Archive for category rants & notes
and now… testing a cron job
Posted by theo in rants & notes on 09/08/2009
this is turning out to be quite a geeky sunday!
ultraintegration test 4
Posted by theo in rants & notes on 09/08/2009
testing a routine that would post to blog via email, and then to
twitter via plugin, and then to facebook via twitter app.
2.1v9
Posted by flickr in rants & notes on 09/08/2009
You know you’ve reached 29 (or, being more accurate, the 9th version of your 21 years) when, from a ‘ technical perspective’, you:
- When people started talking about blogs, all you could remember was your geocities page (in the Paris neighborhood) and could not really understand what was all that fuss about HTML being difficult (granted now you don’t even bother to look into code anymore – it’s just too low level detail and you have better things to do).
- When people now talk about social media, all you can think of is that you cannot really remember all the accounts you’ve created in so many services (most of them now extinct). Though now you have your social media morning routine (check twitter, then a quick look at facebook, then email and once a week orkut – well, brazilians…)
- At a given point of your life, the amount of colors (counted by the hundreds, not the milions) that your monitor had was something really important to be aware of
- At that same given point of your life, all you wanted is to know how to create a file. In Wordstar. In a PC XT.
- As a matter of fact, you’ve seen an Amiga, more than one MSX and worked on PC-XT’s, and not as part of an assignment on a museum somewhere for old computers.
- Programming databases was fun. In DBase IV (Plus!). Now you’re pretty sure someone in elance can help you out should you decide not to live with out of the box solutions
- You’re absolutely unimpressed with the discussions that surround new versions of operating systems. Anyone that could do something in DOS can find their way in other OS’ (ok, for Linux you may need some help from a few tech-savvier friends)
- You’ve been wanting the ultimate PDA for so long that you give in and start thinking an iPhone may be good enough for the time being. And maybe all this talk about tablets will bring something actually useful somewhere in the future.
And finally, you regard yourself as someone from Generation Y/Next from the 80′s, but, from a technical perspective, you were born in the 70s, you old GenXer.
tip@NL: if in doubt between a pedestrian…
tip@NL: pedestrian crossings without trafifc lights go faster (the car has to stop for ya 
)
Nog een keer – trying Dutch
Posted by theo in living in nl on 09/05/2009
Yes, once again, I am trying to get it over with and learn Dutch. The resolution came while talking to some friends in Brazil – that are trying to move to Canada – who are already almost fluent in French and are even taking ice skating lessons to “adjust” to the culture. I seem to be in a somewhat different state: after two years in the Netherlands, ja, ik kan Nederlands begrijpen (yes, I can understand Dutch), but speaking more than “two zones, please” to the tram driver or “where is street X” to a passerby seems to be a somewhat bigger challenge.
installed p2 in wp, with twitter.
installed p2 in wp, with twitter.
Is there still time for meaning?
This is not about the death or transformation of blogs. This is not about what can be said (or even meant) in 140 characters. This is not about how relevant status updates are, nor if people answer “what are you doing?” literally. This is about something else, and probably all of the above.
podogcasting
Getting a medium-sized dog brings a lot of joy and happiness into a house, and also some side effects: you start to walk a lot. As since January I have found myself the owner of a semi-whippet mixed breed called Hannah, I must say I have suddenly realized I have close to one or two hours of “extra” time dedicated to wondering through the neighborhood. The question then becomes: how to use this amazing extra time that all of a sudden appeared in my agenda? Well, after unsuccessfully trying to have meaningful conversations with her (apparently the birds and rabbits are more interesting than me) and listening to music (nice, but seems a bit too redundant), what could I do? Well, listening to podcasts seemed like a good option.
After completing the Web 2.0 summit podcasts (well, it’s from 2006/7 all right, but it is interesting to see what people thought then of what the future might become now), I found one extremely interesting treasure buried in iTunes (through the recommendation of an ex-manager): TED Talks. These talks have turned my previous monologues with poor Hannah into listening seminars on the origins of evil, romantic love, if our brains are really blank slates when we are born, who really likes classical music, exploring oceans and the evidences of existence of life in other planets. Meanwhile, Hannah can safely and happily chase birds and find rabbit trails. To each their own.
when the cloud locks you out
everyone seems to be ascending to the cloud these days, even myself. my pictures, of which an edited and selected subset is being shared through flickr, now are also massively stored in picasa (yes, all 2 GB of them). i haven’t downloaded my private email to a hard drive in about ten years (thanks, yahoo and google!). after so moving from home to home (even between continents) and computer to computer so many times, most of my files are either stored somewhere in one of my emails, or in a virtual hard disk, or are nowhere to be found. oh, and i am not sure if it counts, but i have a couple of blogs& sites running on wordpress. all things considered, i guess it is safe to say i am a cloud user.
a flashback from 2001 – what happened to indymedia?
I’ve been revisiting – and translating – the graduation thesis I wrote back in 2001 – started in August and finalized weeks after 9/11. Yes, most of it is dated, but it is interesting to see how things were at that point in time. The biggest thing prior to 9/11 were the anti-globalization protests that got visibility in Seattle, 99, and continued with an ever increasing force until 2001 (300 thousand people in Genoa). And an alternative media website – Indymedia – caught my attention. It is funny when you read things you wrote 7 years before: one cannot escape making predictions, and sometimes these forecasts can be a little bit off (as a british would say). Read the rest of this entry »