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.
Some more details on the Barcamp event of May 20th:
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.
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).
As you might have read in my Migrating to WordPress article, I am now the proud owner of both a Bluehost and Dreamhost account. These two shared hosting providers have similar strong offerings for a similar low price, but they’re nevertheless different. Let’s compare both:
I have written about FON before (they provide a business model for sharing one’s bandwidth through Wifi). They use a custom firmware for the Linksys WRT54G routers. I have the feeling that current Wifi routers (or access points) cannot offer a good balance of security/flexibility. Opening your own network for everyone is currently too dangerous. There’s Wifi trolls that gobble up your bandwidth and there’s hackers that scan your ports for vulnerabilities. My idea is that now you would need 2 Wifi zones, one behind the other, each having different security and different policies. With access points costing as little as 25 euro, that is not a big investment.
If your (Belgian) parents or grand-parents want to buy a cheap PC to get started on the Web, tell them to hold back for a couple more days. The Federal Government – through FEDICT – has set up a program to sponsor a complete package of PC + software + broadband + training for a sharp price. The title of the project: IVI or “Internet voor Iedereen” – the launch is planned for next week, April 18th.
Background
I read a lot of info on digital cinema these last months. I find there is little syndicated content (blog feeds) to be found on the topic. Some sites have a page of press releases and/or an email newsletter, but that’s about it. That’s why I have created some custom RSS feeds with feed43. (e.g. Digital Cinematography feed for the CMP Digital Cinematography Magazine)
What I do see is that some sites publish really nice magazines in PDF (Portable Document Format – by Adobe) format (see Videography on the right). You only know about these if you go visit the site of course – very Web 1.0. So if there could be a feed that alerts me of new issues of these PDF files … And while we’re at it, why not put the PDF link as an enclosure in the RSS feed, podcast style? And just like an MP3 podcast is automatically transferred to a portable MP3 player, could a PDF podcast be automatically printed? The answer is: Yes. Let me show you how.
I had been wondering just how much information Google Adsense uses to select the right contextual ads. Specifically, do they use the referring page also. I just got part of the answer:
So there it is: after some feedback on my Barcamp announcement post, we fixed the date and location for Barcamp Brussels!
