Work setup

This is what I look at for roughly 36 hours a week. It's a good thing I have to tidy my desk every night before I leave, because otherwise I would be swamped in papers.

Oh, and I need a bigger monitor. The left one is used to access a developer environment which runs our production environment (don't ask). The right one is for office and e-mail. Applications on the right can span to the left. But those on the left cannot spill-over to the right. And as always with software, there is so much anger and hate going round. To minimize this, I dutifully follow http://we.hates.software and Worse Than Failure.

Zaaf

My old phone

I just received a new camera phone. It allows of to post straight to my blog. So here is a picture of my old phone, taken with my new one. 

The only thing I wanted from T-Mobile was to lower my monthly subscription fee to €5,-. But no, they had to sent me the Sony Ericsson K800i for free, including a bluetooth headset. Well who am I to say no to that.

Zaaf

Hear who swims there, kids

Someone past me this link of the Saint Nicolas welcoming parade in the town where we live: Piet Overboard.

Zaaf

Chess master

Last week my seven-year-old participated in the school chess championships for primary schools in our town. This was a cross primary school event where 24 teams of eight different schools bested their chess playing skills against each other. Each team consisted of four persons. My son's team was the on average youngest team with an average age of 7. And although they ended 23th of the 24, I still think he did a remarkable job: 4.5 of the team's 9 points where his. Of his 7 games, he won 4 and drew only one.

But the most remarkable feature was that he only played 10, 11 and 12 year olds. Giving away only 2.5 out of 7 points to kids that are at least 50% older than you is reason enough to make me proud. And the first time ever he came in contact with a chess board was two months ago.

Yes, I'm a proud parent,

Zaaf

Double counting kid

Last weekend, on Sunday morning, the 7-year old crawled into our bed and told me what he had been up to that morning. Turned out he was just playing with figures and doing some "double counting" as he called it. He basically calculated the powers of 2 up till 256. So he went 1 + 1 = 2; 2 + 2 = 4; 4 + 4 = 8, et cetera. But the interesting part of this was that instead of starting from 1 he started from a quarter.

He must be destined for a life as a programmer (or an accountant)

Zaaf

Robin Trower

A few months ago Fake Steve Jobs posted a blog about todays music. Here he waxed lyrically about listening to an album of Robin Trower called Robin Trower Live. I immediately searched for it on the iTunes Store, but it was not available there. Luckily, after a few weeks I found a similar album called Bridge Of Sighs it on bol.com.
After it arrived, I immediately popped it in the CD player. The moment I heard the first beat, I was sold. This is a classic guitar power trio from the early seventies, reminiscent of Jimy Hendrix and Fatal Flowers. The music is raw and pure and somehow strikes a nerve that most modern music misses.

Give it a try,

Zaaf

AVRO quits podcasting due to rights issues.

Since long I've been enjoying the podcast delivery of the radio show Andermans Veren. However, they decided to stop this due to rights issues. In short, they need to pay BUMA/STEMRA (Dutch ASCAP/BMI) a license fee, but they don't know how much.

This is the letter I sent them (in dutch)

Re: Podcasts stoppen.

Naar aanleiding van uw bericht over het stoppen met podcastweergaves van ondermeer Andermans Veren, zou ik u het volgende willen meegeven.
De afgelopen twee jaar heb ik met heel veel plezier gebruik gemaakt van de podcastservice van de AVRO om uw programma Andermans Veren te beluisteren op een tijd die mij wel schikt (namelijk 's middags in de trein naar huis). Mede hierdoor ben ik in aanraking gekomen met een keur aan kleinkunstartiesten die ik anders nooit zou hebben gekend, of waarvoor mijn waardering veel lager zou zijn dan nu het geval is. Hiervoor mijn hartelijk dank.
Dankzij uw podcast heb ik ondermeer CD's aangeschaft van Mylou Frencken, Alex Rouka en Boudewijn de Groot. Tevens heb ik door het enthousiasme meerdere theatershows bezocht van artiesten waar ik anders nooit naar toe zou zijn geweest.

