Jeroen Sangers

Bloglines has redesigned!

The new user interface looks more beautiful, and they also added some new functions. You can now blog about the items you read, directly in Bloglines!

Six months ago I set some targets for myself for this year. Now that I am halfway the year, it is time to evaluate my progress:

Learn to speak Spanish

My Spanish is definitely better, simply because I have been using it some months more. I planned to study more structurally, but so far I haven’t spent a single minute doing this. There’s still work to do on this one.

Say "ja"

I am on schedule on this one; I expect to finish this task in 36 days.

Call old friends

I have more contact with my old friends in Holland than I had last year. However, for my feeling it can be even better.

Finish work in the house

The plans have been made, now all we have to do is say to eachother to start. I still have hope.

Be less afraid of risks

This is the most vague item on the list, and I don’t know how I can ‘measure’ the result. My feeling tells me that it hasn’t changed much.

Think about the future

My plans for the near future, 2–3 years, are ready. But what do I want with the rest of my life?????

Spend more time in the nature

For several reasons, we haven’t made as many excursions as we would like. Now that summer has come, the only nature we can visit is the Mediteranian Sea. This item has been postponed to autumn.

Learn to program in python.

Not started yet… All in all I have the feeling that at 50% of the year I haven’t reached 50% of my aims.

I have been using the services of Mobical for some time now, mainly to back up my cell phone’s contact list, and have been very satisfied. Once in a while I press the button on my phone, and I know that all my phone numbers are stored safely on a server in Sweden. They also supply a web interface to your data, so you can enter your contacts with more than nine buttons, but I never used that.

Today I visited them again, and noticed that they have created version two of their service. Version two is not backwards compatible, so I had to create a new account. After setting up my account, I uploaded the data from my phone, and looked around at the site. It all looks very professional, and I can imagine that some people use this as their main agenda contact list. It has a nice overview window with the upcoming meetings and tasks, and you can browse your contacts in an intuitive way. Notes have been implemented as post-it notes glued to each page, with the option to drag them with your mouse. Really neat… if you only have one note. I tend to store many small pieces of useful information as notes on my phone (I definitely have to buy me a Palm) and the pot-its became very annoying. I tried to close the ‘windows’, but a pop-up warned me that I was about to delete the note.

For the moment I continue to use Mobical as always: to back-up my data.

This is a message for every person in the world creating a form with a drop-down list to choose the country from: the country where I was born is called The Netherlands, and I expect it to appear in the list right between Nepal and Netherlands Antilles. I am not going to look at the H, since Holland is only a part of The Netherlands, and neither do I expect it at the T, if dictionaries would do the same, most entries would be found under the T!

Thanks!

💬

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. — Albert Einstein

Summer in Lleida has a bad name. Being in the inlands without any lake and usually without even a small breeze makes Lleida a very hot place. The hottest months yet have to come and the temperature is already at 38°C. With this kind of temperatures you have only two options to spend your free time: inside the water (a swimming pool or the sea) or in the mountains. In both cases it is advisable to leave early in the morning, as driving a car can be unbearable during the day.

This weekend we chose the swimming pool option, since we didn’t feel like driving very far. As a result, our activities were limited to those you can do in a swimming pool, which is basically limited to reading. Fortunately I still had to read the latest Linux Journal, but for next weekend I will have to buy some books.

The night of San Joan, two o’clock in the morning. We are sitting side by side on a balcony on the fifth floor of a house in Balafia. The view is stunning; we can oversee the whole city with the Seu Vella high above it. There are fireworks and bonfires everywhere, and I count 5 empty bottles of Cava. The radio plays “The house of the rising sun”, so there is no need to say anything…

Just like many people, sometimes my head bursts of all things I have to remember and to do. In fact, my short—term memory is terrible; I am able to tell you to do something and completely forget about it within 10 minutes. The reason for this is that I can be completely focussed on the action I am doing at the moment. I am aware of this problem, and have tried out many strategies to overcome this. How can I process the enormous amount of information I receive by e-mail, hear from colleagues and clients and read on the internet without getting drowned in it, so that I can actually get things done?

The answer for me lies in the last three words: for the last year I have been applying David Allen’s methodology called Getting Things Done. This method looks a lot like the things I have been trying out before; only it is worked out a lot better. The basis is to process your inbox (which can be mail, paper, phone…) and fill your calendar and next action system. Combined with a weekly review, this system ensures that no action will slip out of your system, and you actually get things done.

Of course the whole thing is explained in more detail in the book by David Allen, but this scheme explains a lot.

