Jeroen Sangers

You might already have seen it, I added some new pictures to my photo gallery. You’ll see some typical tourist photos as well as some pictures of our bachelor day.

Yesterday I wrote about some usability problems with cellphones. As I am exploring the functionality of my new phone, I have run into some more small usability problems.

Yesterday I already wrote about the fast access button asking for a confirmation. The reason they did this was probably to provide the user with an easy way to configure the fast access buttons. The moment I use the fast access button, a screen appears asking me whether I want to start the selected function or whether I want to modify the function linked to the button. Though in general it is handy to have the configuration option close to the functionality, in this case it definitely gets in the way. If I have to confirm the action each time I use the fast access button, the access won’t be that fast anymore!

Another thing bothering me with many phones is the hassle I have to go through to send a SMS message. After writing the message, I have to go through the following steps to send it to somebody from my phone list:

1. The first screen asks me directly to enter the phone number to send the message to. Since I (and usually many other people) only send messages to people from my address list, I press the fast access button that brings me to my address list;
2. In the address list, I search or browse to find the right person and press Select;
3. If I have stored more than one phone number for this person, the phone lets me choose the number I want. Icons show which kind of phone it is;
4. The chosen number appears again for verification. Since I am not so good in remembering phone numbers, I always choose OK here;
5. Finally, the message is being sent…

Usually I need a minimum of 7 key-presses to send my message. If you compare that with how easy it is to write the message —T9 is great—, you can only come to the conclusion that something is going wrong here.

Maybe this set-up is useful for some people, but I assume that most people are like me, and almost always send messages to people from the phone list. In my opinion, the procedure should be the following:

1. The first thing to show should be the phone list. If I want to manually enter a number, I can use a fast access key;
2. After selecting the name from the list, I would like that the message is immediately sent to the number listed in the mobile field of that persons details. I can imagine that some people would like to see all numbers for that person to choose from, but for me that won't be necessary. They could make this configurable;
3. After that, the message is being sent...

Got it!!!

This weekend I finally got some time to walk to the shop and buy a new cellphone. They girl helping me wanted to show me many models, but I interrupted her to tell her first my criteria:

1. A good price
2. Small size (I usually wear my cellphone in the pockets of my trousers)
3. Easy to use

My first criteria limited the selection to those models for which my provider had an offer. Of these I could immediately remove all camera phones, smart phones, and big old models which left me with 3 phones to choose from (I don’t remember which were the other two). This brought me to my third criterion, usability. The girl told me that all phones are equally easy to use, which made me shock in horror, since most phones have major usability problems! And each generation of phones gets more features and thus more horrible usability decisions are made.

After trying out the three models a little bit, I decided to go for the Siemens M55, even though it had a big usability problem popping up immediately: on the main screen two fast access buttons are shown: ‘menu’ on the right, and a book icon on the left. I expected that the book icon would directly open up my address book, but to my horror a confirmation screen appeared, on which I had to select ‘yes’ to open my address book. Of course the people in the shop could not explain me why I had to press the button twice to open up a basic function as the address book.

Anyway, I have a cellphone again and still many hours to go to find out how things work.

Almost a year ago I posted the last picture to my photo gallery. That’s what happens if you’re one of the last fossils preferring ‘real’ photo’s over digital photo’s and you’re too lazy to scan your pictures. Today I added a photo of our stand at the CeBIT, and I am preparing to publish a series of photo’s of our last visit to Holland.

Sometimes people ask me whether there are certain Dutch products I miss here in Lleida. The answer is: “No, I don’t miss anything, since I am often enough in Holland to do some shoppings.”

Most people can guess the most obvious items from my Dutch shopping list (Cheese & Dropjes), but there are some things which are not so obvious. Last weekend Berry and Manon told us several times that they would have brought it if they would have known it.

So for all my future visitors from Holland, here is our Dutch shopping list:

1. Jonge kaas
2. Dropjes (zacht zoet)
3. Chicken Tonight
4. Mix voor lasagne
5. Cup-a-Soup Tomaat (Toscaans of Chinees geen bezwaar)
6. Tijgernootjes
7. Hagelslag
8. Pepernoten (alleen in november en december uiteraard)
9. Chocoladeletters (eveneens alleen in november en december)
10. Brylcream (hier zijn ze zo modern dat ze alleen nog maar gel en wax hebben)

Last weekend Berry & Manon visited us. The good thing about people spending their holiday with us, is that we also get a little bit the ‘holiday feeling’. Normally we use part of the weekend to clean the house, do some shopping and work in the house, but now we did all this during the days before. So we had all the time to relax! On Friday evening we welcomed our guest with a beer, after which we ate a little bit. This to initiate them to the Catalan culture of spending a lot of time eating and drinking, usually a few hours later than they do in Holland – we had supper at 23:00. Saturday morning was a typical vacation morning. After sleeping a bit longer than usual, taking a shower and having a long breakfast, the morning was over. Time to head over to the city centre to take a beer on a terrace! Back home we had a long lunch and a short sleep (siesta!). When it started to become dark we walked outside to do some window shopping and compare the prices with those in Holland. In the evening Berry and I went to see a Basketball match, while Manon and Maria José had some tapas. We finished the day in a fine restaurant. After so much eating and drinking, we decided to have a slightly more active day on Sunday. The morning was the same as on Saturday, but after that we took the car to visit Montserrat and Sitges. At the end of the day we left them in front of a hotel in the middle of the Ramblas of Barcelona, so they would not have to travel a lot on Monday. Berry and Manon: thanks for getting us to relax!

