The sorry state of keyboard layout management • 15 Feb 2018
How is it possible that today, in 2018, it is still up to the end-user to detect/guess what the layout of the computer keyboard is he has in front of him/her? In any Belgian office with more than 10 computers, you might encounter a mix of “Belgian French”, “Belgian ISO”, “Belgian Period”, “French French” keyboards. They’re all AZERTY keyboards, but they mix up characters like the “@”, the “.” or the “,”. No one, except for the odd OCD sysops guy, knows what the differences exactly are. You only know that, if you pick the wrong one, you’re going to...
Status page for telecom/internet providers • 11 Sep 2013
My mobile provider Telenet had a partial outage today. Sometimes calls would go though, sometimes not. Same things with SMS and 3G. I wanted to check if there was a page I could check to see if it was just for me, just for that location on globally in Belgium. You know, a proper status page like Google and Apple have. Or in Belgium, like Combell. It appears Telenet has one, but it’s for the Internet division. They also have a Twitter account that is well followed up. How does this compare to the other providers? Here is an overview...
Company cars in Belgium: your new taxes • 03 Apr 2012
January 2012 marks the beginning of a new calculation of the ‘Benefit in kind’ - the value an employee is calculated to get from a company car. It has a big effect on your taxes. Do you pay taxes in Belgium? Do you have a company car? Read on!
“I will you in the night” – Idool 2003 • 28 Jan 2010
At the Pixagogo reunion dinner the other evening, I was reminded by one of my ex-colleagues Steven (‘Beukie‘) that back in 2003 I was having some fun with remixes/mashups. More specifically, I took some vocals of the Belgian “Idool 2003” preselections, and added music to them. To make the exercise more fun, I took samples from the ones that were really musically challenged.
Procreate to win a car • 04 Jun 2008
I’m getting old, I guess. This ad campaign annoys me. For those who don’t understand Dutch: if you take a Dodge Journey for a test-drive on the Father’s Day weekend, and make a baby on the back seat, then you have a chance of winning a car.
TVH likes women • 13 May 2008
I was born near Roeselare, in West-Vlaanderen, and every now and then I go back to my roots. I drive over Gent and Kortrijk and on the way I’m always curious to see what kind of advertising the guys from TVH have put up this time. For they are clearly guys, in the TVH marketing department.
My first picture in the papers • 23 Aug 2007
An Baccaert wrote an article in De Morgen about Nathalie and Andrés, who are representing the Benelux in the ‘Mundial de Tango‘ in Buenos Aires. She wanted a nice picture to include with the article and came across one I made at the Tango Marathon in June.
Bwards: URL overload • 24 Mar 2007
Too many URLs
I’d list everyone I’ve talked to yesterday, if only I could remember. Some random memories: Dramoghe is a girl, Hendrik has a beard, Sven has a nice blogless girlfriend (enchanté!), LittleQ is about my size without her shoes, Onnozelaar thought my age was 28 (thanks, but you should see me on the painting in the attic) and we ate looooooots of Crokidos!
Tonight: Bwards in Antwerp • 23 Mar 2007
It’s gonna take me some effort to arrive there in time, but tonight is the Bwards event in Antwerp, and I’m looking forward to it! It looks like Jeroen has created a fun party for those of us with a URL and an opinion. The place to be is Het Paleis, and here is how to get there: clopin.be.
The Top 20 bloggers in Flanders • 16 Mar 2007
Bloggers love lists. Bloggers adore lists of bloggers, certainly when they’re featured in the said lists. I started making top 30 and 60 lists of Belgian bloggers a way back, and somewhere in Nov 2005 Bruno took over the position as ranking specialist. He has just finished making a new list based on Pagerank, Technorati backlinks, Bloglines subscribers and some other indicators. I came out #3, which proves that the bribe worked as expected.
Countdown to no smoking • 20 Dec 2006
Just in case you forgot: less than a dozen days to go before the smoking ban in Belgian restaurants. What was only possible in places like the AB resto or Bar Bik, will then be the norm: no one spoiling your food with cigarette smoke!
Follow the countdown here!