Door te stoppen met uw podcastservice, verliest u mij als luisteraar. Dit zal voor u als organisatie waarschijnlijk niet een heel groot verlies zijn. Voor mijzelf is het ook geen groot verlies daar er genoeg podcasts zijn om het Andermans Veren-gat op te vullen. Degene die wel verliezen bij het stopzetten zijn de artiesten, daar ik nu niet meer blootgesteld word aan nederlandstalige kleinkunst.
Om Kasper van Kooten te citeren:
"De artiesten verliezen en dat moet jullie een rotzorg zijn." (uit "De Ziekte van Download").

Ik hoop dat u een en ander in overweging neemt bij het besluit om weer door te gaan met podcasting. Wellicht is het goed om te bedenken dat podcasting, net als radio, bijdraagt aan de populariteit van een artiest.

Hoogachtend,

Zaaf

So does anyone know about a good replacement for the loss of this podcast? Should I start to listen to Soccergirl Inc.?

Zaaf

iPhoto All Events shortcut key

I just discovered a shortcut for getting back to the All Events view in iPhoto when you're in a specific event view. Just press Escape and you're back! It's that simple. Now you don't need this specific hint to do it.

Zaaf

5 September Apple Announcements

Well, Apple suprised me again. The did refresh the iPod Nano and the iPod Classic to something much more visually appealing. I did not expect that. Nor did I expect the inclusion of WiFi and Safari in the iPod Touch. And neither did I expect the iPhone price to be cut so drastically. $200 of from $600, that's 33% price cut.
But what about the total cost of iPhone ownership? The AT&T subscription? Did that come down too? I just checked, but I could not find any information about it. The cheapest rate is still $59.99 per month for a two year contract. So that's $1439.76 for two years. Add the $599 iPhone to it and you get $2038.76 which is now down to 1838.76, which is slightly more than 10%.

You might argue that all iPhone buyers already have a mobile telephone that would cost them something similar, but I disagree. I'm currently paying €10 per month for my mobile telephone contract and I still have minutes left after each month. So the price of the iPhone has not come down significantly enough for me to buy it. The iPod Touch on the other hand, that's a different story. There are a few things about it that I need to further investigate before I will invest in it.
First of all, it's only 16 GB in capacity, minus the storage for OS X. Currently I've used 53 GB of the 80 GB available on my iPod. And given my preference for album shuffle, I'll only buy one when I'm sure that it will pick out whole albums at random for me to listen to. Although I'm very tempted with the built in browser.

So in the end, the Steve's Reality Distortion Field, which I alluded to in the previous post, did not prove strong enough to wipe out my credit card and buy an iPod Touch.

Zaaf

September 5th speculation

September 5th 2007, what will Apple show the world? And will the rdf prove strong enough for me to buy it?
I've seen speculation on Apple bringing out a new iPod, or even an new iPod line, based on OS X. Some even speculate that Apple brings out an iPhone without the phone part and the main reason given is that such would both be cool and technically feasible. However, Apple has a tradition of focusing on its customers, instead of focusing on the Apple Geeks that want everything. Just compare the features of an iPhone to a Nokia N95 and see that the N95 is a much better phone feature wise. However, having played briefly with both phones, it's clear that the iPhone is way more attractive than the N95.
Or look at the video iPod. It does pictures really well, but you cannot store them directly onto your iPod. It does video very well, but it only supports one video format. And it does audio very well, but you cannot record on it. And the same goes for the AppleTV. All lack things that to a geek would seem basic functionality, but that most Apple customers don't care about.

So far this year, Apple had special events for both the iPhone and the iMac. Neither the MacBook, the MacBook Pro, nor the iPod were the centre of attention this year. And since the MacBook was refreshed in May and the MacBook Pro in June, it is time for Apple to focus on its iPod business.

Keeping the above in mind, I predict here that Apple will announce

1. New iPods
2. Based on OSX
3. Without WiFi
4. possibly prepackaged with Beatles music
5. New colour on the iPod Shuffle
6. Price drop on the Shuffle

Of course, it's always possible that Apple will astonish us with a very thin 12" sub note book based on flash, but somehow I doubt that.

Zaaf

256 character penny wise license

One of the software products we use at work is ARIS. It is an business modeling suite of tools written in java. To activate it, you have to enter a 256 character license-key. Why would you need a license-key that has more possible combinations than there are atoms in the universe when you have only tens of thousands of licenses sold? A possible answer is that it is incredibly safe.