> To set a blank blue homepage in Internet Explorer, do the following:

1. Click Tools and choose Internet Options.
2. On the General tab, set the homepage to about:mozilla.
3. Click OK. No comments…

Slightly condensed… Hat tip: Punkey

The only shops open in the morning when I wake up are bakeries and kiosks. I like that, since many days I go downstairs to buy some fresh bread for breakfast, once in a while accompanied with a newspaper. When I come home from my work, almost all shops are closed. I don’t like that, since many days I need something, and I will have to wait until Saturday to buy it. Or better: I’ll have to wait for the first Saturday on which I have time. Sometimes I work on Saturdays, sometimes I am in Holland on Saturdays, sometimes we have visitors on Saturdays, and sometimes I have to buy more important things on Saturdays… This Saturday I hope to have some time to do some shopping, but am afraid that once again I won’t have the time for it. I want to bring my suit to the chemical cleaner, I want to develop the pictures we made in Easter, and I want to buy a new cellphone. And as a true gadget freak, it itches to know that you really need a new gadget (my old phone is completely destroyed), and probably won’t have the time to buy it! :-(

> Ik haat het om geblinddoekt te worden. Al met al een geslaagd vrijgezellenfeest. Vrij naar John

Bags packed… Some hours of sleep… Air plane to Amsterdam… Arriving in Harmelen… Relaxing…. Tourist in my former country…

One of the problems of using the XHTML 1.1 doctype is the fact that your pages need to be completely valid in order to be displayed. If there is one single error in the XHTML code, the browser will display an error message. This in difference with HTML and XHTML 1.0 pages, which browsers will try to show even if the code contains errors. Of course, all my templates contain valid code, but the problem comes when I or my commenters use code in my texts. It is always the parts that are not automated where the problems appear :-( The number one error screwing up my valid pages is the use of ampersands (&). Since ampersands have a special meaning in XHTML, you’ll have to enter the entity code & to display an ampersand. In my texts I don’t use many ampersands, but many URL´s do contain ampersands. And usually URL’s are simply copied and pasted from the browser address bar, without verifying the address, resulting in an error message instead of a link. But now I hope I solved this problem. I just installed the latest version of the SafeHref plugin, which automagically repairs this error.

YRCHTVOL is still a difficult thing to understand for most people in the web-business: Single Input – Multiple Outputs.

Now that I am back home again and took some time to catch some sleep, it’s time to tell about the CeBIT experience. It was my first time at the biggest technology fair in the world, and the first time ICG was present with their own stand. Therefore I did not really know what to expect. I assumed to see many new things, but not in the area where we have our stand. The POS world is a niche market after all. Since we never did this before, we did not spend huge amounts of money on the stand. We simply ordered a basic stand and transported all other materials ourselves. That meant that we spent two days on the autoroutes and autobahn and one day constructing the stand. As a result, we were already tired before the show started, and looked very jealously at all consultants freshly arriving at the Microsoft stand and finding their cup of coffee already prepared. Like I already said, our stand was situated in a specialized POS corner, so the big public did probably not pass our stand. However, the people walking around in that particular section were exactly the people we wanted to talk to. We made many good contacts, and we have very good hopes on a good number of dealer wanting to distribute our software. What surprised us was the change in visitor types by day. On the first two days (Thursday and Friday), the audience was very international. We attended people from all over the world, but did not see many Germans. In the weekend, many students and families visited the show, which did not bring us many contacts. Monday and Tuesday suddenly the Germans and Dutch showed up, while the foreigners seemed to have gone home. On Wednesday the only visitors to the show were some teenagers begging for goodies, so it was very quiet. This made the Wednesday a perfect day to visit other exhibitors, and they also visited us. What I really missed at the CeBIT was the new technology buzz. I did not notice any excitement, did not see a single new gadget. It was even very difficult to get internet access. I expected it to be a lot more on the forefront of technology.

The last week we have worked very hard. Not only to prepare for the CeBIT, but also to do our regular work and the work that we normally should have done the next two weeks. Now, we’re almost there. Tomorrow we will load the truck with all material for the stand, and Monday morning we will drive to Germany. After two days of travelling we’ll have a day to construct everything and then… let the show begin! I don’t know what exactly we can expect but I am convinced that the show will be a big success for our company. I will tell you more in two weeks, when I’m back.

Out of respect for the victims and out of protest towards terrorism, today I put my site on black.

What happened this morning in Madrid is inhuman and cannot be justified. I can only guess for the reasons behind this horrible deed, but know that whatever they were trying to reach is not going to happen, in contrary.

