Crisis
When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger, the other opportunity.
When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger, the other opportunity.
Street theatre is nice, since it is small-scale and personal. The acts are small, and the audience is small. That’s why they got out of the theatre, and onto the street. That’s why it is called street theatre. A great way to get to know street theatre is to visit a theatre festival. Edinburgh has the most famous theatre festival in the world, and Tàrrega has the most famous Spanish festival. Tàrrega happens to be quite close to Lleida, so tonight we’ll be walking around in the streets of Tàrrega to see what is happening in the marvellous world of street theatre.
This year we found something curious. There was one show we really liked to see (Toni Alba), but this show is performed in a theatre. The curious thing is that we are going to look at a street theatre artist, those artists that are too small for a theatre, that is so popular that he’s playing in a theatre. The other curious thing about this show is that it starts at 1:00 o’clock at night.
The street where I live is just inside the ‘blue zone’, the zone where you have to pay to park on the streets. The payment machines are activated on working days from 9-14 and 16-20, the other hours you don’t have to pay.
I never pay, since these hours coincide more or less with my working hours, so I can park my car in front of our door for free. The only exception is the end of the morning: I work until 13:30, and usually arrive home 15 minutes later. So officially I have to pay 15 minutes, 15 eurocent, every day, which I never did until today.
When I come home I always pass the parking control, as they are talking to each other while waiting for the end of their shift. Every day I see them standing on the same corner, and I know that I can park the car in the blue zone without having to be afraid that they will fine me.
The controller on the photo might just have started this job and was simply doing his job, or she does not get along very well with her colleagues or maybe simply had a bad day and wanted to share this feeling ;-).
Anyway, the result was that I ended up paying for 5 minutes of parking to avoid problems.
Though we did receive a bid on eBay, the buyer yesterday told me that they decided not to buy the car. His ‘story’ was that he asked for some hours off at his office in order to travel to Lleida and pick up the car, when his boss offered him a lease car for only €90 per month.
So now our little Fiat Punto is back on eBay. As I stated before, the car is old, 11 years, but in excellent state, and I am sure it will serve some years more for somebody who takes care about the car. Place your bid, or contact me for more information.
We all know that almost all comment spam is coming from virus infected PC’s turned into zombies. For a while I suspected that these zombies work with a list of URIs to attack, since attacks always follow the same pattern: suddenly I receive a lot of comments from various IP addresses, but all using the same referrer and posting more or less the same message. Usually attacks take about two days before the comment spam slows down. Very few of all these comments make it through the Movable Type spam filters, and usually adding the URL to the blacklist takes care of them forever.
Since upgrading to version 3.2 I did not receive any single comment spam. The reason is that I forgot to rename the comment script. One of the first measures I took against comment spam was renaming this script, so bots using Google to find spammable sites would not find me. With the latest update, I forgot to do so. Now, the list with spammable URIs these spambots use, contain hundreds of links to a script that does not exist anymore. So they do not even reach my comment-spam filters!
Even better, they fall into another trap. I catch all request for ‘inapropiate’ files as system files and non-existing scripts (formmail.pl), and automatically put their IP address on a blacklist, which is cleaned up after two weeks. This blacklist has been growing like crazy the last week, due to all these MT-spammers requesting the old location.
Until they refresh their list, I can sit back and relax!
BryteNet is growing, but could grow faster. Therefore we decided to offer a sponsoring package, with the following conditions:
After I left Harmelen four years ago, I also stopped participating in youth activities. Of course I have done some work for Fimcap as their webmaster, but I never visited or participated in any activity.
Last weekend we went to Vall d’Aran to spend 24 hours in a Roundabout camp.
Roundabout is a Fimcap project in which two groups from different countries spend their summer camp together. This Roundabout was between three groups (Germany, Malta and Catalonia), and this was the third year of the project. Since we knew the Maltese animators and most of the German animators very well, we visited them to meet our old friends again.
Because the group had been together for already a week and the participants knew each other from former years, we decided to stay on the background to not disturb the group dynamics. That gave us many possibilities to analyse the activity, and compare it to our own experiences. People active within a youth organisation already know that there are huge differences between groups within a single organisation, let alone the differences between different organisations from different countries — this is one reason Fimcap is so interesting.
Anyway, the atmosphere was very relaxed, and everybody was enjoying the activity. And we? We were very happy to meet our old friends again, and get up-to-date with all the gossip.
I will be making some changes under the hood of this site. As a result, you might find that you cannot reach the server or that e-mail is bounced. Of course I will try to get everything back in order as soon as possible, in order not to dsiturb your reading pleasure.
Note: the maintenance only involves sites under the braintags.com and jeroensangers.com domains. No other sites hosted by BryteNet will be involved in the changes.
[Update 2005.08.31] As far as I know, everything went alright. I had some problems with a wrong DNS entry, but that should be sorted out by now. If you find anything strange, please contact me.
