April 2003 Archives
I just added a lot of old news.
Using the Internet Archive I was able to see my old site again. I copied all the news I had written on this site, and imported them into my new site.
In case you are curious to read them, they are dated from November 9, 1997 until March 4, 2001. Most of these messages are written in Dutch.
Whenever I am talking to somebody in Holland, one of the first questions asked to me is: "How is the weather?". The truth is, the weather here is not so interesting as it is in Holland. Over there you never know what to expect, it my rain, it might be sunny, it might be cloudy... everyday something else. Over here it usually is warmer than in Holland, and usually we have a sunny or partially cloudy day. Nothing special.
If you're still interested in the situation here, please read the weather report on Internet. It appears that there are two amateur radio stations in Lleida publishing weather reports, so you will always be able to have updated data.
Lleida is a good place to live. People who regulary follow my messages on this site already know that, but now an independent source has confirmed this. The Spanish magazine Actualidad Economica has done a research for the quality of life in the 52 capitals of the Spanish provinces, and Lleida ended on the 2nd place!!!
The have looked at the price of living, mobility, services, educational possibilities, the character of the inhabitants and the political situation. All those factors seem to be alright here in Lleida.
The most remarkable conclusion from this research is the top position of the Catalan cities, with Girona and Lleida on the first two places and Barcelona on the fifth place.
Yes, it's definitely great to live here!
Q: How long does it take me to put my signature on a paper?
A: Over 5 hours!!!
To get my new passport, I had to fill in a lot of papers. I did all I could at home and send the whole bunch (request form, photo's, police report,...) to the consulate. Last week they phoned me and told that they had sent the whole packet to Holland, but that I still had to come to Barcelona to put my signature on a paper. And this could not be done by post, but had to be done in person at their office.
So this morning I left home at 8 o'clock to enjoy the traffic jams of Barcelona. After three hours I parked me car, I went into the office, put my signature and within 10 minutes I was standing on the street again. Two hours more in the car, and the morning was finished and I was home again.
Still I am very lucky, because since I live so far away from Barcelona, they are going to send my new passport to me by mail. People living in Barcelona are also 'obliged' to come and get their passport at the consulate, but for me they are willing to do this favour. The girl at the desk even told me that I don't have the pay the cost of sending it!!!!! This must be my lucky day...
Until some months ago, this web site had the possibility to subscribe to the news published on this page. Each time I wrote something new, the subscribers would receive the text by e-mail. Unfortunately, my hosting provider does not allow me anymore to send e-mail.
Today I have added a new solution, hosted by Bloglet. By filling in your e-mail address on the form on the main page, you will receive a daily message with all news of that day (usually not a lot...).
This website is now available for trading on the BlogShares fantasy blog shares market. At this moment, 4000 stocks are available at $0,20 each.
I am convinced that this is a very good investment, since the site is still under development, so quality (and thus incoming links) will surely increase.
Now that I have a wonderful new CMS able to produce RSS feeds, I have been looking for a way to use it. My idea is to create a page showing the latest headlines from some news sources (see the list in the side bar), so that I don't have to visit each site.
I have found some applications (so called news aggregators) which do this, but until now I haven't found a good web service offering the same service. I don't want to install an application, since I want to access this information both from home as from my work as well as when I am on holiday. My idea is that I don't have the same bookmarks on all those locations, and by offering a web page the information is always available.
NewsApp is the closest to my ideal I could find, but it lacks configurability and has the layout of an early alpha release.
Today is Sant Jordi, the day that all Catalan boys give a rose to their girlfriend and receive a book in return.
Already this morning I could see some people selling roses at the trafic lights, so for sure I won't have any problems getting a rose.
Maria José does not know this yet, but I also bought a book for her. To me it is not so fair that the boys are ready for €4, while the girls have to spend at least four times that amount.
I read on the Gencat site that Sant Jordi has been celebrated since the year 1456!
Easter in Spain is something special. On 'Semana Santa' everybody takes a small holiday and leaves town to spend a few days in the mountains or at the beach. You can not imagine how silent and empty a city can get until you have visited a city at easter.
Maria José and I also planned to go away for some days (but not to Holland), but finally decided that after working so many weekend to make our home perfect and comfortable, we should take the opportunity to enjoy it.
Of course, four days at home is a little bit too much, so to start our short holiday we headed to Andorra to do some shoppings. The typical items people buy in Andorra are gasoline (we made sure that our tank was empty when arriving - the difference in price was €0,10 per liter), sugar (we bought enough), perfums, cigarettes (unfortunately we don't smoke), clothes (it appeared that most shops have the same owner, must be a rich guy!!!) and electronics (at the moment we don't need anything).
We took our swimming clothes with us to visit Caldea again, but after a day shopping we preferred to go home instead.
You might have noticed the BlogShares logo on my web site. This is because last week I started trading on their fantasy blog share market. The principle is very simple:
Instead of buying shares for companies you virtually buy shares for weblog sites. The value of a site depends on the incoming links. This very sites has no incoming links from other weblogs, so that leaves my website worthless. However, my outgoing sites are worth a little bit, so by linking to other sites, I add value to these sites. The rest functions just like the normal stock market. Everybody starts with $500 and can buy virtual shares. At this moment my assets are worth $745, which I think isn't bad, but compared to some big players this amount is insignificant.