These days I am trying to see whether the Mambo Open Source CMS system could fit my idea’s for the new Fimcap site. The software is very complete, and I still have to explore all available third-party Components and Modules before I can make my final judgement. I am using this post as my scrapbook, so I can access my notes from any computer.

• To support the site in three languages, the best solution is to have three separate installation; note: I still have to look at mambelfish
• The default DTD is XHTML 1.0 Transitional;
• The default templates do not validate; :-(
• If I want to see the contents of a section, it gives me a list with the categories within that section. I would like to be able to see the actual items, grouped by category;
• Is it possible to have a general login without the rights to publish documents or to change account settings?;
• The default WYSIWYG HTML editor only works on Internet Explorer and produces upper case elements;
• The user manual is very clear, but unfortunately more technical documentation (template design) is not available yet;
• There are two separate login systems, one for the site and one for the administrative interface. I would like to login only once;
• The PartyStaff module lets authors manage their own details (presidium page);

More and more people are buying digital cameras; I even read that the digital camera sales outnumber the traditional film cameras nowadays. I am very happy with my Canon film camera, but after I have been playing with my parents' new Sony digital camera last week I wondered whether a digital camera would be something for me. Of course as a gadget it would most certainly be welcome, but as a replacement for my current film camera it will need to add much additional benefits. So I made a little comparison:

Pro digital:

• Electronic format Logically, digital cameras store photographs in a digital format. This makes it very easy to save them on your PC.
• Easier handling Related to the digital format, photographs taken with a digital camera are much easier to publish to the internet, to e-mail to your friends and relatives and to catalogue. Besides that you can easily retouch them using graphical editing software.
• No film rolls Since you don't need to buy film rolls, the costs per photograph will drop significantly.
• Cheaper workflow With a digital camera you work different. You shoot your pictures, delete the ones you don't like, store them on you PC and maybe you will print your best pictures. This is a very cheap process.
• Quantity gives quality Because the workflow is so cheap, you generally make many more images. This has two big benefits for the image quality: first you simply have a bigger chance making a photograph at the right place and the right time and secondly the more pictures you make, the more experienced you become. Professional photographers use the same tactic, but using film makes it way too expensive for amateur photographers.

Pro film:

• Higher resolution It is difficult to compare two completely different techniques, but in general film cameras have a much higher resolution. In digital cameras the important parameter is the number of Megapixels — even though the sensor size is more important — so experts have been trying to calculate this number for film cameras. Results vary, but most conclude that film cameras have a resolution between 15 and 25 Megapixels.
• Bigger enlargements The quality of enlargements is another feature in which the traditional camera beats the newcomers. A photograph made with a film camera can easily be enlarged to 40 by 50 centimetres, while a digital photograph will start losing quality at 20 by 25 cm.
• Cheaper cameras Film cameras cost only a fraction of their digital equivalents; sometimes they are even 90% cheaper.
• Dynamic range Digital photo chips have limits in dynamic range; at a certain moment a change in subject brightness won't result in a change in image brightness anymore. Films do not have this hard limit, but rather become less and less sensitive. The dynamic range of films is larger than the dynamic range of photo chips.
• Proven technology Film cameras on the market now do not differ much from those on the market five years ago. In general you buy a camera and use it until it stops working. A digital camera however, is new technology that is still being developed. You new 6 megapixel camera will be considered old within a year. I don't know anybody who is still using his one megapixel camera he bought two years ago, but I know several people still using a film camera they bought over a decade ago.

In short, digital cameras give you ease of use and electronic access to your photographs, while film cameras give you quality and are cheaper. The choice is up to you. For me it is not so important having a digital photograph — though I would like to publish more photo’s on this site. On a cold Sunday in winter, I like to grab a photo album and browse through the images on my sofa. I don’t think I can have that same feeling sitting behind my computer. For the moment I still prefer film cameras to digital cameras, but maybe I might buy a very cheap digital camera for those moments I want to send a photo by e-mail or publish it on this site.

Firefox 0.9 has been released today. Of course I immediately downloaded and installed it. As the version number shows, this is still a technology preview, so there still are some things not working quite as they should.

The most important missing feature is a good installation procedure. To upgrade from version 0.8 to 0.9, I had to remove the old version, install the new one and after that I had to reinstall all my extensions — Bookmarks synchronizer, Bloglines notifier, Links toolbar. All together 10 minutes work to upgrade a simple application.

But alas, this was the last time I had to go through this, since the next version will hopefully be 1.0 and will include the upgrade functionality.

