June 2004 Archives

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

--- Albert Einstein

Summer in Lleida has a bad name. Being in the inlands without any lake and usually without even a small breeze makes Lleida a very hot place. The hottest months yet have to come and the temperature is already at 38°C. With this kind of temperatures you have only two options to spend your free time: inside the water (a swimming pool or the sea) or in the mountains. In both cases it is advisable to leave early in the morning, as driving a car can be unbearable during the day.

This weekend we chose the swimming pool option, since we didn't feel like driving very far. As a result, our activities were limited to those you can do in a swimming pool, which is basically limited to reading. Fortunately I still had to read the latest Linux Journal, but for next weekend I will have to buy some books.

The night of San Joan, two o'clock in the morning. We are sitting side by side on a balcony on the fifth floor of a house in Balafia. The view is stunning; we can oversee the whole city with the Seu Vella high above it. There are fireworks and bonfires everywhere, and I count 5 empty bottles of Cava. The radio plays "The house of the rising sun", so there is no need to say anything...

Just like many people, sometimes my head bursts of all things I have to remember and to do. In fact, my short--term memory is terrible; I am able to tell you to do something and completely forget about it within 10 minutes. The reason for this is that I can be completely focussed on the action I am doing at the moment. I am aware of this problem, and have tried out many strategies to overcome this. How can I process the enormous amount of information I receive by e-mail, hear from colleagues and clients and read on the internet without getting drowned in it, so that I can actually get things done?

The answer for me lies in the last three words: for the last year I have been applying David Allen's methodology called Getting Things Done. This method looks a lot like the things I have been trying out before; only it is worked out a lot better. The basis is to process your inbox (which can be mail, paper, phone...) and fill your calendar and next action system. Combined with a weekly review, this system ensures that no action will slip out of your system, and you actually get things done.

Of course the whole thing is explained in more detail in the book by David Allen, but this scheme explains a lot.

These days I am trying to see whether the Mambo Open Source CMS system could fit my idea's for the new Fimcap site. The software is very complete, and I still have to explore all available third-party Components and Modules before I can make my final judgement. I am using this post as my scrapbook, so I can access my notes from any computer.

More and more people are buying digital cameras; I even read that the digital camera sales outnumber the traditional film cameras nowadays. I am very happy with my Canon film camera, but after I have been playing with my parents' new Sony digital camera last week I wondered whether a digital camera would be something for me. Of course as a gadget it would most certainly be welcome, but as a replacement for my current film camera it will need to add much additional benefits. So I made a little comparison:

Pro digital:

Electronic format

Logically, digital cameras store photographs in a digital format. This makes it very easy to save them on your PC.

Easier handling

Related to the digital format, photographs taken with a digital camera are much easier to publish to the internet, to e-mail to your friends and relatives and to catalogue. Besides that you can easily retouch them using graphical editing software

No film rolls

Since you don't need to buy film rolls, the costs per photograph will drop significantly.

Cheaper workflow

With a digital camera you work different. You shoot your pictures, delete the ones you don't like, store them on you PC and maybe you will print your best pictures. This is a very cheap process.

Quantity gives quality

Because the workflow is so cheap, you generally make many more images. This has two big benefits for the image quality: first you simply have a bigger chance making a photograph at the right place and the right time and secondly the more pictures you make, the more experienced you become. Professional photographers use the same tactic, but using film makes it way too expensive for amateur photographers.

Pro film:

Higher resolution

It is difficult to compare two completely different techniques, but in general film cameras have a much higher resolution. In digital cameras the important parameter is the number of Megapixels --- even though the sensor size is more important --- so experts have been trying to calculate this number for film cameras. Results vary, but most conclude that film cameras have a resolution between 15 and 25 Megapixels.

Bigger enlargements

The quality of enlargements is another feature in which the traditional camera beats the newcomers. A photograph made with a film camera can easily be enlarged to 40 by 50 centimetres, while a digital photograph will start losing quality at 20 by 25 cm.

Cheaper cameras

Film cameras cost only a fraction of their digital equivalents; sometimes they are even 90% cheaper.

Dynamic range

Digital photo chips have limits in dynamic range; at a certain moment a change in subject brightness won't result in a change in image brightness anymore. Films do not have this hard limit, but rather become less and less sensitive. The dynamic range of films is larger than the dynamic range of photo chips.

Proven technology

Film cameras on the market now do not differ much from those on the market five years ago. In general you buy a camera and use it until it stops working. A digital camera however, is new technology that is still being developed. You new 6 megapixel camera will be considered old within a year. I don't know anybody who is still using his one megapixel camera he bought two years ago, but I know several people still using a film camera they bought over a decade ago.

In short, digital cameras give you ease of use and electronic access to your photographs, while film cameras give you quality and are cheaper. The choice is up to you. For me it is not so important having a digital photograph --- though I would like to publish more photo's on this site. On a cold Sunday in winter, I like to grab a photo album and browse through the images on my sofa. I don't think I can have that same feeling sitting behind my computer. For the moment I still prefer film cameras to digital cameras, but maybe I might buy a very cheap digital camera for those moments I want to send a photo by e-mail or publish it on this site.