Thalys to Amsterdam is way too slow • 19 Nov 2006
In 1987 it was decided that a high-speed train connection between Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam and Köln would be built. Ten years later, the Thalys train already achieves a travel time of 1h25 to Paris (over 200km/h). So the Thalys is this High-Speed-Train? Well, not always, as I experienced recently. While travelling to Paris is fast enough for daily commute, the train to Amsterdam is even slower than driving.
Thank you for smoking • 02 Nov 2006
Henny Heyndrickx, the boss of Tabaknatie, is very worried about the ruthless discrimination of smokers in Belgium. With the ban on smoking in restaurants coming into effect in less than 60 days, he wants to set up a list of ‘smoker-friendly’ restaurants. This means: restaurants that have a smoking room (* see below) installed.
Being multilingual in Belgium • 05 Oct 2006
Who doesn’t like a good controversy? The Belgian government statistics site has just released a study on language knowledge in Belgium. This study has numbers for Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia separately. Let’s take a look:
Brussels’ traffic is kinda safe • 12 Jul 2006
Imagine my amazement: when processing the numbers from the Belgian traffic accidents in 2005 (statbel), Brussels turns out to be a lot safer than one would suspect. Or let’s just say: there’s worse:
First RubyOnRails seminar @ I.T.Works • 21 Jun 2006
I.T.Works, one of Belgiums leading technical training organisers, has cooked up its first RubyOnRails seminar on Thursday July 6th. Alain Ravet and Werner Ramaekers, both experienced Rails developers, will talk about the advantages of this application development framework.
Estimating real-time traffic speed • 07 Jun 2006
— This is a post from 2006. Back then, there was no Google Maps, no Waze, no iPhone, no mobile data —
Barcamp Brussels: getting there • 19 May 2006
Less than 24 hours to go and 55 people registered!
Some last instructions on how to get to the International Press Center (near Wetstraat/Rue de la Loi):
Play us a slow song • 03 May 2006
I remember when I started DJ’ing and going to parties (that would be the previous century, yes) that we used to have this whole ‘slow-dancing’ routine. Every couple of hours the DJ would play ‘La Bamba‘, sweaty teenagers would check each other out for a quick dance and a stolen kiss (on the cheek), and then there would be 3 to 5 ballads, or ‘slows’. Fifteen minutes of one boy slow-dancing with one girl. For those of you who have never done that: with the right kind of partner it is awesome.
Emma, Marie and Julie • 25 Apr 2006
I found some data on the first names parents gave their children in 2004 (data from statbel.fgov.be). It should come as no surprise that passe-partout names (used in both Dutch and French) dominate the first names hitparade.
Blogcom Antwerp – pings and comments • 22 Apr 2006
Blogcom in Antwerp was exactly what I had hoped it would be: an interesting mix of old acquaintances and new faces and lots of fun conversations. The event was organised by Jeroen and some 50 bloggers showed up. No speeches, but lots of mingling and chatting. We’ll have to remember that for the next Brussels blogger’s meeting.
Pleasure from da bass – memorable bass lines • 19 Apr 2006
Went to a DJ-set (Peaches @ Mirano/Dirty Dancing) yesterday and was not too impressed with the DJ skills of Peaches. Yes, she knew what kind of hard pumping electro the audience wanted to hear, but she couldn’t beatmix if her life depended on it. Lady Jane who played before her, now that’s a real DJ, and a cool chick too (as Ine and D&tC would probably agree).
Barcamp Brussels: May 20 2006 • 04 Apr 2006
So there it is: after some feedback on my Barcamp announcement post, we fixed the date and location for Barcamp Brussels!
REQ: more “BEING SPACES” in Brussels • 15 Mar 2006
Anyone who often works at home is probably familiar with this: sometimes you would like to work somewhere else to finish something undisturbed, to see some people while you work instead of just the PC and the refrigerator, to have a meeting in a pleasant location, to be in another environment. I often do some work at the Recyclart or the AB Café, and almost always I’m the only nomadic worker there. Both places are cosy and have free Wifi, but they’re not real offices: there is no printer, no meeting room, no water cooler. And since I don’t pay...