A red Buick Electra Convertible 1959. Really nice car…

When you travel by car through Europe, you’ll find that the traffic rules are more or less the same for all countries. Of course there are some minor differences as the maximum speed on —120 km/h in the Netherlands, 130 km/h in France— but in general the rules are the same. Nobody ever warned for the fact that the Standard European Traffic Rules are not valid in Spain. The confusing part is that the used signs are exactly the same, but the interpretation might surprise visitors from abroad. Therefore I decided to write here about the differences I experienced, starting with the most disturbing rule: the minimum speed.

Each road has a minimum speed, which is normally shown with a sign equally to the one above. In general the minimum speeds are as follows:

• inside towns: 50 km/h;
• open roads: 80 or 100 km/h;
• motorways: 120 km/h.

It is very important to obey the minimum speed. Fortunately, the local drivers are very friendly and will warn you if you are driving slower than the minimum. They will signal with their lights and horns, wave with their arms and even shout at you. In case you miss these signals, they will risk their lives and approach you with their own car up to a distance of 30 centimetres. They assume that once you will notice them you accelerate to keep their lives out of danger.

Already for some months, this site can be reached at another domain name: braintags.com.

First this domain was hosted at another server, redirecting to jeroensangers.com, and since some weeks it serves as a full domain name for this site. Silently I have tested the new domain name for some time, since I like it better than the original one. This site is called ‘Brain Tags’, so it is only logical that you can reach it through braintags.com.

As of today I changed the configuration of this site to use braintags.com as its main domain, though you can of course still access the site by its old URL.

The new Link dump section of this site is now also available as an Atom 0.3 feed, so you will be able to receive my links in your favourite feed reader — my preferred reader is Bloglines.

In the footer of each page you will find feeds button, showing you all available feeds.

After restructuring the templates, it was time top add a new feature: the Link dump.

While surfing the internet, I find so many interesting sites, which I usually bookmark all. Lately I found my bookmarks getting too crowded, making it difficult to find specific links. From now on I won’t put them in my bookmarks anymore, but publish them on this site, for four good reasons:

• My bookmarks list stays cleaner;
• I can use the search function to look up links;
• I can easily add comments;
• You also benefit from my findings.

For the moment the link dump is implemented solely as a list on the main page, but I plan to add an archiving function and enable comments on individual links.

In an international office like ours, the right tools are very important. My most important tool is the phone; I spend most of the day talking on the phone. All other important tools are electronic ones, as you can see from this screenshot (click for a larger version):

I e-mail a lot and use instant messaging through Trillian (MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and IRC in one application). But the handiest tool I have is the big image on the background: xearth for Windows. It shows me in a single screen which of our foreign contacts is awake. ;-)

I am facing a small CSS problem: I have a page with some blocks of content, of which I don’t know the contents on beforehand. Therefore all blocks — defined by div elements — have the same definition. If the block contains text, it has to be left aligned; if the block contains an image, it has to be horizontally centred.

In the good ol' HTML era, I would simply add align=“center” to the img element, and I would be done. But with CSS, the only way to centre an image is with text-align: center; to the parent element of the image. But this is impossible, since I don’t know the contents on beforehand.

What I would want is to apply a certain style depending on the child element; something like: div < img {text-align:center}. Since this kind of instructions do not exist, I will probably have to use some kind of JavaScript hack to accomplish what I want — or does anybody know a better solution?

I have restructured my templates for this site. The old ones used way too many <div>’s and <span>’s, which cluttered up the HTML — these elements are today’s equivalent of the tables in the 90’s. I decided to start from zero and only add those elements that I think are necessary. As a result, the new pages are smaller, which should make them faster for you.

To make things easier for me, I decided to use another Document Type Definition. This site is now XHTML 1.0 Strict, instead of XHTML 1.1. To me it feels a little bit like a loss, since I liked it that my site was on the forefront of web technology, but the hassle is simple too big. The biggest problem is that a lot of JavaScript won’t work, and my knowledge is not enough to fix these things myself.

I also took the opportunity to activate the TypeKey service for those people who want to use it. It is not required; I only see it as a means for showing to the readers that it was really you who wrote this comment. As an alternative you can still use OpenPGP to certify your comments.

There are still some things not going quite as I wanted to, and the quickly adjusted stylesheet makes this site look even worse than before in Internet Explorer, but I will be working on those. If you notice any strange behaviour or mistake, please let me know.

Last week when I entered my hotel room and switched on the light, the TV turned on and showed me a welcome message explaining how to use Pay TV. First I did not pay any attention to this screen, and I started unpacking my bags. When I passed the TV for about the fifth time, I suddenly saw something I did not notice before. On the top of the screen I could see a blue bar with some letters below it. I was amazed. The welcome message was simply a text file written in Write, and the whole system appeared to be running Windows 3.1!!!

