Jeroen Sangers

Easter in Spain is something special. On ‘Semana Santa’ everybody takes a small holiday and leaves town to spend a few days in the mountains or at the beach. You can not imagine how silent and empty a city can get until you have visited a city at Easter.

Maria José and I also planned to go away for some days (but not to Holland), but finally decided that after working so many weekend to make our home perfect and comfortable, we should take the opportunity to enjoy it.

Of course, four days at home is a little bit too much, so to start our short holiday we headed to Andorra to do some shoppings. The typical items people buy in Andorra are gasoline (we made sure that our tank was empty when arriving—the difference in price was €0,10 per litre), sugar (we bought enough), perfumes, cigarettes (unfortunately we don’t smoke), clothes (it appeared that most shops have the same owner, must be a rich guy!!!) and electronics (at the moment we don’t need anything).

We took our swimming clothes with us to visit Caldea again, but after a day shopping we preferred to go home instead.

You might have noticed the BlogShares logo on my web site. This is because last week I started trading on their fantasy blog share market. The principle is very simple:

Instead of buying shares for companies you virtually buy shares for weblog sites.

The value of a site depends on the incoming links. This very sites has no incoming links from other weblogs, so that leaves my website worthless. However, my outgoing sites are worth a little bit, so by linking to other sites, I add value to these sites.

The rest functions just like the normal stock market. Everybody starts with $500 and can buy virtual shares. At this moment my assets are worth $745, which I think isn’t bad, but compared to some big players this amount is insignificant.

People who haven’t visited my website might think that it has changed a lot. But after the big step last week things look quite the same. That is because I am going to make the site in three stages:

1. Contents. I have imported all the news items from my old site. The last days I have reviewed them all and corrected spelling errors, updated expired links and categorised the items. It was fun to read everything again, from moving to Lleida to local culture to reconstructing our house;
2. Structure. In the next step I will create the structure: decide which information will be shown, and where does it come. I will start with the main page, and then do the archive and individual pages;
3. Presentation. The last part will be the fun part. In this step I am going to edit the style sheet to define how each page looks (colours, fonts, borders, images…)

Anyway, plenty of work left for the next weeks.

Yesterday I started installing Windows 98 on my computer WITHOUT A LICENCE!!!

I know that it is illegal, but I have some reasons for doing it. First of all I think that I will only use Windows 98 temporary, and will be able to switch to Linux or FreeBSD soon.

Secondly, Windows 98 is a product that is not supported anymore by Microsoft, and I doubt if I still can buy a licence. But even if I could, I wouldn’t buy it.

So today I entered the world of serialz, my god how I hate this! Especially since I was doing it on my old laptop which was slowing down with each pop-up showing.

Now that I almost finished installing the operating system, it is time to start thinking about the applications I need. I have made this small list:

• Microsoft Office 97 Also highly illegal, but I think my computer is just too slow for OpenOffice;
• WS_FTP Pro to copy and synchronise files for my websites;
• HTML-kit to edit my web sites;
• TopStyle Pro the easiest way to edit CSS files;
• Mozilla or Phoenix Everything is better than IE, but I am not sure whether my system is fast enough to support Moz;
• ArgoSoft mail server Since my ISP doesn't allow me to send mail from my @jeroensangers.com or @fimcap.org e-mail addresses.

The worst part of the site redesign is done.

I just changed the CMS application form the old NewsPro (which is not supported anymore, the creator is now working on Coranto) to Movable Type. Until now I am very positive about MT, I even was able to import all my old NewsPro posts!

The site now shows the default Movable Type layout and design, which is not ugly at all.

The coming weeks I am going to study the Movable Type templates and little by little create my own style.

Alright, the legs of the table in our working room are there. My old computer is unpacked, the boxes are thrown away.

After some problems I got the computer to work. I decided not to install the scanner, since is is quite big, and I never use it anyway. If I really need to scan something, I can always connect it temporary…

Now I have to reinstall all the software. I could clean up the current installation and copy my files from my laptop, but I have been playing with this machine for years, and I think it is best to start from zero. I am sure I don’t need any file or application, since I didn’t use this computer for the last 17 months.

First I was thinking about installing only Linux, but to get working quickly I think it is best to start with a small Windows 98 installation.

After Linux is fully operational, I only have to change the boot loader. And it is always handy to have a copy of Windows available, isn’t it?

As I have stated before, this site has been created in a very short time, expecting that soon it would be transferred to a better place with better possibilities.

As this has not happened yet, I decided to redesign my site. I will do it in the Zeldman way, so I will strip the whole site to its bare bones and after that start trying out the new design. So expect the site to change once in a while…

Since I created my first web page back in 1994 I always have had at least a section in which I tell about my personal life.

At this moment this section is the most important part of the site, and more and more people have such a section. If you also link to other sites in your articles, this is called ‘blogging’, and blogging is very popular.

Although my site is not (yet) so advanced as some other bloggers, I do realise that I am a blogger.

And ‘real’ bloggers publish their Blogger code on their site. Of course I also have created my own code:

B9 d++ t+ k s+ u- f i o++ x– e+ l- c–

In fact, the blogger code is nothing but a lame copy of the good old Geek Code.

It has been a while ago since I last updated my page. The stats show that it doesn’t matter since people are visiting my site anyway, but I feel a little bit guilty about it. It is not that I haven’t got anything to tell. There are things happening in my life, but mostly I am waiting.

Waiting for the arrival of the legs of our desk, so I can remove my computer from the boxes and check if it still works after spending 17 months stuffed away in a little corner.

Waiting to see if my computer works, so I can finally buy a Wifi PCI card to connect to the neighbours ADSL line. Why pay a lot of money if you can share, isn’t it?

Waiting for the Dutch consulate to tell me when my new passport will arrive. I just sent them the request form, and I know that it takes at least three weeks to have the new passport, but I want to be sure that I can go to the Netherlands for a small party in the beginning of June.

Waiting for Easter, when I will have some days off to relax a little bit. We have been thinking about going away for some days to the Basque Country, but finally we decided to stay at home and relax a little bit. Of course we will go to the beach one day, and for sure we are going to do some nice things the other days as well.

Waiting for inspiration to write something more interesting on my site…

The police has found my driver’s licence!

This morning I went to the police station to pick it up. It was still in the wallet I keep it in, but the other things like my passport and my Aino business card have disappeared from the wallet.

Anyway, this saves me some trouble requesting a new licence.