Broadband in Brussels • 17 Feb 2006
(post seems to have disappeared when I migrated to WordPress
I have what is proving to be an expensive habit: I’m subscribed to over 30 podcasts (including e.g. Diggnation at 300MB/week), I regularly download software to try out, I use BitTorrent on a regular basis, I buy stuff on iTunes. All that adds up to more than my allowance my ISP subscription gives me (20GB per month). Most of the months I pay an extra €8 per 10GB.
Magnus: Jumpneedle drummers • 07 Jan 2006
I was checking out the Deus website to see if their new video for the Pocket Revolution album was already online (a friend of mine, Sachli, is playing in it with four other cute girls).
There was a link to another Tom Barman project, Magnus, and I remembered being an ‘extra’ in one of the music videos Tom directed for “Jumpneedle”. The official Magnus site only has a 1-minute excerpt, but I did find a full version on anti.com. So where am I?
Add yourself to the Belgian Bloggers map! • 15 Nov 2005
(Post in Dutch)
Een leuk initiatief van Gaetano Palermo: een kaart waar elke Belgische blogger zijn coordinaten kan op mappen. Misschien een leuke vervanging van de kaart op blogium.be.
Wealthy Belgian Bloggers: the blog dollars top 60 • 23 Oct 2005
Since I’ve been told my “Popular Belgian Blogs” series (Jan-Feb 2005) was very much appreciated, I’ve just spent some time coming up with a new version. The main reason being: thanks to Dane Carlson’s Blog Value Estimator it is now so easy to put a value on a blog.
Some prior remarks:
Domain names in Flanders and Wallonie: the digital divide • 18 Feb 2005
DNS.be, the Belgian non-profit organisation that manages the .be domain, has published new statistics on domain name distribution in Belgium. They added geographical statistics for e.g. the domain names per inhabitant in 2004. Some numbers:
Popular Belgian blogs: the preliminary top 25 • 24 Jan 2005
Luc Van Braekel has developed a service called Blogium.be, to find new emerging ‘hot’ links on the front pages of Belgian blogs. His start database is obviously a big list of URLs of Belgian bloggers. I think that a good additional function of Blogium could be to display a ranking of these, ordered by some kind of meta-calculation over things like: Google Pagerank, #incoming links for all search engines, posting recency/frequency (so deserted blogs disappear from the ranking in time), intra-belgium link traffic, …
Wired Magazine in Belgium: expensive habit • 05 Jan 2005
In this geeky world I’m in, there are few magazines as spot-on and influential as Wired Magazine. It’s one of the magazines I keep around for years after publication.
Peter Forret
How is it possible that today, in 2018, it is still up to the end-user to detect/guess what the layout of the computer keyboard is he has in front of him/her? In any Belgian office with more than 10 computers, you might encounter a mix of “Belgian French”, “Belgian ISO”, “Belgian Period”, “French French” keyboards. They’re all AZERTY keyboards, but they mix up characters like the “@”, the “.” or the “,”. No one, except for the odd OCD sysops guy, knows what the differences exactly are. You only know that, if you pick the wrong one, you’re going to...
— This is a post from 2006. Back then, there was no Google Maps, no Waze, no iPhone, no mobile data —
I remember when I started DJ’ing and going to parties (that would be the previous century, yes) that we used to have this whole ‘slow-dancing’ routine. Every couple of hours the DJ would play ‘La Bamba‘, sweaty teenagers would check each other out for a quick dance and a stolen kiss (on the cheek), and then there would be 3 to 5 ballads, or ‘slows’. Fifteen minutes of one boy slow-dancing with one girl. For those of you who have never done that: with the right kind of partner it is awesome.
Anyone who often works at home is probably familiar with this: sometimes you would like to work somewhere else to finish something undisturbed, to see some people while you work instead of just the PC and the refrigerator, to have a meeting in a pleasant location, to be in another environment. I often do some work at the Recyclart or the AB Café, and almost always I’m the only nomadic worker there. Both places are cosy and have free Wifi, but they’re not real offices: there is no printer, no meeting room, no water cooler. And since I don’t pay...