But is a 256 character license-key more safe than, let's say, a 10 character one? A 10 character key is something you might be able to remember, which with a 256 character key it is virtually impossible to do. So that means it is safer to use right? Well, a 10 character key can be typed into the license-key registration box by hand. For the 256 character key you'd need either a highly accomplished and very unimaginative touch typist, or use cut-and-paste. And when using cut-and-paste, it means that you've already stored the key electronically, so it is easily swapped with co-workers. This really diminishes the value of the license-key since you now need only one instead of many. It really feels penny wise and pound foolish.

Zaaf

Mac Pro even screams Rosetta

Rosetta, named after the famous Stone of Rosetta, is the emulation layer that allows applications written for the PowerPC architecture to run on an intel processor. And every emulation layer is more code to process for the processor, so most of the time the emulated program runs slower than the native program.

However, on switching from a 1.42GHz DP PowerPC PowerMac, to a Quad-core 2.66GHz intel Mac Pro, the rosetta applications run noticeably faster on the Mac Pro than on the PowerMac. In fact, I would even say that their performance is screaming. (Now I know what Steve Jobs meant when he said that the Intel macs are 'screamers').

Zaaf

Mac Pro screams the sound of silence

Last night, I was working on transferring some data from my Powermac to my new Mac Pro, so both my computers were on. And only when I shutdown my Powermac to see if all was transferred correctly, I was engulfed by this quiet sensation, which washed over me like a warm blanket. This new Mac is so much quieter than the previous one, it is unbelievable.

Zaaf

Mac Pro: Here and back again

Friday morning I finally received the phone call that my Mac Pro is ready. I spent most of the afternoon remodelling the desk to fit the Mac Pro. To make it fit I had to mount the shelf above it after the Mac Pro is mounted on the desk. This means that I have to unmount the shelf when I have to move the Mac Pro. Next to the computer is a new 23" Cinema display. Because a bigger computer needs a bigger screen and since I was in a spending mood I threw caution into the wind and decided to replace my new 20" Cinema display.

After finally fitting and connecting everything I fired up my brand-new computer. I was greeted by the Tiger intro and the setup wizard which asked me to pair my bluetooth mouse and keyboard. After entering my Apple / iTunes ID, most of my personal details were filled in. Next it asked whether I wanted to transfer information from my previous mac. I booted the PowerMac, as per instructions, into Target FireWire mode and connected the two together. The setup wizard found all my accounts and asked me what I wanted to transfer. Selecting everything, it seemingly went ahead to transfer information. Hereupon I went downstairs to provide lunch for the kids. After lunch I went back to check, only to see that the Mac Pro had gone asleep without tranfering anything. Mmm. Having tried it one more time I just booted into the new admin account to take care of things manually. Here the Migration Assistant worked well. All four accounts were set up correctly and e-mail et cetera worked flawlessly.

However, I noticed that somehow too much PowerPC architecture information was transferred to the intel Mac Pro. After rebooting twice, it stopped working. So I did an Archive-and-Install from the setup disks. The installer showed that there were too many kernel extentions without intel code in them. And after a few more hours, it died on me too. While going through the errors, I noticed that I had only 2GB RAM available where I had bought 4. System profiler told me that there was only one module installed. But when I looked at the memory there where two banks inserted, only the faulty one had a big red marker dot on it. By this time it was 2 'o clock at night so I called it a day.

The next morning I was awoken at seven by our lovely kids. Seeing this as a good sign, I decided to install Tiger from scratch, apply all updates and sent it back to the store to have them look at the memory. The store opened at 10, so there was plenty of time to do it. At the store, they immediately swapped both memory banks for new ones, tested them and handed me the computer back. There techician told me that since a Mac Pro is supposed to have two equal banks of memory side by side, the source of my problems could well lay in the fact that one of the banks was faulty. Well, we'll see.

However, we had already decided to spend the weekend at my in-laws so, here I am, somewhere in the middle of nowhere with a powerful Mac Pro in the back of my car dying for a change to get back home to re-create the mess I had on my PowerMac. The only consolations I have are that the weather is nice and warm and that my father-in-law has broadband internet and an Apple eMac which I'm now using.

Zaaf

Mac Pro is on its way

When seeing that the special Apple event of last Tuesday did not yield anything about Mac Pros, I decided to order one. It is due later this week. All I need to do now is to prepare the computer corner in my home-office and prepare the data on my Powermac for transfer to the Mac Pro.