At this moment I am updating my MT sites to version 3.2. This is a huge update, and I am running into some issues. My dynamically published POS Blog is currently unavailable, because the core smarty libs are missing in the installation file. I receive the following error message when requesting a page:
main(/home/jeroens/public_html/cgi-bin/mt/php/extlib/smarty/libs/core/core.load_plugins.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory
My normal blog also gives me an error when rebuilding, stating that I used some tags in the wrong way:
Error in tag: You used an ‘MTEntryDate’ tag outside of the context of an entry; perhaps you mistakenly placed it outside of an ‘MTEntries’ container?
I hope to solve these issues, and other issues I find, as soon as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The Internet is a very good medium to get to know new artists. On the site of George I found The Subways, and of course I just had to put them in my jukebox: I Want to Hear What You Have Got To Say and Rock and Roll Queen are waiting to be downloaded.
Fiat Punto TD SX
Year: 1994 Exterior colour: White 290000 kilometres Diesel engine 5 doors ITV check until may 2006. Centralised closing, assisted steering, electrical windows.
A bloke is in a queue at the supermarket when he notices that the rather dishy blonde behind him has just raised her hand and smiled hello to him.
He is rather taken aback that such a looker would be waving to him, and although familiar he can’t place where he might know her from, so he says “sorry do you know me?”
She replies “I may be mistaken, but I thought you might be the father of one of my children!”
His mind shoots back to the one and only time he has been unfaithful, “Christ!” he says “are you that stripogram on my stag night that I shagged on the snooker table in front of all my mates whilst your mate whipped me with some wet celery and stuck a cucumber up my arse?”
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“No” she replies, “I’m your sons' English teacher.”
This week we bought a very expensive gadget: a new car!
After many visits to many car dealers we were very fed-up with searching. We are happy that we made a decission, mainly because that means that we can spend a Saturday at home, or just walking around. The car is expected to arrive at the end of September.
I just read ‘How to tip properly’ on lifehacker, and was very surprised to read about pre-tipping:
In busy clubs or at crowded bars, it is acceptable to “pre-tip” the bartender. This encourages him to respond promptly to your needs, and it keeps you from waiting at the bar. A pre-tip is always at least 5 dollars (and more often 10 or above, depending on how crowded or upscale the bar is). Despite the amount, it should not comprise the whole of your tipping. One dollar for every 2 drinks afterward is typically sufficient to maintain their interest.
What a huge bullshit!!! Why did we let it go this far?!
First of all, tipping is a way to express my thanks for the delivered services. If I decide to pay a little bit extra, I decide how much I will give. In many places I read tipping rules like “you should always give 10%”, but for me there is only one rule: how do I value the extra service delivered to me. I put emphasis on extra, since I always assume that normal service is already included in the price. I pay for a coffee, and you bring it. If I read in the quote above that I have to pre-tip in order to encourage the waiter to respond promptly to my needs, I’d rather go to another place, since this waiter is simply not doing his job! He should be paid less, not more!
Furthermore, why do we only tip in bars and restaurants? Don’t the hairdresser and the cashier of the supermarket work just as much or even more? And who ever gave a tip to the electric co.? OK, skip that last one, since they will never do something extra for me.
The point is, I see tipping as something general. If you do something extra for me, I pay you extra. If you deliver the basic service, e.g. you bring me my cup of coffee when I order one, I pay only the required amount. A tip is something you need to earn!
Today, I proudly present my latest work: BryteNet.
BryteNet is going to be the name under which I am going to manage my hosting activities. I am certainly not going to be the cheapest hosting provider, but my prices are far lower than the average European hosting company (XS4ALL still asks €23 for only 50Mb space) and I can support you in English, Dutch, Spanish and Catalan.
Furthermore, the only limits I put in my packages are disk space and bandwidth. I offer unlimited POP3 mail, mail forwarders, FTP accounts, mailing lists, mySQL databases, and subdomains; you decide how to use your space!
Go have a look at the site, and tell me what you think of it.
Coming back from my holidays, I found an awfully empty homepage on this site. For the moment it will stay like this, since I am wading through hundreds of e-mail messages (you will get your answer), comment spam (none of which made it to the live web), dirty cloths to wash, photos to develop, and a new site to launch today :-D.
Stay tuned!
Just a small note to point you to a new feature on this site. As of today Brain Tags has a Folksonomy page, showing the most important themes I write about in a visual way.
To make dreams come true you need two things: focus and time. Without focus a project takes way too much time, and without time…
Anyway, I had a dream that I wanted to come true. With some spare time in the weekend and in the lunch breaks, which are 2½ hours here, the second factor was available. I struggled a little bit more with the first factor, since I tend to jump from database design to logo design to testing out e-mail automation. But I managed to stick to my plan:
Everything is fully operational, but it has a horrible design. I hope to fix all that this week, take my summer holidays and open the site on August 1st.
