#English

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.

While I was eating today, I was watching ‘Ready Steady Cook‘ on the BBC. During their 10 minutes session they create absolutely astonishing meals, the cooks also answered a question from a viewer. A Dutch viewer. She stated that as everyone knows one should never reheat spinach, but she asked whether it was ok to reheat spinach soup?

Paul Rankin, Antony Worrall Thompson, and Ainsley Harriott were all three very surprised by the statement that one should never reheat spinach. They have never heard such a nonsense.

About a year ago I wrote a small piece over using VOIP and UMTS, stating that that might be a cheap alternative over calling, but it wouldn’t probably work because of high delay (and jitter).

Apperantly, it does work. And apperantly, other people have been using it: Vodafone has announced (although I can’t find it on the original german page) on friday that using VOIP on their UMTS network will be made technically impossible.

Yesterday, I downloaded, installed and played with Google Earth, just like half of the internet population. I then found it a very nice toy. Exceptionally cool. The streaming technology is so beautifully implemented. But still, a toy. I couldn’t really see the real usefulness. As a technical person, I really have deep respect for the way the program works, but hey, unfortunally in the real world, you also need to have a business case in order to make things happen, and at that moment I didn’t see it.

Frans wrote a piece about using an I as a prefix when using interfaces. I agree to him that differentiating between classes and interfaces by a naming convention is a useful thing. But instead of using a prefixed I for the interface, one can also use a postfixed Impl for the implementing class. Because normally you program to an interface, the code that uses the interface becomes much more clean:

Today it is 5 years ago that a firework factory in Enschede exploded. At that time I lived in Enschede, about 2 km from the scene. Although no one I knew was injured or killed, I know some people who lost all their possessions.

It is a weird feeling. These things happen every month, but only because this accident occured nearby it had a much larger impact on me than all these other sadly recurring accidents. And not only to me, the whole population of Enschede was in a shock for a few months. And even several years later, the accident leaves trails: it was absolutely not-done to ignite firework in Enschede at newyear’s eve for the first one or two years, the house-market was tensened immediately and the whole neighbourhood that was blown away is still being rebuild. And in Enschede almost everyone knows people who have lost their home.

I bought (the Dutch translation) this book almost a year ago at the local supermarket (hey, it was cheap, and it looked better than the other cheap books, and it was next to the waiting line for the cash register :)), but until recently I’ve never read it. Only on the trip to Prague I started to read it (I also took ‘Managing Software Requirements’ [Leffingwell, Widrig] with me, but that book was a bit too heavy for a holiday).

Last week I was on holiday in Prague, mainly to meet my family there. It was a nice week, although Kreslice (where we stayed) was a bit too far from the centre and the weather was not that nice (the first day was about 30 degrees, but after that it became colder and it started to rain).

But anyway, I was both happy to see my family again, and to relax for a week after 7 exhausting weeks of working hard combined with moving to my new apartment (as of this week, I just have to work hard again :)).

Almost a year after I blogged about my fourth birthday of my old camera, I bought a new one: a Canon 350D.

What a nice camera it is! The difference between a compact camera and a SLR is huge. The speed, the non existing shutter lag, the control, the range of the lens (ok, this is more a comparison of the lens and a compact camera), the feel, the … everything.