schildmos.nl

Dates suck

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:38:00 +0200

It should be against the law to have any sort of datefield type in *any* database. Dates and their format suck big time.

AARRRGH!

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:58:00 +0200

I've said it before but let me say it again..

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Godspeed SY 607 camera backpack review

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:38:00 +0200

I needed a backpack for my camera and accessories that could hold as much as possible ( I had stuff lying around everywhere in the house) and I was not prepared to spent a fortune on it. I ran into a Godspeed SY 607 backpack. I had never heard of this brand before nor could I find a lot of info on it. So I decided to write a review on it.
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Do the DOJO guys never learn?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:13:00 +0200

There are two things to be said about the Dojo Javascript Toolkit:

1) Is is a very ( if not the most) complete Javascipt framework out there.
2) It is poorly ( if not the poorest ) documented framework out there.

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Adobe keeps missing the point..

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:39:00 +0200

For as long as Adobe's Air is around I have been (trying) to play with it. It shows a lot of promise and could tackle a lot of browser specific problems we encounter here in the office and with our customers.

Unfortunately Air suffers from one, but very major design flaw. One needs to have administrative rights or you can't install an air application. That's just plain bad thinking Adobe! I am quite convinced that this alone has still kept my company from embracing Air, simply because most developers can't be bothered to have an administrator come over each time they want to check out an Air app. so they can see what it's all about.

Truly a shame and a missed opportunity.

Doesn't matter.. we invented the country that invented the car.

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:35:00 +0200

So last night president Obama claimed it was the USA who invented the car:

"..the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it..."

That's fine with us..
After all, it was us Europeans who invented the USA in the first place.

A sunday night..

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:49:00 +0200

A late sunday night. Just playing around with some photo's I took earlier that day. And in the background the media center tuned to a Digitally Imported web stream.
Easy going progressive trance. To be more exact: Max Ruby's Summer Sessions 2008.

Ahh, all I need now is a beer and I'd be dancing. :-)

Best news headline in years!

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:55:00 +0200

A Dutch news website had the best headline I have seen in ages.

'Naked man carrying raw trout bites shoe sales man in arm'

hahaha.. Sounds too good to be true huh!
But it has really happened somewhere in the south of the Netherlands. Apparently the man in question walked into a shoe store wearing nothing more then a hat and a pair of shoes. In his hand he was holding an uncooked trout from which he took a bite every now and then. Some security guys with the help of the sales guy wrestled him to the ground because he refused to leave. The trout eater was not amused and bit the shoe expert in his arm until it bled.

It turned out the trout man, who arrived on a bike, had escaped from a mental institution earlier that day.

Full (dutch) story here.

Winter in Holland.

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:14:00 +0200

It is hard for me to imagine but nowadays there are 10 to 12 year old kids, born in the Netherlands, who have never seen frozen lakes and canals. I mean, not frozen enough so people could actually go ice skating.
But winter has returned to Holland this year. A few days ago temperatures dropped to as low as minus 20 (celcius) in some areas. And it doesn't look like temperatures will rise anytime soon. People are ice skating everywhere.

So at night we take our pet rabbit inside and put her in the coldest room in the house. The rabbit (named after a well known Belgian beer :D) looked so miserable the other day that we felt sorry for her and we decided that during the coldest hours she should be a little warmer.

That this is not unnecessary was proven to me today when I found a dead bird in the parking lot at work. The beautiful animal seemed to have been frozen to death. As I browsed the internet to determine the species, I learned that it was a greenshank, a wading bird. And I also learned that she shouldn't have been here to begin with. It is a migrating bird and she should have left for Africa weeks or maybe even months ago. For some reason she never did leave and paid for it with her life. It left me feeling sad.

More current winter images (not shot by me) are found here

The beauty in polution

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:23:00 +0200

Can there be beauty in polution?

Click image for larger size.

Going under in Egypt.

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:45:00 +0200

Me and my girlfriend decided we could do with a few weeks of sunshine. The summer here in the Netherlands sucked with lots of rain and low temperatures. Egypt in September however still had blue skies and temperatures close to 40 degrees celsius ( 104 Fahrenheit). I wanted to learn how to scuba dive and snorkeling opportunities were supposed to be great as well. And they sure were !

Read on and see more underwater images. [More]

Dojo: The Definitive Guide

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:30:00 +0200

Dojo has always had one major drawback; it's documentation (the achilles heel of many open source projects). Admittedly, things have improved seriously over the last year or so, but still I was waiting eagerly for a book on the subject.

So I was happy to finally see one or two books being published recently and I got myself a copy of Dojo: The Definitive Guide. by Matthew A. Russell.

This book makes Dojo a lot better to grasp and Matthew A. Russell (as far as I can tell not related to Alex Russell, the founder of Dojo and president of the Dojo Foundation) structured the book in a way that presents the Dojo framework in a clear and concise way.

The downside to this book however are the many, many errors. Not even taking the typo's and wrong references into consideration, the worst errors are the ones made in the coding examples.
It is very apparent O'Reilly didn't spent much time on reviewing the book before it got printed. Due to these errors I can only really recommend this book to those who are experienced Javascript programmers who can immediately see the flaws in the examples.

Conclusion: Great for experienced Javascripters who can live with the book's flaws.

Update: If you want to have a good laugh, read this review on the book at about.com. The reviewer, Stephen Chapmann is clearly totally clueless.
So much for the credibility of about.com.

Two cents: WWW ?

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:50:00 +0200

Whoever decided that it would be a cool idea to use WWW as the standard web site DNS entry??

I just heard the umpth radio commercial along the lines of ' YEAH!!, visit double-u-double-u-double-u-dot-something-dot-com-slash-somethingmore'

It should have been a word instead. WEB for instance would have been nice:
' YEAH!!, visit web-dot-something-dot-com-slash-somethingmore'

Select chocolate, no wait ehh.. all from table, no.. ah well, just copy it in there.

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:01:00 +0200

I came across this the other day. Probably old and you've probably seen it before but I hadn't and thought it was pretty funny...

Little bream from shore

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:37:00 +0200

I went fishing the other day with a friend of mine. We went for a venue that is only accessible during low tides. As we were happily fishing away while the sun set, we caught one black bream after the other. Taking them from shore, and in these numbers is quite remarkable for the Northsea.

They were all juvenile ones, but pretty angry when they were taken out of the water. Often they refused to open their (needle-teeth filled) mouth, so unhooking them became a bit of a challenge.

They were all returned to the sea, to go and feed some more at the patches of seaweed that are close by. When they grow a little bigger (between 1 and 2 feet) they leave the coast for deeper waters and can the often be found swimming around wrecks.
It is a tasty fish (once bigger in size then the ones we caught) and is excellent when grilled for instance. Here in Holland the fishmongers sell them as 'Dorade'.