Firefox 0.9 has been released today. Of course I immediately downloaded and installed it. Ad the version number shows, this is still a technology preview, so there still are some things not working quite as they should.

The most important missing feature is a good installation procedure. To upgrade from version 0.8 to 0.9, I had to remove the old version, install the new one and after that I had to reinstall all my extensions --- Bookmarks synchronizer, Bloglines notifier, Links toolbar. All together 10 minutes work to upgrade a simple application.

But alas, this was the last time I had to go through this, since the next version will hopefully be 1.0 and will include the upgrade functionality.

A red Buick Electra Convertible 1959. Really nice car...

When you travel by car through Europe, you'll find that the traffic rules are more or less the same for all countries. Of course there are some minor differences as the maximum speed on highways ---120 km/h in the Netherlands, 130 km/h in France--- but in general the rules are the same. Nobody ever warned for the fact that the Standard European Traffic Rules are not valid in Spain. The confusing part is that the used signs are exactly the same, but the interpretation might surprise visitors from abroad. Therefore I decided to write here about the differences I experienced, starting with the most disturbing rule: the minimum speed.

Each road has a minimum speed, which is normally shown with a sign equally to the one above. In general the minimum speeds are as follows:

• inside towns: 50 km/h;
• open roads: 80 or 100 km/h;
• motorways: 120 km/h.

It is very important to obey the minimum speed. Fortunately, the local drivers are very friendly and will warn you if you are driving slower than the minimum. They will signal with their lights and horns, wave with their arms and even shout at you. In case you miss these signals, they will risk their lives and approach you with their own car up to a distance of 30 centimetres. They assume that once you will notice them you accelerate to keep their lives out of danger.

Already for some months, this site can be reached at another domain name: braintags.com. First this domain was hosted at another server, redirecting to jeroensangers.com, and since some weeks it serves as a full domain name for this site. Silently I have tested the new domain name for some time, since I like it better than the original one. This site is called 'Brain Tags', so it is only logical that you can reach it through braintags.com.

As of today I changed the configuration of this site to use braintags.com as its main domain, though you can of course still access the site by its old URL.

The new Link dump section of this site is now also available as an Atom 0.3 feed, so you will be able to receive my links in your favourite feed reader --- my preferred reader is Bloglines.

In the footer of each page you will find feeds button, showing you all available feeds.

After restructuring the templates, it was time top add a new feature: the Link dump.

While surfing the internet, I find so many interesting sites, which I usually bookmark all. Lately I found my bookmarks getting too crowded, making it difficult to find specific links. From now on I won't put them in my bookmarks anymore, but publish them on this site, for four good reasons:

1. My bookmarks list stays cleaner;
2. I can use the search function to look up links;
3. I can easily add comments;
4. You also benefit from my findings.

For the moment the link dump is implemented solely as a list on the main page, but I plan to add an archiving function and enable comments on individual links.

In an international office like ours, the right tools are very important. My most important tool is the phone; I spend most of the day talking on the phone. All other important tools are electronic ones, as you can see from this screenshot (click for a larger version):

I e-mail a lot and use instant messaging through Trillian (MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and IRC in one application). But the handiest tool I have is the big image on the background: xearth for Windows. It shows me in a single screen which of our foreign contacts is awake. ;-)

I am facing a small CSS problem: I have a page with some blocks of content, of which I don't know the contents on beforehand. Therefore all blocks --- defined by div elements --- have the same definition. If the block contains text, it has to be left aligned; if the block contains an image, it has to be horizontally centred.

In the good ol' HTML era, I would simply add align="center" to the img element, and I would be done. But with CSS, the only way to centre an image is with text-align: center; to the parent element of the image. But this is impossible, since I don't know the contents on beforehand.

What I would want is to apply a certain style depending on the child element; something like: div < img {text-align:center}. Since this kind of instructions do not exist, I will probably have to use some kind of JavaScript hack to accomplish what I want --- or does anybody know a better solution?

I have restructured my templates for this site. The old ones used way too many <div>'s and <span>'s, which cluttered up the HTML --- these elements are today's equivalent of the tables in the 90's. I decided to start from zero and only add those elements that I think are necessary. As a result, the new pages are smaller, which should make them faster for you.

To make things easier for me, I decided to use another Document Type Definition. This site is now XHTML 1.0 Strict, instead of XHTML 1.1. To me it feels a little bit like a loss, since I liked it that my site was on the forefront of web technology, but the hassle is simple too big. The biggest problem is that a lot of JavaScripts won't work, and my knowledge is not enough to fix these things myself.

I also took the opportunity to activate the TypeKey service for those people who want to use it. It is not required; I only see it as a means for showing to the readers that it was really you who wrote this comment. As an alternative you can still use OpenPGP to certify your comments.

There are still some things not going quite as I wanted to, and the quickly adjusted stylesheet makes this site look even worse than before in Internet Explorer, but I will be working on those. If you notice any strange behaviour or mistake, please let me know.