Currently my desk houses a Powermac and it just fits on the desk, under the shelf above it. The Mac Pro is, with its 51 cm in height, almost 9 centimeters taller than the Powermac and it will not fit. So some remodelling needs to be done there.

In the three years of its life, my Powermac acquired a lot of applications. Most of them I do not need and some of them I've never used. Moving towards a new computer is a nice moment to do some belated spring-cleaning. And since the Powermac uses ATA-100 drives and the Mac Pro uses S-ATA drives, I can't just put the drives of the old computer into the new one. So we'll see how it will go.

Zaaf

Roman Catholic Church bad for gene-pool

In medieval times celibacy was introduced into the Roman Catholic church. The main reason was to keep the riches aquired by the church, in the church. Otherwise it would be inherited by the children of the bishops and cardinals and the like. Preventing them to get children made sure that the riches of the church were kept intact.

A side-effect of this was that the Roman Catholic church made sure that a lot of smart people could not spread their genes, thus preventing the population of the whole of western Europe to become smarter. Of course this unintended effect helped the church in staying on top of the population. By telling The People to do what the Church wanted the Church needed The People needed to be kept stupid. Celibacy was a means to more than one end.

Zaaf

From A to B

Cars are weird things. After spending quite some time in our car during the past three weeks, I've come to the conclusion that cars are overengineered. The killer application of a car is of course bringing a person from A to B. Why is it then that it takes 1100 kilograms to move 80 kg? This feels overly complex, a bicycle of 20 kg performs the same function only you have to put in some effort yourself. So to remove the effort and add some comfort like a roof, 1000 kg is needed. If this would be halved, then a lot would be gained. The car would most likely be smaller, so it it would take up much less parking space. Because of it light weight it would have less impact on the infrastructure. And since a lot of energy is taken up into accelerating a lighter car would be much more fuel efficient, thus greatly decreasing its carbon footprint.

The things you think about when camping,

Zaaf

TV - Nothing but entertainment

Everything shown on TV is done for its entertainment value. If it's not entertaining you, then you most likely won't watch. Even documentaries are broadcasted firstly because they might entertain you. It might be the filmers idea to teach you something, but the broadcasting company airs it because its entertainment value might attract viewers.

Because everything is done for entertainment, it should come as no surprise that what is shown is spiced up to increase its entertainment value. That's why Formula 1 races need a mixture of fast and slow cars. Drivers overtaking each other is more entertaining. And that's why you need car crashes every now and then. And it might be the same reason that professional cyclists are forced to take drugs to increase their performance. Its more entertaining to watch someone go up a mountain very fast than it is when a group of cyclist are taking it easy.

Since the entertainment factor required of TV shows is such a big issue it is very strange to me that people fall over confessions like these, where the BBC has a short list of things they've edited for entertainment purposes.

Please take the blue pill and relax. Let the TV entertain you and be informed via other means.

Zaaf

Remember to let it go

Have you ever had the problem where you're busy walking around with your hands full and the task you're doing becomes even more complicated? Just let it go. Drop the stuff you hold in your hands and place it somewhere safe. Finish your task and pick it up again.

It happens to me all the time. Say, I've just picked up the mail of the doormat and as I walk back to the living room, I notice that my shoelace is untied. First I start to retie it with the mail still in my hands, but after a couple of exasperating tries I give up, let the stuff go and finish tying my shoelace. And it's not just me, almost everyone in my surroundings has the habit of not letting go of the stuff in your hands. The other day my wife went to the supermarket by car. She picked up the car keys and came back to get the recyclable glass in order to dump in the glass recycle container. She grabbed a plastic bag and proceeded to put the glass in. All this time the car keys where still in here hand. And just as I was starting to tell here that it might be a good idea to let go of the car keys, the inevitable happened and a glass jar shattered on the ground.

From personal experience I know it's hard to force yourself to let go of the things in your hands, but doing one thing well is so much easier that, to me at least, it's worth the extra effort of putting down and picking up. So now I'm always remembering to let it go.

Zaaf

Bejeweled

It's the game I play the most on my iPod.
powered by Google
This version is from iGoogle.
The only reason I put it up on my blog is because iGoogle tends to refresh every half hour or so. This will reset the game, which is rather unfortunate when you're in a winning stride.

Zaaf