It has been a long time ago since I last saw Windows 3.1 in use. I thought that everybody had already switched a long time ago to Windows 9x, but it seems that there are still some of these legacy systems around. Surely the system is running good enough, so why change it?

The next week I don’t expect to write many things.

This morning I will be leaving for Cyprus–I will be flying over Amsterdam!!!—where I will stay until Sunday. I will have meetings with four companies over there and am going to try to teach them as much as possible about our main programs.

Bye!

I temporary disabled the comments on this site. The last days I have received too much comment spam.

Until two weeks ago, I could control comment spam by using the MT-Blacklist plug-in.

Unfortunately this plug-in does not work on the latest version of Movable Type, so I had to remove it. MT 3.0D has the option to require commenters to sign up first before posting a comment, but I have not yet been able to get the JavaScript to work on XHTML 1.1.

Until I fix this, I simply keep a close eye on my comments, and remove any suspicious comment immediately. But the coming week I will be on a trip, and thus can’t watch my comments.

Therefore I decided to disable the comments until I am back home again. If you have any comment, just use the Feedback form.

It was that famous weekend again: the Aplec del Caragol. I won’t go into details, but after two days of eating and drinking I feel tired, dirty, and have pain in my stomach.

A little bit more than a year ago, I entered the fantasy blog shares market with exactly B$500. As of today I may call myself a virtual billionaire, since the total of my virtual possessions passed B$1.000.000.000!!!

Now let’s see if I can do the same with real money…

[Update 2004.05.19]: OK, I deserved it! Directly after writing this entry I took some losses, which brought my virtual wealth down to B$967.000.000. Back to work!!!

Four days ago I upgraded the motor of this site to Movable Type version 3.0D — the D is for Developer edition. Unlike many others who installed this version, I was fully aware that this developer edition could have some problems with plug-ins. Here are my findings of the first days playing around.

Dashboard

The first screen of the MT interface clearly shows a new item: the Movable Type News box. This box syndicates news from the Movable Type web site. Since I prefer to read my news in my feed reader, I immediately removed this box.

Another thing changed in the main screen is the direct access to some weblog features. The 2.x versions had for each weblog links to create a new entry and to enter the entries list. Now you can also access the comments list, the templates list and the weblog configuration screen. The one thing I am missing here is the upload file feature, since I assume that bloggers will more often upload an image than tinker with their templates.

Edit Entry

Also the Entry Edit screen has some —minor— modifications. It is now possible to specify the entry date & time the moment you create a new entry. In the older versions you first had to save your entry to modify the publishing time. That leaves only one feature that cannot be modified in new entries: the multiple categories.

Another change is that the edit buttons now also work in Mozilla based browsers, but only for the entry body. If you use the extended entry field, you still have to enter the HTML code yourself.

Comments

The comments list is new and handy feature to manage your comments. You can see the details and the status of the last comments, and open them from that screen. You can filter comments on e-mail, name and IP address, but unfortunately not on status. I don’t receive many comments, but I assume that more popular sites would love to see only the comments that are pending for approval.

Trackback

In my definition, trackbacks are nothing more than comments on my entries left on other sites. I would like to treat trackbacks in exactly the same way as comments, but unfortunately trackbacks do not have status information.

Plug-ins

Of the 13 plug-ins I use for this site, I removed two after upgrading. MT-Blacklist is not compatible with MT3.0, so I am removing comment spammers by hand again.

The Optional-Redirect plug-in is not necessary anymore, since the same can be achieved in MT 3.0 by no_redirect=“1”.

All other plug-ins work the same way as before.

Individual Archive template

Most of my time went into trying to adjust the individual archive template. There have been many changes to this template to incorporate the TypeKey service, but I have not yet been able to get them to work when served as XHTML 1.1 with MIME type application/xhtml+xml. The smallest problem was to validate the template as XHTML 1.1. The new code uses some names, which I changed into ids, and I had to edit lib/MT/Template/Context.pm so it won’t use valign and border anymore – look at line 1476.

A bigger problem is the JavaScript. Things like document.comments_form.email.value is easy enough changed into document.getElementById(‘email’).value, but I don’t know how to fix document.write so it works both on text/html as on application/xhtml+xml.

The last problem I have with my template is that it shows the wrong comment form; the one that is normally used when TypeKey authentication is obligatory. I still have to find out what is going wrong here.