People who haven't visited my website might think that it has changed a lot. But after the big step last week things look quite the same. That is because I am going to make the site in three stages:
- Contents.
I have imported all the news items from my old site. The last days I have reviewed them all and corrected spelling errors, updated expired links and categorised the items. It was fun to read everything again, from moving to Lleida to local culture to reconstructing our house; - Structure.
In the next step I will create the structure: decide which information will be shown, and where does it come. I will start with trhe main page, and then do the archive and individual pages; - Presentation.
The last part will be the fun part. In this step I am going to edit the style sheet to define how each page looks (colours, fonts, borders, images....)
Anyway, plenty of work left for the next weeks.
Yesterday I started installing Windows 98 on my computer WITHOUT A LICENCE!!!
I know that it is illegal, but I have some reasons for doing it. First of all I think that I will only use Windows 98 temporary, and will be able to swith to Linux or FreeBSD soon. Secondly, Windows 98 is a product that is not supported anymore by Microsoft, and I doubt if I still can buy a licence. But even if I could, I wouldn't buy it.
So today I entered the world of serialz, my god how I hate this! Especially since I was doing it on my old laptop which was slowing down with each pop-up showing.
Now that I almost finished installing the operating system, it is time to start thinking about the applications I need. I have made this small list:
- Microsoft Office 97
Also highly illegal, but I think my computer is just too slow for OpenOffice; - WS_FTP Pro
to copy and synchronise files for my websites; - HTML-kit
to edit my web sites; - TopStyle Pro
the easiest way to edit CSS files; - Mozilla or Phoenix
Everything is better than IE, but I am not sure whether my system is fast enough to support Moz; - ArgoSoft mail server
Since my ISP doesn't allow me to send mail from my @jeroensangers.com or @fimcap.org e-mail addresses.
The worst part of the site redesign is done. I just changed the CMS application form the old NewsPro (which is not supported anymore, the creator is now working on Coranto) to Movable Type. Until now I am very positive about MT, I even was able to import all my old NewsPro posts!
The site now shows the default Movable Type layout and design, which is not ugly at all. The coming weeks I am going to study the Movable Type templates and little by little create my own style.
Alright, the legs of the table in our working room are there. My old computer is unpacked, the boxes are thrown away.After some problems I got the computer to work. I decided not to install the scanner, since is is quite big, and I never use it anyway. If I really need to scan something, I can always connect it temporary...
Now I have to reinstall all the software. I could clean up the current installtion and copy my files from my laptop, but I have been playing with this machine for years, and I think it is best to start from zero. I am sure I don't need any file or application, since I didn't use this computer for the last 17 months.
First I was thinking about installing only Linux, but to get working quickly I think it is best to start with a small Windows 98 installation. After Linux id fully operational, I only have to change the boot loader. And it is always handy to have a copy of Windows available, isn't it?
As I have stated before, this site has been created in a very short time, expecting that soon it would be transfered to a better place with better posibilities. As this has not happened yet, I decided to redisign my site. I will do it in the Zeldman way, so I will strip the whole site to its bare bones and after that start trying out the new design. So expect the site to change once in a while...
Since I created my first web page back in 1994 I always have had at least a section in which I tell about my personal life. At this moment this section is the most important part of the site, and more and more people have such a section. If you also link to other sites in your articles, this is called 'blogging', and blogging is very popular.
Although my site is not (yet) so advanced as some other bloggers, I do realise that I am a blogger.
And 'real' bloggers publish their Blogger code on their site. Of course I also have created my own code:
B9 d++ t+ k s+ u- f i o++ x-- e+ l- c--
In fact, the blogger code is nothing but a lame copy of the good old Geek Code.
It has been a while ago since I last updated my page. The stats show that it doesn't matter since people are visiting my site anyway, but I feel a little bit guilty about it. It is not that I haven't got anything to tell. There are things happening in my life, but mostly I am waiting.
Waiting for the arrival of the legs of our desk, so I can remove my computer from the boxes and check if it still works after spending 17 months stuffed away in a little corner.
Waiting to see if my computer works, so I can finally buy a Wifi PCI card to connect to the neighbours ADSL line. Why pay a lot of money if you can share, isn't it?
Waiting for the Dutch consulate to tell me when my new passport will arrive. I just sent them the request form, and I know that it takes at least three weeks to have the new passport, but I want to be sure that I can go to the Netherlands for a small party in the beginning of June.
Waiting for Easter, when I will have some days off to relax a little bit. We have been thinking about going away for some days to the bask Country, but finally we decided to stay at home and relax a little bit. Of course we will go to the beach one day, and for sure we are going to do some nice things the other days as well.
Waiting for inspiration to write something more interesting on my site...
The police has found my drivings licence! This morning I went to the police station to pick it up. It was still in the wallet I keep it in, but the other things like my passport and my Aino business card have disappeared from the wallet.
Anyway, this saves me some trouble requesting a new licence.
