meeting in Rome. Though the meeting was only a weekend, I spend the entire week in Italy.

On November 9, 1997 I added a new section to my personal web site: a news page. The word weblog did not exist yet, but my news page (though updated manually in FrontPage) did have some aspects of modern day weblogs; it showed the entries in reverse chronological order, but did not allow for comments.

The first entries are written in Dutch, but as I got more foreign friends I changed my personal site to English. The old news however, always stayed in Dutch…

A lot have changed in those ten years. Not only in my life, but also the weblog. It went through several designs, three domains, two content management tools, and had both active periods and inactive periods.

As I had very few readers in the beginning (I still remember the day I had 10 visitors) I doubt there is anybody who have been following Brain Tags since those early days. It doesn't matter whether you read this blog recently or for a long time, I wouldn't have continued that long without my readers. So I would like to use the opportunity to thank you all!

The coming days I will look back in more detail on the pas ten years.

Two years ago, reflections were cool and something new. Reflections gave your web site or your application a crisp look.

Nowadays, even the big operating systems and television stations have reflections and thus reflections as a design element are outdated. I am surprised, even irritated, by the big number of startups still using reflections in their logo or their screendumps only to look ‘cool’.

Get over it. Reflections are soooo 2005.

I could simply write here that I am too busy to write on Brain Tags, but I guess it is more interesting for you to read what I am doing currently. So this is a short list of my most interesting current projects:

New web site for Fimcap

This is a project on which I have been working for a long time (not always as active as now) and which should have been finished a long time ago. I am now finishing off the new design, after which we can finally show the world the work we have been doing. Working on a graphical design is quite an adventure for a technical person like me. I can easily tell whether I like a design or not, but to make one yourself is a whole different thing.

Renewed site for Brytenet

Hopping along with the Fimcap redesign, I am also reworking the site where I station my side-business. Both sites are built on eZ Publish, so I use the experiences on ons site to advance on another. I am also working to leverage some of the karma I got with blogging to new profitable projects under the Brytenet umbrella. You will read more about that when these plans have crystallized a little bit more. Anyway, currently the Brytenet site is off-line while I restructure the content, but before next week I hope to be open for business again.

A home project

There is still one room in our house where we didn’t do anything since we moved in, the room where our visitors sleep. Those who have visited us can confirm that the beds in that room have had their time. So we are going to use our holiday in November to get rid of the current furniture and paint the room. In the mean time we are already looking for two new beds and a wardrobe to provide our guests with better rest and ourselves with more storage room.

Teaching sells

And finally I started an on-line course about making on-line courses (?) called Teaching Sells, which will probably help me getting all that information I have been absorbing over the past years out of my head and into my wallet. I am sure some very interesting new projects will arise from that course.

Blogging

The blogs are still there, and will stay, though I am considering stopping to write on the Wizard of POS.

Note: This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day, joining thousands of other bloggers to write about one topic for a single day. This year's topic is the environment.

Camping is my favourite holiday activity. In our tent I feel free and I feel at home as I use my own stuff and sleep in my own sack. Furthermore, it is very easy for a shy person like me to have contact with others on a camping. I feel a lot more comfortable on a camping than in hotel and apartments.

However, lately I noticed a trend of people camping more and more luxury: huge caravans with satellite television, microwave ovens, washing machine, skottelbraai, and even a motor to move around on the camping. While I like some comfort, one of the things I like about camping is its simpleness: less things around you means less cleaning and less worrying and thus more relaxing. And it still is possible:

When I still lived in the Netherlands, I was a member of the NTKC, a club of people who love camping in a simple and quiet way. The NTKC owns 22 campings in natural areas, and all the maintenance and administration is done by club members. On the NTKC terrains, people camp with tents up to 1.90 meters high and always in natural colours. When staying for a longer period, members move their tent to prevent dead grass.

Most of the time there is plenty of room on the campings; in spring and autumn it might happen that you won't see anybody else from your tent!

For me, being in the middle of nature is a very relaxing experience. If you live in the Netherlands and enjoy camping and nature, be sure to check out the NTKC. There are similar organisations elsewhere, such as the Camping and Caravanning  Club in the U.K..

Op 6 oktober ontving ik een mailtje van een andere Nederlander in Lleida. Helaas ben ik door mijn gebrekkige IT kennis dat mailtje kwijt geraakt, en heb dus je e-mail address niet meer. Kun je me a.u.b. nogmaals een mailtje sturen of meeven bellen? Sorry voor het ongemak!