If they wanted to put political parties up against each other, they failed, since all parties now form one front against terrorism.

If they wanted to show their strength, they will fail, since the government (whoever will win the elections the coming weekend) will be very convinced in finding the people behind this attack.

I cincerely hope that the Spanish government does the right thing as a reaction to the events today, without limiting the rights of the Spanish inhabitants.

Maybe I am convinced

Just a small message to give you the possibility to congratulate me. 😉

Sometimes I post comments on my own pages, usually in reaction to other comments. I usually use only my first name ‘Jeroen’ to post these comments, but everybody is free to use any name he/she wishes, including my first name. After all, I am not the only Jeroen in the world.

But how do you know that it was really me who posted the comment? From now on all my comments are PGP signed, so you can verify them with my public key. This way you know for sure that the poster of the message is the same guy as the one who created this site.

Of course you are free to sign your own comments as well.

How wonderful!!! In these times of stress we receive an extra day for free!

Let’s enjoy it… 😀

Today it is raining in Lleida. So what? Well, the problem is that the people over here are not used to rain. When it is raining, the people simply stay inside until the rain is over.

When I drove this morning past the market square, I could see all merchants waiting inside their cars, still packed. They were waiting for the rain to stop, because their clients won’t show up when it is raining. I was imagining that Dutch merchants would have the same mentality; they would only be able to sell during some weeks in summer! But that is mainly because the Dutch clients are used to the rain; they simply have to.

Of course there are situations in which even the Dutch people stay at home, and the amount of snow today created such a situation. The Dutch only stay at home when it is impossible to get out.

Unfortunately, my parents have to catch a flight to Barcelona in a few hours, so at this moment they are desperately trying to get to the airport. I just checked the news, but there are no trains going to Amsterdam and there are huge traffic jams on all highways. I really hope they are able to make it in time!!! 😱

[Update 2004.02.26]: They managed to get to Schiphol airport by train, and I assume they have arrived safely in Barcelona. Just a few hours more, and I will meet them. 😉

Today I received the following message in my mailbox:

an improper scan has caused a ban on your site date: Tue Feb 24 18:30:20 2004 ip: 66.77.73.32 host: shop-gw.sac.overture.com agent: Yahoo-VerticalCrawler-FormerWebCrawler/3.9 crawler at trd dot overture dot com; http://www.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/crawler

I regulary receive this kind of messages, usually created because bad robots or script kiddies access my spam trap. But Yahoo and Overture are well respected companies, and I would assume that they would have respected my robots.txt file, in which I explicitly deny access to the /private folder:

User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin Disallow: /dummy/dummy.html Disallow: /errors Disallow: /fimcap Disallow: /js Disallow: /mailtemplates Disallow: /mt-static Disallow: /private Disallow: /spam

So I looked in my access log and found that they indeed violated my robots file!!

66.77.73.32 - - [24/Feb/2004:17:20:24 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 758 "-" "Yahoo-VerticalCrawler-FormerWebCrawler/3.9 crawler at trd dot overture dot com; http://www.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/crawler" 66.77.73.32 - - [24/Feb/2004:17:57:22 -0500] "GET /private/ HTTP/1.0" 200 4815 "-" "Yahoo-VerticalCrawler-FormerWebCrawler/3.9 crawler at trd dot overture dot com; http://www.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/crawler" 66.77.73.32 - - [24/Feb/2004:18:30:20 -0500] "GET /private/welcome.html HTTP/1.0" 200 351 "-" "Yahoo-VerticalCrawler-FormerWebCrawler/3.9 crawler at trd dot overture dot com; http://www.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/crawler"

Notice that the page mentioned in the User Agent string states that Yahoo-Overture does support the robots exclusion protocol!

That is an awfully big gray area!!! I guess I still have some traveling to do 😀

Notice that a holiday in a small part of the US of A made a big difference, since the whole country is marked red after visiting only 2 states: The fastest way to fill my map would be to make some strategical visits to Canada, Russia, Greenland, Brazil or China.

The other way would be to go for the biggest number of countries, and in that case traveling through Europe is the way to go:

(Hat tip: hightext)

[Update 2004.02.23]: Added USA and Europe maps. [Update 2004.09.27]: Added Cyprus and Thailand.

It has been very silent on this site lately.

This was not because I did not have time to write; it only takes about five minutes to write some lines.

This was not because I did not have anything to write about; I could have written about using Zempt for posting on this site, about the political situation in Spain, about my parents coming to visit me this week, about the fimcap.org server migration…

The only reason for my silence is that I did not feel like writing. But now I’m back again! I promise

That the pixies are going to tour again is old news. The problem is finding the tour schedule, it simply does not exist. So I googled a little bit, and made the following scheme. Surely it is still incomplete, so if you have any additions or corrections, please let me know.

[Update 2004.02.10]: Added links and comments [Update 2004.02.12]: Added US & Canada tour dates [Update 2004.03.03]: Added more gigs [Update 2004.03.03]: I just found out that the pixies finally have an unofficial tour page, so I won’t update this scheme anymore.