We went to CeBIT last weekend with some friends in 3 cars. Despite warnings about it being a weekend meaning there would be way too many people, only a few places were overcrowded (notably the ones where they gave away free stuff to gamers/overclockers). We had a lot of fun there, stayed at a Youth Hostel in Hildesheim (they’ll surely remember us I fear) and had a good time. Of course "Germany" meant a visit to Burger King on friday on the way there AND one on sunday on the way back + a little high speed transportation on the autobahn (where allowed, of course). Also interesting we noticed is that it’s very handy to have walkie-talkies when driving in a group with several cars.

Minor setback on the way back though… 

Also on sunday, I went to Auto Moto Italia in Houten, The Netherlands – the "place to be" for Italian car lovers. However, the fair wasn’t actually all that great, luckily our club had the nicest, biggest and coolest stand 😀 So I met a lot of (new) people, and had quite some fun. Saw many nice cars (Ferrari F40, whew, youth thingy ;)) Took heaps of pictures, which I still have to get off my CF card.

Driving in "colonne" (cannot for the life of me find the english word for it) really is cool, too – 120km/h with a whole bunch of Alfa 156’s 😀

We went to the Night of the Proms in Antwerp on sunday. It was fun, as usual, although I seemed to miss a few "bigger" names – can’t help but think I’d had (even) more fun if OMD was there instead of Kid Creole. 😉 In the end, a fun evening though. Soulsister was very welcome, as were John Miles, Roby Lokatosh and Liebrecht Van Bekkevoort. Hopefully a bigger name next year ! (and perhaps bring the surprise guest back?)

A big boo&hiss to teleticketservice too, the way to order seats at the sportpaleis is quite a disaster, in my opinion. They should look at Kinepolis’ way of reserving seats 🙂

I’m going tomorrow. If you’re there, lemme know! I’ll probably be seeing nghtwsh, thevoke, daviper, wonko, geert, ghosty, and some others that may be there 🙂

I don’t think you really noticed, but we’ve been in Switzerland since friday 😉 We came by car and had no problems (which is always good), there’s not really a winter condition here yet, snow and ice seem to be reserved for february – march (good again! :))

Yesterday we went to Europa Park (yes, that’s not in Switzerland but in Germany, indeed) with some Swiss family and had a great time. It’s a 2-hour drive from here, but I don’t mind as I like to drive (although it was a bit of an adjustment for me, as I’m used to overtake everyone and everything, and now I had to follow the leader as we didn’t know the way ;-)) Great time, but a bit tiring as well, so we slept quite long 😀

Merry christmas and a happy new year! 

Michiel , my girlfriend and I went to the sea yesterday. We left a little late, so it was around 5 in the afternoon when we got there. The wind was pretty strong; we went for a walk on the beach but were firmly pushed in one direction 😉 Diana was almost flying away 🙂 Afterwards we met David/RedLED for some drinks, that was fun – got back home around 1, time for bed. But it was a fun minitrip 🙂

Last friday Diana and I were having lunch at Moccamore in the Bondgenotenlaan. Some girls were sitting there and one had a baby with her. Now, breastfeeding is something to be accepted to be done in public I guess, but then (while many other people were eating) she also proceeded to change the baby’s diper at the table, and when she was done she put it in a plastic bag on the table. I don’t know, but I don’t think this is something to be proud of. Nb. the toilet was 2m away from her. My counter-burp wasn’t loud enough to catch some attention… but I left the table with not-so-good vibes.

We went the Proximus Movie thingamajig yesterday, with some friends, hoping to see Ice Age 2 . However… many other people also wanted to. Diana and I got there in time, but the others were way back in the queue so before it was their turn to buy tickets it said "Full" … 🙁 We already had the tickets for Ice Age, but if we ever got into the room we would have had very sucky places anyway. So we decided to go and watch V for Vendetta instead. Not a bad movie, but not quite Ice Age 2 either…

Just received a few emails from LPI saying I passed my 102 exam, so I can now proudly call myself LPIC-1 certified! 😀

I realise it’s tuesday already, but I haven’t really found the time to write anything. So here’s a small writeup of Fosdem day two…

Woke up (too!) early, left at 9:30, arrived at 10:50. Still early enough to walk into RIFE, we thought. So we did. Very earl-y, as this guy decided to pronounce URL as “Earl” instead of “You are ell” 😉 The presentation wasn’t all that interesting, but I guess that’s what a Java Framework is supposed to be 🙁 Still, I would think it could have been presented more interestingly.

On to Subversion, a very interesting talk, which has opened my eyes even more about how SVN owns CVS in many ways. Also learned the O’Reilly SVN book is available for free (as in speech and beer) at www.svnbook.org.

Valgrind was next on the program, went maybe a bit too “deep” inside the matter, maybe assuming a bit more previous experience with valgrind or memcheck, but all in all not a bad presentation.

Lunchtime, we brought our own food as to not have to queue for 45min like last year 😉

Beagle presentation, by The Guy Who Now Works For Google. Very nice presentation, mostly questions and answers, but very interesting. Also, I was surprised at the quality of the questions asked. Useful and to the point. A total difference from what Rega people would ask, if they even asked anything.

OpenOffice.org, by Michael Meeks (who was preparing his slides right in front of me during the Valgrind presentation). Apparently mr. Valgrind was using a “magic build” of Michael for his presentation, which screwed with the colors somewhat *G*. What was very clear is that Michael was painting a picture of OOo being that it was not good at all, still way behind on what it should actually be, slow, etc. But the presentation was pretty humourous and light, showing new features in 2.0, showing what can and should be done, and ofcourse, a call for developers.

XUL. What can I say about that. The presentation absolutely sucked ass. The original presenter couldn’t come, so someone else came in his place. Assuming everyone knew what XUL was, and that even everyone in the room was developing XUL software day in day out, he enumerated directory structures, which files were in them, and then even the content of each and every file. Very strange presentation. When we left (after 20 minutes of almost falling asleep) , many others were too. We joined in OpenCA, and first thing I heard was “And this is the point of asses.” Must be Italian English for access 😉 10 minutes later, OpenCA presentation was over and noone seemed to have any questions, so we didn’t hear much of it.

Then, luckily we were already in the Janson room, it was Jeff Waugh’s turn. While waiting he put the Xgl demo video on the big screen for everyone to drool on. His talk was quite good. Design vs Megapixel! LAMP: Linux, Apache, Most of our scripting languages start with P, and PostgreSQL. More funny stuff. And very valid points made, iPod vs Zen, … A very interesting and nice talk to end Fosdem with.

Pity for the people manning the booths that everyone had packed up before that, as in my eyes this would be the perfect end of Fosdem, to go home and buy that one Debian T-shirt you first decided not to buy, or that O’Reilly book that you thought you didn’t want… not possible unfortunately.