On my way to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam my flight was in transit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As a matter of fact, quite some flights to South-East Asia actually come through the Kuala Lumpur International airport (or Bangkok). And as I had more than 10 hours to spend there, I thought of making optimal [...]
You never know how the wind blows. And so I am going to Vietnam in early 2012. The first time in Asia and the South-East for some three weeks! My tickets are booked and visa is dispensed. My flight will go from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. And from Kualu Lumpur to Ho Chi Minh City. [...]
I had already written about the concept of a digital timeline (Dutch) before. But I actually didn’t anticipate that a social networking site was going to use it at its core (although I heard it had been done before). So I was really surprised and excited that Facebook’s new release incorporated this timeline concept. Your [...]
We are at the end of 2011 that I am writing this. Time to look back. In short: it’s been a very eventful, unusual and adventurous year to me. What a hell of a ride! First of all, this is the first year that I am no longer living a student life. I ended my [...]
Another day, another TV show that inspired me. Recently, in Reyers Laat, a late night show on Belgian television Maurice de Hond was invited. Never heard of this man, but apparently this Dutch guy is famous for his sharp political analysises. Anyway, the main topic was Belgium still without a government after a whopping 500 [...]
Today I was watching Terzake and comtemporarian ecstatic Balkan philosopher Slavoj Zizek was up for discussion. Apparently he had been on stage in the Ghent Bozar theater yesterday. It was packed. Indeed, with the crushing credit crunch upon us, people are looking for hope and a bright future. Hope and warmth is exactly what Slavoj [...]
I just came back from watching new movie In Time. The trailer was so kick-ass. I was blown away by the idea of time as a currency and the additional element of genetical engineering: you don’t age after 25, but everyone has just one year after to live. And the movie really lived it up [...]
I hadn’t fully realized the implications of moving from ExpressNet to a GoldsHake ComfortNet XL subscription at Telenet. The thing is, the ExpressNet subscription comes by default with free webspace (I believe some 50MB). This is a pretty standard offer, common practice among ISPs since the early Internet days. Across the years, I had once [...]
I am reading Charles Stross award-winning book Accelerando. My very first encounter with the popular science fiction theme called the singularity, in which human intelligence is surpassed by technological advances. Pretty heavy stuff, yes, not just highly entertaining, but an impressive piece of literature. Accelerando describes how three generations of the Macx clan try to survive and [...]
For three consecutive days now the RIM network is suffering from an outage. The consequences are vast to say the least. People are missing meetings, are unreachable by family & friends because BlackBerry Messenger is broken down. And a PR disaster for RIM of course. By the way, it doesn’t seem to get much better, [...]