#English

As a Winamp user since 1998, today I replaced it with Songbird. Winamp has all the features I need (basically FLAC support and last.fm scrobbling :)), but it lacks an important feature I need in the near future: MacOS support.

Today I briefly looked at some Winamp alternatives (thanks Guido!). Some lacked the multi-platform feature, others were just plain hideous (ok, I’m not going to make friends with this statement, but players in this category always had a Linux background…).

Recently, I stumbled upon “Rework” by 37signals in my local bookshop. As an avid reader of Signal vs. Noise, buying it was a non-decision.

The book adheres to their mantra less is more: it is only 273 pages, and about one third of them don’t contain text. The chapters are short and easy to read. You could read the whole book in an evening if you’d want (and then re-read it the evening after it).

Yesterday, I saw a tweet from Joshua Bloch:

Teaching to the test at M.I.T. http://tinyurl.com/cb4799 . But do they teach ethics?

I’ve only read Handout 1, but I am puzzled by two thoughts:

• Do MIT students really need this? I consider MIT as one of the most prestigious universities in the world, with only super-smart students. I would expect that anyone with a MIT degree would be able to get into any company (solely based on capacity).
• Are the interview questions at Google that simple? I was always under the impression that the interview process at Google was very hard, and that they would only hire very, very smart people. But c’mon, these questions are that simple – I would almost say trivial – that anyone even considering applying for a development job should be able to answer these questions without any problem.

I still don’t know what to think of it… (I almost believe it is fake, but the URL really points to mit.edu…)

When I bought my Miele Black Pearl 2000 back in 2005, I thought that that would be my only vacuum cleaner I would buy for a long time… But, apparently, I was wrong, because this week I bought a new one…

The Roomba is not a ‘normal’ vacuum cleaner, it’s a robot! Not exactly like Rosie in The Jetsons, as he or she (I still don’t have a name for it, suggestions? :)) will only vacuum clean, but hey, it’s a start…

Marc (for some reason you can only address another blogger by his first name, even if that other blogger did almost invent the Internet…) points to an article that describes why hybrid cars aren’t the future.

The summary of that story is: people won’t pay 5000 dollars extra to save the environment.

Although I do agree with that, I don’t think that that is a valid reason:

– 5000 dollars more than what? In The Netherlands the taxes on a hybrid car are 6000 euro less than a regular car (so, a hybrid car is in fact cheaper than a non-hybrid car), but even when you ignore that ridiculous law, the difference is less than 5000. Let alone when you compare the TOC.

[lang_nl]Vanwege *ahem* ‘hoge vraag’ *ahem* heb ik de Top Commentator widget weer terug geplaatst. Ik heb zelf de source een beetje aangepast zodat hij mezelf nu niet meer toont. Dus vanaf nu: in de widget zie je de meest actieve commentatoren afgezien van mij![/lang_nl]

[lang_en]Due to *ahem* ‘high demand’ *ahem* the Top Commentators widget is back. I even hacked it a bit to exclude myself. So, in the Widget you see the most active commentators beside me[/lang_en]

The first two posts on this weblog already stated the question: post in Dutch, or in English? The last English post is already 1.5 years old. The last few months I’m more and more posting on my personal live, and I didn’t really wanted an English (technical) post intervene. I thought about splitting the weblog into two, but I realized that I don’t have enough content to justify that. So, this weekend, I installed the plugin Polyglot. Using this plugin I can write posts both in English and in Dutch. I still don’t know whether I will post all blogs both in English and in Dutch (I fear that my English is not good enough so I could translate my dull stupid funny-to-be texts well enough to be enjoyable in English), but we will see…

Although I use Firefox for quite a while now, now and then you still learn useful things. For example, the usage of the middle-mouse-button (or more commonly: clicking the scroll wheel). Not long after I started using Firefox 1.5 and I couldn’t use the Tabbrowser Preferences extension anymore I learned that clicking on a tab with your scroll wheel closes it. A very nice feature indeed (before that, I right clicked on the tab to close it).

Today, I learned a new word: Hackpology. Google doesn’t seem to know the word (at least, not yet :)), but that doesn’t matter: I like the term.

Although the hack on The Daily WTF is a very nasty one, I think that the usage of a hackpology isn’t a bad thing. At least, you explain why you’ve done something the way you did it (and the hack was needed anyway, otherwise it wouldn’t be there in the first place).

After our monthly meeting at work I was tricked (after a beer of course :)) to play a game of Antigrav. To those who don’t know: Antigrav is a game that uses EyeToy: a camera that is connected to a playstation 2, so you have to to behave as an idiot in front of the TV in order to move your in-game character.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t even able to complete the tutorial. My ducking and jumping technique was fantastic, but my arms are probably too short (hey, you need to have some kind of excuse :)) for grabbing the ‘bonus’-items I needed for clearing a rail. But, anyway, it was a great laugh. But for serious gaming, I’d prefer a normal gamepad.