This is way too cool! Google released Google earth, a Windows desktop application to access their geographical data.
Saying java is better because it works on all platforms is like saying anal sex is better because it works on all genders.
– Mike V.
A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of the dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Broni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the shepherd…
“If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?”
The shepherd looked at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looked at his peacefully-grazing flock and calmly answered, “Sure.”
The yuppie parked his car, whipped out his IBM Thinkpad and connected it to a cell phone, then he surfed to a NASA page on the internet where he called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, and then opened up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas. He sent an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, received a response. Finally, he prints out a 130 page report on his miniaturized printer then turns to the shepherd and says… “You have exactly 1586 sheep.”
“That is correct; take one of the sheep.”said the shepherd.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and bundle it into his car. Then the shepherd says: “If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my animal?”
“OK, why not.” answered the young man.
“Clearly, you are a consultant.” said the shepherd.
“That’s correct.” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”
“No guessing required.” answers the shepherd. “You turned up here although nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don’t know crap about my business… Now give me back my dog.”
Our car is about to reach 300.000 km, and the bills of the garage tell us that it is time to say goodbye to our Fiat Punto and start looking for something else.
The first question,new or second hand?, was quickly answered; as the second hand market is almost inexistent here in Spain. Everybody buys new and keeps driving it until the car reaches the same stage as our current car. We will probably end up buying a new car, unless we are lucky enough to buy a showroom model.
The second question, what kind of car?, was also easily answered: we live in the city centre, so big cars are out of the question. And considered my length and the fact that we regularly use the car to go away with our friends, really small cars are also not suited for us. So that leaves us with the regular tourist cars and MPVs.
Since every brand offers these models, we made up a list of all dealers in Lleida and started to visit them last Saturday. Unfortunately, almost all of them were closed, since the day before was a bank holiday! In the end we managed to visit the dealers for Peugeot and Renault, and came home with a lot of information about these cars.
We also bought some magazines with the typical list of all brands and models in the back, and while browsing all that information I quickly noticed that I simply had way too much information. I need a way to get rid of all surplus of information, I won’t buy a Ferrari and don’t have the slightest idea whether 150 Nm is OK or not, so fired up Google to search for the table in the car magazines in text or Excel format to play with.
Without success. It seems like all the car sites have been made only for car-enthusiasts. Usually the first selection you have to make is the brand and the model, which is exactly the information I want the site to give me! I am very disappointed in what I found.
When I am looking for a mobile phone of €50, I have hundreds of sites to help me, but when I am making one of the biggest purchases of my life, I fall into the hands of the salesmen without any help from the Internet.
The temperature is slowly rising to a level where there are only two places to stay: inside an air-conditioned office or on the beach. This weekend I choose the latter, resulting in a lot of time to dream…
I thought about this site, and how I am only using a fraction of the available disk space and bandwidth.
What a waste! What if I just sold the space and bandwidth I am not using? Should be easy enough, I already us cPanel to manage the site, and I know that an additional script called WebHost Manager is available in which I can create new users and assign hosting packages. I could easily implement this without any additional cost.
What else should I need? A way to receive payments.… Most hosting providers I dealt with use 2CheckOut to receive credit card payments, and I could open a Paypal account as well. Both payment services take a percentage of the sales amount, both come without any set-up costs or monthly charges, so that’s free of risk.
What else? I need to communicate with my clients. Some kind of helpdesk software, which also manages the client’s orders and invoices and which can be linked to the two services above to cash in and preferably to WHM so accounts are generated automatically, after all, I rather spend my time on the beach.
There are some very good and complex packages available, but at this moment I am still dreaming, so I don’t want to spend too much money, and certainly don’t want to pay monthly charges. Google found phpCoin, which looks like it could be a good face towards my clients.
Mmmm, sounds like I could do it. Of course I have to spend some more time on the beach to think about details as the composition of the hosting packages I am going to offer and the name of my little hosting company (I already have some ideasj, and after that I need even more hours to implement all this and make a stunning design for the site. Will this dream ever come true???
A trend I noticed on my sites lately: referrer spam is dying out, trackback spam is the main focus of spammers. This makes sense, since most sites only have one page showing their referrer statistics, if shown at all, while they usually accept trackback pings on every page.
For me it changes little, since the only page showing my statistics is not indexed by the search engines, and my trackback pings are perfectly protected by the combo MT-Blacklist and SpamLookup.
I am a statistics junkie. I check the access statistics for this site at least once a day. Also the statistics FeedBurner offers get checked regularly, so I know what the interest of my feed readers is.
Both statistics tell me where you come from and what you read while you are here. But that’s it!
I miss information on that last little bit of information about my website. What do you find interesting and where do you go after reading my texts? MyBlogLog gives my that information by tracking the external links you click on. Not with a clumsy redirect, but with elegant java-script. My addiction for statistics is fed again.